Players out of time - code of conduct

[tbhp]

This is something you do a lot, and it borders on condescending. You don't understand something, so you characterize it pejoratively. Saying "people whose interests are so fleeting" is tantamount to saying "people who have a short attention span like a child."

That's always been my style of debate on the internet. I have strong opinions and I believe that if others feel similarly strongly about their opinions, then they should be able to come up with good arguments and we can have a good debate.

I realize it can be condescending, and when I look back sometimes there's things I wish I would have worded differently. But at the same time, I don't hold it against others when they act the same way with me, and I always welcome discussion.

I'm glad nik raised the analogy to episodic media, because I was thinking of it in a similar fashion. Some people play games and think of them as a series of individual choices made in a certain game state. Some of these people are comfortable with--or maybe even love--playing sometimes dozens of instances of the same game at the same time because it gives them many, many opportunities to make those choices and they don't care if they are made in the same instance of the game. For me, the flow of the game is a narrative, and I no more want that story to be told in drips and drabs over perhaps months than I want to read a novel at a rate of one sentence every two days. When I sign up expecting a story to be told in 5 weeks--as it would if everyone played according to the time settings--and there is someone who is playing at a pace at which it would take 3 months, I have a right to be annoyed by that, and I frankly couldn't care less whether or not you understand that perspective.

I've been thinking along those lines when replying to previous posts (like when nik said that sometimes it doesn't feel like there is a game going). I think similarly about games being a flow, although I'm not sure how that precludes different instances happening at the same time. When playing turn based, the flow is never going to be continuous anyway. It's like, I wouldn't watch several movies simultaneously, but I have no problem watching several shows simultaneously. Which is in large part because a movie can (and is designed to) be watched in one sitting, while shows aren't. So when you switch between shows, it doesn't inherently clash with the way they are supposed to be watched.

I can see how if the table is taking much longer than expected, the experience wouldn't be the one you wanted, maybe even "ruined". I just don't understand the link between one game being ruined, and preventing yourself from enjoying other games while that game is still going.

[Meeplelowda]

When playing turn based, the flow is never going to be continuous anyway.

So what? This is another way to say what furchur said, which is basically if you aren't playing real-time, then you shouldn't care AT ALL how long a game takes. A turn-based game spread out over 5 weeks is a subjectively different experience than one spread out over three months. We are allowed to prefer one over the other.

I just don't understand the link between one game being ruined, and preventing yourself from enjoying other games while that game is still going.

The fact that you don't understand it is glaringly clear. And because it not mattering is foundational to your argument, then we are at an impasse because to those for whom it does matter that major premise is not satisfied, thus the conclusion you want to reach that flows from that major premise is not valid for them.

[BarnardsStar]

it appears like you never were that invested in the first place.

Why is “being invested” a requirement here? These are board games. People can and will accord them different levels of importance, and that’s okay no matter what you, tbhp, may believe.

Frankly I’m finding it kind of offensive for you to tell us we all have to treat board games with the same level of holy import that you do, no matter how unusual your worldview is, when you don’t have the slightest inclination to understand other people’s points of view. E.g., they say they don’t want to engage in multiple instances of the same game at the same time, and you say that is unusual and you dismiss it out of hand as not my problem, it’s your problem… when the things that you have problems with are supposed to be everybody’s problems? You don’t see the hypocrisy here?

[Archisian]

it appears like you never were that invested in the first place.

Why is “being invested” a requirement here? These are board games. People can and will accord them different levels of importance, and that’s okay no matter what you, tbhp, may believe.

Frankly I’m finding it kind of offensive for you to tell us we all have to treat board games with the same level of holy import that you do, no matter how unusual your worldview is, when you don’t have the slightest inclination to understand other people’s points of view. E.g., they say they don’t want to engage in multiple instances of the same game at the same time, and you say that is unusual and you dismiss it out of hand as not my problem, it’s your problem… when the things that you have problems with are supposed to be everybody’s problems? You don’t see the hypocrisy here?

