Board Game Arena

This is a carry on from the thread posted directly in the Heat forum here:

https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 36&t=34457

There are a number of issues here. Firstly how the system handles quitters in some games is completely nonsensical. The majority of quits/disappearance acts, at least at Heat: Pedal to the Medal are taking place either on the last turn of the race or quite literally when the race is already over and several cars are on the podium. Someone then quitting then voids the entire race, neutralising the results, and wasting an hour of everybody's time. How can this possibly be a fair system? The obvious solution is after a certain time if someone quits it should just be they are last place, and the game goes on if it's more than 2 players,

The next problem is the punishments for these players are nowhere near severe enough. One of the things you will be told when you complain is to set your reputation levels high and block players, the problem is this has no effect at games with large player pools that are prone to quitters like Heat is. I have my reputation levels set as high as possible, I have a block list that must have over 100 players on it at this point, yet I still can't escape the endless supply of quitters out to ruin the experience for everyone else. One point I've seen made elsewhere is you can't issue bans, as people are subscribers, but the fact of the matter is that 90% of the quitters are not premium subscribers, and they are actively ruining the game experience for your premium subscribers.

The ELO neutralisation system is also completely flawed and not fit for purpose. Even if we ignore what I said about the system being flawed because the result is already known the system as it currently works is still flawed. A high ELO player cannot gain ELO from a void game, no chance. Because what happens is you gain ELO for beating the player who quit, but then lose ELO for "tying" all the other players, so you would end up in net negative, but the system then neutralises your overall change to 0. Not only is this nonsensical, it's also open to abuse. As documented in that thread I've seen players who know they're about to lose desperately trying to time players out at the end, and what's the worst thing about is they succeed they gain ELO for succeeding, so instead of losing, they are now gaining off "tying" me, a total nonsense. At an absolute bare minimum ties in void games need to result in 0 ELO change vs each player you tied with, so you actually gain from beating the quitter in multiplayer games, not you gain nothing, while everyone else gains from "tying" you when they'd actually lost.

The system should be for honest players, not stacking it against them. I find it hard to believe any honest player actually wants to play with these types of players, as all they do is ruin the game experience.

If you insist on talking about games in ways that don't make sense you are unlikely to get much sympathy.

Players cannot protect their Elo by quitting, and doing so would be pointless when they have the option to concede.

The problem of how games are resolved when a player is clocked (when another player ejects them when they run out of time) is a notoriously difficult one as even the must cursory examination of the forums would show. It works fine in two player games but in multiplayer games, despite lengthy discussions over many years, no-one has managed to come up with a fully worked out solution.

It is worth noting that as in any timer situation it comes down to the amount of time on the clocks - if you play under a time control that is too fast for some or all of the players these problems are going to arise.

RobertBr wrote: ↑05 March 2024, 00:26 If you insist on talking about games in ways that don't make sense you are unlikely to get much sympathy.

Players cannot protect their Elo by quitting, and doing so would be pointless when they have the option to concede.

The problem of how games are resolved when a player is clocked (when another player ejects them when they run out of time) is a notoriously difficult one as even the must cursory examination of the forums would show. It works fine in two player games but in multiplayer games, despite lengthy discussions over many years, no-one has managed to come up with a fully worked out solution.

It is worth noting that as in any timer situation it comes down to the amount of time on the clocks - if you play under a time control that is too fast for some or all of the players these problems are going to arise.

There is no option to concede at Heat: Pedal to the Metal until someone has crossed the finish line. Also it's good you mentioned that it would be pointless quitting when you can concede. You would think, but seemingly not for some players. Because I have seen players quit a game they could have conceded for no loss, voiding the entire race in the process, the last case coming just night. So while we may deem it pointless, it actively happens.

I didn't say players are protecting their ELO by quitting. The players protecting their ELO abusing the system are the ones who the game is over or about to be over, and they will be desperately trying to time a player out who is low on time clicking the expel button every few seconds (because there's a lot of clicks at a game like Heat before you clock resets, you can keep clicking this button over and over on someone). This is only a small part of the bigger issue here, as it's not that common, as like you say someone has to be low on time for you to be able to do this, but it's blatant ethically challenged behaviour to be doing this when you know you're about to lose ELO, and instead gain a load of ELO you shouldn't have from "tying" players you lost to. I don't even particularly want to focus on this behaviour though, as it's kind of irrelevant in the bigger picture, I'm using it to highlight the flaws around how ELO neutralisation currently works.

The next point is a subjective one, because there are solutions you could offer, but you'd say they aren't fully worked out, but then I'd say the current solution isn't fully worked out either. As I said at a bare minimum is there any reason while if a game is void the tied players don't get 0 for tying each other? At least then, at a bare minimum all players would benefit from beating the quitter.

One option that thoun suggested to BGA was to allow game developpers to enable "normal scoring when leavers" that would basically says that for a given game, keep playing the game without the expulsed player and score ELO in a normal way, just making sure the expulsed players are ranked last as it's currently the case.
Of course this is not a good solution for all games because you can argue that playing without that player is not representative in general for most game, but in some cases it's probably ok, as in the case of Heat (or you could even imagine being linked to a gameoption so that players could create table with or without that setting).

