Board Game Arena

I'm trying to report a player for joining hundreds of tournaments with apparently no intent to play them, leading to thousands of automatically started games for them that just slowly time out leading to a lot of frustration from other participants.

Affected are not only the direct opponnents (who joined the tournament for the games and a good competition), but also all the other participants as
* one player gets an easy win, which is unfair
* because everyone has to wait the maximum game duration for no reason
* it is especially painful when the game is for 3+ players because it isn't even just a "free win" for those games when the competition between the other players on the table is being destroyed and a random player advance to next stage (in multi-elimination).

Even though that player is most of the time on 0 Karma, the Karma limit for tournaments doesn't work for them, because they just build up their karma short-term by playing some quick games to then join hundreds of tournaments within the short time they have the required karma. So tournament creators cannot evade them by setting a reputation-restriction.

It was said that this behaviour is not allowed, so I'm trying to fill a report for this. I'm encountering the following problem. When reporting, I have to choose a reason what to report the player for:



The marked categories are the only one's I could imagine to make any sense for the case. But unfortunately they are all a dead end. No report can be filled with these reasons. Instead if you pick one of those options, you only get to read a note that either the system is already handling the problem (which obviously it isn't) or what they did is probably not against the TOS. You're encouraged to give a red thumb and that's it.

So if the moderation system is supposed to be used for a case like this instead of discussing the case on the forums - what should be done here? All the other options make no sense to select for this case. It would be helpful if there was at least a generic / open category where a report can be filled. But as it is now, there isn't even a "next best thing" to pick.

Apart from that I believe it would be better if indeed the system would handle cases like this by not allowing to join so many tournaments or by improving the karma system in a way that it is harder to rebuild so quickly.

The Table Administrator should be given the option to expel any player who is a nuisance.

This issue was mentioned over a year ago:
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... t=countess

Furthermore, this player use to play under the name Eigeneier (https://boardgamearena.com/player?id=88589038).
I reported this player via email and BGA never responded.

Sourisdudesert has written "player's reputation is zero, so the reputation works. It is tournament's creators responsability to avoid this kind of players if they want to (very easy with the reputation settings), and if you join a tournament with no reputation limit, you know you may meet some players like this". (https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... =3&t=25956)

This player joins as many tournaments as possible when his Karma is a 100%.
Then ruins hundreds of games by not playing.
Builds Karma back to 100%.
Repeats process again.

More players complaining about this invidual: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... =8&t=24362

EDIT: apparently I don't know how to get an image to post. I am pointing to the first two points in sourisdudeserts "rebuttal" of my complaint in this other thread:
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... =3&t=25956

In case this was not clear, the problems sourisdudesert points to here is the result of the issue more succinctly explained by Silene above. The referred to forum post was not created mere moments after the report in order to complain about an inability to file a report. It IS the report, because the report system, as indicated, does not allow for filing an actual report about an actual issue. Perhaps if "none of the above" gave the option of actually filing a complaint instead of concluding that "obviously, there is no problem", it would be possible to actually report problematic behavior through the moderation system instead of "doing a witch hunt" in the forums.

Is ​ the tournament system using only instantaneous karma ​ a bug?

If it's really supposed to be ​ "very easy with the reputation settings" ​ for
tournament creators ​ "to avoid this kind of players" , ​ then either the tournament
system is supposed to be using karma history too, or maybe instead the
tournament system is supposed to be removing players whose karma
drops sufficiently between the player signing up and the tournament starting.


(I don't know whether the latter would be enough.
Anyway, whatever it is, the player is definitely exploiting it.)

This is rather disturbing. I don't play tournaments, but even I can understand the frustration caused by such users. If there are so many posts created about the same user, with so many responses, it is not a witch hunt to 'bully' or 'slander' said user, it is clearly a longstanding problem that is being ignored.

@ ​ shrouded figure ​ ​ ​ :

Well, although I play in tournaments here, I have not played in any
for multi-player games, so I too have not experienced anything like this.

I think you should report the player for "exploiting a known bug".

As sourisdudesert wrote in another thread, joining hundreds of tournaments and not playing a single move in 99,9% of them is not allowed.

Nevertheless the tournament system has the bug that is checks karma only at tournament start. Thus, the player moves his karma to 100 with fast-paced games, joins hundreds of tournaments in a span of a few days and then waits and watches his Karma drop to 0. After all his tournaments are finished, he starts this procedure again.

In the other thread sourisdudesert incorrectly claims that the first report about the player has been written on 21.6.2022. This is obviously wrong. If forum moderators remove player names (righfully so) they should then not claim that there has never been a report with this players name in it.

euklid314 wrote: ↑22 June 2022, 05:52 In the other thread sourisdudesert incorrectly claims that the first report about the player has been written on 21.6.2022. This is obviously wrong. If forum moderators remove player names (righfully so) they should then not claim that there has never been a report with this players name in it.

This is disingenuous. sourisdudesert is obviously referring to reports through the appropriate channel, not ranting in the forums.

That said, I do not understand why the impact this player (by now we all know who it is) is having is being downplayed. And I agree with the OP of this thread that too many of the options in the formal reporting system lead to dead ends. I've run into them myself.

I can testify that karma restrictions have been set in tournaments I created, yet he manages to sneak in (sourisdudesert claims that he can be avoided "very easy with the reputation settings").

We are going to work on a solution to this.

Note that this is frustrating but it does not change tournaments results: this is a "free win" for opponents.

Any suggestion of a better way to handle this would be welcome.