Players out of time - code of conduct

[BarnardsStar]

This has now happened to me 4 times in tournaments for loss of ranking points and time penalties. In open play now, I just won't join if there is an American listed.

I’m assuming “open play” means “non-tournament, non-arena”? Because that is very different from tournaments. The scenario you describe can be problematic for tournaments but should never be a problem for “open play” because you get time added to your click with every turn. If you are on a 3x/day table, even with an American, you should be fine if, on average, you can take your turn within 8 hours of it becoming your turn. It won’t matter if you are absent for 11 hours overnight as long as at other times of day you can be reasonably quick about taking your turn. It will make up for it.

And faster tables (8x and above) have sleeping hours built into them. If you join tables whose sleep hours reasonably well match yours, again it shouldn’t be a problem.

[JimBut]

Player C loses Karma and plays a bunch of 1-minute games and immediately restores Karma to 100.

This is my biggest gripe with the time system. Players don't lose karma for timing out which incentivises kicking but karma is trivial to regain.

I'd like to see something where timing out reduces your karma regardless of being kicked and consistent patterns of timing out take longer to recover your karma.

[KenFin1]

Player C loses Karma and plays a bunch of 1-minute games and immediately restores Karma to 100.

This is my biggest gripe with the time system. Players don't lose karma for timing out which incentivises kicking but karma is trivial to regain.

I'd like to see something where timing out reduces your karma regardless of being kicked and consistent patterns of timing out take longer to recover your karma.

Kind of already exists, you can't regain karma on games where you go over time.

Back when we could see players reputation history you could see the pattern of how often they go overtime too which helped decide whether to expel them or not. Hiding that from viewing was not a great change imo.

[FrankJones]

We can still see how many clock violation and forfeits/expulsions a player has in the past (90?) days.

[tbhp]

The whole point of having clocks in the first place is to give people incentive to play so that games rarely reach their maximum game duration.

And people are saying it is okay to ignore the clock entirely, so there is no point in having them at all. Just play in friendly mode then.

The clock still has a psychological impact even if people never actually kick people out. It acts like a deadline of sorts, you see your time running down and it makes you wake up and realize that you need to play. And even if we all agree that it's bad form to kick out someone, the threat always still exists that someone might kick you out. So the system works as intended.

Think of it like nuclear weapons. The possibility that they can be used is real, which serves as a threat, but they are not supposed to actually be used for real. If a country leader decided to use them, they would be the one in the wrong and the consequences would be disastrous.

It's like if you were late for a party, and instead of doing your best to still attend the party, someone said "let's just not go".

It's like you were late to a party that was supposed to start at 1, you show up at 11 and are offended that the host isn't letting you in.

That's different because the party is over and everyone left. When people kick out someone, the game is not over, there's usually still days to go before it reaches its maximum game duration. There is no reason you can't wait. No one is stopping you from playing other games while that game is still going on.

People kick out because they are being selfish, not because they think the game has no possibility of ending in time.

[tbhp]

Sure expelling is not a nice thing and no one wants to get to that point. But the "original sin" is running out of time. That is the culprit. (And the way multi-player elo and tournaments work).

Collusion is possible in many other ways. Just giving all players infinite time because no one wants to "ruin the game" is not a solution. What if the player who's in the lead runs out of time? Is it "fair" to expel them? Not infinite time? How much? 1 min? 10 min? 1 hour? Why not "the time everyone agreed on when the game started"?

The time you sign up for is the maximum game duration. That's the time you are guaranteed the game will never be able to go over. So that's the one you should pay attention to when you start a game or sign up for a tournament.

Your post sounds contradictory. If no one wants to get to that point, as you say, then why kick out? If you truly don't like this outcome, then why not just not do it? No one is forcing you to use the feature.

I agree that we can't just give everyone infinite time. But at the same time, there's no need to ever kick out someone who is out of time, because the alternative is continuing the game like normal, which is always a better alternative than just terminating the game. What do you get out of kicking out? What is the benefit?

