Being able to abandon games

[ExaltedAngel]

Being able to abandon games totally destroys the purpose of Elo rating making it a number without meaning at all. I'm not saying I'm good, I have 300 Elo and still am learning a lot, I often make mistakes, I think it's part of the game and I'm ok with losing Elo when I do so. But in the current state of the game almost everyone wants to abandon suboptimal games, often even just after the slightest mistake. The consequences are evident: I'm finding people with 800 Elo not able to understand the bluff and people with 300 Elo who play like total beginners. Why are people even allowed to abandon games in the first place? It's bad, kills the value of Elo rating and last but not least it ruins the experience for players lowering the weight of errors and thus setting some/many of the players in the "eh whatever, we can abandon, go next" state of mind.

I know there are groups in which you can find better/nicer players to somehow work around what's broken in the system, but why has the system to be broken in the first place when it would be so easy to fix or at least improve?

In b4: "Hey but it's bad not being able to abandon when someone intentionally boycotts the game". This is part of the game, it sucks, but the solution is not letting people abandon, it's a problem that should be addressed separately with reports (let people be allowed to report for boycotting and punish who has a report rate a lot higher than standard, like in other online games, 0 effort, all automatic).

[Spicy]

Abandon functionality

You have to understand that BGA is not Hanabi. Hanabi is just a game that BGA lets you play. BGA itself is like an onion, it has several layers. The ones we're interested in are the following: the game view and a specific game implementation (Hanabi, in this case).

The abandon functionality is implemented on the game view level by the BGA developers, not by the game developer. You probably know about other options like concede a game, leave a game, replay moves, etc. Those are general options you have when playing a game and all games must support them.

That said, inability of a game developer to disable abandon probably makes sense now, right?

I would also like to add that you aren't forced to abandon. I've played a lot of games where somebody wanted to abandon (sometimes even me, to be fair), the vote didn't get enough "Yes" votes and the game continued as usual. Yes, some people can get mad and ruin the game, but that's what you get for playing with actual real people with all their flaws.

Hanabi and ELO

First of all, let's discuss 2 player games vs 3+ player games. Anyone who has played both knows how different they feel and play. How little experience in the game you have to have to be good in the 2P version. However, you can't ignore the fact that a big chunk of the Hanabi playerbase play the 2P version mostly or even exclusively. But they still have the same ELO as the 3+P version players. From my experience, most inexperienced 700+ ELO players are just people who are used to playing a lot of 2P games.

I think the ELO system is fine. Maybe even slightly too punishing. Once you reach 700 ELO, you will be forced to play on the hardest settings to gain any ELO points and a non-perfect score will result in you either not getting any ELO or losing up to 10 points.

[Spicy]

By the way, if you didn't know you can RT (Red Thumb) the player you wish to not play with again or make private note about them. So it's pretty easy to block any player you dislike playing with from playing with you.

You can also GT (Green Thumb) players you like so it's easy to see you've played with someone before and your experience with them was nice.

[ExaltedAngel]

Abandon functionality
That said, inability of a game developer to disable abandon probably makes sense now, right?

I knew (supposed at least) already that the game developers can't mess with the BGA functions, I'm not a total idiot like your answer seems to imply, but I can't believe BGA developers can't make an exception for cooperative games. Maybe you think that by posting here I was asking the game developer to do so? I don't know how exactly the forum is organized, my request is directed to BGA developers and I posted here to find other players to support it, if there are better channels to do so feel free to suggest me.

I would also like to add that you aren't forced to abandon.

Maybe it's just me being unlucky but in 3/3 cases people started to boycott the game intentionally after I refused to abandon, which is ultra rude since abandoning is a request, everyone should be free to refuse like you said, but in fact it is not. Someone even tried to address me in the chat for refusing like it was my fault if he began to act like a jerk.

First of all, let's discuss 2 player games vs 3+ player games. Anyone who has played both knows how different they feel and play. How little experience in the game you have to have to be good in the 2P version. However, you can't ignore the fact that a big chunk of the Hanabi playerbase play the 2P version mostly or even exclusively. But they still have the same ELO as the 3+P version players. From my experience, most inexperienced 700+ ELO players are just people who are used to playing a lot of 2P games.

It's exactly the same as in TTR, 2p and 3+ games have a very different impact on the Elo rating and this makes it not 100% reliable, but it doesn't invalidate my objection in any way, it's just a separate (and smaller) part of the same problem.

I think the ELO system is fine. Maybe even slightly too punishing. Once you reach 700 ELO, you will be forced to play on the hardest settings to gain any ELO points and a non-perfect score will result in you either not getting any ELO or losing up to 10 points.

How can be fine when I can reach 1000 Elo by winning 1% of my games while abandoning all the rest in which I make errors? Even a beginner player can theorically achieve that, it would only take way longer. This makes no sense AT ALL.

[Spicy]

Honestly, it feels quite unpleasant wasting my time trying to explain something to you and receiving such a response.

