BTW Amidon, I see you have quite a list of games and seem to manage them well. More the exception than the rule I'd say. Hopefully, you're not offended by the subject matter.

No worries.  I tried staying down around 20 but recently succumbed to my addiction.

I've thought about asking Tom to allow premium players to set a personal limit on live games.  I just can't trust myself to stay reasonable.

And there have been a few I can think of that manage 100ish number of games.  Tesctassa II was a great player and comes to mind.  There's also those that prove your point.  Genesis is my poster boy for that.

A cap would make sense IMO. The cap would go down when you get skipped/booted, or up if you don't (like Berickf said, RT games would not count).

Today, a player can join hunderds of game, spoiling them all by never coming back.

Dug this old one

: http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1282/275_boots_and_he_will_only_play_games_he_might_win

No offense to OP (Thingol) because I believe he has many great ideas that he's posted before, but this idea is ludicrous and needs to be thrown out.

I think we can all agree that if someone takes 2.75 of their 3 days limit in a game, they're not breaking the rules.
So why is this behavior warranting a new rule? 

Thingol - I certainly understand your frustration.
I've been on the receiving end of an opponent who plays like that, and it can piss me off too.
And I understand why you might have discounted what might have felt like a snide answer from CandyCane.....
But that suggestion is the best one that's happened so far.

If you don't like someone taking 2.75 days to take a turn, then play a game that doesn't have a 3 day turn limit.
Then, when you find someone who is taking 2.5 days to play a 1-day turn limit game, revel in the vindication of watching their player color turn to grey as they are booted (as I do when I play against people like that)!!   

Or, another way to look at it:
The action that is bothering you is that they are not keeping up with their games.
Limiting the number of games they are playing only fixes the problem if you know for a fact that the reason they are slow to play is because they are active in too many games.
It's just as likely that they don't care as much about WarGear as you/I do, and will still play only once every 2.889265 days, even with the now limited [fill in your own number] games.
Which is incredibly frustrating, but also well within their rights.

So limiting their total number of games will only hurt the ones who appreciate playing 125 games at a time, while not fixing the thing that is pissing you off.

As an extension, if Tom ends up deciding that he likes the idea of a cap, I would propose a tiered cap that is tied to length of membership on the site.
If the problem we're trying to stop is player X from signing up on day 1, joining 150 games on day 2, and then never coming back to the site, then a cap might be warranted for the first 30 or 60 days, just to keep the malicious joiner from screwing with the protocol.

But if someone who has been here for 6 months and playing actively wants to bump up their total games to 150, that cap has aged out, because they've proven themselves to be non-malicious.

Just my $.02

It's been my personal experience that my number of games kinda made 2 distinct bell curves, and has since leveled out.  I started with a few, ended up at one point with 100's, went to a few again, went back up to hundreds, and now have sorta reached a manageable medium.  And these number have depended on both my interest in playing games, and the amount of RL I have had to/want to deal with.  (I've only had 7 boots - mostly related to not knowing how to end my vacation the first time)

But I really like that it can be that way. Lots of games when I want them. Not alot when I don't.  Not a big fan of being limited, even if I have to wait for bummer players to be a bummer. That's all part of the game. 

And I think Ratsy is right as well.  I too have had fluctuations in my level of play until I found my comfort region.  I had to find it on my own to know what it was.  An imposed cap or restriction would always feel just like a restriction, especially to a new player.

Boris, with all due respect, you're missing the points. There were more than just the personal frustration aspect, which you seem to be focused on. I happen to think the mental health is the biggest factor. Do you have any concern for the well-being of fellow players or is it "F'em, if they wanna play games all day and night for days on end and ruin their lives, more power to'em"?

Toto wrote:

A cap would make sense IMO. The cap would go down when you get skipped/booted, or up if you don't (like Berickf said, RT games would not count).

Today, a player can join hunderds of game, spoiling them all by never coming back.

Dug this old one

: http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1282/275_boots_and_he_will_only_play_games_he_might_win

I like this idea. If one has a low boot-rate, then let them play 100+ games. But if they have a high boot-rate, then limit the number of games until the rate has dropped for a certain period (i.e. 2 months or something).

It's kind of like how the car insurance works in Holland. If you claim you loose your no-claim bonus, which you will need to build up again. If you don't claim (= get booted), you are given a higher bonus (=allowed to play more games)

+1 for the car insurance model.  The member gets the benefit of the doubt and starts with unlimited games, but as they get booted caps kick in.  Good behavior lifts caps.

Sample formula.. (150- 5n)  where n = # of boots in the previous 3 months

5 boots, cap = 125 games

10, 100 

15, 75

Caps stop at 25 games..  This would necessarily be a premium player.

Assuming a player can manage 100+ games by playing them at the edge of the turn limit, I don't think this will fix the original poster's concern, so maybe we're just hijacking the thread here.

Thingol wrote: Boris, with all due respect, you're missing the points. There were more than just the personal frustration aspect, which you seem to be focused on. I happen to think the mental health is the biggest factor. Do you have any concern for the well-being of fellow players or is it "F'em, if they wanna play games all day and night for days on end and ruin their lives, more power to'em"?

(Sidebar - I appreciate the mutual respect we have in the discussion, thank you for not taking my responses as a personal attack.  Let's keep this spirited argument alive!!  )

I have three responses to your above position:

1) I will admit to focusing on the personal frustration argument.
My reason for doing so is because I feel that it's your best argument for the enacting of a game cap.
However, I do not feel that it is not a sufficient argument to justify the change, hence my position that the cap should not be enacted.

