New mechanism to prevent skipping in tournaments

[Andrew Davidson]

I had my first experience of a no-skipping tournament. The game was an Ark Nova elimination event: AGO 2025. This gave each player 3 days with playing hours of noon to midnight. The overall max duration was 15 days.

My opponent ran his clock into the red and, as I seemed to be a bit behind, I tried skipping him but found that it didn't work. I was a bit stymied about what to do and there was a glitch with the game that made it difficult to load so I gave it a rest for a while, thinking that it wouldn't matter if my own clock ran down. When I got back to the game. I found it wasn't there any more. I investigated and found that the overall time had been exhausted and I had won by having the most remaining thinking time. I hadn't planned on this as the numbers weren't clear to me.

The main thing that bothers me is that there isn't good communication when these timeouts happen. The game just seems to disappear and doesn't leave a notification in your player profile. Players should understand what's happening to provide feedback which helps avoid the problem recurring.

[Meeplelowda]

The main thing that bothers me is that there isn't good communication when these timeouts happen.

It would be nice if there were a clock telling you how much time remained in the entire round. But just add that to the pile of quality life improvements needed for tournaments. Unfortunately, you have to manually go by when the table was created (it will say something like "Created yesterday at 04:12") then add the maximum duration, e.g., "Game maximum duration 15 days."

The game just seems to disappear and doesn't leave a notification in your player profile.

You should always see a notification of a turn-based game ending indicated by your avatar having a reddish hue. Click on your avatar, then click on the ! in a circle and you should see a message like "Table Wingspan n°726167064 has ended."

Players should understand what's happening to provide feedback which helps avoid the problem recurring.

Sorry, what problem exactly? Do you mean not being able to tell how much time is left in the round?

[demyurge]

I currently have the situation where one player in a 15 day 4p tournament game has gone MIA for 4 days, we are at 5% progression.
Another player has slightly more time than me. If I understand correctly, if the overtime player never reconnects before the 15 days limit, then I'll get 2nd place by virtue of the timer rule. Also, since all the opponents are much lower ranked than me, 2nd place is even going to cost me elo.
This sounds immensely stupid, shouldn't it apply the same logic as when a player gets booted? Something like: after the game times out, all players who are in the red get tied last, the rest get tied first. Also remove any elo modifications and treat it as a friendly at this point because losing elo just because another player decided to go AFK is absurd.
If we want to keep the "friendly" aspect of this new setting, make it so the overtimers technically lose the game but don't get any karma penalties. But there's no need to punish the other players at the table.

[nik592]

You can choose not to join games where skipping is disabled. Games that were abandoned due to maximum time have always worked this way. That's not to say that couldn't be changed, but that part of things is not new, and changing it would likely be more than minimal work (also would likely annoy another subset of players if they did change it).

[demyurge]

You can choose not to join games where skipping is disabled. Games that were abandoned due to maximum time have always worked this way. That's not to say that couldn't be changed, but that part of things is not new, and changing it would likely be more than minimal work (also would likely annoy another subset of players if they did change it).

Ah yes I'm sure the fans of *checks notes* "having their tournament placement and elo loss decided over a meaningless clock just because one player wasn't interested in playing the game anymore" will be crying a river of tears if this ever gets changed.

Seriously what would it cost to at least nullify the elo loss for the players who didn't cause the game to time out? Feels like just a massive oversight when implementing this new setting.

[nik592]

Ah yes I'm sure the fans of *checks notes* "having their tournament placement and elo loss decided over a meaningless clock just because one player wasn't interested in playing the game anymore" will be crying a river of tears if this ever gets changed.

Seriously what would it cost to at least nullify the elo loss for the players who didn't cause the game to time out? Feels like just a massive oversight when implementing this new setting.

I don't work for BGA so I can't answer definitively. However, I do write software for a living, and I'll tell you two things I know to be true:

1. "Small" changes often take more work than the end user thinks.
2. When you change something away from the way it's been working for a long time, there is ALWAYS a subset of users who liked it how it was, and think it's an absolute travesty that it now works differently. Even if the new way seems better by all logical thought.

Specifically, on the issue of awarding rankings by timing, there are many of us (including me actually) who find that a relatively arbitrary way of determining places. However, there are plenty of players here who feel the clock is an integral part of the game. Some people feel that if a game runs to maximum, ranking by "thinking time" is a fair way to do it. And if a game has generally been playing, it's probably not totally unreasonable. You're describing one specific situation where a person disappears from a table, and thinking time doesn't really apply, but there are others where maximum table time is reached.

[CarsenL]

Wow! I just noticed this by looking at an ongoing tournament and seeing the option to skip on there and immediately came to the forums to check. That’s great!

The option has applied retroactively as seen in this ongoing tournament, Decks Out For Harambe https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=384338

Looking forward to seeing the feedback on the prevent skip option.

In 2p games I see no issue with this other than some delays due to more games going to max time.

For 3p there can be some tricky politics with skipping versus not skipping. If you are in second or third place, skipping usually benefits you because you get to share 1st with someone. With skips removed all games will now default to placement based on thinking time?

This would be frustrating for a player that’s winning, but uses a moderate amount of thinking time (clock on overnight) versus one too slow player and a “no life “ player that is always online and makes all their moves asap.

For 3+ players I would propose that overtime games become a shared win for all players with positive time on the clock. Let me know your thoughts fellow tournament nerds

This has happened: https://boardgamearena.com/10/terraform ... =735760273

The default of first place goes to someone clearly in 3rd place right before time expired (very close to the end of the game where the outcome is not in doubt). I am not saying the 3rd place person did this, but there is clear incentive in this situation for anyone not winning but with the most time left to stop playing in order to force the game into an abandon and secure a victory for themselves they don't deserve.

***URGENT*** Can we please have an option when creating a tournament where skips aren't allowed to determine how game scoring is handled in the event of an abandon? ***URGENT***

Options:
1) All players not in negative time tie for the win
2) Current in-game scores are considered final and used to assign the final placement (this may not work or make sense for some games)
3) Final placement is given in order of who had the most thinking time left (the current and only option)

For tournaments of Terraforming Mars or other longer engine-building games, the outcome is often more or less decided if you can make it ~2/3 of the way through the game. I think option 2 would work great for it, but could run into issues if picked on games where there is no live-scoring mid-game. At the very least, having option 1 would be an improvement on only having option 3 forced on us.

PLEASE FIX ASAP

[nik592]

I don't disagree with you that for some games, there are better options for determining ranking (and TM is probably one of them, as you say). I'd also somewhat agree that having a game end in a tie is a better option than rankings determined on time remaining.

However, there are pros and cons to having skips allowed/not allowed during games, and both scenarios have loopholes that allow players who may not have won if the game played out, win because it ended prematurely. You can also choose whether you enter tournaments that allow skips or not - maybe in a TM tournament, non-skip tournaments aren't the right fit (for now, until and unless your suggestions are implemented).

Is there a suggestion already raised for the changes being suggested? If not, that should be your first step. Or voting on it if it already exists. But I'm not sure this scenario is any worse than the problems caused by allowing players to skip those out of time, elevating them from a loss or lower placed finish to a tied win.

[Knockando]

When creating a tournament we can see this choice :
Handle players out of time : "All players can vote to kick players out of time." or "Players can't be skipped during game"

In a multi players game, when the tournament creator chose the first option, if a player is out of time, any of the others players can end the game by kicking the player out of time.

Where is the vote of all players ?

And, second problem, in an elimination game (like Perudo) players who were eliminated can go to next turn, random choice of players who advance isn't only between players still in the game.

[Meeplelowda]

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