Quitting

[RMac]

At the moment loads of games are ruined by constant no shows please can we have a "quit game" option that immediately opens the slot up and costs fewer points than being booted out for repeated no shows. It would massively improve the game also no shows have immediate civil disorder as per standard rules. Thanks

[Jamiet99uk]

Simply set "excused missed turns" to zero. Then people are immediately penalised for quitting, as they should be.

Quitting shouldn't be allowed. You sign up for a game, you play!

[RMac]

yes, but people don't bother to enter moves so often it wrecks games.
Surley better to let people quick quickly jthan just wait out days or weeks of no-shows.

[Jamiet99uk]

yes, but people don't bother to enter moves so often it wrecks games.
Surley better to let people quick quickly jthan just wait out days or weeks of no-shows.

Again, when you set up your game, set "excused missed turns" to zero.

You will not suffer "weeks of no shows" if you do that.

[DougJoe]

Simply set "excused missed turns" to zero. Then people are immediately penalised for quitting, as they should be.

Quitting shouldn't be allowed. You sign up for a game, you play!

...I can't +1 this enough. You sign up, you play.

[gimix]

Jamie is super-right, and I think we all agree. But the problem of players joining and then disappearing is real, as is the one of players "rage-quitting" when they're going to be eliminated.

A few years ago webDip had a different behaviour - there were no excused missed turns but the game did go on, simply considering NMRs as "all hold".

This was abandoned in favour of the current system because it gave an unfair advantage to the neighbours of the culprit, especialy in non-anon games where you would know that someone still had to enter order, say 5 minutes before adjudication, and then change your own orders accordingly.

However, the old system could perhaps be made available again as an option, or we could think of some other possibilities.

[echidna]

I think RMac was offering a modest suggestion of a way for a player who really wants to quit to do so immediately, so the rest of the players would not have to wait through the exhaustion of the quitting player's delays left.
I suspect that sometimes this arises when a new player realizes this is not the kind of game they wish to play.

Yes, Jamie points out that setting "excused missed turns" to zero is a way to shortcircuit the game's delays - but excused delays have a purpose for when a player really has to miss a deadline, but wishes to keep in the game (and suffer only a small penalty to their RR). The option to Pause a game is cumbersome, requiring all the active players to agree.

An "I quit WebDip" button, that removes the player pressing it from WebDip entirely, and immediately triggers the opening of the game for a replacement, could help.

[Zohan]

I would like to see a "no excuse on turn 1 option." Missing turn 4 is understandable. Turn 1 is not.

[Trigfea63]

I would like to see a "no excuse on turn 1 option." Missing turn 4 is understandable. Turn 1 is not.

What's the difference? Time has passed by Turn 4 and a player's life circumstances may have changed? In some games, especially multi-player games (World, Chaos), it takes a long time to get the required number of players to sign up. Someone who signs up early might be in different circumstances by the time Turn 1 arrives.

Not that I'm excusing people quitting. I'm with Jamie and Doug on that one: You sign up, you play. Period. But I know not everyone agrees, and thus we will continue to have this problem.

One solution I have found helpful is to set a high reliability rating, say 90%, for a new game if you want only dedicated players. You can also give the game an indicative name. For example a couple of years ago there was a series of games called "High Reliability Gunboat-X" (and RR was set to a minimum 90%). This kind of signaling up front could make it harder to get the required number of players for your game. But once you do, it will tend to make for a better game with fewer people quitting.

[CptMike]

We have here a player (Western-Canada) who doesn't write his orders but doesn't quit... He takes the country back after the delay. Would someone be interested to take back Western-Canada before him ?

https://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=1150720

[qrzy]

We have here a player (Western-Canada) who doesn't write his orders but doesn't quit... He takes the country back after the delay. Would someone be interested to take back Western-Canada before him ?

https://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=1150720

He can do it only three times after the escused delays left.

