Non-playing Player who has signed up for A LOT of tournaments

[DrRockenheimer]

I believe any system that allows a player to manipulate the results by stalling out a game to the time limit is going to be a problem in a competitive format. But there may be other ways than auto-booting to mitigate that problem. In turn-based arena mode, the system forces you to play all your games that are waiting, rather than picking and choosing among them to try to get a winning streak to level up. (Pro tip: still possible to strategically use real-time games to try to level up.) Similar rules for tournaments would tend to force games to a result rather than allow for stalling.

[Gulchen]

...

In any case, my original point on this thread was that I don't think going into negative time should result in an auto-boot. In fact, given that booting results in basically a random result, I think you shouldn't be allowed to boot on tournament games at all, you should just have to wait for the max time to be reached (in which case, whoever has remaining time wins, which is still a bit random, but a better solution is probably pretty difficult). If all players are playing regularly, hopefully the game will be finished in time. If someone chooses to run their clock down late in the game to try and get to max time, they're likely to place poorly.

That would be preferable, and is something BGA might actually do ,
but for what it's worth, I think the ideal (which won't happen here, because BGA)
would be

Game implementations can provide a method of choosing default actions for players
who have left or run out of time. ​ (In many cases, that method would be ​ ​ ​ "at random" ​ .)
For games who's implementation provides such a method, if the tournament organizer didn't opt out of it being used for this, then
that method is used for players who have run out of time. ​ Otherwise, players running out of time is handled as you described.

.

[nik592]

Game implementations can provide a method of choosing default actions for players
who have left or run out of time. ​ (In many cases, that method would be ​ ​ ​ "at random" ​ .)
For games who's implementation provides such a method, if the tournament organizer didn't opt out of it being used for this, then
that method is used for players who have run out of time. ​ Otherwise, players running out of time is handled as you described.

Yes, I believe if they are booted that's what happens, though I don't think the results count for anything from that point - it's basically, the person booted loses and everyone else ties for a win. But the point is a player shouldn't be booted immediately in a tournament, where time is fixed, limited (as in tournament organisers can only choose certain max times for each game, which then dictates time per player automatically) and can be affected by things outside their control, like timezone differences. If a player is playing regularly, I don't understand why anyone would want to boot them as soon as their clock runs a bit negative (apart from manipulating the result), rather than play out the game.

As I've mentioned before, I ONLY run out of time in tournament play (or so I believe, if I have ever run out of time in a turn-based non-tournament game, it would be a pretty rare thing). In regular games, even up to 4 turns per day (which is generally the most I can do due to aforementioned timezone issues), I am always able to keep a positive clock, even if I lose up to 12 hours overnight. I'm also careful to choose my tournaments where I start with a minimum of 36 hours (preferably 48 and above). I made the mistake of joining a tournament when I was new to them where there was only 12 hours per player and ran out of time within the first two days, and spent the whole game praying no one would boot me (in the end, I remember several other players also ran out of time pretty quickly, though I don't recall how the game finished up).

[blockmonoid]

This player is back. Same pattern: they repair Karma by playing a bunch of Can't Stop. Then they sign up for a ton of tournaments (currently 432!! active games) and then disappears. It ruins so many tournaments because we all have to wait for their time to run out and they are taking the place of another willing player (this is especially true on round robin tournaments). As mentioned before, there is no way to report them because the offenses that actually provide a form to fill out are very, very specific.

Since banning the player from the site doesn't seem to be an option, and reporting them is not an option, I would recommend the following remedy:

Any player who reaches 0% karma must not only repair their karma to join tournaments (as currently required), but they are limited in the number of tournaments they can join. At first, limited to only 10 tournaments. Successful completion of 10 tournaments allows you to sign up for 20 more. Successful completion of 20 more tournaments allows you to sign up for 20 more. Successful completion of 50 tournaments in total will remove all restrictions on the number of tournaments that can be joined. Again, this only happens when a player has reached 0% karma.

