How can we overcome Hanabi "ELO cheats"?

[7decoeur]

I was wondering if there was a possibility of implementing some settings that stopped people from coercing everyone into abandoning a sinking ship in Hanabi?

Technically, a win in Hanabi is getting to the end without three bombs. However there are many players I have encountered that wish to abandon a game by mutual consent as soon as they see getting 30 or thereabouts is not possible and their precious ELO is about to take a hit. This is especially so in 2 player games and it does rile me. It makes a complete mockery of the ELO system, knowing that people have achieved high ELOs purely by false pretences.

In my experience if you say no to abandoning a game, these types of players often get angry, or even retaliatory either by giving you a red thumb or just bombing out. This really isn't the spirit of playing and destroys the ethos of this site IMHO. Yes, one can make a mental note not to play with said player again but shouldn't we try to devise a strategy that eliminates this kind of bad sportsmanship and aggressive/argumentative behaviour once and for all? The benefit of this would be to reveal players who have a genuine ELO and those who do not. If a protocol is possible then I would also advocate resetting our ELOs to that of a beginner as a good Hanabi player would be capable of earning back their rank, whereas a habitual quitter, well...time will tell if they are good or not.

[Oso]

Hanabi games should be always without ELO

People can "cheat" telling what cards you have in hand. Hanabi doesn't work as competitive mode, rly.

[ollyfish2002]

Hello
Hanabi is not ranked anymore.
ELO should be off in cooperative game, but number of finished games over number of total games started should give you the answer to quitters.
For the "quitters", you can make a note in the profil of those players.
You see your notes in the table menu before the start of the game.
You can choose to leave or stay.
Hint : put at least why and when you make this note. This give a chance to some players. These notes could replace the red thumbs system. I have red thumbs for unknown reason : probably not playing the way Hanabi should be played...
my2p

[Ankeszu]

It would be lovely to stop this kind of behaviour, but I am full of doubts about practical way of doing so.

I see abandoning as a way on only one situation: something happened and a player cannot stay to the end of the game - whether it would be his net crash or airplane crash nearby. [OK, sometimes also "oops, too late, you started without me - Let's abandon and start with him!" but its more optional then]

But the only way I see to prevent using abandon as an elo saver option is - to entirely forbid abandoning in Hanabi [unless any player quitted / was kicked]. Unfortunately, players with less stable internet would be influenced by it (and maybe they would start less real-time games because of this rule). So if anything happens and you cannot continue the game, you agree with elo loss and just quit - then your coplayers end the game without penalty. [In Hanabi end of the game should be automatically after any player is kicked out...]

I see some problems with this idea too. I'm not sure it would stop bad behaviour from aggresive players - it may cause even more aggression for every 'mistake' someone does, instead of learning on those mistakes; and more red thumbs. And less will to play with unknown or low rank players, maybe. I think it would be hard to implement also, if even possible.
If someone really wants to cheat, he would do it anyway... I'm not sure if the minuses of this idea is enough to recompensate discouraging elo cheaters.

Though I disagree with eliminating ELO system at Hanabi at all - at least it lets you recognize total beginners (everyone below at least expert from my pov) from people with any experience.

Number of finished games to number of started games is quite useful ratio and it would be nice to have it visible when a player joins table - or even make a restriction of this ratio for joining players. I find it more useful than overtiming and quitting in last games. But it's also making an exceptional rules for Hanabi tables interface - I don't feel it is really useful in competitive games.

* (a bit off-topic)

People can "cheat" telling what cards you have in hand.

If I didn't heard about it, I wouldn't believe anyone would do so. Sad as it sounds, my friend met someone like that (among low rank players), what made him really upset about playing Hanabi with random players on this site. Some guys just started to tell him what he has on his hand and what to play.

[Willie333b]

Delete this game.

[tchobello]

well, sometimes you discover you are playing with really slow ones or volubile ones and only bear them since you try to achieve at least 29.
So yes, sometimes I find it pointless to go on with people I'm not used to play with and waste 45 minutes.
Of course, most of the time, errors happen as Hanabi is a difficult game and I don't care to lose as people I play with play fast, keep focused and avoid basic mistakes.

when you score less than 28, you're gonna lose 10+ points whatever happens.
Perhaps there is something to be made about points you lose/win.

And yes, ELO matters when you're under 2000 since you have to ask before entering Masters only tables.
Masters only table because many only want to play with Masters to avoid those problems we are talking about.

[demiurgsage]

adding % of abandon games would be usefull in Hanabi.

There are problems with ELO in Hanabi.
1. ELO is completely unfair for 3p games. You will never gain 2100 if you play only 3p games with ELO. The gains are too small and the losses are too big.
2. 2p Hanabi and 3p+ Hanabi is very different games. Player can be good in one and just average in other or vice versa. But ELO takes in account both of them.

[7decoeur]

And yes, ELO matters when you're under 2000 since you have to ask before entering Masters only tables.
Masters only table because many only want to play with Masters to avoid those problems we are talking about.

It is the masters that I am talking about, or probably FALSE masters, as they try to quit any game that will deduct ELO and thus their ELO will only inflate, thereby giving a false impression of their ability to play the game. Especially if the ELO is won through 2 player games alone as the ELO attribution has a bias as pointed out above by demiurgsage.

[Liallan]

[Sorry if this is a duplicate. It doesn't appear the first posting worked.]

There's a reason I haven't tried playing Hanabi yet. I've played it twice in person so I'm not exactly experienced at it and have far from figured out the subtleties of it. So not only don't I like people getting annoyed over just plain lack of experience, but getting annoyed enough to give red thumbs over it. I figure if you don't restrict your games, or join games with average or non-expert players, there's no room to complain.

I don't know if it's true this game no longer has any ELO, but I totally agree it shouldn't. I really wouldn't want my ELO on any game affected by how others are playing in a co-op game -- I have no control over that, and that's not a reflection of the person's abilities.

Though I do get that it helps to find appropriate players. I don't know what the solution to that is. I can understand getting annoyed with less good players - even with my little experience, it was annoying with people who couldn't remember anything you told them. But most games are more fun with people near your own level.

I was actually a bit surprised when this game showed up here.

[7decoeur]

On a related note, I was wondering if it was possible for an account not to exist, yet still be active?

I noticed this several months ago after a game of Hanabi in which it was evident we wouldn't hit 30 and thus they tried to abort to save ELO - which as you can tell from this thread is not what I like to do. I can't remember their exact reaction, whether it was to bomb out/verbal tirade or whatever, that's not the issue. What I do clearly remember is that seconds after coming out of the game I went onto their profile page and received the following message:

"This player does not exist or closed his/her account"

Alongside the red banner

"Callback error: TypeError: Cannot read property 'className' of null"

I have in subsequently played the same player again, (I like to give the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they were having an off day before) and out of curiosity went to check their profile page and I still get the same message. Also, with the page that it throws up, you can no longer click the links to play now or forums etc as you would for a "real" members page.

So either this player started to close his account at some point but ended up in limbo or they put me on ignore or something. I don't know if that is a function - I've never investigated, though it would be a very useful function! Even if it was surely we should still see their profile even if we can't communicate?

I didn't want to name and shame as it is probably some genuine bug or something. I can disclose the name of this player and the url with id number I get via private message to a responsible trustworthy type (embarrassingly, I don't actually know admin/mod people, though I'm sure they are far too busy to worry about this!) but not in here.