[Lt Gen Lucky]

I am sure that this has been mentioned dozens of times over many threads, but can't we have much harsher RR penalties than the current 11% quickly dropping to 5%?
If pushed for numbers, I would go for 25% for each quit, and that stays for a year. If someone quits 4 times and their RR drops to zero, then good - they can't play?!

[gimix]

We have here a player (Western-Canada) who doesn't write his orders but doesn't quit... He takes the country back after the delay. Would someone be interested to take back Western-Canada before him ?

https://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=1150720

I checked, and they should be automatically temp-banned next time they do that trick again. Should this not happen please post a note in ModForum and we will manually apply the ban

[DougJoe]

Jamie is super-right, and I think we all agree. But the problem of players joining and then disappearing is real, as is the one of players "rage-quitting" when they're going to be eliminated.

I think RMac was offering a modest suggestion of a way for a player who really wants to quit to do so immediately, so the rest of the players would not have to wait through the exhaustion of the quitting player's delays left.
I suspect that sometimes this arises when a new player realizes this is not the kind of game they wish to play.

An "I quit WebDip" button, that removes the player pressing it from WebDip entirely, and immediately triggers the opening of the game for a replacement, could help.

...I've played with at least one player who didn't end up enjoying the game - she had the best position but was very uncomfortable going back on her word to make more progress. We ended up calling the game a draw, and she has never played again - and that's ok... but she did play the game to its conclusion and didn't drop.

That being said, I definitely can see people who will want to tap out because they didn't know what they were getting into and are just *that stressed* by what's going on that they can't deal. So, as much as I think if you join, you should play I can understand that case for an escape hatch...

...but to prevent others from abusing that option to escape the consequences of being eliminated or whatever, that escape hatch should come with some very serious consequences of its own. I don't know if it should remove the user from WebDip entirely, but there should definitely be a serious hit to that player's RR (maybe a 50% drop?). They would of course not get any WebDip Points back and their GR should suffer as if they were eliminated. The game they drop from could also be instantly force paused to give the other players time to find a replacement or unpause or whatever they want to do. Perhaps also a 2nd drop prevents you from joining any games for while as well.

...maybe also some number of consecutive NMRs (I was thinking two at first) no matter how many excused turns you have, kicks you out of the game (potentially without the possibility of rejoining - and again, maybe there's an auto pause here). That way if someone's set it up with 3/4 or more (for some reason) it's not such a long wait. It could be an option that could be enabled, maybe the number of consecutive NMRs could be an option too. Maybe it's tied to the phase length (for very short, say <24 hour phase games). I dunno, just throwing out ideas here.

...and, as an aside, why is the minimum amount for WebDip Points 100? Beginner games tend have very low bets (5-10). Why not start people out at, say, 25? That would be their new minimum until they cross 100 or something like that...

[franzjosefi]

This is not an either or proposition. We can have a missed turn buffer and a quit option both.

[yoak]

I would like to see a "no excuse on turn 1 option." Missing turn 4 is understandable. Turn 1 is not.

My first and emotional reaction to this was, "Right on!" as you spend all of this time negotiating and planning before the first move, and then two or three people don't make it and at least one gets replaced, and now it is a mess. That sucks, Plus the same logic you imply and others have elucidated about it being more understandable that things might come up.

My second thought that, though I rarely miss, probably the majority of turns that I've missed have been turn 1. (Didn't check this - just my guess about my own experience.) I've recently returned after a couple of years of not playing. I started a game, and it had delay after delay of starting turn 1. I remedied this by starting two more games. Then the press picked up to where I check when I sit down at my computer. Still... a game started and I missed a first turn. There were excused items, and I picked up and am even doing well.

So... while I on one hand support being more lenient further into a game, recognizing that people have other priorities and things occasionally come up. But particularly if you play a game at a time, the first turn is the only one that requires slavishly checking several times per day when you don't really expect anything to happen just in case it started surprisingly quickly. The first seems like the easiest one to miss in that accidental way.