Reminder that this is the same guy who said that would he rather wish violence upon himself than see someone concede in a game because it's "destroying art".

[FrankJones]

This thread seems very adversarial. I want to share my thoughts because I believe there are valid points on both sides of this discussion.

1) Count me among the people who dislikes having a second instance of the same game in progress at the same time. My two main games right now are "Earth" and "Aquatica." Aquatica involves 4 goals that are a significant portion of the final scoring. Even with only one game in progress, I have occasionally gotten one of the goals mixed up with a previous game's goal or something like that. "Oh, I need to score one each of the 4 location colors," and then make a move accordingly, only to then realize, "Oh, whoops, this game's goal is to score 15 location points." (The icons for those two goals are very similar-looking.) With 2 or more games of Aquatica in progress, I would make this mistake more often. Earth involves 4 communal goals, 2 communal ecosystem goals, and one personal ecosystem goal. Even with just one game in progress, I have made similar errors, or, I have mixed up my opponent's personal goal with a communal goal or vice versa. In one game, I failed to convert sprouts to soil at game end because I thought the ecosystem goal of "2 points per soil owned at game end" was my opponent's personal goal but actually it was a communal one. With 2 games in progress, I then have 8 communal goals, 4 communal ecosystem goals, and 2 personal ecosystem goals. I would get confused.

2) That said, if I were playing a 3-player game of Earth or Aquatica, I personally would feel as though I should cat in fairness to both opponents. This is a subjective matter, but let's suppose one of my opponents is high-rated and one opponent is not. I would understand that my opponent is targeting me and vice versa - the low-rated player is almost certain to finish in 3rd place no matter what. If my high-rated opponent had earned a win, and stands to gain significant Elo for beating me, I would not feel right neutralizing that win by expelling the low-rated player. I would feel as though I am being unfair to my high-rated opponent over something that he or she had zero control over. I would message the low-rated player and say, "Please finish this game, our opponent has earned a well-deserved win and I would like to begin a new game, and I do not want to neutralize this game result." For me, starting that new game is less important than having the current game end with the appropriate winner receiving the reward for a well-earned win against me. If it became apparent the low-rated player was not going to comply, I would message the high-rated opponent and say, "Hey, what should we do here, you beat me fair and square but I need to have this game over with so I can start a new one."

Now, if the game outcome is so clearly decided, it is likely late/end game and I can probably start that next game without fear of getting myself confused about the goals. But, maybe it is mid-late game and I believe my opponent will likely win but that I still could mount a comeback. Maybe I estimate my win probability at 10-15%, and one or more of the goals are not yet decided, so I still need to focus on them and not get confused. Personally, I would just let the game dangle and give the other players a chance to finish the game without anyone being expelled. I understand others may view this differently.

Generally speaking, I avoid 3-player games specifically to avoid this situation. If I did play a 3-player game and I lost out on a good win because of an expulsion, I would simply red-thumb the player who triggered end-game by expulsion. That player has the right to expel the overtime player, and I have the right to not want to play with that player. I would probably red-thumb both of them. I don't want to play with people who cannot play within the time limit, and I do not wish to play with opponents who take a cheap tie against me by expelling a 3rd player.

[nik592]

When playing turn based, the flow is never going to be continuous anyway.

So what? This is another way to say what furchur said, which is basically if you aren't playing real-time, then you shouldn't care AT ALL how long a game takes. A turn-based game spread out over 5 weeks is a subjectively different experience than one spread out over three months. We are allowed to prefer one over the other.

100%. I've played 2 tables of the same game at the same time and gotten them confused (as Frank has also described). That was frustrating to me, so I don't do it anymore. It's not the same as a tv show, and even so, tv shows typically have recaps to hit the important points from previous episodes just in case you've forgotten. Even movies in series do certain things to ensure that people who may not have seen the original still understand who everyone is and what's going on.

But, I can happily watch multiple TV shows at once, or read multiple books. I expect I'd find it somewhat confusing to read two copies of the same book at the same time (unlikely, but hey, let's say book and audiobook, or even book and movie adaptation). This is different though, as books/movies/tv is all linear stories. Games are highly branching and two games could either be very different or almost the same. In the latter case, confusion will be higher. Some people are ok with that. A majority of people in this thread seem to not be.

it appears like you never were that invested in the first place.

