Done with tournaments

[tbhp]

It has nothing to really do with competition though, and that's what you want, tournaments decided on merit.

Yeah, but at least it's my own fault. I can accept that I lose because I took longer to play and because for reasons outside of anyone's control, the game had to end. I can't accept that I lose because some idiot decided to kick out someone else, even though I was ahead both in remaining time and by game state.

One of the major reasons tournaments don't do as well as they should is because there's an underlying feeling amongst players of poor rules, unfairness etc.

I don't know, I think those issues are too uncommon to be a reason why people don't play tournaments as much as they could. It might have some impact, but I think the majority of players probably don't care about it as much as we do (if they are even aware of the issues). Once it happens to them then yes they would care, but those players are probably a drop of water in the sea of all players.

The best solution by far for most games is to let them to play to conclusion regardless and have the actual winners qualify.

That may be, but like I said before I worry if it would create a culture where people would think it's okay to drop out because, after all, the game will end anyway. I mean, imagine being in a tournament final and most of the players leave the moment they think they have no chance of winning. It wouldn't be exactly the most satisfying, would it? And I feel the odds of that happening would be higher under that system, than in the current system where it would be very unlikely for the players of a final to suddenly stop playing, even if they are losing.

[FrankJones]

Everyone is making valid points.

The problem is, I'm not sure how the system should be set up to handle a 3+ player tournament game in which one player just simply stops making moves. The game cannot just hang indefinitely, but there is no good way to deal with that situation.

What I don't really understand is why the tournament game timer need to be set to some specific duration, after which the game ends and a winner is declared based on least clock used. As long as all players in the game are making moves, why not just use the standard turn timer that standard non-tournament turn-based games use?

Ideally, game designers of physical games would get with the times and recognize that online game play is increasingly more prevalent and may likely be the primary manner in which games are played, and thus write into the rules an in-game mechanism for dealing with am absent player so that the game can continue. Whenever possible, at least.

[nik592]

What I don't really understand is why the tournament game timer need to be set to some specific duration, after which the game ends and a winner is declared based on least clock used. As long as all players in the game are making moves, why not just use the standard turn timer that standard non-tournament turn-based games use?

From what I've been told this is so that tournaments can have a fixed maximum time, otherwise the end time for games could be highly variable. I believe the expectation is that if you have an unusually long game, that game will be truncated, but it should happen relatively infrequently across the tournament. But it just means if your game of TM happens to go to 20+ generations, while everyone else is ending after 9-10, everyone else won't be waiting on you. In theory. In practice, good tournament creators try to make the max time cover the range of lengths for a game and then some to allow for timing issues, so most games finish well within the allotted time, except for the few per round which have someone vanish early/mid game, and force the time to go to max (or for someone to boot the absent player), and everyone ends up waiting on those tables instead.

Ideally, game designers of physical games would get with the times and recognize that online game play is increasingly more prevalent and may likely be the primary manner in which games are played, and thus write into the rules an in-game mechanism for dealing with am absent player so that the game can continue. Whenever possible, at least.

While I don't disagree in theory, in practice, that's a tough ask for most games. As I understand it, there's a lot of work that goes into balancing a game for different player counts, including adjusting included resources. I guess the best solution would be to establish some kind of automa player, but typically those are only play-tested against a single other player, and often have very different rules setup for the one v. automa game (against a normal 2p game). Then you've also got to code the automa player in, and because it's probably not used that often, it probably doesn't get tested as well as a non-automa game. It introduces a lot. Some games it's easy - Heat is a great example. Most roll and writes don't care if a player drops out, though it can make small differences. But generally the more interactive it is, the harder it would be to continue with a missing player.

[RazorOz]

Yeah, but at least it's my own fault. I can accept that I lose because I took longer to play and because for reasons outside of anyone's control, the game had to end. I can't accept that I lose because some idiot decided to kick out someone else, even though I was ahead both in remaining time and by game state.

I don't know, I think those issues are too uncommon to be a reason why people don't play tournaments as much as they could. It might have some impact, but I think the majority of players probably don't care about it as much as we do (if they are even aware of the issues). Once it happens to them then yes they would care, but those players are probably a drop of water in the sea of all players.

That may be, but like I said before I worry if it would create a culture where people would think it's okay to drop out because, after all, the game will end anyway. I mean, imagine being in a tournament final and most of the players leave the moment they think they have no chance of winning. It wouldn't be exactly the most satisfying, would it? And I feel the odds of that happening would be higher under that system, than in the current system where it would be very unlikely for the players of a final to suddenly stop playing, even if they are losing.

It's a bit of stretch to say it's your fault assuming you stayed within time limits. Eg. say I am in a tournament with 5 day clock, and only use 2 days of my clock, but others have used even less time, which can easily happen no matter how fast you are in multi-player tournaments, because eg. the other players can all be in the same time zone. It's a bit of a stretch it's my fault if I then go out because someone else only used 1 day of clock, and unsurprisingly any player who felt they would have otherwise qualified is going to feel wronged by such a situation.

Trust me poor rules and bad experiences are leading to many players steering away from tournaments. It's not always on these lines, as some times it's the tournament itself has bad rules, eg. bad clock, or just a bad ruleset, which while you can argue that's partly the fault of the player who signed up, it doesn't change the point that I have spoken to 1000s of players in tournament sign ups, and I heard this a lot when I first started about prior bad experiences. The only reason I don't get so much of it these days, is because now my tournaments are known, I'm not having to sell them to people anymore, but I still got lots of DM's about people complaining about other's tournaments or the general tournament rules in DM. For example one of the more common complaints I see these days actually arises from the "players cannot be timed out" option being turned on for Heat, and people complaining they went out when they were going to win/qualify, I always tell people to never join a Heat tournament with this setting turned on, as it's much worse when the game will complete to conclusion regardless, but still creators will use this option likely because they're misguided by other games, or simply overwhelmed by the number of options.