I wonder if we could have an optional, louder alerting system. If I could get a text message (easy to implement if you just require people to give an email gateway that texts them, which I suspect all major carriers support) at configurable times, such as when a game starts and when there are x hours remaining before adjudication with no orders saved. I'd use that every time. It would eliminate the one basis for sympathy for the start-of-game misses, and on misses generally.

[DiplomacyandWarfare]

I am sure that this has been mentioned dozens of times over many threads, but can't we have much harsher RR penalties than the current 11% quickly dropping to 5%?
If pushed for numbers, I would go for 25% for each quit, and that stays for a year. If someone quits 4 times and their RR drops to zero, then good - they can't play?!

This is absurd. The system is already quite extreme.

I currently have a reliability rating of 89%. Let's break that down:

• I have played just under 500 phases in the last year

• I missed two of those phases

• One of those was a classic chaos game which, due to the nature of classic chaos, was 0 excused missed turns (which is fair). I had RL stuff going on and could not play on this day

• The other was some random game with short phases, in which I forgot to enter moves one day

So total, I have actually missed under 1% of the phases I've played in. A little bit higher counting excused missed turns, but the point stands.

And then there's the "percentage". 89% reliability rating logically sounds like I have missed 10-25 times more phases than I actually have. It's not a percentage of your turns you have missed. As far as I can tell, the amount of turns you have played doesn't even factor in at all except for the smaller "total/base" category (which is relatively minor).

What's really the problem here is that slackers are signing up for the 2-3 excused missed turns games, and get to keep their high reliability ratings because the system doesn't penalize, AT ALL, for excused missed turns.

...
Wow, that sort of went off on a tangent. To conclude, the problem isn't low penalties, it's the fact that penalties are applied only in unexcused missed turns. Your proposed solution is the equivalent of solving class inequality by raising taxes on everyone, knowing that the rich will find loopholes to evade taxes.

My proposed solution:

Lower penalties for unexcused missed turns (8%/4% after a month), add penalties for excused missed turns (even just 2%/1% after a month).

[CptMike]

What's really the problem here is that slackers are signing up for the 2-3 excused missed turns games, and get to keep their high reliability ratings because the system doesn't penalize, AT ALL, for excused missed turns.

I agree with this analysis but I keep thinking sanctions must be huge.

I wonder if simply no excused turn should be offered and an increased penalty given each time :
-1 % if you ahve a RR = 100 %
-2 % if you have a RR <= 99%
-4 % if you have a RR <= 97 %
-8 % if you have a RR <= 89 %
-16 % if you have a RR <= 73 %
-32 % if you have a RR <= 41 %
-banned from the site (with possibility to ask mod's to be reintegrated)

and to get RR back:
+1 % for each phase you are at time.

And a player should be banned (and replaced) from a game after a second missed turn if RR < 80 %.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I wonder if we could have an optional, louder alerting system. If I could get a text message (easy to implement if you just require people to give an email gateway that texts them, which I suspect all major carriers support) at configurable times, such as when a game starts and when there are x hours remaining before adjudication with no orders saved. I'd use that every time. It would eliminate the one basis for sympathy for the start-of-game misses, and on misses generally.

I would benefit from an email notification system. I suspect this would probably improve both reliability and press responsiveness. Such a system appears to to be an envisioned feature for the site anyhow given the "Coming soon!" message on the notifications page.

Maybe this could be opt-in for existing users, and opt-out for new users.

It is very old fashioned to have to check a specific website for notifications.

[Lazybones]

There is a problem with players in a game, who miss a turn, being able to rejoin - even if the game was set up with zero excused missed turns.The same player can do this again ands again it seems - making the game difficult for the other players.

Zero excused missed turns should mean zero excused missed turns.

It would be good if the site could be changed to not allow players to rejoin a game they’ve already been removed from.