Why do you have to wait 50% of the game to give up?

[Magicnerd]

Why do you have to wait 50% of the game to give up?

There are situations where it becomes clear who will win when playing with two players.

To make it more burdensome for people who make alt accounts to Elo boost with them. If you could just concede after one move, many of the cheaters would. Yes, it would be easy to see that pattern. But it's also easy to do, and we're already dealing with the type of people who are too lazy to try to get better, so some of them are also too lazy to Elo boost in a way that looks legitimate.

So yes, it's imperfect. It doesn't catch the more motivated cheaters and it restricts people who would like to concede earlier legitimately. Honestly, 50% does not seem like it was carefully thought out to balance all the competing concerns. It just seems arbitrarily chosen as the halfway point between 0 and 100%.

How is this a problem though? The only thing people who "cheat" like this accomplish is that they give themselves a higher ELO than they actually have. Then when they start to actually play games at a higher ELO level they get their ass kicked.

If someone would ever manage to get themselves to the top of the ELO board in this manner it would be like you say very easy to detect automatically that no actual games were played.

[Meeplelowda]

Then when they start to actually play games at a higher ELO level they get their ass kicked.

Why do you assume they have any intention of actually playing at that level?

I know it's hard to understand the mentality of someone who even thinks to Elo boost in the first place. But you can find examples outside of BGA of people finding a way to fake their leaderboard position, for example, by posting that they solved a game in one microsecond. What do they get out of an obviously fake rank? For some, other people knowing it's fake is a feature, not a bug.

[Melizma]

Conceding is a 2-player only thing whereas quitting is “available” at all player counts.

This frankly stinks for multiple reasons.

I'm pretty new to this site, but there's a lot of games I'm discovering. TMars is pretty awesome, obviously has a lot of depth, but for a newbie, most of what goes online is not very transparent vs. learning a game live.

However, with the live scoring, it's very easy to see when you're playing 2-4 players if you're way behind the other players and there's just no way you're going to win. I find it more gracious to "concede", which you're saying "congrats, you won" versus the "quit" option which feels like you're flipping the bird and walking away. Obviously, you're leaving the game either way, but the penalties are harsh on quitting. And having to wait until 50% on games is even worse when people are just stomping all over you. (Also, things happen - people shouldn't get punished because real life interferes with your ability to finish out a game.)

I think a big reason people might quit games more readily is that there is no way to match up with players of equal skill. You have to basically set up the game table and anybody who wants to can join in. But only once the game is matched can you see that you, a 65 "ELO" is playing with 177s and 259s meaning far more experienced players. I had a game tonight, it became very clear by 80% in that I was getting my butt kicked, internet lag wasn't helping my game, and then when the terraforming was complete, I set my "automatic pass" to let out all run out so I could start a new game, and several minutes later the other two players were *still* taking turns - scoring gap was over 100 and it just felt ... really crap to be getting one's butt beaten so bad, like getting punched down.

There's the "mutual abandonment" option, but nobody seems to like that option, apparently.

If these games had a way to better match players of equal skills - for example, if you were only within 20 ELO of the player who initiated the table - then that would negate whatever discussion there is about "ELO hunting". (It would still go on I suppose, but would be harder to pursue if you are much more evenly matched to your opponents.) Just some newbie thoughts based on experiences playing on other game sites.

[rambling_coherently]

The inability to concede in 3p+ games is yet another reason random 3p+ kinda sucks on BGA (another one is kingmaking and the other problems that people have brought up before in countless threads). The 50% game progress to concede is fine for 2p, it's fairly quick to get there if you really want to get out of a game

You're Premium, so you can just create your own table and micromanage exactly who you want there. Any that are too high/low Elo you can just boot from the table, no harm in that. There are also specific Elo filters you can use on the table itself, to limit who can join

If you use https://boardgamearena.com/lobby, choose "Simple Game" and create a table, you get tons of options

From the FAQ:

ELO classifies players into 7 distinct classes:

Beginner (0 ELO)
Apprentice (1-99 ELO)
Average (100-199 ELO)
Good (200-299 ELO)
Strong (300-499 ELO)
Expert (500-699 ELO)
Master (700+ ELO)

[FrankJones]

Conceding is a 2-player only thing whereas quitting is “available” at all player counts.

