Unreliable Players Killing Arena

[QBert]

I have recently been in a number of games with a certain player who has either been booted or nearly booted and received a timer penalty in every game. This player plays LOTS of Agricola, at all times of the day (over 1,100 games played in less than two years of having an active account). Yet despite being completely miserable to play against due to frequent disconnects, they have an 80% reputation immediately after having received a leave penalty.

This is unacceptable and reveals the ineffectiveness of BGA's reputation system. If one player can waste 90 minutes of three other players' lives over and over again and still be considered to have a "very good" reputation, the reputation system is broken. And this is a problem with many players in Agricola. If I red thumb them all, I fear I won't be able to find arena games and will be faced with the miserable prospect of playing games I know have a good chance of not finishing or not playing games at all.

I think the only solution is to revamp arena rules by forcing cooling off periods after players receive leave penalties to prevent them from immediately requeuing and ruining three other players' day. Yes, players can start alt accounts to circumvent the rule, but it does present another hoop that I optimistically think they may be too lazy to jump through.

I know this issue has been brought up before, and this may just be another venting thread. But I know lots of people feel the same way, that something must be done, and we must keep posting publicly about it in the hopes one day the problem is taken seriously.

[Lumin_S]

Use those red thumbs fearlessly. I don't really have trouble finding games and I use plenty of red thumbs.

If players get too many red thumbs then they get a lower ceiling on their karma.

I will once again plug my 2 suggestions for this issue: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=66049 https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=66050

[Ranior]

I completely agree with the base sentiment here--arena should have stricter reputation filters still.

In particular, BGA's reputation system has a bit of a hole for these longer games where you get people who quit part way through. The penalty is the same as if they left a Yahtzee game. There's a big difference between leaving 90 minutes in to a 4p game, stranding 3 others, and from leaving a 2 player game 4 minutes in to it. The fact you can lose reputation for the Agricola game and then get it back in a few minutes of playing Yahtzee games is a small part of the issue.

The thing is, BGA's rep system mostly works though--consistent quitters generally do have a poorer rep, it's just the 65% threshold they've picked is dumb. I've run across a few players that obviously drop below that threshold, and then the system briefly works--it prevents them from playing arena for a little bit, but they just go play some short game and then are back in the arena queue.

I agree that some will find ways around any system, but the main point is that barriers do help. The current system does work to keep out absolutely egregious accounts. Even without modifying the reputation system, the current system does largely identify bad actors. Pretty much every game I start I can tell who is the one that might quit, or basically know I won't have issues. The sad thing is that arena just doesn't restrict the reputation level as hard as they should.

I agree with Lumin that you absolutely can red thumb players though and still get games. I red thumb anyone that quits, and some who get timer penalties, and I think it helps. I still get games without too many issues usually, and while I still run in to some quitters, I think it's less often than some others seem to experience.

However, I also hope that some day BGA does listen to many of the players. Quitters really do ruin the experience of playing on this site, and there are so very many more players that maintain sterling reputations that deserve to play games with each other, without players who are going to spoil things. Using the system to enforce a slightly higher level of decorum would be nice, so hopefully someday we'll se it.

[Jellby]

Perhaps quitting an Arena game should have an additional penalty of not being able to join Arena games (at least for the game you quit) during some time, e.g. a week.