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Re: Cheap Move

Posted: 04 April 2025, 20:08
by FrankJones
schulni wrote: 04 April 2025, 16:35 I'm surprised people aren't being more sympathetic to OP. Sure, technically it's within the rules of the site, but gleefully pouncing on someone's clock expiration to secure a cheap "win" is hardly behavior I think anyone, including BGA, should encourage. Now I also don't think there's a way for BGA to prevent this behavior because the time clock needs to exist to limit actual bad behavior. Letting your clock expire for a tiny bit is hardly poor sportsmanship or bad behavior, and no one's time is so valuable that they can't wait a minute for someone to take their turn once.

(note: I am not condoning people repeatedly exceeding their clock time or leaving for ten minutes or anything like that)
I am sympathetic to the OP.

I had this happen on literally the last move of the game, in a game I was ahead by 60 points, and my internet crashed. I thought it was very poor sportsmanship for the opponent to take such a cheap and undeserved win. And the Karma penalty is absurd. I lost 17 Elo already in a game I should have won 3 Elo, and then another minus 10 Karma on top? Because my internet failed? Because my timer went negative ONCE in a game with 90 turns?

Lame.

That said, I certainly would not report the player - the player did not violate any rules. I did give a red Thumb. It took me 3 minutes to get my internet back up and running. Terraforming Mars' fastest setting is 2:38 or something like that. This player waited literally zero seconds to click "skip turns of player out of time" and then kick me after the 20 seconds. Didn't even give me an extra minute to see whether it was an internet crash issue that simply required power-cycling the device.

I think the reason people are unsympathetic to the OP is that the OP
1) Wants to report the opponent, and
2) Didn't give a satisfactory explanation for running low on clock. I mean, if your internet is working, just .... DO something. sell a card for a dollar. perform literally any action and skip second action.

At that point, refusing to take an action even when the system is giving the 20-secon warning IS trying to take more clock than is allowed, specifically to gain more time to think, and I do not see why that should be tolerated.

Re: Cheap Move

Posted: 04 April 2025, 20:33
by schulni
I do agree with all that, Frank. I am going on OP's word that the person in third simply did it to avoid a loss, which I do think is poor sportsmanship. I don't consider going beyond thinking time every now and then to be a big deal. It sounds like other people do, which is fine. I maintain that someone booting an opponent immediately after they go over time the first time when they are in a losing position is poor sportsmanship, and significantly worse sportsmanship than going over time once by a few seconds.

Re: Cheap Move

Posted: 04 April 2025, 21:52
by FrankJones
Personally, I take the approach that I would want to take if I were on the other end of the situation.

If my opponent runs out of clock, I just do something else and give the opponent a chance to return. After 15 minutes, I assume the player is not returning and skip the player's turn.

Does this mean I get burned sometimes? Yes, because I have lost games in which a player was a couple minutes beyond time, but I allowed him or her to return. And I lose a game as described already.

But at the end of the day, each person needs to make decisions he or she is okay with and can feel okay about as a person. That means different things for different people.

Re: Cheap Move

Posted: 05 April 2025, 17:51
by RoyalRook
There is actually ways to abuse this system I saw from this one player for turn based. He will setup very very very fast turn based game, and kick unsuspected players out of the game to get to elite level arena fast.

Re: Cheap Move

Posted: 05 April 2025, 20:15
by schulni
Someone did something similar to me. They were losing by a ton and asked to switch to turn-based because "something came up." They then set the timer impossibly short and kicked me out immediately.

Re: Cheap Move

Posted: 05 April 2025, 20:39
by FrankJones
schulni wrote: 05 April 2025, 20:15 Someone did something similar to me. They were losing by a ton and asked to switch to turn-based because "something came up." They then set the timer impossibly short and kicked me out immediately.
Switching from real-time to turn-based does not require all players to agree on the time setting !???

Re: Cheap Move

Posted: 07 April 2025, 14:02
by foxracing13
Its particularly bad in terraforming mars. Other games people are willing to hit the end the game vote button which automatically passes the disconnected person but never in TM.

Also i hate to throw shade but every * will spam the kick button even on first turn draft.

Nobody is paying you to play this game, nobody cares about you're rank.

*Moderator edit : BGA is an international site. We do not tolerate racist or xenophobic comments.