Who advanced?

[MarcinKamil]

Here's a riddle:

https://boardgamearena.com/9/sevenwonde ... =494212107

The game was abandoned. How were the 3 of 6 players to advance selected then?

Most baffling for me is that one player who's time ran out has advanced. It's hard to find this fair.

[ErikLevin]

When a multiplayer elimination match ends by expulsion/quit of a player, the player(s) with the oldest BGA accounts advance (not counting the expelled player).

If, on the other hand, a match ends by reaching its maximum round length, the players who used the least time advance.

[nik592]

Most baffling for me is that one player who's time ran out has advanced. It's hard to find this fair.

It's not fair. Not much about that situation is. It's entirely possible that either of the booted players was leading at the time of the game and could have gone on to win. When a player is booted from a multiple elimination tournament game, the resulting rankings are about as unfair as it gets. But BGA seem not invested in improving anything about tournaments (and this is certainly not the only issue with them).

[Tisaac]

Most baffling for me is that one player who's time ran out has advanced. It's hard to find this fair.

It's not fair. Not much about that situation is. It's entirely possible that either of the booted players was leading at the time of the game and could have gone on to win. When a player is booted from a multiple elimination tournament game, the resulting rankings are about as unfair as it gets. But BGA seem not invested in improving anything about tournaments (and this is certainly not the only issue with them).

What would you propose then ??
So far all the rants i saw were never proposing any better solution because basically there are none. Players quitting a game or being booted are the real problems, not the ranking that follows. Which is why bga has a karma system to try preventing this. You could make the karma system stricter for instance, but it wont change the fact that whenever a game is abandonned mid game for any reason, there is no general fair way to rank players.

[ErikLevin]

What would you propose then ??
So far all the rants i saw were never proposing any better solution because basically there are none. Players quitting a game or being booted are the real problems, not the ranking that follows. Which is why bga has a karma system to try preventing this. You could make the karma system stricter for instance, but it wont change the fact that whenever a game is abandonned mid game for any reason, there is no general fair way to rank players.

It's difficult to make a perfect solution, but it's easy to make the situation a little bit better.

Removing the option to expel/skip players in (at least multiplayer elimination) tournaments is a straightforward improvement. It isn't needed, since matches time out when the round ends anyway, and then it uses the "time used" tiebreaker. Is that a perfect and fair tiebreaker? No, but at least it is related to the game just played, and not something totally irrelevant like account age.
Most importantly, it would greatly reduce the number of unfinished matches, since they always get the chance to play out their full length and not being arbitrarily cut short.

Again, this isn't a silver bullet idea that would fix everything.
- "Time used" isn't a fair tiebreaker
- Players can still get tied by... actually getting tied within the game rules, in which case the account age tiebreaker would still come into play (unless something is done about that)

But if we're looking for a new, fair, global tiebreaker for tournament advancement... Maybe take inspiration from FIFA's "Fair Play" tiebreaker? Highest karma advances.

[Stu_1977_SEmelb]

I agree with Erik.

So sick of turns being skipped when the game could still potentially be finished and will finish soon regardless.

[Mathew5000]

Here's my proposal to require that expelling a player for being out-of-time be a unanimous choice of all the other players: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=107708 (17 votes so far).

The reason I want to preserve some possibility of booting an out-of-time player is that occasionally there are situations where a player in a tournament game just disappears. For some formats (Swiss and Multiplayer elimination), the next round of games cannot begin until all games of the current round are complete. You might have a situation where the max-game-duration is 30 days but all other tables finished in 12, except for one table where one player just never showed up, has not even logged into their account in two weeks. In a case like that, I think the others at the table should be able (if they all agree) to boot the out-of-time player, instead of all players in the tournament being required to wait a couple of weeks before the next round can start.

But if BGA thinks it's too complicated to implement my proposal for unanimous consent, then I'd say they should just remove expulsions from tournament games entirely. (At least at tables with more than two players.) That would be much better than the status quo.

What of the case where two (or more) players at a tournament table are out of time? My proposal linked to above does not address that explicitly. My view is that when a player is expelled for being out-of-time, any other players who are out-of-time should also be expelled, automatically. Or to put it another way, if two (or more) players at the table are out of time, there would never be an option to expel just one of them. The choice would be whether to expel all out-of-time players.

[nik592]

What would you propose then ??

Agree with Erik that time used as a tiebreaker is at least a mild improvement and preventing booting altogether would be better for tournament games, or at least have the decision to boot be unanimous from the other players (as Matthew5000 mentions). And I agree that booting should boot all players out of time.

Further to that, there are other improvements outside of the ranking that would also help with this. More flexibility in tournament times for one - at the very least, some longer game lengths than 30 days (which in a 7-Player game of 7 Wonders works out to about 4 days each, and people can start timing out well in advance of 30 days due to simultaneous play). Or localised playing hours per player so playing hours are actually useful in a decent number of tournaments. Or tournament formats where time is added back per turn similar to normal games (in which case, thinking time would probably need to be the tiebreaker instead of time remaining).

Relevant bugs:
Tournament lengths: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=46396 OR https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=55235
Playing hours: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=32133 OR https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=31395
Time per turn formats: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=29010 OR https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=47663

[Calmon70]

Fully agree with Erik, it's so stupid that people can use skip in tournaments as a tactical option. It just should be fully handled by tournament system and skip should not be allowed.

[Timo Soren]

What a waste. Win my game, oldest played getting killed, boots on time the second place for so I win but second place advances.

So I I am done with bga.