The current system makes it too easy for this player to repair karma and then join (literally) a hundred tournaments. My suggestion, I hope, would make the "penance period" long enough to discourage this player. Yes, they could still do a lot of Can't Stop tournaments. But even those take some time to complete, requiring the player to return and play regular to open the door for many tournaments. Right now, this player literally only has to spend a half hour to repair karma before they are able to sign up for the tournaments that cause weeks of frustration for other players. Moderators, you need to address this player's behavior.

[Gulchen]

I am again pointing to ​ https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=12262635 : ​ ​ ​ I would be in it, but I only play 2-player-game tournaments here.

[mrdoctor]

For sake of people's mental-health*, practicalities, and ensuring 1 player can't 'ruin' 100s of games a week - no player should be able to be in more than 100 or 150 (timed) games at once. At the very least you could limit each account to a maximum of 100 Swiss/Elimination tournaments at once, and/or 10 round-robin tournaments (max games at once for those is 15; so 15x10=150).....

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* 500 timed games - to finish them, that's gonna generally mean each game needs on average about 3 moves a day. 1500 game moves a day. If each move takes 30 seconds overall at absolute minumum (switching between games, thinking about the move) - then that's over 12 hours per day required of literal non-stop play.... whereas limiting players to 150 simultaneous games limits their non-stop gaming requirements to about 3.5 hours a day which feels substantially healthier (though it's still a lot!)

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Also, the version I posted a year ago in the thread:

Would a limit on the amount of tournaments a player is allowed to be playing simultaneously (or games with a timer that a player can play) be a good idea? Last year I got a bit enthusiastic and for about a week I think I had about 100 turn-based games running simultaneously - and it was stressful even to do it for just one week.

Maybe something like:
* Max 100 (or 75) turn-based games (non-tournament)
* Max 100 (or 75) active tournament sign-ups
* Unlimited training-mode/no-time-limit games

That'd still allow for 200 (or 150) turn-based timed games for those who really want to juggle that many games, plus allow an unlimited amount of other games where players won't get frustrated at the timer running over/games timing out. Although if someone signed up to 100 round-robin tournaments that'd generate 1500 (100x15) simultaneous games, so may need some planning to counter that...

Or at the least, change things so that reputation can't just be regained quickly by playing 20 quick games of Connect 4 and no actual repercussions.

[DrRockenheimer]

For extreme cases, there should be a simple solution. That person should just be kicked out of BGA, period. But BGA apparently tries to avoid adding a "moderation" burden whenever possible, so assume that will not happen. Something a little more clever may be required. I believe here, that the solution is to have negative karma so that it takes extreme amounts of busywork play to erase the karma deficit created by extreme misbehavior. The person's karma level would still display as 0%, but under the hood it would be a negative number.

[mrdoctor]

For extreme cases, there should be a simple solution. That person should just be kicked out of BGA, period. But BGA apparently tries to avoid adding a "moderation" burden whenever possible, so assume that will not happen. Something a little more clever may be required. I believe here, that the solution is to have negative karma so that it takes extreme amounts of busywork play to erase the karma deficit created by extreme misbehavior. The person's karma level would still display as 0%, but under the hood it would be a negative number.

It feels like lots of technical solutions are having to be put in place for everyone, to counter the behaviour of 1 particular user, and maybe a handful of other similar users.

[DrRockenheimer]

The karma system is there so that human beings are not needed to respond to a big chunk of the complaints that would otherwise be generated by bad behavior. It would be nice if there was a system for effectively reporting extreme misbehavior that circumvents that system, but there is not (at least not in this case). It just seems more likely to me that those in charge would embrace tweeks to the existing system rather than anything that requires more moderation.

[Sliceofbread]

For extreme cases, there should be a simple solution. That person should just be kicked out of BGA, period. But BGA apparently tries to avoid adding a "moderation" burden whenever possible, so assume that will not happen. Something a little more clever may be required. I believe here, that the solution is to have negative karma so that it takes extreme amounts of busywork play to erase the karma deficit created by extreme misbehavior. The person's karma level would still display as 0%, but under the hood it would be a negative number.

I agree with this. Having a floor on Karma just means you can that once you hit the floor, you are no longer penalized.