Remove from tournament games the ability to skip players out of time

[WaffleHat73]

Once again eliminated from a tournament for this very thing. Since my account was younger than the other accounts, I got eliminated as well. It's a huge flaw in the system and needs to be fixed, because this is not fun, or fair.

[Mathew5000]

1. A player who is out of time can be expelled only with the unanimous agreement of all players who are not out of time.

This does seem like the most elegant solution short of disabling skipping turns in tournaments entirely. In fact, I feel like this should be the case everywhere on BGA. It allows tables to kick people who really are egregiously not playing (just vanish for days or whatever), while removing the ability for players to abuse the system by kicking someone who is still playing for selfish reasons. I like this a lot, it seems like it has a lot of upsides, no downsides, and should be very easy to implement.

I submitted it as a formal suggestion. Please vote! https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=107708

[Mathew5000]

1. Tournament creators need more flexibility in creating their tournaments. This could include longer time limits or turn-based time limits, instead of only fixed (both are generally workable, the first is probably slightly better for tournaments where timing of rounds can be important).

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=55235 #55235: "Allow bespoke timings for turn based tournaments"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=46396 #46396: "Extend tournament length to 60 days"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=29010 #29010: "Allow turn-based tournament to use "+X hours per turn" game speeds"

2. Playing hours could be made more workable if they respected different timezones - that is, playing hours are between 10am-10pm in YOUR timezone, not in the timezone of the tournament creator. So I can take my turn during the day, and it flips to a player on the other side of the world where it's currently 4am. Their clock won't start ticking again til 6am. This unfortunately is not as easy as it sounds to develop (which is probably why it hasn't been).

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=31395 #31395: "Tournament clock time doesn't take time zone into account"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=32133 #32133: "Tournament Timekeeping sleeptime"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=29609 #29609: "Warn if turn based tournament has playing hours"

3. Booting in tournaments needs to be improved. Either booting needs to be an "everyone at the table vote", or booting needs to be able to be disabled for tournaments (tournament games have a maximum time related to the selected time limit, so the tables won't run forever if someone AWOLs).

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=107708 #107708: "In tournament games, expelling a player who is out of time should be a unanimous decision"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=35239 #35239: "Make "Skip Turn" / Expel a Timed-out player a Concensus Decision of All Remaining Players."
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=35289 #35289: "Stop skipping in multiplayer tournaments"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=54068 #54068: "Games shouldnt kick Out of a Tournament"

4. The ways of awarding placements when a tournament game does not complete needs to be improved. Currently it's based on most time remaining (if the game is allowed to time out), or seniority of account (if someone is booted). Neither of these is any particular indication of who might be more deserving of the win. Time might mean something if the playing hours respected individual timezones. But this one is tricky, as there isn't an easy way to know who is winning at a given point in many games, due to non-linear scoring conditions (which is probably how most games work).

I couldn't find a suggestion directly on this point, but there are several that are peripherally related:
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=42583 #42583: "multiplayer elimination in tournament - makes winning players loose"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=26541 #26541: "Tournament : Eliminated after a draw"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=10354 #10354: "Tournament rank error"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=80158 #80158: "Tournament: On a tie game, who wins the match?"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=61176 #61176: "Tournaments FAQ is incomplete / outdated"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=58974 #58974: "Absent Players Ruin Turn-Based Tournaments"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=52802 #52802: "Ensure eliminated players don't win under the "time left" metric"
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=40878 #40878: "Tournament match wins related to time limit should be revised."

And there may be more issues. Creating a good tournament system isn't easy and this one certainly isn't perfect. Unfortunately, it also seems to be not under any kind of active development either.

Yes, I am a premium member and I wish the site would devote some resources to improving tournaments. The links I provided above include some suggestions that I agree with, and some that I don't. I wanted to collect all the relevant suggestions I could find, so that anyone following this thread can read the various suggestions and vote for the ones they agree with.

[nik592]

Nice summary of the bugs - I went through them and voted for a number (there were also several I had already voted for ). But as I said, and as many have noticed, improving the tournament system doesn't seem to be a priority.

[Mathew5000]

4. The ways of awarding placements when a tournament game does not complete needs to be improved. Currently it's based on most time remaining (if the game is allowed to time out), or seniority of account (if someone is booted). Neither of these is any particular indication of who might be more deserving of the win. Time might mean something if the playing hours respected individual timezones. But this one is tricky, as there isn't an easy way to know who is winning at a given point in many games, due to non-linear scoring conditions (which is probably how most games work).

I couldn't find a suggestion directly on this point, but there are several that are peripherally related:

I found one other: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=34353 which proposes that after a player is booted for being out of time, the remaining players be attributed points "based on the current standing in the match". This suggestion, from 2021, has only one vote (the proposer) and I might not fully understand it. There was a little discussion of this upthread (bottom of page 3 of this thread, posts by RobertBr and Zelva, who noted that it would be unfair to deem the current midgame scores as final, when some players might have deployed strategies that are expected to yield significant points later on in the game).

Anyway, that idea is a nonstarter because for many games there's no ongoing "score" during the course of the match.

I believe that in Swiss System tournaments it's not an issue at all, because players are considered tied and the points are divided. (If I'm wrong about that, please correct me!) The issue arises in the multiplayer-elimination format.

It's confusing to have a separate rule for what happens when the match ends because a player is booted, as opposed to if no one is booted but the match hits the "maximum duration" as set by the tournament creator.

Seniority of account is a terrible way to decide something like this. I can't think of any justification for it. A random draw would be much, much better.

In a real-time tournament I can see the justification for ranking players according to their time remaining, for purposes of determining who advances in the multiplayer elimination format. It's a real-time touranment, everyone is expected to be "at the keyboard" and paying attention during the whole course of the game. If the game hits its maximum duration then it makes sense to me that the players who have used the most time would be "held responsible" for the match hitting the time limit.

But in turn-based tournaments, as others have pointed out in this thread, how much time you have left (compared to your opponent's clocks) is principally a function of your time zone and your real-life schedule. In my opinion it shouldn't affect your ranking in the game unless you exceeded your alloted time and your clock has gone negative. If the match is terminated because it hits the maximum game duration, then I think anyone whose clock is negative should be ranked last, with the other players ranked in a tie for first. In a multiplayer tournament, the determination of who advances in such a scenario should be made by random draw, not on the basis of who has the most time on their clock. I think that would be the best rule for turn-based multiplayer-elimination tournaments; it's not ideal but (1) easy to implement (compared to other suggestions like using the current game score), (2) fairest, and (3) least open to abuse.

To be clear, what I proposed in the previous paragraph would apply to turn-based tournaments of the multiplayer elimination format, and it would apply to both of the situations, (1) a player is expelled for having exceeded time, and (2) the match is terminated for reaching its max time limit, even though no player was expelled. I couldn't find this suggestion already made in BGA's bug reporting system.

These bug reports also look relevant, but they are already closed:
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=52389
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=60785
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=92036

Here's one that's peripherally related to the issue. It deals with ELO calculation when a game reaches its maximum duration:
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=50600