Board Game Arena

Lika Lu wrote: ↑30 December 2024, 11:01

Romain672 wrote: ↑28 December 2024, 12:14 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.

The play on option would be considered on a game to game basis. Clearly games that are impossible to play on wouldn’t have the option (like 4p team trick taking games). Bga needs to change how elo is calculated for team games when there is a quitter. Playing so well that you make your opponent rage quit only for the remaining losing player to get more elo than you is unfair.

In your arnak example what is the difference between playing on without the quitter and the quitter just passing their turn for the rest of the game?

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑30 December 2024, 13:06 In your arnak example what is the difference between playing on without the quitter and the quitter just passing their turn for the rest of the game?

Very little. But either case results in a situation that isn't correct for the rules - eg. more spaces may now be open for the active players, removing some level of the balance.

Lika Lu wrote: ↑28 December 2024, 11:57

JoysJoy wrote: ↑27 December 2024, 22:06 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.

I can’t speak on expenses but there is definitely a lot of money flowing through bga.
The 11 million “players” they claim I believe are the number of accounts ever created.

Of which I’m guessing at minimum 30% are duplicate accounts. There are lots of people who probably stopped coming here as well. So the active player base is a fraction of that # and obviously the premium subscribers an even smaller fraction.

As for growth, earlier in the year bga was at 9.8 million “players”.

nik592 wrote: ↑30 December 2024, 16:17

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑30 December 2024, 13:06 In your arnak example what is the difference between playing on without the quitter and the quitter just passing their turn for the rest of the game?

Very little. But either case results in a situation that isn't correct for the rules - eg. more spaces may now be open for the active players, removing some level of the balance.

In order to go on the space twice you must pay a higher cost. Which you will still do. The quitter is active. They just aren’t going on the spaces. This is actually well within the rules and for that reason why this sort of behavior is not punishable under bga’s policy.

I’ve experienced this exact scenario in Terra Mystica numerous times. The results weren’t voided just because someone decided to give up and pass every round.

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑30 December 2024, 16:50 In order to go on the space twice you must pay a higher cost. Which you will still do. The quitter is active. They just aren’t going on the spaces. This is actually well within the rules and for that reason why this sort of behavior is not punishable under bga’s policy.

I’ve experienced this exact scenario in Terra Mystica numerous times. The results weren’t voided just because someone decided to give up and pass every round.

Yes, but the higher cost isn't considered enough of a cost to balance the game generally at lower player counts, hence the spaces are blocked entirely. Additionally, they may have opened additional spaces in the explored sites when they were active, which are now available to the smaller pool of players. I know all explore sites are available at any player count, but with 3-4 players exploring them, they'll open faster than in a 2-3p game.

Terra Mystica is a whole different prospect as there's minimal impact from other players, except for them building where you may want, or maybe taking the special power ability you may have wanted. I believe the map may be tighter, but I'm not even sure about that. There would still be an impact but less so than Arnak. Apart from those special power actions, I mostly don't curse people for getting in the way of my moves in TM, but I certainly do regularly in Arnak.

I'm not arguing that the basic mechanics of the game still hold, and you might still have fun playing it - possibly moreso, because it may be easier to do what you want to do (or maybe less so, cause you'll miss the challenge). But it's not comparable to other experiences at the same player count anymore. I mean, look, you could argue that no two games are truly comparable because all the skill levels are different - perhaps a player is active in Arnak, but they make poor choices and so don't get in your way. Or maybe they pass every round in TM. But I suspect those games would number less than games where someone quits (or is booted on time).

I don't disagree that handling a game aborted in progress is difficult - in some ways, perhaps it would be better to just null the results (no ELO changes, except perhaps punitively for the quitter), but that would still frustrate people. And if the powers that be decided that your suggestion was the way and changed it so people had to see out the game with a dummy in place of the quitter, I probably wouldn't argue that much (though I suspect others would). But it certainly doesn't perfectly solve the problem.

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑30 December 2024, 13:06

Lika Lu wrote: ↑30 December 2024, 11:01

Romain672 wrote: ↑28 December 2024, 12:14 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.

The play on option would be considered on a game to game basis. Clearly games that are impossible to play on wouldn’t have the option (like 4p team trick taking games). Bga needs to change how elo is calculated for team games when there is a quitter. Playing so well that you make your opponent rage quit only for the remaining losing player to get more elo than you is unfair.

In your arnak example what is the difference between playing on without the quitter and the quitter just passing their turn for the rest of the game?

From BGA's perspective one is automatically registerable and the other is not.

nik592 wrote: ↑30 December 2024, 22:57

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑30 December 2024, 16:50 In order to go on the space twice you must pay a higher cost. Which you will still do. The quitter is active. They just aren’t going on the spaces. This is actually well within the rules and for that reason why this sort of behavior is not punishable under bga’s policy.

I’ve experienced this exact scenario in Terra Mystica numerous times. The results weren’t voided just because someone decided to give up and pass every round.

which are now available to the smaller pool of players.

I don't view it this way. The amount of players are still the same. Just one player isn't doing anything on their turn which is acceptable in this game. As a result this person will receive last placement. So how is it unfair to any of the remaining players? Everyone remaining in the game has already defeated at least one player. If you are relying on the play of someone who is passing their turns (quit) in order for you to succeed then your game is shot anyway and you had no chance of placing any higher than you would if the player was taking actions on their turns or not because based on their behavior (them quitting) they have proven to be a unreliable poor player.

So in this game https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=611052577 someone please explain how it is unfair in anyway for the game to continue. It is literally impossible for me to lose and I have 3x more pts than my opponents. The game is one click away in my favor.

The player who quit due to me winning by a landslide should receive 3rd placement. The remaining player isn't impacted at all by the other player quitting.

