Overall XP declines?

[tbhp]

But you're not actually playing, that's just a zombie mode. I didn't say it's not possible to code, I said it wouldn't be allowed to have players keep playing a game that has effectively become a different version of what the creator intended. It wouldn't even be legal.

What are you even talking about? It would perfectly legal, given games apps all have something for this effect too. You really think it makes it illegal to make a game count for ELO or not, like come on. For all intents and purposes it's still a 4 player game, just there's only 3 players left playing it.

What. I'm saying it wouldn't be legal to allow players to play different versions of the game. The site has author's rights to respect. They can't make you play on a wrong size map anymore than they can invent a card that doesn't exist.

What games apps are you talking about?

[FrankJones]

But you're not actually playing, that's just a zombie mode. I didn't say it's not possible to code, I said it wouldn't be allowed to have players keep playing a game that has effectively become a different version of what the creator intended. It wouldn't even be legal.

What are you even talking about? It would perfectly legal, given games apps all have something for this effect too. You really think it makes it illegal to make a game count for ELO or not, like come on. For all intents and purposes it's still a 4 player game, just there's only 3 players left playing it.

It could be affecting the game in a manner the game designers did not intend.

For example: In Terraforming Mars, yes, it's legal to just pass and do nothing. But most Terraforming Mars players recognize that in a 3-player game, playing onward after one player quits would result in one of the 2 remaining essentially players having the 1st-player disc 2/3 of the time.

[tbhp]

It could be affecting the game in a manner the game designers did not intend.

My argument is not about how whether it affects the gameplay, but the general principle that you can't just rewrite a game. This includes everything about the game, not just its gameplay aspects.

If someone creates a Chess site and they decide to call the Knight the Bishop and the Bishop the Knight, that doesn't change anything about the gameplay, the roles are just reversed, but it's not the official version of Chess anymore.

[nik592]

It could be affecting the game in a manner the game designers did not intend.

For example: In Terraforming Mars, yes, it's legal to just pass and do nothing. But most Terraforming Mars players recognize that in a 3-player game, playing onward after one player quits would result in one of the 2 remaining essentially players having the 1st-player disc 2/3 of the time.

Exactly. I personally don't see a state where a player passes every turn (whether done by an absent zombie player or a present non-caring player) as a legitimate game either. I'd rather stop playing if my opponent is so determined to be checked out of a game, and I have and will red thumb any opponent who starts playing nonsense moves at a table I'm at. Where it's a game where card counts or board size/spaces vary, yes, you can still play, but I've also played those games IRL and realised, oh, that's why the game felt dissatisfying, because we played it wrong.

While I agree that the ranking based on remaining time isn't a great solution either, I can accept that a lot better than ranking by account age. Generally I think the time-based ranking is designed to eliminate the player who caused the slow down and the table to hit max time (which is probably somewhat fair, and I say that as someone who times out a LOT on tournament tables, but rarely on non-tournament tables). Where it gets tricky is multi-player elimination. And the way I see that is that random elimination through no fault of your own is a risk in multi-player elimination tournaments - if I play them, I accept that risk.

But look, whether or not I agree and would enjoy playing against a zombie player isn't a reason not to implement that as an option - if I don't like the idea, then I don't play in tournaments where it's implemented. So long as it's optional (my understanding was that for Heat and Formula D, it's not optional, it just is the way it works? But not playing those tournaments, I'm not sure).

As to only being able to name a handful of games where player count matters? Well, I spent a few minutes thinking about it, and while I have a vague idea of gameplay across the probably thousands of games I've tried (some moreso than others), I don't typically memorise variable player setups because the rulebook is there to guide me through that part. And as I say, on BGA, even less effort, since BGA does the variable setup for me. My gut feeling is that variable player setup exists in more games than it doesn't. And even where it's not necessarily an issue (eg. I don't think Terraforming Mars has any change to setup for different players), as noted above, a player passing every turn does impact balance, there's no getting around that.

[FrankJones]

Of the 9 games I play that could be 3+ players, in all 9 of them having a player drop out and just be "skipped" would significantly affect the outcome of the game from that point forward.