This frankly stinks for multiple reasons.

I'm pretty new to this site, but there's a lot of games I'm discovering. TMars is pretty awesome, obviously has a lot of depth, but for a newbie, most of what goes online is not very transparent vs. learning a game live.

However, with the live scoring, it's very easy to see when you're playing 2-4 players if you're way behind the other players and there's just no way you're going to win. I find it more gracious to "concede", which you're saying "congrats, you won" versus the "quit" option which feels like you're flipping the bird and walking away. Obviously, you're leaving the game either way, but the penalties are harsh on quitting. And having to wait until 50% on games is even worse when people are just stomping all over you. (Also, things happen - people shouldn't get punished because real life interferes with your ability to finish out a game.)

I think a big reason people might quit games more readily is that there is no way to match up with players of equal skill. You have to basically set up the game table and anybody who wants to can join in. But only once the game is matched can you see that you, a 65 "ELO" is playing with 177s and 259s meaning far more experienced players. I had a game tonight, it became very clear by 80% in that I was getting my butt kicked, internet lag wasn't helping my game, and then when the terraforming was complete, I set my "automatic pass" to let out all run out so I could start a new game, and several minutes later the other two players were *still* taking turns - scoring gap was over 100 and it just felt ... really crap to be getting one's butt beaten so bad, like getting punched down.

There's the "mutual abandonment" option, but nobody seems to like that option, apparently.

If these games had a way to better match players of equal skills - for example, if you were only within 20 ELO of the player who initiated the table - then that would negate whatever discussion there is about "ELO hunting". (It would still go on I suppose, but would be harder to pursue if you are much more evenly matched to your opponents.) Just some newbie thoughts based on experiences playing on other game sites.

The difficult part would be figuring out what to do in a multi-player game if one person wants to concede. The framework for most games is not set up well to skip a player and continue onward with the remaining players. Though it does happen sometimes if a player gets expelled for time, the games can be a bit buggy and unpredictable. The general recommendation is for all players with a positive clock to abandon a game without penalty once one player has forfeited on time.

Some games fundamentally change if player is skipped. Azul, for example, would not work, because a player who had made plays to avoid taking a parge penalty row might end up taking it if one player's turn does not happen.

Terraforming Mars though, in theory, can function if one player drops out - the player would just be considered to be passing every turn.

[xspuipuke]

TfM does not work well with zombie players as one player becomes start player way more often than others.

[FrankJones]

TfM does not work well with zombie players as one player becomes start player way more often than others.

Oh, true. So, yeah, a lot of games probably do not function well with a zombie player.

[happy-smile]

"zomie player", haha

[xspuipuke]

This is actually how this is called in the code

[alexwjb]

I have made a suggestion to this effect for those who agree:

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=198643

My post there:

It's extremely annoying you have to wait until 50% game progression to concede.

I come from a chess background where resignation is part of the game. Forcing someone to continue playing in a hopeless position would be bizarre. It also doesn't exist in other games on BGA (like Agricola, for example).

I get that there are concerns about people elo boosting, but the site should be geared towards the experience of legitimate players, not losers who just want to have a big number to show to strangers online. If I have drawn nothing and my opponent has Mars University, Olympus Conference, AI Central and Quantum out, I want to concede, not waste both of our time. It is gentlemanly to concede a lost position with dignity, I want to congratualte my opponent and move on.

Perhaps the concession threshold could at least be lowered to something reasonable (like 10%)? Terraforming Mars is an exponential game, so "50%" game progression does not in fact relate to being halfway through the game in elapsed time.

But the best solution is just to allow concession as is standard in other games.

For clarity, it is obvious you cannot allow concession in 3+ player games I do not believe it should be allowed.