Player times out in multiple games of Swiss-System tournament

[Mathew5000]

I thought there was a change made last year, which I read about on the forums in a post by a BGA admin, saying that a player would be automatically involuntarily withdrawn/removed from a tournament after having their turn skipped in two games. But if I am remembering this accurately, that change has apparently been reverted because I see it quite often that a player times out in every game and is not removed from the tournament. For example this bracket: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=233289 (group 2 of stage 1 of a Catan tournament with 40 matches total, Swiss System, game max duration 30 days, reputation required ≥ 65%, time allotted to each player 7½ days)

The tournament began in August 2023 (almost 16 months ago) and stage 1 is currently in Step 16 out of 20. (Step 17 will begin seven hours from now.)

There is one player in the tournament who has not completed a game on BGA since October 2023. The player's turn has been skipped at least twice in the tournament:

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table= ... 32&nr=true
https://boardgamearena.com/table?table= ... 72&nr=true

Since the player was last seen on BGA over a year ago, and is still in this long tournament, most of the player's games were not played out but just expired after 30 days. For example:

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=420028432
https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=488990166
https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=513939484
https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=538388495

This is really bad because in every round of the tournament there are three players who don't get a chance to play. They might have to expend time and effort placing their initial settlements, but never have the satisfaction of seeing how the game turns out since one player does not play. Meanwhile, since it's a Swiss-system tournament, the next round cannot begin until the full 30 days have elapsed, even if all other games have finished after 20 days.

The player is currently at reputation of 28%. I thought there was a rule that regardless of timeouts and skips, anyone will get automatically withdrawn/removed from a tournament if their reputation falls below the minimum reputation (in this case 65%). But the player is still in the tournament.

I'm not trying to criticize this player. You can't blame someone because they signed up to BGA and a couple of months later they got bored of it. The player might be injured or even deceased.

My point is, why doesn't BGA automatically remove a player like this from Swiss system tournaments?

Or is it possible that BGA actually does have some code that would remove such a player from a tournament whose mode as coded as Swiss system, but this particular tournament falls through the cracks because it is coded as Groups stage?

I looked through the official BGA bug/proposal list and I only found one suggestion that gets at this issue: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=56223 ("Automatic withdrawl from tournaments after timing out 2 times.").

Would it be too harsh if there was automatic withdrawal from a Swiss system tournament after exceeding your time limit only once? If so I have two suggestions:

• the tournament creator is empowered to remove anyone from the tournament who has exceeded their time limit in a game; or

• alternatively, if you exceed your time limit by 50% or more in one game you are automatically removed from the tournament (e.g. allotted time is 10 days and you go 5 days over, or allotted time is 30 minutes and you go 15 minutes over), and if you exceed your time limit by any amount in two games you are automatically removed.

In proposing this I am thinking of Swiss system tournaments (including Swiss within a Groups tournament). I have not thought about whether some such rule is also needed in round robin, single-elimination, or multiplayer-elimination.

To be clear, when I say "removed from the tournament", I mean it to be with the same effect as clicking the "Withdraw" button: you can finish the game you're in (unless an opponent skips your turn) but you will not be placed in any subsequent game within the tournament.

Comments?

[mrdoctor]

• the tournament creator is empowered to remove anyone from the tournament who has exceeded their time limit in a game; or

Unless you're proposing a salary for the tournament-creator for the time they'll have to spend both checking which players have exceeded their time in a way that looks like it's holding up the tournament, and having to deal with the angry private-messages they'll inevitably be sent by anyone they remove from a tournament - no. Tournaments can be created by anyone with a premium-BGA account. Moderating the behaviour of users on the site is a role for the staff of BGA.

[RazorOz]

Tournament creators should definitely have more power to remove players that are obviously going to cause problems. You can upvote this here if you haven't already: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=43968.

It would help if you could create a tournament and be able to tick an option along the lines of people you have red thumbed can't enter, that way you could just red thumb all problem players like this so they can't join in the first place.

Unless you're proposing a salary for the tournament-creator for the time they'll have to spend both checking which players have exceeded their time in a way that looks like it's holding up the tournament, and having to deal with the angry private-messages they'll inevitably be sent by anyone they remove from a tournament - no. Tournaments can be created by anyone with a premium-BGA account. Moderating the behaviour of users on the site is a role for the staff of BGA.

Except nobody has to create a tournament, the time they invest into it would be up to them.

[mrdoctor]

Unless you're proposing a salary for the tournament-creator for the time they'll have to spend both checking which players have exceeded their time in a way that looks like it's holding up the tournament, and having to deal with the angry private-messages they'll inevitably be sent by anyone they remove from a tournament - no. Tournaments can be created by anyone with a premium-BGA account. Moderating the behaviour of users on the site is a role for the staff of BGA.

Except nobody has to create a tournament, the time they invest into it would be up to them.

If by setting up a tournament it was meant that I then had to for the rest of the entire tournament actively monitor time-outs across all games, remove users fairly, and deal with the constant direct-messages I'd be sent from people I'd removed - I can confirm I would never set up a tournament again.

[Meeplelowda]

If by setting up a tournament it was meant that I then had to for the rest of the entire tournament actively monitor time-outs across all games, remove users fairly, and deal with the constant direct-messages I'd be sent from people I'd removed - I can confirm I would never set up a tournament again.

No one said you'd have to. That would still be up to you. You'd just have the ability to do it under the proposed change.

[RazorOz]

Except nobody has to create a tournament, the time they invest into it would be up to them.

If by setting up a tournament it was meant that I then had to for the rest of the entire tournament actively monitor time-outs across all games, remove users fairly, and deal with the constant direct-messages I'd be sent from people I'd removed - I can confirm I would never set up a tournament again.