Yes, that's only 9 games, but I doubt my subset of games differs so dramatically from the general setup of games that would cause these games to be abnormal in this regard.

And, if I add in the physical games I have on my shelf but that I do no yet have here, the number would be much higher than 9, and the percentage of those games that wouldn't function with n absent player would still be close to 100%. Possibly 100% exactly.

So, taking games on a case-by-case basis makes the most sense. I'm just wondering how many multi-player games DO function adequately with an absent player.

[Ceaseless]

I already said it would be a problem in team games but I would argue if my is fine for bang. Bang is an elimination game in which ppl will die one by one anyway. Them dying from being shot or from timing out of the game is the same result.

Bang is a team game, having a team member drop is a major blow, even losing the renegade, meant to be a balancing factor for the groups, is going to cause headaches for team balance. A player leaving is not the same as being eliminated, killing off a player requires resources, even if they weren't doing anything. The deputy leaving to avoid death by the sheriff, or the outlaws leaving to avoid whoever killed them getting the cards, would also be noteworthy. There are probably other tricks one can pull. Someone suspecting Kit is rigging Dynamite on them, so they'd resign to have the set up hit the player after them, for instance.

[ChiefPointThief]

You have mentioned that you don't play your games right away but then play them very fast when you get started so let me ask you this. You are in a game with 3 or more players and you do this in a game with another player who goes over time. Lets say this is a tourney in which only one player advances. You are a top player and are ahead of player 2 and player 3 by a large margin. Player 2 sees this so times out player 3. Player 2 moves on because they played the fastest and you are eliminated. Even though you still have time on your clock. Do you prefer that scenario over finishing the game without player 3 to determine who would score the most points between you and player 2?

Multiplayer is often about analyzing things and making choices based on what you think other players will do. People who say games like Harmonies don't offer much interaction just because it doesn't have as obvious a fight for resources (for example) as some other games do are I believe mistaken in their assessment. If they think the interaction is not satisfying, it's probably that they aren't putting enough thought into it. They aren't doing all the work that the top players do when they think about everything to give themselves the best chances to win.

It's common when people start out the game that they see it as a game where both players are kind of building their thing in isolation from each other. But the better you get at the game, the more you understand that this is really a duel of wits. The whole mindset of "let's see how I can make a nice landscape in my own backyard" is really just the learning phase. The phase when you start understanding the game more becomes "okay, so here is a yard filled with resources, I need to make something out of it and at the same time also make sure my opponent doesn't come up with something better".

Aren't you arguing my point here? You are admitting that players see the game in completely different ways. What you see as the most optimal move the majority doesn't. They just want to play in isolation. And there's many levels in between entry to your level. So predicting someone else's move or saying what they should or would do is impossible. There are only 4 choices but depending on the player each different choice can be made. That is the downside to multiplayer. Any player can make decisions that are suboptimal that can effect you more than another player at any time. When you sign up for multiplayer you are signing up for that possibility.

[Ceaseless]

You have mentioned that you don't play your games right away but then play them very fast when you get started so let me ask you this. You are in a game with 3 or more players and you do this in a game with another player who goes over time. Lets say this is a tourney in which only one player advances. You are a top player and are ahead of player 2 and player 3 by a large margin. Player 2 sees this so times out player 3. Player 2 moves on because they played the fastest and you are eliminated. Even though you still have time on your clock. Do you prefer that scenario over finishing the game without player 3 to determine who would score the most points between you and player 2?

I think you missed a quote for this part. You have one for tbhp below but didn't add one above this segment.

[RazorOz]

The bigger point still also is we're talking like this would happen all the time. Except the context was for tournaments and particularly around qualifications. Yes, the gameplay might become not as optimal as you wanted it, but that isn't the question, the question is it better than to going out of a tournament on time, which can be akin to a random chance, given even if you're a quick player you won't always lead on time in tournaments for time zone reasons.

The game would have to be be pretty much unplayable for me to think basing the result off time is a better answer, and I can understand team games might fall into this category (albeit how popular even are team games for tournaments anyway?), but a number of the games being brought up where the changes are relatively minor, like more worker placement options open and the like, I would far rather just play on, and I also think that would have the support of the vast majority of tournament players, because anyone that's involved in tournaments knows just how deeply unpopular rules like qualification on clock, seniority rule etc. are.

