Being able to abandon games

[kikirikiii]

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.

How can I join the Hanabi no abandon players group? I'm not able to find it on my own. Can someone invite me to the group? Thank you!!!

[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.

How can I join the Hanabi no abandon players group? I'm not able to find it on my own. Can someone invite me to the group? Thank you!!!

Do you have access to this link?
https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=974 ... ublicinfos

Instructions for joining should be there, assuming you don’t need to be in the group already to read it.

[kikirikiii]

Do you have access to this link?
https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=974 ... ublicinfos

Instructions for joining should be there, assuming you don’t need to be in the group already to read it.

It does! Thank you for sharing!

[Lara8818]

- I'm not a fan of holding people hostage in a game if they aren't having fun. If someone is strongly pushing to abandon and it's not purely an elo-saving situation, I'm typically willing to acquiesce. Here is where I part strongly from the no-abandon group because I think that many people there have the attitude that their fun trumps anyone else's fun.

I just want to point out that it's not a matter of holding hostages or having fun. (This is a general comment for every game and player, not directed at you or Hanabi.) Every player in the game commits to finishing the game in time when they accept, so "I'm not having fun" is not an excuse. I mean, sure, it's a valid reason to request an abandonment, but if it gets refused, just deal with it, the only person forcing you to play is yourself when you entered the table.

I agree that this as the difference between 'fun' and 'fairness'. When you sit down to play a game, here or IRL, you're effectively signing a social contract. You're saying you're willing to play to the end. That's why there's a karma hit if you unilaterally quit a game, because you're breaking that contract, contributing to an environment where there's no use concentrating and getting invested in a game, because someone can always flip the table and walk away if it isn't going well. Maybe it comes from playing IRL too much, but 'don't be That Guy who loses interest/sportsmanship in games halfway through' seems like a pretty established norm.

Once a Hanabi game has reached the point where one or more people want to abandon it, and are flaming anyone who votes not to, trust me, I'm not having a speck of fun. I could still thoroughly enjoy an unlucky and/or low-scoring game, but not a toxic one. However, our bad performance has earned us an ELO hit, and avoiding that hit is cheating. I will not be bullied into cheating.

I could see an option to concede and get full negative points, I suppose, but that pretty much already exists - deliberately bomb three turns at most, done. I see it as unethical to do that myself, but plenty of people don't, and there's no rule against it (and no way to make one, since it can't be distinguished from misclicks or mistakes).

[Wreckage]

I guess for some players even abandoning or not isn't the issue... I just encountered a player who boasted about his 1300+ elo claiming that he is more skilled. I then looked into his game history. For some reason he had a lot of sequential games with the same partner. And a little bit earlier another bunch of games with another player with a similar name... but that user has been deleted by now. Really weird.

Then I looked at one of the replays. The first move of the game was to blindly play a 1 card at the 3rd or 4th position. Some clues were given but when it seemed easier, random card plays without any meaningful clues given.

Some people are really desperate for that elo. Wow. Not sure if that can even be prevented other than actually analyzing each game.

This might NOT be someone cheating. If they have conventions that you don't understand, their plays would look random to an outsider.

I saw one convention where the players would clue color to the card beside a playable card, then their partner would play the expected card even though it was unmarked. The benefit to this is keeping more info in the player's hand. Usually, we clue a color on a single card, giving info on that card. Then that card is played immediately, but the info is spent immediately too. By marking a useful card beside it instead, it plays a card, but the info is still useful for the future. Obviously they had to work out many other details to make this work, but it was a very effective strategy.

I had to replay several of their games to understand their clues, and I still didn't understand it all, but I am sure they weren't cheating, just playing a different style.

I have played using conventions where certain clues meant to play a certain slot. I have even played where white means play your left two cards. This is actually quite powerful, but situational. You lose the ability to clue a normal white, but you may only need 3-4 tokens to play 6-8 cards some games. It gets really powerful if you can use finesse with it as well. If you watched those games, it would look like we made random plays, but we didn't.

I think you should replay those games again, and see if they gave some clues that made no sense at all that might be associated to those random plays.
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I think most players that abandon are not doing it because of concern about ELO. They see 30 as a victory, and 29- as a loss. So once 30 is no longer achievable, they challenge is over for them, and they are eager to try again.

