Player quit to steal a victory from me

[ChiefPointThief]

It doesn't "ruin the game", it just messes up with the rankings and statistics.

I'm confused by the word "just" here as if having your rankings messed up is insignificant. You may be one of the people who don't care about rankings and think no one else should either but the fact is that isn't reality. About a third of ark nova games (the biggest game on the platform) are competitive games. So rankings are a major factor.

But surely, if you spent one hour playing the game, you enjoyed that hour and whatever the player does doesn't change it?

No! It isn't enjoyed. That is why people come to the forums to voice their frustrations about this terrible system Time is precious. People spend their valuable time grinding in games each season. No one like hours of their time being stripped from them due to rage quitters and being cheated in their ranking.

All bga has to do is let the game go on and take the power away from the rage quitters. Then, there would be less rage quitting which I'm sure is something bga would like because rage quitting would only hurt the rage quitter.

In any case, the behaviour is not nice, but you better just accept it, red-thumb if you want, and move on. The player who quit got a karma penalty, hopefully they won't do it again. Getting mad because you got one less victory will get you nowhere.

Accept it why? There is a fix that devs are willing to implement. Let the game continue!
You are correct in that getting mad will get you nowhere. But speaking logic and asking bga to do something about the situation should!

[Jellby]

It doesn't "ruin the game", it just messes up with the rankings and statistics.

I'm confused by the word "just" here as if having your rankings messed up is insignificant.

I say "just" because rankings and statistics are not "the game", they're some kind of metagame.

No! It isn't enjoyed.

I fully understand rankings are part of the fun. But if you spend an hour willingly doing something you don't enjoy... perhaps you should reflect on that.

Accept it why? There is a fix that devs are willing to implement. Let the game continue!

Because that's the way it is, and I doubt it will change in the near future.

And no, in general games cannot continue smoothly after one player disappears. Even if a game could be coded to automatically pass/skip some player's turns, whatever balance there was has been broken. Some players will be unfairly benefitted by the zombie (those who were directly competing for resources/awards), some players will be unfairly harmed (those who were cooperating or piggy-backing on their actions). In a rock-paper-scissors type of balance, if you remove scissors, paper always wins! Not to mention that the set up, winning conditions and even gameplay is often different between different player counts. And players signed for an N-player game, not for an (N-1)-player game, which they may want to avoid for whatever reason.

[h_illes]

But if you spend an hour willingly doing something you don't enjoy... perhaps you should reflect on that.

They enjoy playing the game, and also enjoy being declared the winner at the end of a hard-fought battle. That latter part is stripped from them.

[Remkar]

Just to clarify, when I say they quit at the last possible moment, I mean that absolutely literally. All they had to do was click one final button to end the game properly, instead they chose to quit. They even completed most of their final action!

They didn't quit, they were booted by the other player in that game. The other player likely realized they would finish in 2nd place, and preferred to boot the player that was over time so that they could tie you for first instead.

[Lika Lu]

I think, it is no use to argue about how bad/not-so-bad the situation is. I myself would hate this.

The more practical question: what can be possible done about this?
I found topic "Add a concede option in multiplayer games" https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40146
and then the proposal with the same name https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=18030, I voted (13th vote)
Please, vote yourself.

If this is implemented at least for some games, points among other players can be distributed fairly (this fairly need to be implemented first) and "Reputation loss" for such games can be higher than the current 20 (let us say -30)

[Meeplelowda]

Just to clarify, when I say they quit at the last possible moment, I mean that absolutely literally. All they had to do was click one final button to end the game properly, instead they chose to quit. They even completed most of their final action!

They didn't quit, they were booted by the other player in that game. The other player likely realized they would finish in 2nd place, and preferred to boot the player that was over time so that they could tie you for first instead.

This is an important distinction because the OP is unfairly accusing the wrong person. Other than running out of time, they did nothing the OP is accusing them of.

Here is the relevant line from the game log:

Move 141
Momo1126 is out of time, so iiaannoo skips his/her turn

That's what it says when a player (in this case, iiaannoo) expels someone. The text from Move 142 says "Momo1126 has quit the game," but you can't read that out of context.

[JoysJoy]

I think, it is no use to argue about how bad/not-so-bad the situation is. I myself would hate this.

The more practical question: what can be possible done about this?
I found topic "Add a concede option in multiplayer games" https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40146
and then the proposal with the same name https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=18030, I voted (13th vote)
Please, vote yourself.