On top of that I am proposing it as an optional rule anyway, similar to how the option to turn off kicking is optional. That was an attempt to tackle this issue, but in reality doesn't actually tackle the issue at hand, because how qualification is decided is still clearly unfair in the eyes of many, and not being able to kick players doesn't help the wider issue. I would be shocked if for the vast majority of games, players wouldn't in time select to have games play to conclusion in multi-player tournaments, because it just seems clearly a vastly superior solution for the majority of games.

In fact I can pretty much tell you, that Heat tournaments would not be as popular as they are if they had to play under the rules most the site has to play under, and that's not really got anything to do with the game itself, it's just it was universally despised to have games settled this way, and was the #1 factor why players would avoid tournaments. There seems to be this idea the reason Heat was allowed to have its rules changed was because playing on was fine, but in reality I don't think it had anything to do that, because like I say there are minor gameplay changes similar to many of those for other games mentioned here, the reason the rules were changed was because the # of quitters at Heat was abnormally high, particularly I imagine in a fashion where in reality the result of the game was already settled. It was driven by the players wanting a solution, and you have to remember for years we've heard on this forum when people have complained about this that there's nothing that can be done, but now we know that's not true. Tournaments as a whole are pretty much in the same boat, it's pretty clear to me as someone who follows the tournament forum and tournaments generally that tournaments are crying out for a solution to this issue, and I think it's virtually guaranteed allowing this rule to be used on all games would be a huge positive for tournaments.

[tbhp]

You have mentioned that you don't play your games right away but then play them very fast when you get started so let me ask you this. You are in a game with 3 or more players and you do this in a game with another player who goes over time. Lets say this is a tourney in which only one player advances. You are a top player and are ahead of player 2 and player 3 by a large margin. Player 2 sees this so times out player 3. Player 2 moves on because they played the fastest and you are eliminated. Even though you still have time on your clock. Do you prefer that scenario over finishing the game without player 3 to determine who would score the most points between you and player 2?

Account's age determines who advances in your example. The proper example would be like you say, except instead of kicking out, the third player starts delaying the game so that the maximum game duration is reached, while they still have more time than me (which is possible depending on how much time the other player and I used up in total).

It happened to me once, in a tournament like you described, except I suppose it was accidental, rather than the third player deliberately delaying things. In that example, I can't say I would have preferred the alternative of continuing the game without the out of time player and qualifying like that. I'm not saying what happened is right, it obviously shouldn't be allowed to happen. But I just don't think continuing a game without a player is right either. It's not enough for me to know I would have won or whatever. I need to actually make it real, make it official. So, I'd always prefer to just keep waiting and hope we can finish normally and with everyone present.

Aren't you arguing my point here? You are admitting that players see the game in completely different ways. What you see as the most optimal move the majority doesn't. They just want to play in isolation. And there's many levels in between entry to your level. So predicting someone else's move or saying what they should or would do is impossible. There are only 4 choices but depending on the player each different choice can be made. That is the downside to multiplayer. Any player can make decisions that are suboptimal that can effect you more than another player at any time. When you sign up for multiplayer you are signing up for that possibility.

Well if players want to think just of their own board they are free to do that, but they would be wrong to say there is no interaction just because that's not how they play.

It's kinda like in the Ticket to Ride thread I just read, the people who are against blocking argue that it's not in the spirit of the game, but they are being oblivious to the fact that in order to be good at the game, you have to learn to use blocking to your advantage. They can play without it if they want to, but it would be wrong to enforce the idea that it's not part of the game.

Regarding how effective it is to predict what others will do, well generally it is. The first assumption obviously is that they are playing in their own interest (either to win or to secure a position), which is the case for most players regardless of their level. Beyond that, there may be uncertainty on whether a player is going to stick to their board or do something against another player (if they are at a lower Elo they are less likely to bother about other people's boards). But generally it works out, because the higher the level of your opposition is, the better you can predict what they are going to do. You don't see baffling moves at high level, only maybe moves you didn't predict because you got outplayed.