Here we go again.

[Tisaac]

Once again I'm leading in a Welcome To tournament match and someone expels the slow player. Guess what? I'm relegated to third and eliminated. The admin on the this site keep saying not to criticize them but it's very hard to do so when we pay to use the service and get shit like this. Frankly if we are paying for it we have a right to expect a decent service and a right to complain if it isn't. So fix this crap and you will have less complaints to deal with.

I am really unsure why you are angry at BGA and not at the expulsed/expulsing player.

Evaluating a position in general is really hard. Even if you only takes games when score already means something (already filtering out a very large portion of 2p game for instance where only win/lose matter), having the highest score at some point do not imply at all that you will winning the game with a higher probability than other player. The only reasonnable option I could see for these kind of situations would be to let the remaining players vote for who should be considered as the top first players, but this would bring just sooooo many issue.

Since any other solution to deal with leaving/expulsed player in this kind of situation wouldn't be better than just plain random, the only thing that BGA could work on is try to make these situations rarer, but honestly I wouldn't have any idea on one could do that. Tournament without any timing out players ? You can already filter based on ELO. Or prevent player from expeling other players during tournament ? You could just get locked in a game and block the whole tournament.

You have kind of hit on a solution there. Don't allow peoples to expel, put that in the hands of the tournament organizers. Let them expel a player if it's clear they aren't playing and then allow the match to being again without that player. Or let the organize decide who goes through (but that brings it's own problems). Again, this would take too much work from BGA so it will never happen but the fact is that there are solutions if they are willing to look for them.

Well it sounds like a very limited solution that might brings more problem than it solves, so I wouldn't code that if I were them.
The only thing i can think of that could be a net improvement for some games would be a way to flag the game as "results are meaningful even if a player left" that would enforce left player to finish the game even if someone left, and then you take the final results as the real results. But honestly I don't think that many games would fit into this category. I mean even for Welcome To it could be argued that the leaving player might have taken the "first player" reward of an objective, that might completely influence final results.

[john0607]

I am really unsure why you are angry at BGA and not at the expulsed/expulsing player.

Evaluating a position in general is really hard. Even if you only takes games when score already means something (already filtering out a very large portion of 2p game for instance where only win/lose matter), having the highest score at some point do not imply at all that you will winning the game with a higher probability than other player. The only reasonnable option I could see for these kind of situations would be to let the remaining players vote for who should be considered as the top first players, but this would bring just sooooo many issue.

Since any other solution to deal with leaving/expulsed player in this kind of situation wouldn't be better than just plain random, the only thing that BGA could work on is try to make these situations rarer, but honestly I wouldn't have any idea on one could do that. Tournament without any timing out players ? You can already filter based on ELO. Or prevent player from expeling other players during tournament ? You could just get locked in a game and block the whole tournament.

You have kind of hit on a solution there. Don't allow peoples to expel, put that in the hands of the tournament organizers. Let them expel a player if it's clear they aren't playing and then allow the match to being again without that player. Or let the organize decide who goes through (but that brings it's own problems). Again, this would take too much work from BGA so it will never happen but the fact is that there are solutions if they are willing to look for them.

Well it sounds like a very limited solution that might brings more problem than it solves, so I wouldn't code that if I were them.
The only thing i can think of that could be a net improvement for some games would be a way to flag the game as "results are meaningful even if a player left" that would enforce left player to finish the game even if someone left, and then you take the final results as the real results. But honestly I don't think that many games would fit into this category. I mean even for Welcome To it could be argued that the leaving player might have taken the "first player" reward of an objective, that might completely influence final results.

There is no perfect solution but there are better solutions than what currently exist. Anything is better than the current situation

[nicch]

I suppose the elimination being down to the players, gamifies the situation, e.g. a player not likely win to pull the trigger, but equal points does stop squabbling over who's winning. There have been plenty of games where a player seemingly in 3rd etc goes on to win because of how final few rounds play out.

It depends how often in happens and what system is being used, e.g. if rarely and the swiss system then one bad game because of a drop out will have minimal effect.

The talk of orginisers deciding means it adds extra responsibilities on to those already taking on a lot organising the tournament. If you put in an option of players not allowing elimination, then what do you do carry on and delay the whole tournament or have the organisers decide who won and there be disagreements amongst the players?

[dgjxqz]

Evaluating a position in general is really hard. Even if you only takes games when score already means something (already filtering out a very large portion of 2p game for instance where only win/lose matter), having the highest score at some point do not imply at all that you will winning the game with a higher probability than other player. The only reasonnable option I could see for these kind of situations would be to let the remaining players vote for who should be considered as the top first players, but this would bring just sooooo many issue.

Since any other solution to deal with leaving/expulsed player in this kind of situation wouldn't be better than just plain random, the only thing that BGA could work on is try to make these situations rarer, but honestly I wouldn't have any idea on one could do that. Tournament without any timing out players ? You can already filter based on ELO. Or prevent player from expeling other players during tournament ? You could just get locked in a game and block the whole tournament.

How about an overhaul to the game engine API that allows BGA to inject a random legal move on behalf of the timed-out player?

[GeraldineMerida]

How about an overhaul to the game engine API that allows BGA to inject a random legal move on behalf of the timed-out player?

That is happening in my current 4p game of Azul for 2 of the players (one skipped, one quit post-skip) and it's horrible: the usual planning around what other players will do to improve their positions is gone, so the rest of us really might as well play randomly too. Bad enough in a 'friendly' game. This would ruin a tournament.