This is a forum. Your post is public and visible to the entire BGA community. You're not the first one and not the last one who is unhappy with the abandon functionality. So I tried to make it clear why this can't be changed for anyone interested.

As for the abandoning, I don't think it needs to be disabled. I don't face the issues you're facing and find it very convenient that you can abandon if everyone is fine with that. What if someone has an emergency? What if you know all the players in your lobby, someone goes offline and you don't want to kick them (because penalty)? What if YOU have to leave? Many players are fine with letting you go because they know about the game leave penalty.

You're being too emotional about all this. This is still just a game and not even a competitive one. Did you know that there is a bug that causes the clue counter to show incorrect number of clue token when replaying last moves? I think that has a much higher priority, but still not fixed.

[Travis Hall]

What if someone has an emergency?

I’m in the Hanabi NO abandon players group, and I take it pretty seriously. I know I’ve been red thumbed for refusing to abandon.

But even players in that group generally, and I specifically, agree that it is usually best to abandon if somebody has a real-life emergency.

(What are some of my more recent abandons? My most recent was when I was 3 seconds over time and couldn’t refuse the abandon request, but going back a bit before that, there was the game that somebody had meant to start with Flamboyants but messed up the settings, so requested an abandon before the first move. There was the time I misread a clock and started a game 2 minutes before a work meeting instead of 62 minutes before - again, request before we had even played a round. There was the game early last year when I requested an abandon about halfway through a game because a nurse had arrived to admit me into a hospital ward from the emergency department! Things happen.)

I’d much rather have the abandon option available for these situations, and encourage players to speak up about difficulties that emerge from outside of the game.

Although at least once, I’ve informed a player who had emergencies several games in a row that if he kept it up, I would refuse his request and just boot him when his time ran out if he didn’t quit. Because while I’m happy to abandon in case of an unexpected emergency, I also expect you to properly resolve the issue that is causing the emergency before joining another game.

(Full disclosure: I have a couple if hundred abandons from way back when I first started playing here, because it took a while for me to figure out why other players were requesting to abandon so much. Once I realised that most of the requests were, frankly, to boost ELO, I started refusing, and giving private red thumbs to players who behaved badly. My play experience is now much better as a result, and those abandoned games are so far back in my history that they have no measurable effect on my current ELO.)

[Travis Hall]

You know what I would really like to see for a cooperative game like Hanabi, though? To have a “concede” option that will just end the game with the current score, and apply appropriate ELO calculations based on that score.

Like, you’ve got 20 cards played in your 7-colour game for a score of 15, your position just sucks, at least one partner is being obnoxious, and you just want to move on to play a decent game? Sure, I can see that. Vote to concede, accept the ELO loss, and move on.

I would rarely be inclined to use it, but it would be nice to have. And would cut the legs out from under the “I don’t care about ELO, but I’m not enjoying this game” crowd; they would have to demonstrate that by suggesting concede rather than abandon.

(Bonus: it would improve the experience for competitive team games too. If everyone on one team wants to concede, mark it up as a loss for that team and a win for the other, immediately.)

[Stroom]

Abandoning games should count as a loss in co-op games. Full -10 elo and move on. Then you would see much less abandonments and the score would start to have some kind of meaning.

I have seen people with 50% elo loss over the last 50 games. Most players I play with have about 10-20%.

[ExaltedAngel]

Honestly, it feels quite unpleasant wasting my time trying to explain something to you and receiving such a response.

I might have overreacted, but honestly in both of your initial posts I felt a not so veiled condescending tone.
"You have to understand that BGA is not Hanabi" I mean, seriously?

I tried to make it clear why this can't be changed for anyone interested.

Actually you explained why it cannot be changed by the game developer, which is just one of the possible options here and not even the one I was hoping for (I think BGA developers can easily disable abandon functionality for cooperative games).

What if YOU have to leave?

I'm 100% ok with getting a penality. If I started a game when I didn't have enough time/focus to play it's just my fault and I deserve to be punished for wasting other players time. If, instead, I happen to have an emergency, I can survive a 10 Karma penalty. Emergencies don't happen everyday.

Did you know that there is a bug that causes the clue counter to show incorrect number of clue token when replaying last moves? I think that has a much higher priority, but still not fixed.

Had no clue, but I agree it should be fixed. Doesn't make me think the abandon issue is minor stuff though.

[BusError]

Spicy, your definition of why this can't be changed makes no sense. It's a simple conditional to allow abandon in cooperative games or not. I guarantee it's trivial to implement, there's only one reason why it's not implemented:

BGA does not care about this problem and the toxic behaviors it fosters.

Simple as that. Either of these two solutions fixes the problem overnight:
1. Disallow abandons on cooperative games. Players must use Quit to leave, normal penalty for the quitter applies.
2. Allow abandon with full penalty in case of unanimous vote. As others have echoed I'd gladly use this in cases of true emergency.

We've been complaining about this for years, curating your personal red thumb list by trial and error and joining the no abandon group are the only workarounds.