(Note that this is about turn based games. For real time games, being in them prevents you from starting another game, so it's understandable that people would decide to throw the towel at some point)

[Cile]

And even if we all agree that it's bad form to kick out someone...

That's clearly not going to happen. What if we all agree that it's bad form to run out of time?

there's usually still days to go before it reaches its maximum game duration.

To clarify: this thread has been about 1 off non-tournament games. You are the only one talking about tournaments and insisting that if something won't work for tournaments then it shouldn't be used for non-tournaments. Tournaments have extra timing considerations that only apply to tournaments.

the alternative is continuing the game like normal, which is always a better alternative than just terminating the game. What do you get out of kicking out? What is the benefit?

Ending an incomplete game now is better alternative than continuing the game and it ending incomplete in a week anyway.

What I get out of it is the ability to start a new game, with people playing at the speed selected, that I know will play to completion without someone booting the offending player in the final round to avoid a loss. I actively do not want to be playing two different tables of the same game so "just join another table" does not work.

[nik592]

There is a problem with the time period allocated and time zones. It is fine if all players are in the same time zone, BUT, if a European player is in turn order after (say) a player from the USA there can be an 8 hour time delay. So if a European takes a turn at 10.00PM and other players take their turns shortly after, the North American will take their turn around 3.00PM their time. The following European goes to bed promptly after taking a turn but then wakes up and logs on at say 9.00PM and 10 hours have been deducted from their time allocation. Over a week they will have lost 3 days of time just because they were asleep.

Other players in the same game who might be losing, then see the red timer as an opportunity to snag a win and boot the 'late' guy out. This has now happened to me 4 times in tournaments for loss of ranking points and time penalties. In open play now, I just won't join if there is an American listed.

Could not a 'sleep' allowance be introduced where each player does not incur time loss from say 23.00hrs to o7.00hrs in their time zone to reflect the fact that they aren't being slow, just asleep.

I used to think this was true (that being in a different timezone negatively impacts your chances of being booted), but it's actually not. For one thing, what you need to consider is not timezones, but play times. My partner goes on BGA once per day, usually in the evening. Sometimes earlier in the day on weekends. I go on BGA usually over breakfast, lunch, after work and before bed. On weekends, I may only be on at breakfast and before bed if I'm out doing something. Sometimes, I have insomnia, and I'll be on BGA at 4am. Our play times are different even though we're in the same timezone. Timezones may influence play time - most people probably do play in "standard" waking hours, so yes, it's more likely that two players who live in the same timezone may share similar play times (and my habits overlap somewhat with my partner's), but not always.

Additionally, if you have 4 players who operate on the same play times - let's say they all live in the same region, and are on between 7pm-bedtime for ease of understanding. Someone among them will be the last to go to bed. The player who follows them will then have the clock tick all the way from bedtime til 7pm the next day when they go back on. Assuming that pattern remains the same, that same player will likely eventually run out of time (if it's a tournament game), but they're all running on the same play times.

What you truly want is players with equidistant play times through the 24 hour period. So you want a player who operates from midnight-6am, 6am-midday, midday-6pm, 6pm-midnight. Each player's clock should run down equally. Very possibly, these 4 hypothetical players would be from different timezones, not all from the same one. But the hypothetical is unlikely - even if people had those nice 6 hour periods where they were active, they could make their move anywhere in those 6 hours and some players clocks would tick down more than others.

In short, the tournament framework isn't ideal, but is setup that way for a reason (something about guaranteeing maximum tournament length). If you find yourself getting booted pretty often, your options are to either join tournaments with playing hours that match your playing hours (and this has never been feasible for me, as I've never seen a tournament without a big chunk of hours in my normal sleep time), or choose tournaments with long enough time limits that you'll probably be ok, and rely on the generosity of your fellow players to not boot you just because you're over time with a few moves to go. And if it happens, you need to accept that as a risk of tournaments - the penalty for being booted from a tournament is lesser anyway, possibly because of this "unfairness" - or not play them.

