Opinions on booting people from a game when they run out of time?

[Kaladry]

I was in a four player game of Ticket to Ride which was playing mostly quickly but one person was low on time and went negative on their very last turn. Another player knew they weren’t winning (I was) so they expelled the person as soon as they could without even asking if they were still here or anything. This really annoys me because it’s obvious the player who expelled the other just wanted a “win” at the other player’s expense. And I ended up not getting any ELO even though the game was at 100% completion since the results were neutralized. We asked him why he did that in the chat and he claimed he has other games to get to with friends while continuing to type in the chat… yeah sure buddy.

[Stuff by Bez]

At the end of a game, it is quite annoying. If someone is out of time on turn 2 or half-way through then fair but if its at the end, some grace is appreciated.

At the same time, folk should be taking their turns in the time limit. There needs to be a limit somewhere and I feel like if folk want to not run out of time, they can play with longer time limits.

I don't see any solution that would make everyone happy. :-/

[Blacktango]

I agree with Stuff, there is no good general solution.

IMO, players should just talk more. That's what chat is for.
If you need more time, just tell the other players that you are sorry, but the game is a bit too fast, and you need more time.
Or on the other hand, ask a player what happens to them if they regularly run out of time on their turn.

Simply informing them will make them more aware and understanding of what is going on.

More talking = less rudeness

[Jellby]

Another option is switching to turn-based. If it's at the very end, you may only have to play one turn, or none, and it allows the game to finish properly without expelling a player who may have had connection issues in the last turn.

On the other hand, if a player is out of time, even if it's at the end, the game is already compromised, in the sense that it might be neutralized at any moment, at the whim of any player. Is it nice? No. Is it fair? Maybe not. Is it against the rules. No.

And yet again, it's a possible tool for cheating: Play with your account and a sockpuppet, no suspicious moves, everything looks fine and competitive, but if it looks like you won't win, let the sockpuppet time out and you (or anyone else) expel it.

[Chucklepie]

There's nothing worse than playing a game for 60 minutes, then at the very last turn you creep into the negative and somebody expels you.

This is not right, it is gaming the system for whatever purpose they did it for. Expelling should require 2 people in games of 3+ and some kind of buffer near to the end.

I'm never playing Stone Age again after somebody did this to me, literally pulling home my meeples for the final score and they got rid of me. Me and the others then spent 5 minutes discussing what had gone wrong because that entire session was ruined.

[AKuras]

There's nothing worse than playing a game for 60 minutes, then at the very last turn you creep into the negative and somebody expels you.

This is not right, it is gaming the system for whatever purpose they did it for. Expelling should require 2 people in games of 3+ and some kind of buffer near to the end.

I'm never playing Stone Age again after somebody did this to me, literally pulling home my meeples for the final score and they got rid of me. Me and the others then spent 5 minutes discussing what had gone wrong because that entire session was ruined.

Most likely you are lying or you are talking for ever to Press a button. You go into Negative and they get an option to kick u. When they press it its not an instant. You have another 20 Second to Finish. BUT if you do Any move the 20 Second counter gets stopped and they need to press kick u again and another 20 Second counter starts. So you must have been doing nothing to get kicked. Its super annoying to play a 60 minute game with someone that slow and i would kick you out when ever i could cause most likely by The end of the game į would have been fed up with such slow play and would t even care if ir was the last move. More than 20 Second to pull your meeples are you joking?
Thats The problem people you always blame the other. Think what you did. How misserable the other person has to be to pull the plug at finishing moves.
Play turn based if you need minutes to decide what meeples to pull...

[frogstar_A]

I think it just needs some common sense and communication. If someone posts "sorry my baby is crying ill be back shortly" then give them a few minutes. If someone is 5 seconds over time give them a minute. If someone never shows up to the game, or has clearly lost Internet for several minutes then definitely kick them out.

But ultimately all players know the time limit from the start so if younrun out of time you only have yourself to blame.

[Kilban]

Something horrible happened to me last Sunday, I was expelled at the last round in a two-hour Gaia projet game. For once, I was about to win. But I just took a bit too much time to think on my last moves because it was quite complex. But someone decided they did not want to lose that "precious" ELO even though it meant not seeing the end of the game and how it would unfold.

I was sooo frustrated. First time clearing the 150 points bar in this game but nope, it could not happen.

By the way the 20 seconds bonus are sometimes nothing when a turn implies validating a lot of stuff like doing a federation in Gaia project.

[RobertBr]

Something horrible happened to me last Sunday, I was expelled at the last round in a two-hour Gaia projet game. For once, I was about to win. But I just took a bit too much time to think on my last moves because it was quite complex. But someone decided they did not want to lose that "precious" ELO even though it meant not seeing the end of the game and how it would unfold.

Your opponent was entitled to do this and in your it was a reasonable use of clocking. For those inexperienced with board games clocking may seem odd but it is no less a win than any other method. It is why players in games will often persist in lost positions if their opponent is very short on time rather than simply resigning. And there is nothing unreasonable or unfair *in a two player game*.

The problem on BGA is how the timing system extends to multi-player games. Expelling a player who is not winning in order to improve your own position penalises players who have kept good time (this is what happened to the OP). Players are currently able to do that and as long as the rules permit it it will continue to happen - unfortunately no good solution to the problem has yet been identified (requiring all players who have positive time to agree to an expulsion is an interesting idea that was raised in this thread and it might go quite a long way to making clocking work in multi-player games in a similar fashion as it does in two-player games).

[Ze Monstah]

Expelling a player who is not winning in order to improve your own position penalises players who have kept good time (this is what happened to the OP).

How exactly was the OP penalised?
By getting 0 instead of the normal ELO win (had the expelled player played withing time-limit)?
Big deal... I've seen more tragic stuff going around.
And even so... it's the one who went out of time's fault. Not the one who expelled.
I feel like people like to put the blame on wrong targets, a lot.

requiring all players who have positive time to agree to an expulsion is an interesting idea that was raised in this thread and it might go quite a long way to making clocking work in multi-player games in a similar fashion as it does in two-player games

What if in a such Real Time game, some of the positive-time players decide to refuse the expulsion, while a player wants to expel the out-of-time player?
Should everyone be obliged to stick to a Real-Time game, just to avoid his/her own expulsion (in case he/she has to go away while the out-of-time player returns), by paying the price for a player who wasn't capable of playing within a certain time-limit? And how long are they supposed to wait? 20-30 minutes? Who decides that?
Or should that player who wants to expel, be forced to agree to a turn-based change, even if (s)he dislikes playing turn-based?

Blame the ones going out of time, not the ones expelling.

The idea above is bad, IMO (at least in Real Time games, 'have no idea how Turn-Based games work), because people might have other stuff to do besides games and waiting for an unexpected lagging player.

There are also a lot of folks who join fast-speed games, then start lagging and go out of time, and say "It's too fast for me". Why do you join fast tables, then?

Why shouldn't such player be expelled?