Players quitting games they are losing is a serious problem for arena

[Le Mish]

I've been playing a bit of Splendor in the arena recently trying to gain some ranks and i have had multiple people quit games that were all but concluded. I guess that's not something you can ever fully stop, but the issue is that these players aren't being properly punished for quitting a game that the other players have invested half an hour of their time into. One of the players that quit the turn before I was going to win still has 100% karma. And while I'm moderately high in the rankings, these players are so low that losing extra rating points clearly doesn't matter to them.

What's worse is that if a player quits in Splendor, a 3-person game, the remaining two players automatically tie, even if one was clearly winning. What this means it's that the higher-rated player actually loses ELO for tieing the lower-rated player. It just makes no sense. It's a bit of a rant but I've had 3 leavers in my last 4 arena games, two of which occurred when I was in a literally unloseable position 1 and 2 turns before the end of the game. And the system won't even let me report them because I haven't thumbs-upped enough people?

This website needs harsher punishment for game abandonment, perhaps scaling up as the time investment in the game increases. If a player quits a 3+ player game 30 minutes in progress they need to be punished more than 10 karma that doesn't matter in the first place.

[xxerox]

+1.

People who abandong games so someone else not win on purpose are the worst.

[FSKFSK]

Maybe they should have it auto-skip the turn of people who quit like it does in regular mode? That wouldn't work for some multi-player games, but in Splendor it should be a fair solution.

[Tisaac]

Maybe they should have it auto-skip the turn of people who quit like it does in regular mode? That wouldn't work for some multi-player games, but in Splendor it should be a fair solution.

No it would not. You can't just go on without someone else and pretend that wont change the game. What if I saw that this player went for X noble and was ahead of me so i wasnt rushing to getting it and now that he is gone, the other player will get it eventhough he would never had it if the player didnt quit ? And you can think of many many other examples.

[Le Mish]

I don't hate that the system admits that it can't properly assess who would win the game if a player leaves, but the fact of the matter is that they've wasted everyone's time and the punishment needs to be more serious than losing 10 imaginary friendship points that don't matter anyway. I'm talking like up to a one-week ban, depending on how long the game had been in progress for and how competitive the mode is.

I was really looking forward to feeding my competitive side with BGA but the rules are extremely favorable to players who quit at the very end of a game if they are losing. After all, not everyone is motivated by ranking. The punishment needs to be enough to dissuade players from ever quitting a game 30 minutes in progress.

It makes zero sense that I can literally lose rating for winning a game.

[FSKFSK]

If you're literally two moves away from winning with no chance of losing (like OP said), then skipping a missing player is fair.

If it happens in the middle of a game, there really isn't a fair solution.

There also are games where passing is a legal move, vs games where passing is not a legal move. If the player didn't disconnect but just passed, would you object to that?

The penalty for quitting a game can't be TOO harsh, because connection issues do happen sometimes. It should be a severe rating penalty, but not a ban unless it happens too often.

There's no way to support 100% fair competition in an Internet-based game. There always will be disconnects. There always will be people using multiple accounts to cheat.

[Gormenghast]

I suggest a harsher penalty to deter quitting, to discourage players from not finishing the game and wasting everyone's invested time, especially on turn-based games that usually runs for weeks.

[compte obelète]

I'm talking like up to a one-week ban, depending on how long the game had been in progress for and how competitive the mode is.

WHAT!? That harsh will make everyone that just accidentely got lost connection to run away from the site, juste because he get kicked from the game and getting ban? Like, imagine, he doing a single error of a connection issue and he's ban for a week whiteout his own consentement. That's make him think the website is unfair and quit it definitly.

My suggestion is. instread of being that harsh, i can go like this, first error "if of course you already did one a long time ago since the start of the account" is still -10, then -20, -30, -40 karma (getting the max next penality if not 1/4 of a mouth 3/4 if 1/4 of a mouth, etc. since the last penality). Then if he do it again and he get all 4 firsts penality, it gose like this: moderated for 1 day, 2 day, 3 day, 4 day. then a ban from 1-7 days, then if still doing it: Perma moderated

that whould fix it.

but of course, if he didn't do it while still connected (like a disconnection for any reasons that isn't make by himself [like thunders, tornado, or a internet break]), then it stop at -20 karma. Like, he didn't do by himself, but rather from anything that he can't control.

[unclesamb]

I just recently was playing a game of Lost Ruins of Arnak, and we came into the final round with a player who was pretty clearly going to win. The other player didn't quit exactly, but he passed right at the beginning of the round, not using any of his actions/cards/etc, since he knew he couldn't win--this still had the effect of opening up the action spaces in an unrealistic way in the final round and allowed the eventual winner to sprint ahead.

This slightly avoided the problem being described here (the ELO didn't get totally thrown off because technically he finished the game), but was still a bad experience. I ended up reporting him, so I think having "quit the game early / threw the game because they were losing" as one of the standard player-reporting features is the best bet, since it's player-identified.

Also, if a player quits (and the other players don't approve the quitting), the game should have no impact on ELO, correct?

[shyrma]

This happened to me for the first time this week, but twice in last 2 days, and in 1.5 hrs live games which is very annoying. It seems like the player leaving didn't lose any ELO, how is that possible/fair? It's just way too easy to quit and sacrifice a few karma points and get away with it...
Taking the quitting player into account for ELO calculation would be much more logical, and even giving an additional ELO penalty (even if small). It would make quitting more costly than losing, and would be fair on the other players (like when the player that was about to win loses points for tying with the 2nd one in 3 player games).