I am finding in almost all of my open table games there is a boot in them and it really spoils the game.  A few times in Red's Mideval Europe map the boot has totally screwed 1 or more players where now they had units placed where they no longer needed them or were forced to waste armies on neutrals to gain ground.  This is annoying me a lot.

I know the site is new and things like this are gonna be an issue at the beginning until we get a large group of active players but what would everyone think about a boot filter for games.  I didn't mind that on ToS.  The ability to only show games to players with 3 boots or less would be good with me and not have that as the default but something people must switch to.

I don't think it would be effective. It's been my experience that the majority of players getting booted here are ones who joined casually and then never got "hooked" on playing like the rest of us and simply abandon the site.

RiskyBack wrote:

I am finding in almost all of my open table games there is a boot in them and it really spoils the game.  A few times in Red's Mideval Europe map the boot has totally screwed 1 or more players where now they had units placed where they no longer needed them or were forced to waste armies on neutrals to gain ground.  This is annoying me a lot.

I know the site is new and things like this are gonna be an issue at the beginning until we get a large group of active players but what would everyone think about a boot filter for games.  I didn't mind that on ToS.  The ability to only show games to players with 3 boots or less would be good with me and not have that as the default but something people must switch to.

I'm about to lose a game because we're down to 3 players Ender's Shadow was booted, and the other player left plowed into me in a way that would not have succeeded had we not lost our 3rd wheel after my previous turn.  This player does not appear willing to vote to end game and wants the fake win.

Boots really have wrecked a number of the games I've been in.

I'm not sure why people are being booted. We had that like 5000 page thread early on when everyone offered opinions on boot structures, times, etc. My opinion was that since Auto-skip was implemented then boots become a moot point and shouldn't be used.

Kicking a player out and reverting everything to neut kills games and turns possible winners into definite losers. Leaving the units on the field and skipping the turn immediately at least preserves some of the balance.

If the ability was there for someone who was getting 0 time autoskipped to rejoin the game (ONCE) the effect would be even less, because the remaining players would have to factor the possible return of said player into their strategies.

A boot time that actually took weekends into account would be nice, too. Two days is just long enough for me to log out on Friday and get skipped in a few games by Monday. Fantastic, that.

Heh, I try to take my turns on weekends too but I agree that I definitely don't log on as frequently.

So what are the current options on the table?  For instance, right now anyone can join any public game..  Have experience structures been talked about?  I have no idea how these things are usually structured but I can throw out some ideas..

Like novices are on a 1/2 time boot policy until they get 5 bootless games under their belt.

Or you start games that are open to players with an average turn time that is in a certain range, provided you are in that range or better.

Oo -- even better.. How bout this?  Let's say you have an average turn time of 3 hours and 17 minutes... As host, you can open a game where only players with an average turn time that is better than 150% of yours are eligible to join.. in this case -- 4 hours 10 minutes..  Additionally, as host you can raise the range of your invitation.  For instance, you could set it to 200% or even unlimited, but you can't set it to lower than 150%, ..or whatever the threshold is.

This way you could play a 2-day max move game, with the expectation that everyone logs on about as often as you do.  You could add other mods, like each boot penalizes your average turn time by 10%, and boots time out "for good behavior" (I think WF does something similar to this, although it might not even be necessary in this proposed system).  Sounds complicated but I'll bet it's not hard to code.  The only problem I can think is that vacations might screw things up, and if players alway "claim" they are on vacation, they could circumvent the mechanism.  On the other hand, it seems to me that most people are pretty honest about vacation time on WF.   You could even limit vacation time if people took advantage of the system.

Or you can't join a game if you are on vacation..  and taking yourself off vacation automatically boots you out of games where you are over the limit.

I don't really mind waiting a few days for some games. It's annoying, sure, since I am on almost all the time, but I've grown used to it. All I want is a way to filter games for active players. I think Toaster is right about a lot of boots being from players who login, join and then never log back in. All I really want to be able to do is play a game that I am fairly confident won't have any boots in it.
I actually like playing the games and am not here just to collect Championship Points or just make maps. I just wanna have more than 10 turns a day when I have over 30 active games and so I would like the bootless option just to get active daily players to join my games and I theirs.

I don't mind waiting either - I don't like people being booted within 2 days. It my mind it doesn't keep the games moving, it just screws up the game.  Or even auto-skipped and booted within 4 days.  Many players on this site will not have vacation days, and they will simply be booted if they take a long week-end.

I would be strongly in favour of allowing booting to be in the hands of the players rather than the server.  Say umm, 1-day vote-to-boot by everyone or 5-day direct boot by anyone. ;)

I mind waiting.. Maybe the problem will fix itself over time, but because anyone can login join a game and never return, I will probably not many play public games. If the problem arises too often in tournaments (whenever that happens), I will really have a problem. As a tournament host on WF, I am constantly checking my tournaments and booting as host..

I think a weekend boot extension is reasonable, question is how this would work exactly. No boots on Sundays for non-lightning games is a possible simple solution. It has a Biblical ring to it too :p

I also agree about that a lot of boots happen from people who join the site, join a game then don't ever return. How would an active player filter work, would it just be 'you must have finished more than x games to qualify'? What should x be, perhaps in the range 1-10?

If we are just looking to block the people who never came back after joining then really only filtering people who haven't finished a game yet would be reasonable. (i.e. x = 1).

Then you're going to have a problem.

With all due respect, you are asking for an automated solution to an impossible problem, with the possible exception of people who have just signed up.

150% of turn time? Bump up to 245%? Seriously? So this is something that everyone would have to set for each game they start? Or do you propose a default, and if there's a default guess what.. 90% of the people will leave it as is and then *wham*, you've locked out the people who just want to log in once a day and take their turns.