If this is implemented at least for some games, points among other players can be distributed fairly (this fairly need to be implemented first) and "Reputation loss" for such games can be higher than the current 20 (let us say -30)

You may or may not have noticed the bug report is from May 2020? I see you're rather new year. Most of us has given up on bug reports and up voting. Nothing happens. This is a volunteer website. My personal theory is that the bug reports and suggestion reports are mostly there just so if you can feel like you did something to get rid of your frustration. It does not mean anything it's going to change ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever. Sooner or later, you get frustrated from the number of times you tried and nothing happened and you just give up

[Lika Lu]

You may or may not have noticed the bug report is from May 2020? I see you're rather new year. Most of us has given up on bug reports and up voting. Nothing happens. This is a volunteer website. My personal theory is that the bug reports and suggestion reports are mostly there just so if you can feel like you did something to get rid of your frustration. It does not mean anything it's going to change ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever. Sooner or later, you get frustrated from the number of times you tried and nothing happened and you just give up

Yes, I AM new here, not even 2 monthes.
I see from the bug list https://boardgamearena.com/bugs that the priority (the highest-supported) bugs/suggestions have a couple of thousands or at least a couple of hundreds upvotes. If the suggestion "Add a concede option" has 15 Votes (as of now) ... who cares?

As of the "volunteer website" - I think it is called "community-based". Think of all the computing resources needed to support thousands games per day and keeping the history of those games. Money is definitely involved. I would be very interesting to know: how many of 11 Million players are premium. So, how all of this is going to develop?

And, IMHO, here comes the mathematical concept of "exponential grows". Here, on BGA, every non-mathematical person can _feel_ this concept. Think of games like "Race for the Galaxy" or "Terraforming Mars" (here comes the "ever ever ever ..... " feeling) where the majority of all your points are collected in the last/a-couple-of-lasts round(s).

So, what about the community-based development? What (that is, what mathematical law) is the grows of number of players? What is the grows of premium members and money collected compared to the cost of computing resources? How far is BGA from paying the Developers for fixing bugs or implemented suggestions? I don't know all of this.

[Romain672]

You may or may not have noticed the bug report is from May 2020? I see you're rather new year. Most of us has given up on bug reports and up voting. Nothing happens. This is a volunteer website. My personal theory is that the bug reports and suggestion reports are mostly there just so if you can feel like you did something to get rid of your frustration. It does not mean anything it's going to change ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever. Sooner or later, you get frustrated from the number of times you tried and nothing happened and you just give up

I reported some things in the bug area. I like to think that some of those get though a lot. In the suggestion forum here, you can see some admin answers on specific subject, so they are readed there.
(Per example I said some years ago that new players would not understand that automatic messages in chat get translated. That got no upvote. Recently, we got a new symbol next to it telling that the message is translated in everyone's langage)

Another thing, especially if you know programming is to make the life the most simpler for the one who correct the bug. If you said 'X doesn't work', that force the programmer to think how to resolve the problem. If instead you said 'X doesn't work, and I think doing Y could be nice' that will be better already.


Then about games report, the new ones or the ones on beta/alpha ( https://boardgamearena.com/reviewer ) usually get fast answers. Or it happen that no bug is resolved during 6 months or 1 year, and one day, someone work on it, and all of a sudden, your bug report was useful.

Others are still waiting.

But to take the suggestion reported here, that just a bug report which tell that being able to concede in multiplayer would be nice. Nothing more, so that's a very bad suggestion if your goal is for it to be changed. People upvoting it don't even said what they would want for the second place to be managed.

[Lika Lu]

But to take the suggestion reported here, that just a bug report which tell that being able to concede in multiplayer would be nice. Nothing more, so that's a very bad suggestion if your goal is for it to be changed. People upvoting it don't even said what they would want for the second place to be managed.

This is exactly my point. IMHO, there is no way to handle this in a unique automatic way for all games.
To froze the game with the current number of points is not a solution, because the next turn can change everything.

What are other options?

In some games (for example, Random Forest) only the initial number of cards depends on the number of players. The simplest solution here, with one player conceding, would be to continue to play. But how this influence the fairness of the game? Do other players agree? Who knows?

In other games (Lost Ruins of Arnak, for example) for a small number of players some playing fields are "covered" (not available to play).
Another example is Marco Polo 2, where the number of black dices depends on the number of players. How to handle such situations?

And, I believe, for each game there is an open list of questions. And for each game it is a specific individual work. This means work for developers. And this makes it ... let us say cumbersome.