New mechanism to prevent skipping in tournaments

[nik592]

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 ?

That's just how they worded it. There was a discussion of this earlier in this very thread - see the comment here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 82#p216082, which confirms (through running a test tournament) that there is no vote, just that each player has the option to kick other players who happen to be out of time.

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.

That's just about how tournaments work - if a player is kicked from a game, the result becomes null and void, apart from the kicked player loses and all others are considered winners. If it's multi-elimination, some other way has to figure out who else should be eliminated. Anecdotally, this isn't random, but is based on the age of account (older accounts progress in favour of newer ones). The solution to this is to choose appropriate options for the tournament - either no booting, or no multi-elimination. Although in the former case, you'd have a similar problem if the game reaches maximum allowed time.

[Mathew5000]

Where is the vote of all players ?

There isn't any vote! The terminology of those options is not apt. See the following proposal to rectify the wording:
• https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=180949 (currently 3 upvotes)

[danielvictor]

Please could the default be no skipping where tournament organisers get to choose ? I find that players who about to time out just give up and stop playing,because they're afraid that if they get into a winning position,someone will skip their turn.

[Meeplelowda]

I find that players who about to time out just give up and stop playing,because they're afraid that if they get into a winning position,someone will skip their turn.

They have told you this, or you're just speculating about their motivations? This rationale makes no sense because if they have already used all their time such that they are in a position to be skipped, not playing won't save them because then they'll just be eliminated based on time anyway when the round time runs out even if no one skips them. Or do you mean you believe they think there's no point in continuing because they will just be skipped if they get in a winning position? I guess I interpret "they're afraid to continue" and "they think there's no point in continuing" differently.

[danielvictor]

I mean they can't be bothered putting in the effort to try to win,because they know if they succeed they're likely to be skipped by one of the other players.So when they get too close to timing out,they just slow down and start passing - it's pretty obvious what happened,and really sad.

[dschingis27]

Well, the sad part is that they got close to timing out in the first place. Then slowing down even more is a jerk move. I assume such a player doesn't care about the game in the first place.

You shouldn't simply assume you get expelled, many players want to finish a game properly and grant extra time. It's foolish to assume "I will get kicked anyway." The honorable move is to communicate, apologize and give a rough estimate what time you probably need.

I think it is nice that tournament organisers have the option to not let players skip. But making it the default would lean too much into granting freedom to players who do not care about time.

[danielvictor]

They were,playing,quickly and enthusiastically,up to the point where they couldn't make the time requirement.The only reason that they couldn't is that this was a fast,turnbased tournament with very stiff time requirements - I think it was one day per player for a game of Terraforming Mars.If the game had timed out then it would have been decided on time.So there'd still have been an incentive for them to play quickly.If they play fairly quickly,even though they've gone over time,then the game might not time out and be decided in the normal way,So both of those things would have been an incentive for them to play quickly and properly if only they couldn't be kicked.
[Sorry,the reason I'm having to mix my tenses is that the game hasn't finished yet].

[dschingis27]

Understood, you have a point. But the solution can not be to allow loopholes around rules by default. The solution must be to make it more obvious to players what they are getting into. I hope the whole tournament interface gets better sooner or later.

Ideally, there is a check whether a player has at least once or twice played a normal game in the "normal game time limit" that maps to the tournament time limit. If not, there should be warnings all over the place and extra confirmations required. Also if a time limit is very unusual for a game, there could be extra warnings at least once or twice (certainly BGA has data on what time limits are usual or unusual for each game). Probably not going to happen but one can dream. (I know I am late to the party in this thread, so I guess there have been several things suggested already.)

[Godsmurf]

I think it is nice that tournament organisers have the option to not let players skip. But making it the default would lean too much into granting freedom to players who do not care about time.

Which is not nearly as bad as granting freedom to losers who'll happily ruin a game that has run for days and still has days to complete, just to get out of a loss.

Skipping should simply not be possible when a tournament game has plenty of time left to complete before the next round, and when it is possible, it should only be by vote. BGA now grants all the power to self-centered losers who'll ruin a game for a whole table of people just because they can.