And that would be up to you, nobody has to set up tournaments. How can more options for creators be a bad thing? Particularly those that would lead to higher quality tournaments.

If anything it would be beneficial to the tournament scene if the tournaments that were setup were of higher quality, and it eliminated some of the nonsense tournaments that get setup. In the communities I've seen, bad tournaments end up a net negative, firstly, they give tournaments a terrible reputation, if someone's prior experience of tournaments was bad, they assume all tournaments are like that, and secondly, it would reduce the amount of fallout other players/tournament creators have to deal with, player's venting by DM, and having to explain why x tournament was always doomed to fail before it began.

[JoysJoy]

• the tournament creator is empowered to remove anyone from the tournament who has exceeded their time limit in a game; or

Unless you're proposing a salary for the tournament-creator for the time they'll have to spend both checking which players have exceeded their time in a way that looks like it's holding up the tournament, and having to deal with the angry private-messages they'll inevitably be sent by anyone they remove from a tournament - no. Tournaments can be created by anyone with a premium-BGA account. Moderating the behaviour of users on the site is a role for the staff of BGA.

as someone who used to create a lot of tournaments, it would not be a horrible difficult thing at all! as a matter fact, TOURNAMENT ORGANIZERS WANT THIS!

There is no way this can be done at all ever! We have been asking, begging, for a long time for the ability to knock someone out when they do this. We are forbidden! It is not just this one player either. There are a small number of very bad people who sign up for hundreds and hundreds of tournaments at a time and they ruin thousands of games. They come and go from BGA. They are here for a few weeks or months and then they are gone for many months. The games just keep coming on day after day after day and they never show up. They get to zero karma and keep getting put in games.

Then they come back and play some quick can't stop or lucky numbers and in a couple of days they are back eligible to start terrorizing players again. They sign up for a large number of games and then disappear for months on end. Rinse and repeat for year after year after year. Despite being individually reported nothing ever happens. it is never even addressed with the people that do this and there is no consequence and no way to fix it once they have broken the tournament.

There needs to be an automatic booting of people when this happens! if your karma drops below the required karma to be in a tournament, why are you left in the tournament?!? It is obvious when it happens and the system should just automatically boot them. Evidently it is too expensive for BGA to consider putting the resources into this little bit of programming.

I don't even play regular tournaments anymore. Too many times I have been paired up with people like this and it ruins the whole experience of being here. I don't play games here to be unhappy every minute of the rest of my life when I'm not here.

To fix this I have friended good players as I meet them in games. I create my own tournaments that are invite only and I am very picky about who I invite. But I don't play random fun-sounding tournaments anymore at all because of this.

Some parts of BGA are broken. Sometimes it is games that can't be played because of a bug that has been reported for many years. But with tournaments, the entire system is just broken. It is very rare to get into a tournament that goes well from beginning to end without someone (like this person being described) ruins everything for everybody there. And it does go on from month after month after month after month after month after month after month until you just wanna pull your hair out. It's better not to get frustrated like that in the beginning. Sure you can blow it off a few times but after a while it gets too irritating . And BGA just doesn't have the resources since they are a platform of bringing out new games rather than fixing and perfecting the ones they have.

[mrdoctor]

• the tournament creator is empowered to remove anyone from the tournament who has exceeded their time limit in a game; or

Unless you're proposing a salary for the tournament-creator for the time they'll have to spend both checking which players have exceeded their time in a way that looks like it's holding up the tournament, and having to deal with the angry private-messages they'll inevitably be sent by anyone they remove from a tournament - no. Tournaments can be created by anyone with a premium-BGA account. Moderating the behaviour of users on the site is a role for the staff of BGA.

as someone who used to create a lot of tournaments, it would not be a horrible difficult thing at all! as a matter fact, TOURNAMENT ORGANIZERS WANT THIS!

As a tournament organiser, I don't want this power. I want the thing you describe later in your post, of BGA consistently booting players automatically when their karma falls to a low point:

There needs to be an automatic booting of people when this happens! if your karma drops below the required karma to be in a tournament, why are you left in the tournament?!? It is obvious when it happens and the system should just automatically boot them. Evidently it is too expensive for BGA to consider putting the resources into this little bit of programming.

[Mathew5000]

if your karma drops below the required karma to be in a tournament, why are you left in the tournament?!? It is obvious when it happens and the system should just automatically boot them.

I could not find a formal proposal of this narrow suggestion, so I made one just now: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=149548 Anyone who agrees, please upvote!

As I noted on that proposal page, this does not fully remedy the problem. If you lose a few karma points for every game when you time out, it might still be several rounds before you fall below the minimum reputation for the tournament (which by default is 65, and cannot be higher than 85).

MrDoctor, I understand your objection to empowering the tournament creator to remove a player from the tournament. Do you have any comments on the alternative suggestion I stated above:

• alternatively, if you exceed your time limit by 50% or more in one game you are automatically removed from the tournament (e.g. allotted time is 10 days and you go 5 days over, or allotted time is 30 minutes and you go 15 minutes over), and if you exceed your time limit by any amount in two games you are automatically removed.

[RazorOz]

]As a tournament organiser, I don't want this power. I want the thing you describe later in your post, of BGA consistently booting players automatically when their karma falls to a low point:

There needs to be an automatic booting of people when this happens! if your karma drops below the required karma to be in a tournament, why are you left in the tournament?!? It is obvious when it happens and the system should just automatically boot them. Evidently it is too expensive for BGA to consider putting the resources into this little bit of programming.

You don't want it, so no-one should have the option to do it? You're yet to explain any logic to that whatsoever, how an option for creators that clearly would improve tournaments would be a bad thing.

It's the equivalent to saying I don't like Catan, BGA shouldn't be implementing the game, because I wouldn't play it. Creators who are interested in making their tournaments better would use it, just like players who want to play Catan will play it.