Tisaac wrote: ↑05 March 2024, 00:55 One option that thoun suggested to BGA was to allow game developpers to enable "normal scoring when leavers" that would basically says that for a given game, keep playing the game without the expulsed player and score ELO in a normal way, just making sure the expulsed players are ranked last as it's currently the case.
Of course this is not a good solution for all games because you can argue that playing without that player is not representative in general for most game, but in some cases it's probably ok, as in the case of Heat (or you could even imagine being linked to a gameoption so that players could create table with or without that setting).

Yes, this is one potential idea I like the sound of. As you say it would be game dependent, but it should be fairly easy on game-by-game basis to work out which games no longer function properly once a player quits, and which do. How close the game is to completion is also a factor, because even in Heat, the number of players can influence the result, however a good portion of the quits are coming either after someone has already crossed the line or on the last turn, at that point there's no influence whatsoever on the result.

It feels to me a lot of the current system has been setup for 2 player games, but doesn't translate well to some like 5 player games. The ELO thing being a good example, obvious the ELO neutralisation would function perfectly as it is in a 2 player game, but it's just clearly not fair in a 5 player game. I assume the reason for players gaining/losing off "ties" is because some games can end in a tie and in that scenario you would gain for tying a higher ELO player, it seems the system should be able to differentiate though between a game ending in a tie, and ties coming from a void result, because they aren't the same thing.

RobertBr wrote: ↑05 March 2024, 00:26 If you insist on talking about games in ways that don't make sense you are unlikely to get much sympathy.

Well, it's good then that they actually made sense.

It works fine in two player games but in multiplayer games, despite lengthy discussions over many years, no-one has managed to come up with a fully worked out solution.

Time-out expulsion should be either automatic or unanimous (or require a majority vote). This is not a direct solution to the problem, but it's a good start.

Tisaac wrote: ↑05 March 2024, 00:55 Of course this is not a good solution for all games because you can argue that playing without that player is not representative in general for most game

We can also argue that tying all players is not representative in general. And imposing one solution for all games is not a good idea. Maybe it was fine and dandy many years ago, but there are 700+ games on BGA. So, it's time to give developers more agency in this case.

teallite wrote: ↑05 March 2024, 03:04

It works fine in two player games but in multiplayer games, despite lengthy discussions over many years, no-one has managed to come up with a fully worked out solution.

Time-out expulsion should be either automatic or unanimous (or require a majority vote). This is not a direct solution to the problem, but it's a good start.

If expulsion needs to be unanimous/majority vote, then I'd say players who have not gone in red should also have the option to quit the game without penalties if that vote fails. People should not be stuck in a game with a slow player just because others don't want to kick. Automatic is definitely the way to go for this, at least that would stop these posts in the forums trying to villainize people who want to stick to the agreed time limits.

buu441 wrote: ↑05 March 2024, 04:44 People should not be stuck in a game with a slow player just because others don't want to kick. Automatic is definitely the way to go for this, at least that would stop these posts in the forums trying to villainize people who want to stick to the agreed time limits.

I do get what you're saying, but my POV is I'd rather play a game with someone who is always a few hours late for their turn (I play mainly turn-based) than not play a game at all for 3 days. RT is a bit different, and I get playing with someone who always runs 30-60 seconds over every round is going to make things frustrating. But I'd still think in that boat, I'd be kicking if they did seem to be doing it every turn, not just once, or even twice (and automatic booting is essentially kicking on the first instance). If I actually have time to play RT, I'd rather spend the extra couple of minutes waiting to finish out the game then quit halfway through and not have time for another.

And as someone who tries very hard to stick to time limits (and consequently doesn't play a lot of RT), it is really easy to think, cool, my kids are occupied with an activity, I can probably squeeze in a game, and then to have them come and distract your attention, or the doorbell ring or something. I have been booted in those cases and I agree that people are well within their rights to do so, but I would have also appreciated not being booted at the first available opportunity.

I've encountered a different but similar issue trying to play Beyond the Sun: I would very frequently have a player at the table who would not play their turns within the turn limit. These were 1move/day games with a 48hour time bank and I'd still have people going into the red within the first couple of turns every other game.

I found the easiest solution was to play Arena games. I'm not trying to climb the Arena ranks, I'm just looking for people who actually care about playing the game and that's the best place to find them.

nik592 wrote: ↑05 March 2024, 05:49 I do get what you're saying, but my POV is I'd rather play a game with someone who is always a few hours late for their turn (I play mainly turn-based) than not play a game at all for 3 days.

If the system was auto-kicking people you would have better matches because people wouldn't be joining tables they can't meet the time commitments for hoping the other player(s) would tolerate them being in the red. You could open up your search to longer turn times and still be able to play with those players. I would prefer the system enforce the rules instead of the users, and have the option to "propose finishing the game" after the system has ended it. Any players that agree will resume at a "friendly" table where the game left off.

RobertBr wrote: ↑05 March 2024, 00:26no-one has managed to come up with a fully worked out solution.

We don't need a fully worked out solution. We could have incremental improvements, that fix the most obvious, glaring, and simple problems first.

The most obvious improvement being that on a quit, non-quit players should exchange Elo only with the quit player. No other combinations of players should exchange Elo. (The same error exists for team games and all games with only a winner/loser state with no score standings) It is strange that the BGA team finds the time to tinker with the Elo system, adding tweaks that nobody had asked for (consecutive wins and all that) but not to fix this flaw.