Perhaps a setting could be made "30 or bust!" And when this is toggled on, all games end in 30 or a loss, and games end immediately as soon as 30 is impossible. Perhaps the elo would need to be adjusted because you will have substantially more losses with that option on.

[ufm]

I think most players that abandon are not doing it because of concern about ELO. They see 30 as a victory, and 29- as a loss. So once 30 is no longer achievable, they challenge is over for them, and they are eager to try again.

It cannot explain high abandon rates of other co-op games with artificial ELO but without scoring (eg. Pandemic, Forbidden Island).
If that option were active, they will abandon just before the defeat.

[Wreckage]

It cannot explain high abandon rates of other co-op games with artificial ELO but without scoring (eg. Pandemic, Forbidden Island).
If that option were active, they will abandon just before the defeat.

They might want to, but most of the time they wouldn't know the mistake in advance, or see the double discard until it happens.

[Stroom]

I guess for some players even abandoning or not isn't the issue... I just encountered a player who boasted about his 1300+ elo claiming that he is more skilled. I then looked into his game history. For some reason he had a lot of sequential games with the same partner. And a little bit earlier another bunch of games with another player with a similar name... but that user has been deleted by now. Really weird.

Then I looked at one of the replays. The first move of the game was to blindly play a 1 card at the 3rd or 4th position. Some clues were given but when it seemed easier, random card plays without any meaningful clues given.

Some people are really desperate for that elo. Wow. Not sure if that can even be prevented other than actually analyzing each game.

This might NOT be someone cheating. If they have conventions that you don't understand, their plays would look random to an outsider.

I saw one convention where the players would clue color to the card beside a playable card, then their partner would play the expected card even though it was unmarked. The benefit to this is keeping more info in the player's hand. Usually, we clue a color on a single card, giving info on that card. Then that card is played immediately, but the info is spent immediately too. By marking a useful card beside it instead, it plays a card, but the info is still useful for the future. Obviously they had to work out many other details to make this work, but it was a very effective strategy.

I had to replay several of their games to understand their clues, and I still didn't understand it all, but I am sure they weren't cheating, just playing a different style.

I have played using conventions where certain clues meant to play a certain slot. I have even played where white means play your left two cards. This is actually quite powerful, but situational. You lose the ability to clue a normal white, but you may only need 3-4 tokens to play 6-8 cards some games. It gets really powerful if you can use finesse with it as well. If you watched those games, it would look like we made random plays, but we didn't.

I think you should replay those games again, and see if they gave some clues that made no sense at all that might be associated to those random plays.
-------------------------------------------------------------
I think most players that abandon are not doing it because of concern about ELO. They see 30 as a victory, and 29- as a loss. So once 30 is no longer achievable, they challenge is over for them, and they are eager to try again.

Perhaps a setting could be made "30 or bust!" And when this is toggled on, all games end in 30 or a loss, and games end immediately as soon as 30 is impossible. Perhaps the elo would need to be adjusted because you will have substantially more losses with that option on.

It was literally the first moves of the games that they randomly played in the middle of their hands and they "happened to be" 1s. No clues given! And they played several games in a row like that. You can't blindly play the first card as it could be a 5, ruining your game overall. Also, it didn't help that one player was below 500 elo and the other one was around 1000. It is clearly a way to boost elo rather than actually valid gameplay.

Tell me how this is not suspicious for instance. 0 elo player with 1100+ elo player. And there are several games in a row like this. (If it goes against some kind of forum rules, you can tell me to delete this)
https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... s=84270428;

I have seen the different conventions already. Also those "proven" ones where your clues make you play from a specific position etc. This was not the case.

[Wreckage]

I looked at the link you gave. These players are clearly cheating. I don't understand the pleasure this would give. They are no doubt spending hours of their time not actually playing games. This drudgery just to gain elo can't be worth it when elo doesn't matter in this game anyway.

[Jkline]

Tell me how this is not suspicious for instance. 0 elo player with 1100+ elo player. And there are several games in a row like this. (If it goes against some kind of forum rules, you can tell me to delete this)
https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... s=84270428;

I have seen the different conventions already. Also those "proven" ones where your clues make you play from a specific position etc. This was not the case.

I recently played with the player who has 0 elo in that replay, and of course they were rude about other players' mistakes.