What's the etiquette on Skipping Players Turns

[nik592]

I've had about 3-4 RL friends who I've convinced to join BGA. We start a game or two, they maybe make one move, and then, they disappear. If I remind them IRL, they tell me they'll get to it a couple times, but eventually they admit they're just not that into it, and aren't going to come back. And look, that is absolutely fine. But my point is, sometimes when a person disappears for 19 days at a time, it's because they're not coming back. I agree, there probably are situations where an emergency comes up (as you've noted), but there's also situations where a person just decides (either explicitly or implicitly) that they're not going to continue playing games online.

[FrankJones]

I've had about 3-4 RL friends who I've convinced to join BGA. We start a game or two, they maybe make one move, and then, they disappear. If I remind them IRL, they tell me they'll get to it a couple times, but eventually they admit they're just not that into it, and aren't going to come back. And look, that is absolutely fine. But my point is, sometimes when a person disappears for 19 days at a time, it's because they're not coming back. I agree, there probably are situations where an emergency comes up (as you've noted), but there's also situations where a person just decides (either explicitly or implicitly) that they're not going to continue playing games online.

True, and, if that clock had reached 32 days, and being that I had a decent lead, I would have likely kicked the person. I think the game cancels without penalty after 40 days.

[BananaHarambe]

I host 8 Vale tournaments per month. There is a monthly Casual cup for 0-199 Elo I would recommend. I haven’t made it yet, will soon. Starts Aug 16. It would be great if you could join us

I may ask for an invite to this, just to support your efforts.

Attention Meeple and FrankJones,

New Vale of Eternity tournaments for beginners have been made here:
https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=421106. Casual cup with round robin opening, then Swiss. Intensive learning since all at once. August16

https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=422888 Beginner 2p Swiss, one game at a time, auto number of matches. August 27

DM for invite

[Exotic Dreams]

Possibly unpopular. My take is don't do it.
In thoery I think it's fine to kick players who are playing distracted after being notified or are making others wait on purpose.
Given how many times BGA has issues or that other players might have issues going on beyond their control, I think it's better to not to. Either players will come back or time out. No further action needed.

[Ceaseless]

Possibly unpopular. My take is don't do it.
In thoery I think it's fine to kick players who are playing distracted after being notified or are making others wait on purpose.
Given how many times BGA has issues or that other players might have issues going on beyond their control, I think it's better to not to. Either players will come back or time out. No further action needed.

You can't skip a player that hasn't timed out.

[Wentu]

Personally, after trying different policies, I try to follow this one:
if it's a casual game, I don't kick out anyone. If it's Tournament or Arena, I consider it a competitive play and I do kick out someone who took too much time. Was it just because something bad happened and they couldn't move? Well, I am sorry, that happens and I don't think BGA is so important. It happened to me too and.. ok, I just lost an Arena match... I don't care, the real life thing that happened in my real life is more important.
That said, some time I randomly decide to wait some more time even if it's an arena game or tournament game... just because it's not that important to win.
I usually avoid real time games exactly because I know that, when i start one, surely the doorbell will ring or my connection will blow up.
I don't know if this policy is the best possible one. I could be convinced to change.

[Cunning]

There are different levels of etiquette to consider, and etiquette is a good word to describe it.

To find the correct action, consider your reason for playing. I'm going to address live games, and I want to remember that sometimes players struggle with connection. Here are some examples:

The game started, but your opponent timed out either immediately or near the start of the game.
Best option: simply abandon the game. It achieves the same effect, i.e. ending it, but doesn't penalise the player's ELO. Recommended!

The game's within 1-2 moves of the end, and the opponent runs out of time. They have been playing throughout, but a little slowly.
Best option: play on. Ask the player politely to play faster. What is the point of playing 30+ minutes then kicking the opponent at the end of the game?

Several moves in, player is obviously playing too slowly.
Best option: Take your pick but this is the time you can expel the player without guilt. It'll still be better sometimes to abandon.

[FrankJones]

The most important etiquette point here, in my opinion, is this:

If a player runs out of time, decide then and there whether to kick the player (After attempting to communicate with the player, as described in the post before this one).

What I think is an egregious misuse of this option is to play on and then kick the opponent 6 moves later when it becomes apparent the opponent might win.

To be clear - if the opponent is making no effort to move quickly and try to get the clock into the positive, okay, fine. Kick.

But if the player is moving every 10 minutes, but because the clock had done significantly into the negative, the time added still leaves it negative, well, the opponent is doing everything possible to move ASAP and get the clock positive, against an opponent who has opted to play on.

Kicking that player when it seems the player is doing well, several moves after the fact, seems like very poor sportsmanship to me.

[Cos-]

As you can see from the comments so far, there is no consensus about this. People have many different opinions about when and whether you should expel someone.

However, this site does have a lot of different options for pace of game, and amount of time allotted. In turn based games (which is the only kind I ever play with strangers), people have a very wide variety to choose from, and should choose something they can actually keep up with, and do so. So whatever each person's thoughts are about when they want to expel someone who's over time, I think we all need to accept that as soon as someone is over their time by any amount, it is totally okay for another player to expel them, period. They joined the table with the expectation set for how often people will move, and someone didn't meet that expectation.

As for whether **I** personally choose to kick someone out: I usually prefer to keep playing the game if we've already gotten into the game. If someone goes over time near the beginning, I'll just expel them as soon as I see that - no point getting invested in a table where someone seems likely to go over time. But if we've already made enough moves that I want to see how the game turns out, I'll usually give them some hours of grace, at least the first or second time they run over. Sometimes I'll wait until they're 10 hours over; sometimes I'll wait until they're 24 hours over.

One exception is if I'm planning to be away for a few days, like a trip, or some other plans, that will make it so I can't play BGA much for a while. When that happens, I plan ahead by ceasing to start new turn-based games with strangers well before the event/trip/whatever, such that I can reasonably expect that most or all of those games will be done before I become unavailable. I have a pretty good sense of how long a game is likely to take (a 2 player kingdom builder is going to take less than a week, but a 5 player wingspan may take over two weeks, for example), so I decide which games to start based on how much time remains. BUT if one player keeps running over time, they can cause a game to drag on much longer than I intended. If we get too close to the cutoff date when I want most of my stranger tables to be done, and someone's running out of time, I'll expel them even if they're only a little over but they've been using too much time before, or even if it's near the end of the game and someone else is ahead and people think I'm doing it to cheat on ELO. I'm not, I'm doing it because someone broke the time expectation I set for the table in a way that will make the game last into my travel when I wanted the game to be done.

So as you can see from this example, people may have reasons for expelling players, or not expelling players, that you may not be able to guess. And in turn-based games, the broken BGA chat is pretty useless - you often don't get told there's a new message until the game is over. Which means this comes back to what I said in the beginning: You should accept that if you or another player are over time by any amount, at any point in the game, another player may expel you or that other player, and it's completely acceptable for them to do so regardless of what you think of it. Or, they may not expel.

[Starwarrior1128]

I usually give them 24 hours extra before I skip turn.