Are we ever going to change the system to stop hurting honest players vs quitters?

[Jellby]

I do get what you're saying, but my POV is I'd rather play a game with someone who is always a few hours late for their turn (I play mainly turn-based) than not play a game at all for 3 days.

Simply put, your time preferences are "flexible", but maybe others' are stricter for whatever reason.

Same goes with other preferences like number of players, karma, player level or expansions. If I join a table with some particular settings, no one should assume that I would also be OK playing with some other settings.

[nik592]

I do get what you're saying, but my POV is I'd rather play a game with someone who is always a few hours late for their turn (I play mainly turn-based) than not play a game at all for 3 days.

Simply put, your time preferences are "flexible", but maybe others' are stricter for whatever reason.

Same goes with other preferences like number of players, karma, player level or expansions. If I join a table with some particular settings, no one should assume that I would also be OK playing with some other settings.

And neither do I. As I said, I get that POV, I was just saying there are other valid ones out there. I feel like there's an assumption that people who don't boot just aren't strong enough or bold enough or whatever, similarly to there being something of an attitude that everyone who boot are jerks. Neither is true in all cases. There's lots of reasons for why people choose a particular play style (in terms of time), and some of them probably aren't as unreasonable as the other side seems to sometimes think.

Of course, my opinion is possibly somewhat coloured by the fact that people come on here to complain about either being booted or players using almost all of their valid turn time, both of which are acceptable scenarios which should be defended and possibly tends to provoke people with strong opinions the other way.

[RazorOz]

One thing about the issue of boots, is they aren't one and the same. Booting someone who is out of time and taking forever mid-game can be fair. Booting someone when the game is quite literally over once they complete their current move is far more dubious, and in my experience tends to only be done by someone who knows their about to take en ELO hit in a desperate attempt to save themselves.

Like I said though this really is only a minor part of the original post. If some of the other issues around this situation were handled differently, it wouldn't actually matter if people were doing this.

[buu441]

Booting someone when the game is quite literally over once they complete their current move is far more dubious, and in my experience tends to only be done by someone who knows their about to take en ELO hit in a desperate attempt to save themselves.

This misconception is what leads to a lot of the bitterness we see around here. Some players believe that they are still in a winning position after their timer goes red. If you are playing with some form of timer, board state doesn't matter once you go over the allotted time. You have already enabled a defeat condition for yourself.

[pjt33]

Booting someone when the game is quite literally over once they complete their current move is far more dubious, and in my experience tends to only be done by someone who knows their about to take en ELO hit in a desperate attempt to save themselves.

This misconception is what leads to a lot of the bitterness we see around here. Some players believe that they are still in a winning position after their timer goes red. If you are playing with some form of timer, board state doesn't matter once you go over the allotted time. You have already enabled a defeat condition for yourself.

You're overgeneralising. This thread seems to me to have talked more about the scenario where player A is winning, player B is in the red, and player C kicks player B to avoid losing Elo to player A.

[RazorOz]

Booting someone when the game is quite literally over once they complete their current move is far more dubious, and in my experience tends to only be done by someone who knows their about to take en ELO hit in a desperate attempt to save themselves.

This misconception is what leads to a lot of the bitterness we see around here. Some players believe that they are still in a winning position after their timer goes red. If you are playing with some form of timer, board state doesn't matter once you go over the allotted time. You have already enabled a defeat condition for yourself.

Yes, as pointed out above, it's not me timing out. It's I/others have already finished, then someone else who is losing is trying to time out someone else who hasn't finished yet to void the result, and instead actually profit from "tying" me. I consider this terrible etiquette, especially in the fashion I normally see it. So at a game like Heat, you get timed added at the start of the turn, and then have that time to take all your actions as you go through all the steps. When someone is desperately trying to time someone out they will keep clicking the expel button between every action (click) that player is playing, even though they are clearly actively trying to take their turn, and you are just actively hurting their ability to take their turn when you are clicking the expel button every few seconds. If you think that's acceptable behaviour, sure, but I don't, I don't want to play with players like that, so I will block them too.

But as I keep saying, it all wouldn't matter if the system handled the situations differently to begin with. In my opinion, the players who are doing this in the way I am talking about here know full well what they're doing, but wouldn't bother if the system was going to give them 4th or 5th anyway.