Personally my interest in online risk has waxed and waned over the course of 9 months. There's been periods of time when I've taken my turns within 5 minutes for days on end. There's been weeks where I've logged in once a day to take my turns. So my average is 2 hours, and that means what?

Boot penalties, 1/2 average turn time, yes it sounds complicated and complicated is bad. If you want to be sure you get fast games, join lightning games, start making your own list of players who play quickly, start more games, don't play open games, or suck it up.

Every little hurdle is potentially a hurdle that will cause a new player not to sign up or an existing one to leave.

The Sunday thing is a separate issue. Sure, make WarGear the Chik-Fil-A of online Risk and don't serve boot sandwiches on Sundays. Be sure you get the time zones right!

150% of turn time? Bump up to 245%? Seriously? So this is something that everyone would have to set for each game they start? Or do you propose a default, and if there's a default guess what.. 90% of the people will leave it as is and then *wham*, you've locked out the people who just want to log in once a day and take their turns.

 

11's,

If you log in once a day and play in 5 or 6 games, chances are that your Average Turn Time will be in the 5 or 6 hour range - not too bad.  If you log in twice a day, probably closer to half that.  Regardless of the what the actual numbers are..

Default:  None   (meaning anyone can join, regardless of their ATT.  Would you have a problem with this?)

I'm just suggesting this as an option for more hard core types who would like their games and tournaments to move at the speed that "they" play at.  You can't complain about game speed if you're playing against people who have similar ATT times.

Forget boot penalties -- this system wouldn't really require it.. if you're getting the boot, guess what?  Your ATT is pretty high.  I agree, "complicated is bad".  This isn't really that complicated from the player's perspective - certainly not when the default is "None".

To be fair, it does occur to me that this system doesn't necessarily stop Joe surfer from joining WG, taking a move, and moving on, not if they start with an ATT of 0.  But if they start with an ATT of infinity, then they will only be eligible to join "default" games.  If you think this is a deterrent for some, you could make it so that you only see games that you are actually eligible for on the Join Game screen.

M57 wrote:

150% of turn time? Bump up to 245%? Seriously? So this is something that everyone would have to set for each game they start? Or do you propose a default, and if there's a default guess what.. 90% of the people will leave it as is and then *wham*, you've locked out the people who just want to log in once a day and take their turns.

 

11's,

If you log in once a day and play in 5 or 6 games, chances are that your Average Turn Time will be in the 5 or 6 hour range - not too bad.  If you log in twice a day, probably closer to half that.  Regardless of the what the actual numbers are..

Default:  None   (meaning anyone can join, regardless of their ATT.  Would you have a problem with this?)

I'm just suggesting this as an option for more hard core types who would like their games and tournaments to move at the speed that "they" play at.  You can't complain about game speed if you're playing against people who have similar ATT times.

Forget boot penalties -- this system wouldn't really require it.. if you're getting the boot, guess what?  Your ATT is pretty high.  I agree, "complicated is bad".  This isn't really that complicated from the player's perspective - certainly not when the default is "None".

To be fair, it does occur to me that this system doesn't necessarily stop Joe surfer from joining WG, taking a move, and moving on, not if they start with an ATT of 0.  But if they start with an ATT of infinity, then they will only be eligible to join "default" games.  If you think this is a deterrent for some, you could make it so that you only see games that you are actually eligible for on the Join Game screen.

I like it!  I agree about the long turn time in some games.  This is just proposing an option to create games with players with similar turn times.  As long as the default is 'none' and the starting ATT for new accounts is infinity.

This doesn't stop casual players from joining 90% of games but allows more active players the ability to start faster paced games.

I also really like the weekend solution tom mentioned.  If anything I tend to log in more often on the weekends but I can see how that's a problem for some of the players.  The whole sunday immunity thing is pretty good but keep in mind it might have to extend into monday if the whole problem is that players don't log in on the weekends; else they are getting booted monday at 12:01am.

tom wrote: I think a weekend boot extension is reasonable, question is how this would work exactly. No boots on Sundays for non-lightning games is a possible simple solution. It has a Biblical ring to it too :p

I also agree about that a lot of boots happen from people who join the site, join a game then don't ever return. How would an active player filter work, would it just be 'you must have finished more than x games to qualify'? What should x be, perhaps in the range 1-10?

If we are just looking to block the people who never came back after joining then really only filtering people who haven't finished a game yet would be reasonable. (i.e. x = 1).

As Enix said, you would probably have to extend Sunday to Monday at Noonish.

I'm pretty much against the other % thingy that M57 suggested, I'm quite anti-complicated at the moment.

The problem with the "You must have finished more than x games..." filter would be that you then have 2 queues (ie Beginners vs "WarGearers").  Seems like you want to avoid new players from seeing an empty queue or the inability to join a public game, yet somehow filter out those that will just get booted :P.

I'm pretty much against the other % thingy that M57 suggested, I'm quite anti-complicated at the moment.

What's so complicated about default = none?

Ok -- instead of select a %, how about just two choices:

None and Players with an ATT of x or better (where x is automatically determined by the host's ATT - set at 150% or something like that)?

I'm really not a fan of filters/multi-queues either.
I understand the want for a filter according to turn time, I'm just not a fan of filters.

It's worrisome if it gets too complicated, yea.

I think skipping sundays and monday morning would be a good idea. I think Monday at noon is a reasonable amount of time, even for those who don't log in on the weekend. If it becomes too difficult for them then, maybe they should considering taking half a day of vacation time ;).

I filter my email, my water, my coffee, and my carburetors. I'm a filter fan.