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Re: Remove from tournament games the ability to skip players out of time
Posted: 26 June 2023, 23:08
by nik592
I've not seen a tournament game where everyone agreed to abandon, but I'd assume that's why. Generally, games where everyone agrees to abandon are considered a neutral result, so everyone tied would make sense from that POV. The player out of time doesn't get a vote in whether to abandon, but they're also not penalised in terms of losing because they weren't booted (they still get a time penalty though).
Re: Remove from tournament games the ability to skip players out of time
Posted: 27 June 2023, 04:56
by Looper334
nik592 wrote: ↑26 June 2023, 13:48
MarcinKamil wrote: ↑26 June 2023, 10:57
I've had games where I had plenty of time left and winning, but game timed out because of other players... and these players finally were counted as winners due to account seniority rule or whatever.
If players are booted however, the booted player is judged last and ALL other players are judged equal first. In a tournament where more than one player is eliminated per round, those players (other than the booted player) are determined at random. Hence why allowing a tournament game to time out is usually the better option (unless you're definitely losing, in which case, it encourages people to boot rather than see it out, because a random chance is better than no chance).
Are they determined at random? Every time I've been in that situation (described above) the players that advance are based on account age with the oldest accounts advance.
Re: Remove from tournament games the ability to skip players out of time
Posted: 27 June 2023, 05:31
by nik592
Maybe that is true then. I didn't look at age of accounts and someone else mentioned somewhere that it was random, so I figured that was correct. I guess age of accounts makes a little sense? Better than random at least, but still encourages people losing to boot others if they know their account is older and will probably progress.
Re: Remove from tournament games the ability to skip players out of time
Posted: 27 June 2023, 08:06
by DrRockenheimer
Making tournaments consistently unbalanced in favor of older accounts is anything but good. (Possibly time left on clock is used in some situations, though that might just be a guess floating around that is false, like the notion that the tie-breaker is a random selection.) It appears that using age of account for tie breakers was the simplest thing to implement, maybe starting out as a placeholder, but growing in destructive power with every new tournament feature. So it's not just obscure situations that are controversial anyway, like kicking players out and deciding winners. As it stands now, in round robin tournaments, order of finish for the entire tournament seems to be determined by age of account in case of ties (which are entirely routine).
Re: Remove from tournament games the ability to skip players out of time
Posted: 27 June 2023, 11:30
by nik592
DrRockenheimer wrote: ↑27 June 2023, 08:06
Making tournaments consistently unbalanced in favor of older accounts is anything but good.
I guess my feeling is that anything non-random is slightly better than true random. But you're correct, it's not an objectively good measure to use.
DrRockenheimer wrote: ↑27 June 2023, 08:06
(Possibly time left on clock is used in some situations, though that might just be a guess floating around that is false, like the notion that the tie-breaker is a random selection.)
It's definitely used in the case where the game times out. It says so on the results page (eg.
https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=384917324). Though I'd argue that this isn't an objectively good measure either, due to the aforementioned issues around timezones. A player who has a luckier positioning where their preceding opponent is in a timezone close to them is more likely to get the win there, which has nothing to do with their skill at the game (as remaining thinking time might be perceived to indicate).
Re: Remove from tournament games the ability to skip players out of time
Posted: 27 June 2023, 11:33
by Zelva
DashingDonnie wrote: ↑26 June 2023, 12:03
How are the other players judged as who gets to advance then? Most time? Most points?
Most time left, which is ridiculous.
I've been eliminated in a tournament because I was the first player, took one minute to finish my turn, then the second player never played. He got kicked out and players three and four advanced because they didn't use up any time.
Re: Remove from tournament games the ability to skip players out of time
Posted: 27 June 2023, 14:10
by nik592
Time remaining is not the deciding factor when a player is booted, only when the game times out (which could still have resulted in the situation you described, and I agree, it's not fair). I've been that player and I've still been eliminated. Length of membership on BGA is what's been suggested, which probably makes sense, but the results screen doesn't tell you and I've never checked it myself.
Re: Remove from tournament games the ability to skip players out of time
Posted: 29 June 2023, 21:29
by DashingDonnie
I was just eliminated in a Wingspan tournament where three of the five players were out of time and I choose to skip the player who was most out of time. At that point I had the third highest score and three people were to advance. I was eliminated along with the person most out of time.
I wish there was a clear explanation as to who advances. I thought I should have been safe at that point with most time remaining and the third highest score, but wrong.
Re: Remove from tournament games the ability to skip players out of time
Posted: 29 June 2023, 22:37
by DrRockenheimer
DashingDonnie wrote: ↑29 June 2023, 21:29
I wish there was a clear explanation as to who advances. I thought I should have been safe at that point with most time remaining and the third highest score, but wrong.
You have the youngest account, so you lose. Not documented, not fair, but that is the system here.
FWIW, if you had let the time run out for the game (assuming that would have happened), then it seems that order of finish for the game would have been based on clock time remaining. Which of course creates an unfair advantage for players with older accounts to be able to remove players who are out of time and then be ensured of advancing.
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=61176 is a suggestion to vote for simply to get the tournament FAQ updated.
Re: Remove from tournament games the ability to skip players out of time
Posted: 30 June 2023, 14:07
by Early_10
Alloran wrote: ↑17 June 2023, 15:13
There is no reason that games in tournaments that have round time limits should also have the functionality of kicking players who are out of time, if there is still time left in the round.
It is very frustrating to be playing in a tournament that still has 10-15 days left in the round, but one player in your game is playing slow, so someone kicks them, which ruins your game, and now you still have to wait 10-15 days for the other games to finish anyway. It doesn't save anyone any time, it just ruins games that we have been playing sometimes for weeks.
The round will end and kick that person anyway, if the game isn't over by then. There's no need for players to arbitrarily enforce time limits in their own game (usually for selfish reasons, like they are losing) in tournaments that are already being automatically enforced equally for all games by the tournament's round timer.
I agree completely. And running out of time isn't always about delays, frequently its about timezones. I play every hour throughout a 15 hour day but just got kicked out of 2 separate games against players in Russia and Germany when I am in Canada and timed out overnight. I too would like to see tournaments have a different option. It's very unsportsmanlike to kick a player who is playing timely and regularly in a tournament.