Non-playing Player who has signed up for A LOT of tournaments

[ChrisKern]

This is not simply an issue with someone running out of time in a tournament. This person has been doing this for at least 6 months -- signing up for literally hundreds of tournaments, and not taking turns in many of them. This goes well beyond simple mistakes or someone accidentally signing up for a few too many games. I first noticed the behavior of this user last October, when he was in almost 400 simultaneous games, timing out all of them without taking a turn.

He currently has 2950 penalties (710 quits and 1951 time outs). This is completely absurd and can have no genuine justification; it should be grounds for being banned completely from the site.

[GeraldineMerida]

We are already eliminating players that does not show up when a game starts. Thus, as soon as an absent player does not join a table, he is eliminated from the tournament.

Obviously, this can't work for turn based, since there is no "join a table". However on turn based an absent opponent is a free win and you don't have to "wait" without playing since it is turn based, so this is not a so big issue.

If you actually played in turn-based tournaments sometimes, you might realise this is in fact a big issue, and is nothing to do with the wait.

If someone fails to play at all in a multiplayer game, the other players either wait for the game to time out, and then some of them will also be quite randomly eliminated (or in a Swiss-sttyle tournament, they will be ranked on time taken for their first move, not on skill), or skip the absent player, in which case everyone else will draw, receiving far fewer points than any of them would have for a win.

I am currently playing in a tournament where I was leading until 2 rounds ago. Then twice running, I was paired with someone who hasn't played at all since early in the tournament. Several players lucky enough NOT to have been grouped with this 'zombie' player have now overtaken me.

It is quite frustrating when we tell BGA staff there is a problem, and you simply reply that it is not a problem at all.

As for solutions, what about eliminating from a turn-based tournament anyone who quits/is skipped in consecutive rounds? That would make allowances for people for whom life occasionally gets in the way of regular play, but not ruin an entire tournament for everyone else if a player goes AWOL long term?

[T72on1]

I agree that this definitely IS a problem, as pointed out clearly in the above two posts (and many others before that) !!

I also agree that this particular player's behaviour should be more than enough to completely ban him from playing here.

[Mathew5000]

I agree with GeraldineMerida. The comment by SourisDuDesert that "this is not a so big issue" fails to recognize what it means for a player to time out in a turn-based tournament for a multiplayer game. It just wrecks the playing experience for the other players.

[Shazzypaz]

I also totally agree that this is a big issue. I was in a year-long Viticulture tournament with 30-day games, and was in the running for first place until two of my tables ended up with the same player who made only a handful of moves. The fact that he made any moves meant that the final points were based simply on how long it took us each to make our few moves - totally timezone dependent.

Any player who runs out of time in a tournament should be automatically withdrawn from the remainder of the tournament.

[JoysJoy]

PLEASE upvote this suggestion to fix this problem! https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=65534
"There have been several players who sign up for many (sometimes hundreds) of tournaments and then go offline for months and never play the tournaments. The rest of us just sit and wait until the whole thing times out, and that no-show player is put into the next tournament, making the next set unable to play the game. It ruins the tournaments- if we can't play we aren't really getting good rankings. I don't sign up to sit frozen for days on end when we know that player has not been online for >30 days. Maybe they got COVID, maybe they are in the war. I don't know, I just want to be able to play the games I sign up for and I can't.

Please give tournament organizers and players a way to get rid of these no-shows. Let us report with a tournament karma so we can screen them out like we can with other statistics.

Here are two good (bad?) examples.

FunWithFlags boardgamearena.com/player?id=91223505: 616 left games, 1,715 over time limits, playing 243 turn based games- looks like all tournaments

The_T boardgamearena.com/player?id=85335779 - currently still ruining 3 tournaments. Has not been online for 49 days. 17 left games and 26 over time limits

Maybe we need a new karma rating added the current one. A special category for those who no show. RIght now, there is no real penalty so this just keeps going on.

[Athos83]

Hes still doing the same. Not even a move in most games. I understand when people go over the limit time, it happens to me, but this guy almost never plays

[dgjxqz]

I remember I soon hit the limit of 3 simultaneous tables when I was new. It was really frustrating as I had to wait for a few days for my tables to finish. On top of that, one of the player in one of the tables was not playing. So yes, there is a limit on how many tables you can play, but it is only there to punish innocent new players.

This player has played since this post, so it probably happened something that does not concern anyone but this player.

Probably? He plays a few tables from time to time to recover his karma so he can join more tournaments with karma restriction (which is a useless feature against exploiters like him).

I see several propositions to fix the situation in this thread, but I did not see anything that can improve the situation.

Meaning all other propositions from other threads were never read? I am sure you can at least come up with something that works yourself if you really want to solve a problem. Among others:
1. Eject a player from a tournaments as soon as his karma drops below the karma restriction (which already exist now but is totally useless) of the tournament.
2. Remove the lower bound of karma so that a player's karma can continue to drop into negative values once it reaches 0. Making it hard to recover his karma.
3. Add a new class below apprentice for ELO rquals to exacly 100, apprentice is 101 or above. That way, tournament creators can opt to exclude those class from joining them.
4. Set (or lower if there is already ome) a reasonable (statistically based) limit for how many tables / tournaments a player can join at the same time.
There are many more ...

However on turn based an absent opponent is a free win and you don't have to "wait" without playing since it is turn based, so this is not a so big issue.

Maybe not a big issue for 2 player games and the other player is active. A big issue in 3 player games where losing player will skip the timeout player to tie with the winning player.

[ChrisKern]

I like the idea of allowing negative karma; that would prevent this person from having 2950 penalties but then recovering his karma with a week of playing Can't Stop.

But it's really discouraging to see the way the mods/admins have responded to this issue, mostly just by denying there's a problem, closing threads, and pretending everything is OK while tournament after tournament is spoiled, largely by one person. They seem more upset with us for raising the issue than for this player ruining the site.

[JoysJoy]

I just read the result SOURISDUDESERT wrote here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 20#p115555 and the moderator says only one email came about this player. I am glad they are finally acting on this issue.

PLEASE PLEASE tell me how to report players like that one? I did report that one under suggestions because there is no way I can see to make these types of reports. I went to their profile and tried every dang report option and there is nothing about those who sign up for HUNDREDS of time-based tournaments at once and then never once play at all (no one could possibly play that many, they chose this only to fail and ruin the games for the rest of us). I just end up with saying "something else" and basically being told- too bad, cope or leave, your choice, all else is allowed no matter how awful you and others find it. My premium is up in July and I've been thinking of walking away from the website over the utter lack of caring or help over this ruined tournament thing. It has been many, many months since I started trying to get this fixed and keep getting blown off.

I don't even get one reply to this question and this is my third time asking. I cannot email the moderators directly, I tried messaging SOURISDUDESERT but I can't. PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO REPORT BAD TIME-BASED TOURNAMENT PLAYERS????????????? PLEASE!!!!!!!! Third time asking