I also did read your previous argument with regards to looking out for the personal safety/health of other players on the site.
And I chose to move past it because I feel that it's even further off base from the argument of personal frustration.
It requires an even larger (and more unsubstantiated) logical leap than the argument that putting a cap on the games will make a player play faster (the basis of personal frustration argument).

2) I'd wager that you have no knowledge of that player IRL, nor of his mental/emotional/health state.
So what evidence do you have that the quantity of games that any player is playing is affecting that player's personal life/health/social life? 

Sure, it is possible that it could be ruining his life.
And the moment that that player reaches out in the forums or via PM to another player with the claims that their inability to keep up with the games is making them feel the need to harm himself/herself, then that would be justification for an intervention on that player.
And I would gladly offer support and try to talk that player out of any self harm, and would do what I can to validate that player's worth to the group.

But no rule that you're going to enact (game cap, or otherwise) is going to fix that problem.
Someone who measures their self-worth on whether they can keep up with the number of games they have going on a website has many more problems to deal with than a game cap.
so arguing for the player cap based on that potential

Let's just take an opposing view:
What if this is a man who has lost his wife due to divorce, and lost his job due to downsizing.
And now he spends 8 hours per day hunting and applying for jobs, with no luck.
And his only respite to keep his sanity is to log into this website and play his 40 turns over an hour.
And that keeps him from either a) stepping off the ledge of sanity or b) drinking himself into a stupor.

This latter example is probably just as likely as the former (maybe more so, given the statistics on marriage and the state of the economy these days).
And for this guy, I'd want him to have the ability to have as many games running as he needs to help keep his sanity.

3) Based on my RL load (long hours at work, just moved to a new house that I am preparing to remodel, and my first child due in a few months, etc), I can only handle 4-5 games these days.
At my best, I was up to maybe 17 or 18 games, and I quickly felt overwhelmed, and I can't understand how anyone can keep up with more games than that.
So the same argument that you will make to the group about why 100 games for Player X is too many, I could make to the group about why 13 games for you is too many.

Neither you nor I have enough information about about the RL of the other player (Player X for you, or you for me) to be able to make that value judgement on the other player's behalf.

Listen Linda!

At some point, this just goes to common sense. Either the player is managing the large list of games or they aren't. If they are, they're taking large chunks of time from their personal life to do it. If they aren't, than they shouldn't be in so many games IMO. Not rocket science here...and I also don't think you're gonna see any bitching and screaming if a player can't join their 71st game or 81st game or whatever.

Now, as far as the particular player is concerned, I did a little digging and I found the he/she had another, similar playerid and received a ton of boots before creating the current id.

100 games. Talk about getting your money's worth.

Thingol wrote: Listen Linda!

Is that a reference to something? I don't get it.

I never heard of it before, but google turns up this:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/maycie/this-3-year-olds-argument-for-why-he-needs-a-cupcake-for-din

I'll be honest here. 

I still fail to understand the problem presented here.

People are taking less than their allotted time to take their turns.  And that is a problem?

People who are not taking their turns in the time allotted are being skipped and booted.  Isn't that the way it's supposed to work?

If they accumulate boots, they have fewer people willing to play against them, hence also accumulating enemies and fewer games they may join.  Yet the games that they do join they loose and forfeit their points in the game.  Again, isn't that the way it works?

How is any of this a problem?

If the problem is that your games are not moving as quickly as you wish, make/ join games with shorter turn timers.  If you do not have as many turns available as often as you would wish, create/ join more games.

It really just seems to me that we are trying to find a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.  I think if it's not broken, leave it alone.

Lol, yes, that link by Ozy was where my comment came from.

Snake Eyes wrote:

I'll be honest here. 

I still fail to understand the problem presented here.

People are taking less than their allotted time to take their turns.  And that is a problem?

People who are not taking their turns in the time allotted are being skipped and booted.  Isn't that the way it's supposed to work?

If they accumulate boots, they have fewer people willing to play against them, hence also accumulating enemies and fewer games they may join.  Yet the games that they do join they loose and forfeit their points in the game.  Again, isn't that the way it works?

How is any of this a problem?

If the problem is that your games are not moving as quickly as you wish, make/ join games with shorter turn timers.  If you do not have as many turns available as often as you would wish, create/ join more games.

 

It really just seems to me that we are trying to find a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.  I think if it's not broken, leave it alone.

In agreement with all you've said here Snake Eyes. 

In an attempt to answer your question: There is a behaviour: joining a lot of games and then not playing them, that degrades the quality of the player experience for the rest of the users on the site. If quality play experience is to be maintained for all of us (and I hope that's what were all trying to accomplish here) it's a good thing to look at how these behaviours affect players and what can be done about them. 

We do have lots of systems in place that minimize the impact of the irrisponsible player (as you outline above).  The question on the table is are they effective and should there be more or different ones? 

-- As far as does having a 100 games on the go indicating problems - I'm tapping out of that discussion. I have in the past both fit the description given by BTF (unemployed and bored) and using a site and community to maintain sanity, as well as the problem given by Thingol - spending ALOT of personal time checking games - so I have nothing to say on the issue. I like having access to these things. If I don't have it here, I'll get it somewhere else. :) -- 

... and if I caught my kid talking to my wife like that - he'd be luck to make it to his next birthday. 

...I guess he'd woulda have to have learned it from me though eh?... 

It's just a rumor at this point, but apparently the kid's father maintains a couple hundred active games on Wargear. ;)