Implement a script that tracks login activity and duration, making a note of players that have been logged in AND are active for a period of time determined by a formula*(see comments). The formula I would put forward is: "90 seconds" x "number of turns waiting to be played."
When such players as qualify then miss turns in games they are active in and could have taken their turn before the clock ran out on them, the deferred troops they receive on their next turn are reduced by 33% (1 in 3 of the deferred troops they'll claim when they do take their turn is deducted).
Speed games are exempt, this suggestion is targeted at Casual games only as this is where the majority of players are affected and resentment of purposeful turn missing is greatest.
Specifics:
The deferred troops afforded for missing turns is fair to those players with infrequent internet access, as they shouldn't be penalised by the game for not being online 24/7 and genuinely miss a turn because they don't have access/time to take their turn in the games they're still active in.
The problem is the abuse of this feature by players who are online but choose not to play their turn just to get troops for deployment AFTER their assaults have ended. This feature is supposed to help out players that can't access their account in due time to play when they are expected to, not for cheap players to 'play dead'. Then attack recklessly when they do take a turn, knowing full well that they can reinforce whatever position they've managed to achieve.
This will improve the following aspects of the site:
There will be a serious deterrent against unnecessarily dragging out a game and making other players wait for no good reason. Games will not drag on unnecessarily because chronic turn missing players that employ this cheap tactic will be losing one third of their deferred troop deployment. Rendering a tactic that was an unintended side effect not particularly profitable to use.
Will keep games honest without penalising genuine non-attendance due to lack of access/time to sign in and take turns.
Because Speed games will be exempt under this suggestion, players with slow/poor connections will not be unjustly docked troops just because their internet falls over on them.
Comments: I don't have a problem with the deferred troops feature, that's not the issue here, it's the abuse of this feature that's the issue. I've lost count of the number of games where I've seen it used, it's thoroughly dishonest gameplay that is not in keeping with the spirit of the game. Also it antagonises the honourable majority who take their turns in a timely fashion and utilise superior strategy and planning to win their game, not cheap tactics.
Artimis wrote:For those who think 5 minutes is not long enough:
Conquer Club's Home Page wrote:Designed for the casual gamer, playing Conquer Club is not a time consuming process. You can take your turn in 5 minutes
Clearly anyone who takes longer and fails to take their due turn when it's their go is doing so on purpose, if they're involved in more games than they can play in 5 minutes then it can be taken as read that they have sufficient access/time to play all their available turns, at a later time if necessary.
NOTE: A question mark has been justifiably raised over this. So instead of a fixed cut off point, maybe a formula can be used that will take into account the number of games a player has running concurrently. So as not to unfairly catch out players who brought premium. A Freemium account would only ever have a maximum of 4 turns to take at any one time and would only ever have a maximum trigger time of 360 seconds(6 minutes). Plenty of time to consider your moves in each game. Thus players who brought Premium and have many more games running concurrently will not be unjustly tagged by the script as active but unwilling to take their turn.
If you see someone is missing turns and you do not want them to get their deferred armies, then attack them. They will lose out on some of the armies that they should have received. Here is an example: A has 15 regions and one zone worth three troops, this is worth 5+3=8 deployment.
SITUATION 1 A takes three turns, but does not attack and no one attacks A. A increases his/her troop count by 24.
SITUATION 2 A misses two turns, but no one attacks, then A deploys 8 troops, takes the turn but does not attack, then deploys another 16 troops. A increases his/her troop count by 24.
SITUATION 3 A misses two turns, then B attacks and conquers one region from the zone that A controls, now A is down to 14 regions and has no zone. A takes his/her next turn, deploys 4 troops, does not take action, then deploys the other 8 troops. A increases his/her troop count by 12.
By taking one region (even after A has missed two turns), B has cut the deployment of A in half. There is no advantage to missing turns because others in the game can cripple you. Personally, since I have premium, I do not mind if someone is trying to miss two turns to get some kind of strange perceived advantage, because it does not exist. Why punish these people more than using their poor strategy against them?
Artimis wrote:For those who think 5 minutes is not long enough:
Conquer Club's Home Page wrote:Designed for the casual gamer, playing Conquer Club is not a time consuming process. You can take your turn in 5 minutes
Clearly anyone who takes longer and fails to take their due turn when it's their go is doing so on purpose, if they're involved in more games than they can play in 5 minutes then it can be taken as read that they have sufficient access/time to play all their available turns, at a later time if necessary.
I disagree entirely. I currently am playing in 56 active games. Many times, I will start playing with 15 or 20 games ready for me and halfway through my ready games, something will come up and I'll have to log out. That would put me at not only 5 minutes that I'd be logged in, but also registering that I've been logged in quite some time ago (for the second half of the games) and didn't move.
Auto kicking is a little harsh. If a player has multiple games going, it could cause a real problem for someone who doesn't deserve it. I think the armies awarded for missed turns should be placed by the computer ON RANDOM TERRITORIES. This would eliminate the use of this concession as a strategy. You're not always in a position to attack this deadbeat to remove the advantage of reinforcement after the fact.
king54 wrote:Auto kicking is a little harsh. If a player has multiple games going, it could cause a real problem for someone who doesn't deserve it. I think the armies awarded for missed turns should be placed by the computer ON RANDOM TERRITORIES. This would eliminate the use of this concession as a strategy. You're not always in a position to attack this deadbeat to remove the advantage of reinforcement after the fact.
