Why do so people make real-time games and then log off, without taking down the game? It's not like you can leave it up to come back to later, because you're going to end up booted from the game. Just now I noticed a real-time game that was created over a week ago.

And then there are people who join real-time games and log off without leaving the game. I've noticed this less than before, but creating and then abandoning real-time games still seems to happen way too often.

I think this brings up a larger point of auto cancelling games/tornaments. I was coming to the forums to suggest auto-cancelling of tournaments, something like a tournament can stay open as many days as there are total tournaments. I'm tired of seeing a cycles tournament of 56 open seats and 7 joined, for the last x months.

but i'm sooo close to getting my chutes and ladders tourney from day 1 started!

Happy to do this... what's a reasonable timeframe for both?

Real time games 4 hours, tournaments one month?

i'd almost say an hour for real-time, unless it can be tied to WG activity. not sure we can do that tho other than if they do a hard log off.

I don't know, an hour for real-time might not work because it's hard to get enough people to join within an hour. I've started a real-time match and waited for a couple hours, so it's not entirely unreasonable to assume some people might wait longer than an hour.
If there is some way to have them shut down automatically when the creator logs off that may be ideal. Then again, if it's a larger real-time game with plenty of players but only the creator logs off it's kind of unfair to the other players.

In the end I suppose there could be problems no matter which way you go.
But I'd certainly be for some form of auto-canceling.

Tom, that time frame seems fine, The join time being proportional to the number of seats seems better, though probably irrelevant.

For tournaments, that is.

How many tournaments have filled up within a month compared to how many have filled up after a month?
Currently one month seems pretty quick IMO.

Real time, 2 hours may be good.

Both said though, there's still that "AHHH!!! Where'd my game/tournament go when it was just about full/I wanted it to keep filling up!!!" aspect that's a potential drawback to this type of functionality.

Could it be dependent on when the last person joined? The timer would reset when a new person joined. If you have a 4 player real time game you would actually have 6 hours for it to fill up at max but it could be canceled before that if there is no interest.

P.S.  I would still like some sort of invitation system for tournaments.  My RL friends really liked that on ToS and they are probably the types of players that commonly play a game or two but don't really join open games but would join tournaments if they got a evite to them.

Could there be a button the host could click to reset the timer? That way the host could keep it open if it was about to fill up, or while they were on, but if they start it and don't keep it up then it would go away.

RiskyBack wrote:

Could it be dependent on when the last person joined? The timer would reset when a new person joined. If you have a 4 player real time game you would actually have 6 hours for it to fill up at max but it could be canceled before that if there is no interest.

P.S.  I would still like some sort of invitation system for tournaments.  My RL friends really liked that on ToS and they are probably the types of players that commonly play a game or two but don't really join open games but would join tournaments if they got a evite to them.

Both good ideas I think.

Mongrel wrote: Tom, that time frame seems fine, The join time being proportional to the number of seats seems better, though probably irrelevant.

For both,

How about 2 * number of players (in hours) for real time.
and 2 * number of players (in days) for tournaments.

This could also be added to regular games although I don't know if it is an issue, I 'X' out games I am not interested in.

*edit: There would clearly need to be caps on these (we don't want a 100 player tournament sitting for over 6 months).

What's the objection to having open tournaments sit around for awhile? If a person is tired of looking at a particular one they can X it out.

I am not particularly opposed to such a thing - just askin'.

Even X-'ed out games/tournaments seem to reappear.

I know this is an old thread but I would hate to see an automatic end on tourneys... Kommismar has a tourney that was started in Sept and has been filling up slowly till it needs only one more player now.

There's a 60 day limit...

tom wrote:

There's a 60 day limit...

*cough*90*cough*

Why yes I do believe the coughing Turtle is correct!

is that a cousin to the snapping turtle?