A waste of time: Unfair Karma penalties...

[tbhp]

Perhaps, but there is no way to distinguish between a rage quit and a "polite" or emergency quit, or between someone who just disappears and a network issue or a real-life incident. Some of those would deserve a harsher penalty, some should be less punished. But since all look the same from the outside, the current status is that all get the same "middle-ground" penalty.

Plus, the distinction doesn't even matter. OP's karma being where it is tells us that they have a tendency to leave games that haven't even reached their half way point. It doesn't matter whether they "intend" to cause harm when doing that, that defense doesn't fly in this case because the results of their actions are exactly the same as they would be with someone who leaves games early for other reasons.

The system is doing exactly what it's supposed to do, telling us that this is a player who is risky to play against because if you take longer than the limited 10-15 minutes they have to play a game, you risk not being allowed to finish the game normally.

[nik592]

BGA has an option to "Propose to abandon the game collectively", but I've been ignored or rejected every single time I've tried. So, in my experience, that tool is basically useless.

Are you just clicking abandon, or are you explaining why in the chat? Because I have agreed to a collective abandon a few times (with strangers - I've also done a lot with friends, sometimes even because I've just asked my partner to help me test something, but that's obviously different). But if someone just clicks abandon without explaining, I will decline.

Anyway, the system should reward good manners. If you have to leave for whatever reason and you actively click "Quit", the game should just end on the spot.The opponent immediately receives 100% of the ELO points for the win, and the player who quits loses 100% of the ELO (regardless of the game's completion percentage). Since this is a clean exit that doesn't waste anyone's time, the Karma penalty should be tiny (say, I don't know... only -5%).

But it does waste people's time. I use BGA to play games - I don't care about how much I win or rankings, or even particularly about gaining great skills in any particular game. I just want to play a game in its entirety. It's frustrating when those games end prematurely, whether the player quits, or whether they just vanish. I typically don't boot as soon as someone goes into the red, I don't concede games, and I don't like it when games end prematurely. When I sit down to play a game with a stranger IRL (eg. at a con), if they leave before the end, I'm not happy about it. Unless they've done something like initially told me they won't be able to stay for the whole thing, or if it's a seemingly obvious emergency. But if they just said, "sorry, I'm out of time, gotta go" and left, I'd be annoyed. You are wasting my time.

For multiplayer games, the ideal solution would be for a player who clicks "Quit" to be instantly replaced by an bot, allowing the remaining players to finish the game normally.

Bots take programming (and testing and maintenance). Considering the number of open bugs in games, I don't think bot programming is high on anyone's priority list.

I get that, but as I've been trying to explain, this isn't about my personal situation. I am just trying to bring up a constructive idea that could actually improve the platform for everyone.

I think the point people are trying to make is that they don't agree that your idea is workable or would improve the platform. You may think it would work for what you want to do. I can't see any benefits for the way I want to play. And while BGA could choose to align with either of us, they happen to align better with my (and others) POV. So naturally we would say we'd prefer things to stay as they are. Not just because, but because your proposal would make things worse for me (and others).

[FrankJones]

For multiplayer games, the ideal solution would be for a player who clicks "Quit" to be instantly replaced by an bot, allowing the remaining players to finish the game normally.

For 2-player games, I agree. A player should be able to concede without penalty and with full Elo to the opponent. The current system disallows this (prior to 50% game progression) as an anti-cheating mechanism.

But instead, it penalizes players who would have gotten full Elo but instead get a tony amount because someone quit. That's a bad system. Find a solution that does not penalize the honest players.

For multiplayer games, BGA does not have Bot programming to fill in as replacement players. Even if they did, this could still cause problems because of how poorly the bots generally play.