Abandon + red thumbs.

[Proclivitas]

I don't care that much, because playing Hanabi has really shown me how useless the "thumbs" system is, and I have a feeling nothing will change, but I guess I care enough to spend the time to start this thread about it.

If you disagree to abandon games in Hanabi, you will receive red thumbs. Yes, not everyone does it, but enough people do it to where it's fairly consistent. If you play Hanabi frequently and not too many other games, you will absolutely have a high enough "red thumb" ratio to consistently receive "warnings" by BGA that you have too many red thumbs - which is amusing in this context.

It's amusing, because it's being used the opposite of what it is supposed to accomplish here - which is, to finish games. People are reporting instead if you DO finish games.

If you don't believe me - try it. Everyone who plays Hanabi knows that as soon as a mistake is made, the "abandons" start rolling in - by all players successively, one after another, even if you hit "no." It's like they can't process the message, which is that the game is not going to be abandoned. Then the chat starts: "Let's abandon! Why not abandon? You realize that we can't 'finish?' (whatever that means?) You know flamboyants are not on, right?" etc. etc. etc. Trust me, I've seen it all.

So, my preferred solution is simple. Remove the abandon ability for Hanabi. If everyone needs to leave, it's easy enough to end the game by playing 3 "bad" cards, and then you everyone can leave.

Alternatively, disable red thumbs for Hanabi, if they aren't going to be human-audited - which they aren't, and it's not feasible.

There's also the option of implementing an auto-abandon, if that's the approved BGA way to play Hanabi. If a certain number of mistakes are made (1 or more with flamboyants) the game automatically quits. If the game won't be perfect, the game automatically quits before the last move. If 2 wrong cards are played, the game automatically quits. Formalize what is already happening, so that players who do not agree don't have to put up with it.

P.S. By the way, I think all of these comments might apply to other co-op games. I played some Tranquility and Solar Storm, and while it's not a problem there yet, for some reason, it is definitely a potential problem with "reverse incentives" for all co-op games on BGA.

[Travis Hall]

I play an awful lot of Hanabi and not much of other games. (That’s because I play other games with friends - and not always on this platform - but Hanabi to kill time between other things.) I haven’t run into this problem of too many red thumbs against me. I also don’t often have people trying to pressure me into abandoning. (Ignore my recent streak of abandons. That was technical difficulties, not poor play.)

Maybe it’s because I’ve already given red thumbs to many of the problem players, possibly combined with having gotten my rating well above where many of them are playing.

Red thumbs are not going away. They serve an important purpose. I use them for that purpose - those who obnoxiously try to pressure me into abandoning get my RT, and then I don’t have to worry about it any more.

Abandoning also serves an important purpose. Real-life difficulties sometimes interfere, and I’m happy to agree to the request in such a case.

Quitting is an option too. That will unilaterally end the game. The quitter takes a hit to both ELO and reputation, though, so I understand why players try to avoid using it often. But you know, if a player has to use it often, there’s an issue. A lower reputation tells us that the player regularly does not finish games, and that’s a good reason not to start games with that player. But that’s how a player can escape if they really find completing an imperfect game so dreadfully boring.

The solution I would offer to you, Proclivitas, is to get just a bit better at the game, then come and play in the Expert+ multiplayer games that appear regularly. While you will occasionally be pressured towards abandoning, at least for me it seems far less common than some have described.

[Proclivitas]

Sounds great.

Like I said, my experience is that your attitude is more the exception to the rule that if you refuse to abandon, you'll receive red thumbs. I wouldn't be surprised if you receive green thumbs for abandoning as well, but I'll never know.

How good you are at playing the game must be irrelevant in this discussion. "Reputation" (whatever that means considering this discussion) isn't designed to measure how good you are at the game, and it never should.

If you personally dislike people for a valid or invalid reason, private red thumbs are fine, because they're just between the two of you.

As far as a "valid" reason to abandon - what percentage of abandoned Hanabi games on BGA would you guess have "valid" reasons? My guess is less than 5%. Valid reason meaning "I got an important phone call," or "something truly unexpected happened," not "we're not going to get a perfect score."

I even saw a person say "I have an emergency" in several games in a row ~a year ago, which was clearly a lie. That's an outlier though, because I haven't seen anyone else do that. Mostly, it's just statements of confusion and bewilderment in chat.

[Silene]

When people severely pressure you in chat, you should also report them. I usually tell them that I want to continue and why I think that is the right thing to do. If they don't accept and keep saying I should abandon and try to make me look like the bad person on the table, I report them (even if no swear-words or insults used). But I don't necessarily red-thumb them because they might change their mind about it - who knows.

[Silene]

As far as a "valid" reason to abandon - what percentage of abandoned Hanabi games on BGA would you guess have "valid" reasons? My guess is less than 5%. Valid reason meaning "I got an important phone call," or "something truly unexpected happened," not "we're not going to get a perfect score."

Yes. Below 5% is totally doable while accepting emergencies and occasionally abandonning right after start because of wrong settings or a player came a bit too late bou you want to include them. I also have a bunch of abandons because I didn't have a vote when being over time - but that's my fault for being too slow .

