Board Game Arena

Hey guys,

Apologies if this has already been covered but did a search and couldn't find anything. I'm just curious about the reason why everyone else 'wins' if someone else is kicked out/quits. This recently happened in a game I was playing. We were 75% through according to BGA (though a lot closer by my estimation) when a player stopped responding. We sent messages and waited 2 minutes into red before kicking him out and carried on our game skipping his turns. We only had a few more turns before I won but because he left, all of us 'won' which meant (because I had the highest ELO rating) my rating didn't go up but the other 2 players did. I looked it up on FAQ and this is what it says:

"Whatever happens in the game afterwards, all the other players will be considered tied in first place for ELO, and will receive a % of the ELO corresponding to the % of progression of the game at the moment the player was kicked out. Example: if 80% of the game has been played, the remaining players will receive 80% of the ELO they would have won."

I can understand punishing the player who quit by making them last but why punish the person who came first too? The other players would still beat the player that quit and ELO would reflect that. It's not the end of the world but just trying to wrap my head around the system.

Thanks

My guess is that they've decided you will never know for sure who would have won if ghe game had finished properly- once turns are skipped that invalidates the result- so let's just say everyone tied for first.

It's very unfair on someone about to win and very unfair that it breaks winning streaks too but that's how it is

Feztox wrote: ↑17 May 2022, 23:34 I can understand punishing the player who quit by making them last but why punish the person who came first too? The other players would still beat the player that quit and ELO would reflect that. It's not the end of the world but just trying to wrap my head around the system.

frogstar_A wrote: ↑17 May 2022, 23:42 My guess is that they've decided you will never know for sure who would have won if ghe game had finished properly-

There are situations in which all players except one are mathematically eliminated from taking first, even if the person playing first intentionally tried to lose from that point on. The problem is that for games for which that situation us even theoretically possible, programming the logic to recognize that situation would have to be done on a game-by-game basis and would be very daunting. For some games you'd literally have to check all permutations of future moves to make sure none would affect first place.

And even worse, what about 2nd place, 3rd place, etc.? If 1st place matters so much that effort is put in to program this logic, why not other places? Of course, this would dramatically increase the complexity of the computation.

tl;dr It's too hard to implement this logic* for many (most?) games.

*Just to clarify, I'm talking about actually calculating possible endgame states. It would be relatively trivial to just award points based on the current standings (moving the expelled player to last).

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑18 May 2022, 00:03

Feztox wrote: ↑17 May 2022, 23:34 I can understand punishing the player who quit by making them last but why punish the person who came first too? The other players would still beat the player that quit and ELO would reflect that. It's not the end of the world but just trying to wrap my head around the system.

frogstar_A wrote: ↑17 May 2022, 23:42 My guess is that they've decided you will never know for sure who would have won if ghe game had finished properly-

There are situations in which all players except one are mathematically eliminated from taking first, even if the person playing first intentionally tried to lose from that point on. The problem is that for games for which that situation us even theoretically possible, programming the logic to recognize that situation would have to be done on a game-by-game basis and would be very daunting. For some games you'd literally have to check all permutations of future moves to make sure none would affect first place.

And even worse, what about 2nd place, 3rd place, etc.? If 1st place matters so much that effort is put in to program this logic, why not other places? Of course, this would dramatically increase the complexity of the computation.

tl;dr It's too hard to implement this logic* for many (most?) games.

*Just to clarify, I'm talking about actually calculating possible endgame states. It would be relatively trivial to just award points based on the current standings (moving the expelled player to last).

I agree

Also in games with luck eg yahtzee you can't even calculate it by just permutations of what a player could do but also what eg dice rolls or cards could come up.

And basing it on current score is also unfair as players mayplay a strategy that deliberately gives a low early score with bigger prospects later.

frogstar_A wrote: ↑19 May 2022, 22:43 Also in games with luck eg yahtzee you can't even calculate it by just permutations of what a player could do but also what eg dice rolls or cards could come up.

And basing it on current score is also unfair as players mayplay a strategy that deliberately gives a low early score with bigger prospects later.

All this is also true.