yfimc wrote: ↑06 May 2025, 21:51
It should be possible for the tournament administrator to end the over-time game, AND to expel the player who is MIA and whose karma has fallen below the level required for the tournament. For example, I have a tournament with a minimum required karma of 65% but this one player who is holding everything up has seen their karma drop to 30%. And the other players in that game are not skipping them.
This is very frustrating because the whole reason I set a longer time for the tournament is so people don't get skipped just for being in the wrong time zone - it's easy to burn through a couple days when you have 8 hours on your turn when you go to sleep every night! But now these shady players are messing everything up. There was no option to set a longer time for players but a shorter maximum time for a game.
Hi, I organize many tournaments and can give some advice. Inactive players can never be completely eliminated because there is no way to exclude players from a public signup tournament.
For organizing tournaments always assume at least 1 table will take the maximum game duration to finish when considering schedule. Any other expectations will make you agitated for no reason.
Some tips to reduce the rate of inactive players:
-Set reputation requirement to 85%. Ignore what BGA says about not recommended, it makes absolutely no sense. Always use 85% rep.
- Keep the signup window reasonable, longer signup window means higher chance for a player to sign up in advance, then quit BGA. I prefer 2-6 weeks signup window myself based on experience with the games I host. 2 weeks or less signup works great if you can get enough attendance. Anything with over 3 month signup window is insane IMO. You are just exposing the tournament players to more inactive players for no real benefit.
- Keep the game duration reasonable. Long enough that the vast majority of players can finish
-Related to game duration, stick to lower player counts for better tournament experience. Each additional player greatly increases game duration, is it worth it? The answer is different for each game. Is it better to play 3 games of 2p Yatzee in a tournament or only 1 4p game?
-Keep the number of rounds in the tournament reasonable. I personally think tournaments with over 10 total rounds are too long unless the player count is VERY HIGH like 256 players.
-Many of these factors multiply together to make the length of a tournament. Is the tournament length reasonable? I prefer tournaments to be 90 days or less whenever possible. For 4p with 30 day games, a 180 day tournament is likely required.
The TLDR of my tips is that a shorter tournament with a shorter signup window will have a lower chance or inactive players to start and a lower chance of new inactive players. Instead of one really long tournament, why not just make shorter tournaments and make them more frequently? That allows for all the inactive and uninterested players to stop and allows new players to join.
