List Time-Based Tournament improvement Suggestions here

[JoysJoy]

SOURISDUDESERT asked for suggestions to make time-based tournaments better so I thought we should start a thread to help BGA fix the horrible mess that it is now- where currently a small number of players ruin hundreds of tournaments and not a thing can be done about it, not even a way to make a report to let anyone know it is happening.

I'll start:

[*] Create a maximum number of turn-based tournaments a player can join at once. 50 would be my suggestion. I have played 45 at once and been online all day and could barely keep up. It is not possible to play more than that and actually play and finish all the games. If anyone wants to play more than 50 at a time, they can add a few real time games that day, or start some turn-based, non-tournament games to fill in the gaps if they really feel they need to have more than 50 games going at once.
[*] Make turn-based tournament players opt-in, don't do that automatically. This gets rid of the bad ones right away..
[*] Create a turn-based tournament karma and let tournament organizers use those numbers to screen others. This karma should include a count of those who sign up and never play.
[*] If a tournament organizer has thumbs anyone down, don't let that person see or join the tournament created by the other someone who asked not to play with them. This would have stopped all issues after the first encounter but we are currently forced to keep going with thumbs-downed players, even if we organize the event. If they want to play- let them start their own tournament and not join where they have already ruined things.
[*] Let tournament organizers boot players but have that report go to you with the reason why.
[*] Automatically un-register anyone who no shows 3 tournaments so not one more is ruined. Make them earn back tournament karma with real-time tournaments.
[*] Let organizers create notes to potential players as they make events. I would like to say, I am creating a tournament for those who show up to tournaments. Send me a message for an invite if I can go to your page and see that you show and up and play when you say you will, and you are welcome to play.
[*] Make players do specific things to earn back specific karma. Playing Can't Stop live cannot change your time-based karma or tournament karma.
[*] Let organizers make changes players want during the event. For example, in a Viticulture Tournament I created, I gave everyone 5 days to play but we all timed out. The game is so long we needed 10 days, everyone agreed, but there is no way to do that once someone has signed up. Why can't we just all vote yes if that is what we want, if anyone votes no it doesn't happen.
[*] Give us a clear way to report issues you don't have listed. We need an "other" option where we can actually describe the issue, not where we are told any other issue is not an issue. This is infuriating when people are already upset and makes everything worse from the perspective of the player who has no options left to get help. The fact we had to have dozens complain for many, many months about this time-based tournament issue before even beginning to take us seriously has created its own bad karma. Many of us are ready to quit and would have long ago if another board-game playing option existed. Reaching the point of BGA believing there was even a real problem took way too long.
[*] Let us create a new category of tournament that is just for those who REALLY want to play and promise to show up. Then, all the news rules apply. Anyone who does not want the new rules can create and play under the current rules.
[*] Finally, BGA moderators need to plan, join, and play some time-based events so you understand the experience the rest of us are having. It seems some obtuse answers to problems have shown this does not happen.

BTW- how is it NOT part of TOS to play when you say you will? SOURISDUDESERT says player "F...F" is not a problem because TOS does not say you have to play when you sign up. ??? How does that make sense? Why let people promise to play and not show up? What is the point of signing up for time-based tournament of not to promise to play? i need someone to explain this to me.

[Tanjanica]

100% agree that something needs to be done. The current setup doesn't stop any of the problems that tournaments have.

And they are problems. Serious problems.

The system DOESN'T work, even if the admin says it does. It doesn't.

[Gulchen]

"how is it NOT part of TOS to play when you say you will?"
That is not part of TOS because an issue can come up, or one's
internet can disconnect, or one can later change one's mind.

(However, it not being part of TOS presumably
doesn't stop its consistency from being a problem.)

[JoysJoy]

Yes, Guichen, issues arise for everyone, sometimes, but not more than once or twice a year. This thread is aimed at people who do this most of the time, not just on rare occasions. No one should do this for hundreds and hundreds of events month after month and have it be seen as innocent.

[Caffe Latte]

Please do not do decisions instead of other players how many turn based are ok or not ok.
50 is very very small "limit". At least to 500 if you would insist on knowing better what amount people can manage.

[GeraldineMerida]

In swiss-style tournaments, automatically eliminate from the tournament anyone who has been booted out/quit in 2 consecutive rounds. This would save tournament organisers work, and also protect those sourisdudesert is concerned about, who have brief emergencies, but generally play responsibly.

In multiplayer tournaments, let all players in a game with a non-playing player advance to the next round (in player elimination tournaments) or score the same as for a skipped game (in swiss-style). This would avoid randomly penalising players for being drawn against those who don't play.

I agree that limiting the number of tournaments all players can join could be problematic: what seems excessive to one person does not to someone else. Maybe only allow those with very good reputations (85%+) to join more than 50(?) tournaments at one time?

Since karma is too easy to get back for those who play the system, ban players from joining all tournaments for e.g. one month if they are automatically eliminated for failure to play, as above.

[Doubleshoe]

Give moderators the ability to see if a game was timed out or not.

According to sourisdudesert, the mods do not have this ability at the moment, and it is quite clearly a tool you need. THAT SAID, there is a very, very easy way of seeing if someone timed out of a game: They lost it with 0 points with their opponent scoring 1. A finished game with a score of 1-0 (or 1-1-0, etc.) is something I will contend is not a valid or likely outcome in the VAST majority of, if not all games available on BGA. So, either give your mods this special power of seeing why a game ended, or alternatively learn how scoring works in boardgames, to the same effect.

[Cruella-Devil]

Any player can go into another players Reputation and click on a penalty to see if the game was abandoned or if a players turn was skipped.

[mrdoctor]

* De-register people from tournaments they're in if their reputation hits zero for more than 48 hours.
* Limit maximum tournaments one can enter simultaneously to 100 [admittedly, if people entered 100 round-robin tournaments they could end up in 1500 simultaneous games, but I'm guessing few would try]
* Allow tournament organisers to at least have the ability to adjust game-length to make games longer (not shorter) if deemed necessary and they've noted too many games are timing out
* Change whatever the existing algorithm is for swiss-tournaments - in smaller tournaments this always seems to end up with matches becoming really repetitive and the same players playing each other for the last 5 games of the tournament. At the very least just have it loop back to the beginning.
* Make earning karma back harder than just playing 1 hour of Connect-4 to get back to 100 and as if nothing ever happened.
* A more direct link for tournament-organisers to raise issues/bugs with BGA staff. Example - 2-stage tournaments where the 2nd stage hasn't started and it's just perpetually frozen - the players then have to report this as a bug and wait for it to get voted on for it to be looked at.
* More detailed info as a default on tournament pages explaining how they work and what all the tournament types mean. I often get messages about tournaments I've set up about basic misunderstandings such as not knowing what a 'round robin' means.
* In addition to the above - a note next to the tournament admin name to tell people that they unless their profile says so, they're not BGA staff, and can't change any settings whatsoever once 1 person signs-up to the tournament.
* Add a game length of 21-days. Some games need something between the 15 and 30 day options.
* Change the algorithm for knockout tournaments where 2 players are kept to solve the infinite-loop problem of if only 4 players remain, as happened here: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=106420
* When inviting players to a tournament, you have to 'refresh' the page fully between each person you invite. Maybe a way to avoid having to do that, or a way to invite multiple users at once?

[sourisdudesert]

Thanks for your suggestions.

We made the appropriate updates that fixed the issues:

See announcement: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25994