But we can see the evidence that this doesn't happen, because of the fact it already exists at Heat. Look at this https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=538154. 486 players, 81 tables in Round 1, and you can count the number of time outs on 1 hand, and that's in Round 1 where most time outs occur, there likely won't be a time out in the rest of the tournament based off previous experience. For one you lose a ton of ELO by dropping out, which is already a deterrent.

[Meeplelowda]

What I don't really understand is why the tournament game timer need to be set to some specific duration, after which the game ends and a winner is declared based on least clock used. As long as all players in the game are making moves, why not just use the standard turn timer that standard non-tournament turn-based games use?

From what I've been told this is so that tournaments can have a fixed maximum time, otherwise the end time for games could be highly variable.

This is the reason. There aren't turn-based tournaments in sports, so it's an imperfect analogy, but like sports tournaments BGA tournaments aren't meant to be an open-ended affair. They are meant to have defined timeframes. And there are no holiday jokers for tournaments. With precisely defined maximum round times, if I know I'm going on holiday in July then I can confidently enter a tournament that begins in April that has round times of 7 days and will go 8 rounds at most knowing that it won't bleed over into my holiday. With variable maximum round times there can be no guarantee that it will end before my holiday.

[FrankJones]

I used to play on a site that primarily ran tournaments as the means for competitive play. There was no "Arena", and though people could play non tournaments games, most people played tournaments. There was no Elo, so the primary way to gain prestige and accomplishments was to play and win tournaments.

The tournaments would start 4 days a week, if I recall correctly; maybe more. Half were "fast" (24 hours per move), the other half were "normal speed" (48 hours per move). It worked fine. Players would register and get placed in brackets of 4. Each player would play 2 games against each of the other 3. (alternating turn order for fairness). Whoever had the most wins advanced. If two players each won 5 games (splitting with each other and winning both games against the other two players), both would have 5 wins and advance. Then new brackets form, util after a few rounds, it would be reduced to a final bracket.

So, anyone who was playing high-volume was generally participating in numerous tournaments simultaneously. Yes, some games took longer than others in the same bracket. But it wasn't a big deal, because, as I noted, most players were involved in lots of tournaments (that being the main game play option). When a new round began with a new bracket after advancing, the player would simply see new games in the active games page.

There was no "fixed" duration for a game or tournament.

So, it can be done. Granted, it makes little sense to have standard ranked games with Elo AND an arena AND a highly prominent tournament structure. My guess is that's why tournaments here aren't given much attention by the website? Because most people play Arena or just standard ranked games? I'm an avid player here but I've never played one tournament.

[Meeplelowda]

I used to play on a site that primarily ran tournaments as the means for competitive play. There was no "Arena", and though people could play non tournaments games, most people played tournaments. There was no Elo, so the primary way to gain prestige and accomplishments was to play and win tournaments.

The tournaments would start 4 days a week, if I recall correctly; maybe more. Half were "fast" (24 hours per move), the other half were "normal speed" (48 hours per move). It worked fine. Players would register and get placed in brackets of 4. Each player would play 2 games against each of the other 3. (alternating turn order for fairness). Whoever had the most wins advanced. If two players each won 5 games (splitting with each other and winning both games against the other two players), both would have 5 wins and advance. Then new brackets form, util after a few rounds, it would be reduced to a final bracket.

So, anyone who was playing high-volume was generally participating in numerous tournaments simultaneously. Yes, some games took longer than others in the same bracket. But it wasn't a big deal, because, as I noted, most players were involved in lots of tournaments (that being the main game play option). When a new round began with a new bracket after advancing, the player would simply see new games in the active games page.

There was no "fixed" duration for a game or tournament.

So, it can be done. Granted, it makes little sense to have standard ranked games with Elo AND an arena AND a highly prominent tournament structure. My guess is that's why tournaments here aren't given much attention by the website? Because most people play Arena or just standard ranked games? I'm an avid player here but I've never played one tournament.

I didn't say open-ended tournaments can't work. I said BGA tournaments aren't meant to be open-ended. I like the fact that I know with certainty the maximum time they will last. The idea of playing a ton of open-ended tournaments simultaneously is not appealing to me. That means you never know when you can take a break. Sometimes (like when I got married) I want a BREAK. Not one move per 48 hours. I want an option for 0 moves for a week or more and I want to be able to plan that weeks or even months in advance.

[FrankJones]

I didn't say open-ended tournaments can't work. I said BGA tournaments aren't meant to be open-ended. I like the fact that I know with certainty the maximum time they will last. The idea of playing a ton of open-ended tournaments simultaneously is not appealing to me. That means you never know when you can take a break. Sometimes (like when I got married) I want a BREAK. Not one move per 48 hours. I want an option for 0 moves for a week or more and I want to be able to plan that weeks or even months in advance.

Those are all good points. I do think that structure made sense and worked well only because that was the primary means by which people played. Now that I think about it, I wonder why that site did not use Elo or any sort of rating system.

[Meeplelowda]

Now that I think about it, I wonder why that site did not use Elo or any sort of rating system.

In my opinion: it creates perverse incentives that 1) promote a toxic attitude from certain players, and 2) are hard to police.