Andernut wrote:

Risky: When I say put boots in the hands of the players, I mean allowing ANYBODY to direct-boot after pre-determined time, not vote-to-boot, but direct-booting. If you make the turn-timer RED and noticeable in some way when it has reached a certain time-frame, you can take a look and decide whether to boot or not.

Again, if the solution is that said person gets booted because they had a slow week, I'd rather avoid that solution in say a 3 player game. If it's got 6 players, then maybe I'd take advantage of the solution with my solo-boot option.

I'm fully in support of keeping games moving, but not at the expense of destroying that game for remaining players.

I like the idea, but how do vacations fit into this?   Is there a limit to how long (like total time per year) you can go on vacation?

What if this idea was incorporated AND there was a "skip turn at boot time" option that each individual player could assign to themselves?  This way, players who elect not to have their turns skipped run the risk (pun not intended) of being booted by a single person.

I think vacation should prevent boots for any reason aside from a lightning game - so as usual vacation takes precedent over boot-timers.

I think skip-turn is an interesting option, but I don't really care to have anyone's turn skipped because they fell behind in the game, I would rather just wait.

I don't think anyone cares if a game stalls for a little bit - it's more when it is always stalling for the same person. Auto-skip is made to combat that type of person, and I believe to mitigate the 2-day boot time imposition. If boot rules weren't so tight, there wouldn't be much need for auto-skip.

What if we just make it so that if a player is booted, the game terminates?

Or, the game restarts with the remaining players?

Andernut I do see your points and it definitely sucks when someone is booted from a game that you've been playing for weeks which then screws up the balance of the game.

So am I correct in saying that you are suggesting:

1. Disable Autoboot / Autoskip completely
2. Retain existing turn limits (10 mins / 2 days / 5 days)
3. Any player can direct boot once these times have elapsed (subject to vacation settings of course)

Perhaps instead AutoBoot could be made optional? It would still be the default but you wouldn't have to have it enabled.

Subject to having a 'cleanup' autoboot script which would autoboot to keep games from stalling completely I wouldn't have a problem with that if it was generally supported by the community.

Toaster wrote: What if we just make it so that if a player is booted, the game terminates?

Or, the game restarts with the remaining players?

Was that a serious suggestion?

tom wrote:

Perhaps instead AutoBoot could be made optional? It would still be the default but you wouldn't have to have it enabled.

Subject to having a 'cleanup' autoboot script which would autoboot to keep games from stalling completely I wouldn't have a problem with that if it was generally supported by the community.

I would want to be able to see that information on the Games List if AutoSkip/Boot is Off (or would AutoSkip still occur just the player wouldn't get booted?), that way I'm able to see what games have to be cleaned up manually without having to go into each game that hits over 2 days (since right now I can just assume the player is on Vacation).

I think the cleanup script is a good idea too.

tom wrote:
1. Disable Autoboot / Autoskip completely
2. Retain existing turn limits (10 mins / 2 days / 5 days)

Id say

1. Keep the autoboot / autoskip and just add a manualboot / manualskip

2. Retain existing turn limits (10 mins / 2 days / 5 days)

What about keeping autoskip and reducing/removing autoboot?

Also, 2000th post in this forum. Woot.

Vataro wrote: What about keeping autoskip and reducing/removing autoboot?

The thing with that, is that it gets annoying playing a turn, then you have to wait 2 days before the person is auto-skipped when they won't ever return to WG anyway.

True...

Yertle wrote:

Vataro wrote: What about keeping autoskip and reducing/removing autoboot?

The thing with that, is that it gets annoying playing a turn, then you have to wait 2 days before the person is auto-skipped when they won't ever return to WG anyway.

This presupposes that the only people who are going to absent are those who are one-turn wonders.  I dislike having my stats based on a large number of games with boots in them.  There is no way to plan or accurately predict a boot, and most of my non-private games have boots.

The boot issue can be resolved in two ways - 1) increasing the leniency on boot rules & 2) growing as a site.  The first we can affect, the second will come with time.

People quitting the site generally happens early in the game, not late - and early boots don't bother me.

IF "life happens" then somebody may get booted from 10 or more games, get frustrated, and quit the site.  If someone is booted because they're "getting into" wargear and miss a few days, then that person may get frustrated and quit the site.

All that said: I don't have a solution for late-game boots. In a recent game I attacked Player C pretty hard because he was on the verge of crossing the threshold from game leader to game winner.

Player C got autoskipped.

Player B plowed into me gambling that player C wouldn't make it back.

I suggested voting to end game if player C didn't return and did a weak retalliation having already spent myself and being pre-emptively attacked.

Player C got booted. Player B again plowed into me with everything.