Why is “being invested” a requirement here? These are board games. People can and will accord them different levels of importance, and that’s okay no matter what you, tbhp, may believe.

Frankly I’m finding it kind of offensive for you to tell us we all have to treat board games with the same level of holy import that you do, no matter how unusual your worldview is, when you don’t have the slightest inclination to understand other people’s points of view. E.g., they say they don’t want to engage in multiple instances of the same game at the same time, and you say that is unusual and you dismiss it out of hand as not my problem, it’s your problem… when the things that you have problems with are supposed to be everybody’s problems? You don’t see the hypocrisy here?

Yeah, that's the thing. tbhp's opinions are facts, people who hold opposing ones are inferior in some way. Those people lack empathy, they have a poor attention span. They're not just making different, equally valid choices, they are WRONG. I have also attempted to point out the hypocrisy in their arguments before, but tbhp will just tell you that it's not hypocritical, because their opinion is so much more important and valid than the opposing one (ie. the pain of having a game end early will destroy a person, but having to play slower than you signed up for is just mildly annoying). And I think most people would say that neither thing is particularly horrible (first world problems), which is just used as an argument to say, well, you don't understand how bad my issue can feel and you've acknowledged yours isn't that bad, ergo mine is worse and you should defer to my opinion. It's a non-winnable position, no matter which way you turn. I acknowledge I've been here before and I probably should know better. But then, I also don't mind some healthy debate. Sadly, I'm not sure the debate is all that healthy and at some point I'll probably just step away again.

What floors me is that in terms of behaviour, I tend to agree with tbhp. If a player is playing at a slower speed than I signed up for, but they are playing moves regularly, I will likely continue the game. I dislike players who boot opportunistically (when that position is relatively clear - ie. maybe they allowed a time overage to go on for a while, but then booted when it became obvious they would lose if the game completed), or quickly (ie. within a few hours of someone going over time), and I may red thumb them on that basis. My perspective on games here is that I'd prefer to play them, so even if someone signs up for my 4 turns/day table and plays at roughly 1 turn/day, I'll probably let them.

Where tbhp and I differ is in terms of our tolerance for others to make different choices. If someone makes different choices to me (that are reasonable - and again, that becomes a subjective context that tbhp will love to leverage and claim all things they don't like are unreasonable), that's fine. That doesn't make that someone a terrible person, just different. That may make them someone I don't want to play with and red thumb. That's fine too - they're still not a terrible person, they're just someone I don't want to play with because we view how play should happen differently.

The other point is that while I will accept someone playing slower than expected but still regularly, where I do kick is where players seem to have vanished. They're now 3-4 days in the red. Usually they've either not made any moves or maybe only a few. And having had several RL friends join BGA and do this to me, and I've had the opportunity to go ask them, hey, what happened? And they tell me, yeah, sorry, they just forgot about it, and I suspect that in a majority of cases, that's what happens. Occasionally, I'll probably hit a false positive - there was a thread recently where someone went into hospital unexpectedly and was kicked from all their games. Which isn't great, but usually when such a person posts on the forums, I usually see people offering to play games with them to help them recover their reputation. There are ways out of such a situation if you've been unfairly put in it, and for the rest, it's probably a reasonable punishment.

That's all, that's it. You may kick, you may not kick. The official stance of BGA on running out of time is that they don't have a stance. Players decide. And since players think differently about that matter, we'll have many many more thread to come about this issue.

As others have said, the fact that being kicked from a game is punitive, the fact that you get a screen that pops up to tell you "Ooops! You did something you shouldn't have and here's some tips on how to be a good player who doesn't do that again" (as people on forums have also complained about) would suggest that the BGA stance is that people shouldn't be exceeding their timers. I think it's more a point that some people will accept people exceeding their timers, so they made it a player decision so those who wanted to could continue the game (which I appreciate, as I wouldn't want to play with auto-booting - but again, some people do and I don't see that as a problem to offer as a choice).