In this current system player b was extremely outplayed but yet gained 46 elo. I played so well that I made someone rage quit and I received 0pts (looking at the elo calculations I "tied" with the lower ranked player. I thought bga was supposed to change that). I don't understand people advocating that this is a better solution than playing on.

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑05 January 2025, 22:53 It is literally impossible for me to lose and I have 3x more pts than my opponents. The game is one click away in my favor.

That's fair enough when the game is almost completed, but it's a very different prospect if the quitting player exits earlier on. Possibly BGA could use game completed percentages to determine this, but not every game would have the same threshold for the point of no return, and as I understand it, percentages are determined by something programmatically and aren't used consistently by all game developers (so are sometimes meaningless). I get why you're annoyed with that outcome, and rightly so, but it's not as simple as "in all situations, gameplay should just continue" or even "where percentage complete is 80% or more, gameplay should just continue".

Even in the case of the final moves, it can be close enough that a player just giving up can affect the outcome (not in the case of your example game, but it does happen). At that point it becomes something of a discussion on king-making - if Player C can't win, some might say taking Action X and blocking Player A from doing it, giving the win to Player B is king-making. But passing and allowing Player A to take the move that gives them the win - is that not also king-making if that's how you define it? I've seen plenty of games where which player can win comes down to the choice of another player, and I don't see that as king-making. King-making to me is where you start playing a series of moves designed to improve the chances of one player over the other (eg. I'm going to lose this game of Catan, so I will only make trades with Player A so they can win, and refuse trades to Player B just so they don't). But how many moves makes it king-making? The definition of king-making is tricky sometimes. Where I'm player C in this situation, I personally try to continue playing as if I have a chance of winning, to try and achieve the maximum score I can. I've been criticised by opponents on occasion for spending time thinking about a final move when "it doesn't matter, you're not going to win anyway", and sometimes I will agree and take the path of least resistance to get the game done (usually if figuring out the "best" move for me is going to take some minutes to calculate). But sometimes I resent that criticism - can I not continue to play the best game available to me, even if it's obvious someone else has already won? That's obviously a different prospect from your situation, where the losing player has just exited the table, but even though in your situation, their presence wouldn't have changed the outcome, that's not always the case.

nik592 wrote: ↑06 January 2025, 01:57

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑05 January 2025, 22:53 It is literally impossible for me to lose and I have 3x more pts than my opponents. The game is one click away in my favor.

That's fair enough when the game is almost completed, but it's a very different prospect if the quitting player exits earlier on. Possibly BGA could use game completed percentages to determine this, but not every game would have the same threshold for the point of no return, and as I understand it, percentages are determined by something programmatically and aren't used consistently by all game developers (so are sometimes meaningless).

Yeah the % are extremely off and another good reason why the current system is horrible. It credits for progression % of games in the event of a quit but that number is off in a ton of games. I had a game recently of living forest in which my opponent desperately wanted to concede. I never realized this but they couldn't because the progress remained at 42%. In terra mystica even at the end of 5 of 6 rounds it still shows 50%. Also consider that tm has a long auction phase and you must pick factions before the rounds actually start. So the game is really at about 90% when it shows 50%. I can list a ton of other games with progression problems as well.

nik592 wrote: ↑06 January 2025, 01:57 I get why you're annoyed with that outcome, and rightly so, but it's not as simple as "in all situations, gameplay should just continue" or even "where percentage complete is 80% or more, gameplay should just continue".

I don't think this should be added for every game. It does seem like we have some disagreement on games it should be added though. Imo any game in which a player can pass their turns should automatically qualify. Because they are declaring they wish to pass the remainder of their turns by quitting. Therefore the "but they could've helped another player win" argument doesn't apply because they wouldn't be hurting or helping anyone with future actions. They've already declared they are passing their turns which is legal.

The play on option was recently added to Heat. I'm not even a Heat player but I am happy the heat community put an end to the nonsense. This change has got nothing but applause from the community from what I've seen.

nik592 wrote: ↑06 January 2025, 01:57 Even in the case of the final moves, it can be close enough that a player just giving up can affect the outcome (not in the case of your example game, but it does happen). At that point it becomes something of a discussion on king-making

But this is why you should be able to carry on. Any game with more than 2p is at risk of some form of king making and you can't govern how other players play. Player a may help player b, player c, or simply do nothing. In any case you don't get to void game results based on whichever action player a decides. In the result of a quit player a is deciding to do nothing.

This scenario is very applicable to 3p living forest. So much so, that the arena suggestion a few seasons ago was something along the line of "king making in arena must end" and arena was switched to 2p. Now if player a cannot win and has the option to make player b or c win should player b or c be allowed to petition the game results if player a doesn't do something in their favor? Of course not! So the argument of the game needing to be called off because player a is doing nothing (quit) shouldn't be a thing either.

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑22 January 2025, 16:35 I don't think this should be added for every game. It does seem like we have some disagreement on games it should be added though. Imo any game in which a player can pass their turns should automatically qualify. Because they are declaring they wish to pass the remainder of their turns by quitting. Therefore the "but they could've helped another player win" argument doesn't apply because they wouldn't be hurting or helping anyone with future actions. They've already declared they are passing their turns which is legal.

The play on option was recently added to Heat. I'm not even a Heat player but I am happy the heat community put an end to the nonsense. This change has got nothing but applause from the community from what I've seen.

I mean, if this is a discussion of Game X should be allowed to continue if players quit, then surely raising a suggestion about Game X is the way to go, rather than a general discussion? Yes, I knew about the issue in Heat, and I also think it's a good thing. But a lot of the discussion I see if "games should continue if players quit where possible" and expecting devs to determine the "where possible" part. Even to say "where possible" means "where passing is a viable option" seems too simplistic to me (but I'm not a dev, nor a BGA admin, so that's not my decision).