Also, the idea of players nominating their "sleep" time and BGA considering a player's sleep time individually has been floated before, but I suspect that would cause all kinds of havoc with maximum table times for a tournament (I haven't really considered the maths of it). Not to mention, it'd be a pretty big change to the framework and possibly not one BGA can see the benefit in. It's not a bad suggestion, but unlikely to happen anytime soon.

[tbhp]

And even if we all agree that it's bad form to kick out someone...

That's clearly not going to happen. What if we all agree that it's bad form to run out of time?

Everyone already agrees on that. That doesn't mean we're not gonna criticize it when someone sees that as an invitation to do something even worse.

there's usually still days to go before it reaches its maximum game duration.

To clarify: this thread has been about 1 off non-tournament games. You are the only one talking about tournaments and insisting that if something won't work for tournaments then it shouldn't be used for non-tournaments. Tournaments have extra timing considerations that only apply to tournaments.

Well, I'm biased because I only play competitively these days. For casual games, I guess the fairness aspect of it doesn't matter as much, but it still doesn't seem nice to end a game when others may want to keep playing it and you have no real reason to just wait.

If the people you were playing with were people you know in real life, would you still feel as free to kick out without consideration for how it may impact the other players in the game? (or even the one you are kicking out) I feel that the anonymity of the internet is making people act in way they wouldn't in real life.

the alternative is continuing the game like normal, which is always a better alternative than just terminating the game. What do you get out of kicking out? What is the benefit?

Ending an incomplete game now is better alternative than continuing the game and it ending incomplete in a week anyway.

What I get out of it is the ability to start a new game, with people playing at the speed selected, that I know will play to completion without someone booting the offending player in the final round to avoid a loss. I actively do not want to be playing two different tables of the same game so "just join another table" does not work.

You don't know that the game won't be completed in a week, that's my whole point. If there's still days left there's no reason to not keep playing and hope the person who ran out of time will improve their frequency of play.

If you don't want to play different instances of the same game, that sounds problematic for you. That's not a reason to make it a problem for other people.

Someone booting the offending player at a time when it's convenient for them is a risk, yes. I worry about it myself all the time. But that doesn't justify becoming yourself the bad guy by enacting the same unfair and unfun outcome earlier than it needs to happen. Why would you not wait and hope that it will work out? It seems like a very defeatist perspective on life to decide to throw something away just because there's a risk it won't succeed.

[Meeplelowda]

Additionally, if you have 4 players who operate on the same play times - let's say they all live in the same region, and are on between 7pm-bedtime for ease of understanding. Someone among them will be the last to go to bed. The player who follows them will then have the clock tick all the way from bedtime til 7pm the next day when they go back on. Assuming that pattern remains the same, that same player will likely eventually run out of time (if it's a tournament game), but they're all running on the same play times.

For those of you who keep asking for filters to require people be in your time zone, let this sink in. By force of logic....someone in your time zone would have to make the last move of the day. Being in the same time zone is not a magic wand that solves everything, unless you are playing fast turn-based and the playing hours end when everyone goes to bed. But then you will have to be on fairly regularly during your work/school day at fast turn-based pace to not fall behind. If you're concerned about always being the first person after the sleep period to move, then play 3 moves/day or slower and you'll get 8+ hours back after each move and recoup your sleep time.

Or as nik said, if you're playing a tournaments: 1) choose one with compatible playing hours that freeze the clock when you're asleep, 2) choose one with LONG round times so you can afford to eat all of your sleep time, 3) accept the risk that sometimes someone will make a move while you're asleep, or 4) if you don't want to do any of those....don't play tournaments.

By the way, the best way to find a tournament that satisfies 1) is to SET IT UP YOURSELF. A lot of times people complaining about bad playing hours are Premium users and could easily set up their own tournament precisely tuned to their own preferences.