[Godsmurf]

Note how you had to invent an extra condition to make it sound bad. We've gone from "expelling a player is always rude" to "the game is 95% complete".

It's called an edge case. Just like you've been describing the opposite edge case.

You still don't address the central issue, which is that you are unilaterally ruining the game for other players who are NOT overtime.

[tbhp]

I'm surprised that so many people in this thread have this multiple instances of a game issue. Like I said, I basically never run into them when I check the profiles of people I encounter in my games.

I guess maybe it's less likely to encounter someone who only plays one table per game, and they may be less likely to play in tournaments.

[tbhp]

it appears like you never were that invested in the first place.

Why is “being invested” a requirement here? These are board games. People can and will accord them different levels of importance, and that’s okay no matter what you, tbhp, may believe.

Frankly I’m finding it kind of offensive for you to tell us we all have to treat board games with the same level of holy import that you do, no matter how unusual your worldview is, when you don’t have the slightest inclination to understand other people’s points of view. E.g., they say they don’t want to engage in multiple instances of the same game at the same time, and you say that is unusual and you dismiss it out of hand as not my problem, it’s your problem… when the things that you have problems with are supposed to be everybody’s problems? You don’t see the hypocrisy here?

Like I said in the conceding threads before, I'm just trying to avoid the biggest harm scenario (which you may not agree is the most applicable moral framework in this context).

To me, it seems preferable to avoid a situation that can literally destroy a person, even if this is at the cost of creating a smaller inconvenience for many more people.

I already explained that in the conceding discussions. I'd never concede on someone, even if not conceding might have effects that bother some people (for example I have an emergency that leaves them hanging and they're gonna wonder for a long time what is happening).

I feel about it like if you gave me the choice between slapping someone and shooting a gun in a dark night. Sure it's not fun to slap someone, but if the alternative is to risk killing a random person, I have basically no choice. Conceding on someone, kicking out, whatever action that ends early... this is the "pulling the trigger" scenario I will always avoid at all cost, because I know from my own perspective how devastating it can be.

Nothing I've read from other people has sounded all that bad in comparison, so you can't accuse me of not listening to people. At worst people have described being "excruciatingly bored" (I'm sure you remember that person from the other threads). It seems to me that the hypocrisy goes the opposite way. Other people are not listening to me when I say that the issue I want to avoid is a lot more than an inconvenience. I wouldn't waste my time writing all those posts if it wasn't.

[tbhp]

Note how you had to invent an extra condition to make it sound bad. We've gone from "expelling a player is always rude" to "the game is 95% complete".

It's called an edge case. Just like you've been describing the opposite edge case.

You still don't address the central issue, which is that you are unilaterally ruining the game for other players who are NOT overtime.

That user is really going out of their way to feign not understanding the issue. I don't understand people who are able to act so casually about their actions when it's clear the harm it is doing.

For fairness purposes, it doesn't even matter if the game is 95% complete or 0% complete. If you kick out someone before a game has even happened, then you are making the rankings basically random, instead of actually having a game to determine them.

Now for integrity or artistic purposes, this is different, since interrupting a game at 0% doesn't destroy anything the players were building. I'd still ask people, but probably no one would see an issue to "cancel" a game that never started in the first place. Now, if the game is in any way competitive, then obviously that's not an option.

I think it would be pretty easy to make changes that would feel like an improvement to everyone. E.g. allow someone to call a vote to expell a player, rather than letting them decide that by themselves and incurring the wrath of the other players who weren't consulted.

This is what I've been advocating for a long time, to make the decision to expel a unanimous vote. This is the only way to ensure that timeouts can't be exploited to eliminate someone who didn't do anything wrong.

The site never gave any explanation as to why they can't put this in place. Someone here told me that actually, it may not be an improvement to everyone. Some people may complain about it. But something tells me the people who think it wouldn't be an improvement wouldn't like it if they were themselves in the position of being eliminated from a tournament for no reason.