[Travis Hall]

How good you are at playing the game must be irrelevant in this discussion. "Reputation" (whatever that means considering this discussion) isn't designed to measure how good you are at the game, and it never should.

How good you are at the game is measured (at least roughly) by your ELO score, not your reputation. It is relevant because if you haven’t reached Expert (500) you can’t join in on the regular Expert+ multiplayer games which I find to generally be a good experience.

Reputation is, essentially and in reality, a measure of how consistently you finish games, with timely. That’s because if you finish without exceeding your time limit, your reputation increases, and if you quit or get expelled for exceeding your time limit, your reputation decreases.

[Travis Hall]

As far as a "valid" reason to abandon - what percentage of abandoned Hanabi games on BGA would you guess have "valid" reasons? My guess is less than 5%. Valid reason meaning "I got an important phone call," or "something truly unexpected happened," not "we're not going to get a perfect score."

Yes. Below 5% is totally doable while accepting emergencies and occasionally abandonning right after start because of wrong settings or a player came a bit too late bou you want to include them. I also have a bunch of abandons because I didn't have a vote when being over time - but that's my fault for being too slow .

5%? I’d say that’s really hard actually, if you go by the common method of calculating it. I’ve got two unfinished games today from when one player exceeded their time limit and another expelled them. (I was neither.) Four in a row the other day due to two different forms of technical difficulties. That’s a rough few days, but things happen.

Besides, you’re comparing two different percentages. A player’s abandon rate is not a same as the rate of legitimate abandonments.

Sure, Proclivitas, there’s a lot - a huge number - of abandons of Hanabi games just because players wanted to push their ELO score up regardless of whether their method renders it meaningless. (And let’s be honest, it is about the ELO, not because it’s boring if you can’t get 25/30 or other excuses like that.) But that doesn’t change the fact that we need it for that small number of legitimate cases.

[Silene]

5%? I’d say that’s really hard actually, if you go by the common method of calculating it. I’ve got two unfinished games today from when one player exceeded their time limit and another expelled them. (I was neither.) Four in a row the other day due to two different forms of technical difficulties. That’s a rough few days, but things happen.

The only way to calculate it that I know is looking at someone's game history and compare the numbers of Hanabi games with/without "finished games only" checked. Of course that catches any possible reason. But I think it's good enough as a measure.
Of course you can have way more than 5% on a short run. But on the long run you can do it - if you're willing to stay strong against people who want to bully you into abandonning against your will.

[Travis Hall]

5%? I’d say that’s really hard actually, if you go by the common method of calculating it. I’ve got two unfinished games today from when one player exceeded their time limit and another expelled them. (I was neither.) Four in a row the other day due to two different forms of technical difficulties. That’s a rough few days, but things happen.

The only way to calculate it that I know is looking at someone's game history and compare the numbers of Hanabi games with/without "finished games only" checked. Of course that catches any possible reason. But I think it's good enough as a measure.
Of course you can have way more than 5% on a short run. But on the long run you can do it - if you're willing to stay strong against people who want to bully you into abandonning against your will.

I’ve got a few hundred unfinished games from my early days before I worked out why players wanted to abandon so often, and was less inclined to oppose when all three partners in a 4-player game wanted to abandon and I wasn’t up for a fight about it. And before I got fast enough to consistently deny their requests, and highly-rated enough to be playing with a better class of partners. (Also before Flamboyants, which make a lot more players willing to play on, and before the No Abandon group existed, and before I had red thumbed so many players.) Staying below 5% would be possible if I started a new account specifically for that purpose, but… no. (And I believe that is against BGA rules.)

And the truth is, a bunch of really old abandonments don’t matter. A thousand games later, their effect on ELO rating has dropped below the precision of the ELO calculations. Reputation has had ample opportunity to reach 100% or 0%, or even both several times.

You can manually survey and count abandonments for the last 100 or 200 games a player has played, and get a rate for recent abandonments, and that would be far more relevant. It’s just more difficult to access.

And I’ll repeat, neither of these is the rate that Proclivitas was talking about anyway.

[admitted]

A lot of cooperation games inevitably run into this type of toxicity. I had a 4p game recently with all 700+ players where I was being bullied into abandoning when max score was 28. One player tried to emotion shame me by saying how I ruined his day. Another player suggested that player to bomb out. So the game ended by intentional sabotage and I got two red thumbs from that table .

Of course, I mitigate the risk by creating another account to check abandon rate in 2p now and refuse to play players with high abandon rate.

If you really refuse abandons, 5% abandon rate or under is easy in a large sample size. There are a lot of players in hanabi b or not 2b group with under that abandon rate over 2000+ games (shout out to silene for suggesting me to stop abandoning).

If you compare abandon rates of noncoorp games vs coorp games, you will notice the difference in abandon rates. I noticed a lot more "convenient excuses" such as "I got to go" "I have an emergency" in hanabi. Probably 50 of my hanabi abandons are due to that. 30 was unattainable in almost all of them. Coincident? I think not, but I just give them the benefit of doubt.