I suggested voting to end game because mechanics were completely skewed by boot. I let my turn get to auto-skip having plastered the wall with text.

Player B killed me and never responded to my request for vote-to-end (thanks wbush, I mean Player B).


My fear - a game reduced from a game of strategy to a game of chance, whomever gets to a turn after the booted player wins.

This really bugs me, and having it impact my stats bugs me.

What does this situation mean however?

1. Is there a problem, or is it just an extreme case?
2. If it is a problem, is it caused by growing pains - or will it be repeated?
3. If it is a problem, is there a viable solution - or does it just suck?

Honestly, most of the games I'm in now don't have boots. However, the few that do certainly do suffer from the balance issue, so I don't know.

I don't see as many boots as you all are indicating, but it can definitely be game changing.

The best option is developing an AI that takes over for the booted player. This is a long term fix, that I can't even begin to think about the start.

The second best option might just be auto-skip, rather then auto-boot, with the boot timer for that player being set as immediate. Won't slow down the game, and if you've invested in eliminating a player, you can still get that players cards/elimination bonus.

A couple thoughts and suggestions

1) I am certainly seeing a lot of games with a booted player, and they can definitely change the balance of the game. Some have helped me, some have not, so I don't know if they are critically stats changing in the long run. Also, being relatively new, I don't know if I am seeing more or less than anybody else. Almost all I have seen have been early in the game, one was more in the middle. I certainly don't like them in general.

2) How about instead of booting a player, they get put on permanent autoskip after two skips in a particular game? They are then sent an e-mail saying so. And we put a button on those games for them that allows them to rejoin the game if they wish. We don't get neutrals, but the games still move along. Smart players would still treat them as neutrals.

3) Even more radical. Create some mechanism for other players to take over booted players. Chances are a player skipped twice is in poor position, so anybody would want to I don't know - maybe to get experience on a board. You could have the game not count for the player taking over the booted one, but then it would be strange for a game to count for some and not others. So, I can see all kinds of statistics and other related problems with this solution, but I'll put it out there because I find it interesting. Perhaps some other reward system could be created for players doing such.

4) I find this "no Sunday boot" option a little silly. If you are worried about getting skipped/booted on Sundays (or any other two-day period you are regularly webless) then only join/create games that have the 5 day limit. There are certainly enough of them to keep people happy.

5) That said I think one easy fix would be to bump the 2 day timer up to a 3 day timer, or create one. That would slow the games some, but not overly so me thinks. Or we could have the option of making games with turn times of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or more days with a simple numbered icon showing so. Not sure if necessary or not, just throwing it out there.

That's all for now. Let's see if I got a turn after all this.

I find almost all the suggestions in this thread objectionable.

I could live with changing the 2-day timer to a 3-day timer which would elegantly solve the "weekend problem".

I don't like turning the autoboot into a perpetual no-timer autoskip; that would just lead to super neutral bashing situations where everybody races to eliminate the player that can't fight back. Talk about upsetting the balance of a game.

I will strenuously object to any "solution" that involves the remaining players coming back to a game between their turns to manually vote on or discuss anything.

I fail to see the point of replacing the autoboot with a one-player manual boot.

Amidon's #3 sounds interesting but from experience in Yahoo games I can say it will lead to all kinds of unintended and undesirable consequences. Throwing a game back to "open" with the booted player's position available to play without ranking impact is just begging to be griefed - this will automatically appeal to the sociopathic element who only want to sow chaos in other peoples' games.

So let's see.. a universal expansion of the boot time (not just a day of rest). How much slower than than the current WG crawl are we gunning for here? I'm going to conjecture that you can't solve a complex problem with a simplistic solution.

There's a contingent that cringes every time a pull down menu is added to a menu. Many prefer that boots are not unreasonably punitive to the bootee, and also that the result of a boot doesn't unduly affect the play of an ongoing game. I would like to play against opponents who move roughly at the speed I do because I think there would be less boots, and I would also like less taxes and world peace.

Tom, we're counting on you to get this right!

By the way, I am a more active player on weekends, not weekdays. So this day of rest thing runs counter to my preferences..

Am I missing something?

2days - 12hrs
2days - 16hrs
3days - 2hrs
3days - 2hrs
3days - 3hrs

That's five (5) games with 2day limits....I don't get it!

Fugee, Dud's on vacation til tomorrow, so that explains the games in which you are waiting on his turn. However, there does seem to be a problem with:

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/15710
http://www.wargear.net/games/view/15136
http://www.wargear.net/games/view/15639

I note that in the 3rd game there, the offending player has offered a surrender. Tom, is it possible there's a loophole in the timer to do with offering surrender? I'm not in the other games in question so I can't see if that's a common thread.

Thanks for the reply.