I have actually heard of even worse horror stories along these lines in turn based, but because I don't play turn based, I can't comment from direct experience myself. One thing that would help was if there was a delay between the number of times you can click the expel button, because in games where your turns require a lot of clicks through the actions, it's just not helpful if someone is clicking the expel button every 2 seconds after your clicks.

[buu441]

I guess your anger is misplaced then. If you need to be mad at anyone, it should be the player who went into red to enable this and not the player who did the kicking. It is funny how we always see posts whining and complaining about players kicking someone going into the red, but never a post thanking someone for being nice and not kicking when it is perfectly within their right to do so. Within the BGA framework of multiplayer games with timers, a possible outcome is one loser and no winner. Might be frustrating for some when it happens, but those are the rules you agreed to play with. And to reiterate, it is a slow player going into red that causes this to happen, and the player doing the kicking is not at fault in any way.

[RazorOz]

I guess your anger is misplaced then. If you need to be mad at anyone, it should be the player who went into red to enable this and not the player who did the kicking. It is funny how we always see posts whining and complaining about players kicking someone going into the red, but never a post thanking someone for being nice and not kicking when it is perfectly within their right to do so. Within the BGA framework of multiplayer games with timers, a possible outcome is one loser and no winner. Might be frustrating for some when it happens, but those are the rules you agreed to play with. And to reiterate, it is a slow player going into red that causes this to happen, and the player doing the kicking is not at fault in any way.

Not only this ignoring the majority of the point of the opening post, it seems to be indicating like it's a closed shop with no chance to change. The whole point of bringing it up is to drive change, things aren't set in stone. Sites that work off a subscription model will generally do things to appeal to said subscribers.

Your last point is purely subjective, that's your opinion, it's not definitive fact. The circles I have run in here nearly unanimously agree the behaviour I have described is poor etiquette and block these people on sight. If you think that behaviour is fine that is fine, but don't be surprised if you end up getting blocked by lots of players, because I guarantee the majority of players do not view it that way.

[pjt33]

It is funny how we always see posts whining and complaining about players kicking someone going into the red, but never a post thanking someone for being nice and not kicking when it is perfectly within their right to do so.

That's not at all surprising. I've played many games where someone who lost connection has thanked people in the in-game messages for being patient, but it would be rather weird for them to post about it in the site-wide discussion forum.

[ChiefPointThief]

There are a number of issues here. Firstly how the system handles quitters in some games is completely nonsensical.

I agree with a lot of your post but this basically sums it up.

It is strange that the BGA team finds the time to tinker with the Elo system, adding tweaks that nobody had asked for (consecutive wins and all that) but not to fix this flaw.

Completely agree!

I guess your anger is misplaced then. If you need to be mad at anyone, it should be the player who went into red to enable this and not the player who did the kicking. It is funny how we always see posts whining and complaining about players kicking someone going into the red, but never a post thanking someone for being nice and not kicking when it is perfectly within their right to do so. Within the BGA framework of multiplayer games with timers, a possible outcome is one loser and no winner. Might be frustrating for some when it happens, but those are the rules you agreed to play with. And to reiterate, it is a slow player going into red that causes this to happen, and the player doing the kicking is not at fault in any way.

Not only this ignoring the majority of the point of the opening post, it seems to be indicating like it's a closed shop with no chance to change. The whole point of bringing it up is to drive change, things aren't set in stone. Sites that work off a subscription model will generally do things to appeal to said subscribers.

Maybe having one mega thread on this issue instead of countless small ones could bring more attention? This topic pops up all the time. I don't think anything will change but good luck. These are the accounts in which you will find opposition.

The "I don't care about elo and none of you should either." accounts

The "How dare you insinuate bga is anything less than perfect?" accounts

The "Just use the red thumb." accounts (they expect you to play hundreds of games and find every bad apple on the site) I'll put the "they got -karma what more do you want" accounts here also

The "It isn't a problem because your elo will get back to where it should be." accounts (I completely disagree w/ this. As you've stated you had this happen to you six times recently. Meaning your elo isn't a true representation of your skill because it is only accounting for your recent losses)

The "Bga compensates you properly in this situation." accounts - They may even direct you to the f.a.q page which says you get the % of elo depending on game progress. What they fail to understand is that most games inaccurately depict the correct game progress (mostly on the short side) and that with multiple players you lose elo to all players besides the quitter. So basically you get next to nothing