I absolutely agree with this suggestion alteration. Sadly, this has been suggested (and shot down for no real reason) already.
They are still a nuisance, I give them the ratings they deserve, but that will not stop them from do it again, and again, and again. This way at least they'd have direct and painful consequence of unnecessarily drawing out a game when there is just no advantage to it, other than trying to dupe the other players into believing that you'll drop and watch to see if they'll lower their guard against you.
In order to be abusing the feature the players would have to get an advantage for missing their turn. You have yet to state what advantage they would get. Can you come up with some way this would give them an advantage?
spiesr wrote:Can you come up with some way this would give them an advantage?
Simple, they are deploying AFTER their assaults have ended. The normal Turn order runs as follows:
Deploy Assault Reinforce
The deferred troops don't get deployed until after the player has ended his/her assaults. So they can attack recklessly to a key objective and fortify it with their deferred troops. This is particularly irritating in an Adjacent Reinforcements game, where the the game settings are supposed to restrict how you reinforce, forcing the player to think ahead, by deliberately missing turns to gain deferred troops they are side stepping this limitation.
spiesr wrote:Can you come up with some way this would give them an advantage?
Simple, they are deploying AFTER their assaults have ended. The normal Turn order runs as follows: Deploy Assault Reinforce The deferred troops don't get deployed until after the player has ended his/her assaults. So they can attack recklessly to a key objective and fortify it with their deferred troops. This is particularly irritating in an Adjacent Reinforcements game, where the the game settings are supposed to restrict how you reinforce, forcing the player to think ahead, by deliberately missing turns to gain deferred troops they are side stepping this limitation.
But they're really NOT side-stepping the limitation. You're looking only at what happens AFTER the turn when the reality is that they could just have placed those armies where they wanted them (in their previous "missed turn") and not attacked and it would end up exactly the same way.
Re: Eat At Joe's [Yummy]
Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 3:29 am
by owenshooter
bad idea... at times i will have upwards of 50 games going at a time, and generally around 20 on average. in the amount of time it takes me to log in, wade through PM's that are game related, clan related, personal, etc, i can already be at 10 minutes on CC. that is before i even go to my clan's forum to see what is going on and who has something to say that may need immediate attention. that is another 10-15 minutes. then i'll check my games and see if any need immediate attention, and see what is going on. if none of them need immediate attention i'll browse the forum for a quick 10 or so minutes, and then log off and get back to real life. essentially, i save the turns for later when i have more time and am in the mind set to kick some serious ass. so, under your rule, i could be penalized for utilizing the social aspects of the site at one log in, instead of using the gaming aspects of the site. not a good idea at all.
if you see someone miss a turn, you attack them to limit their armies and to take away bonuses, period. if someone misses, you punish them, period. simple enough solution, and the one that is easiest to implement. sometimes you don't need something scripted to solve a problem. afterall, it's a game of war. kill the guy that missed his turn, simple enough... the black jesus has spoken...-0
Artimis wrote:The deferred troops don't get deployed until after the player has ended his/her assaults. So they can attack recklessly to a key objective and fortify it with their deferred troops. This is particularly irritating in an Adjacent Reinforcements game, where the the game settings are supposed to restrict how you reinforce, forcing the player to think ahead, by deliberately missing turns to gain deferred troops they are side stepping this limitation.
artimis, you should have been around here when turn missers got their armies at the START of their next turn. THAT was a real kick in the ass to those of us that didn't miss turns. it was also why/how i learned very quickly to attack turn missers!!-0
owenshooter wrote:artimis, you should have been around here when turn missers got their armies at the START of their next turn. THAT was a real kick in the ass to those of us that didn't miss turns. it was also why/how i learned very quickly to attack turn missers!!-0
I'm glad they changed that! So maybe an auto kick is a little too harsh, how about reduction in deferred troops by 33%? A player logs in and they decide for whatever strange reason that it's in their best interests to miss a turn. Then when they go to claim their deferred troops they have 1 out of every 3 troops they could have claimed last round deducted.
Genuine non-attendance is unaffected as they will not have triggered the script.
Artimis wrote:I'm glad they changed that! So maybe an auto kick is a little too harsh, how about reduction in deferred troops by 33%? A player logs in and they decide for whatever strange reason that it's in their best interests to miss a turn. Then when they go to claim their deferred troops they have 1 out of every 3 troops they could have claimed last round deducted. Genuine non-attendance is unaffected as they will not have triggered the script.
see... that is something i could get on board with... great idea... the black jesus has spoken...-0
Or just leave it the way it is, because it's a fine set up. It's not an advantage to miss turns. Making it more of a disadvantage by eating up some deferred armies is ridiculous, because it punishes people who miss turns when they couldn't actually make it on time.
If you can't beat someone who isn't playing, then you're not a very good player.
BaldAdonis wrote:Or just leave it the way it is, because it's a fine set up. It's not an advantage to miss turns. Making it more of a disadvantage by eating up some deferred armies is ridiculous, because it punishes people who miss turns when they couldn't actually make it on time.
If you can't beat someone who isn't playing, then you're not a very good player.
well, i think he is talking about chronic missers... i'm in a game with a player that has about an 80% rate for taking turns. that is a guaranteed missed turn. i wouldn't mind if he misses 2 turns in a row, when he returns, he gets 33% less armies... one turn, i'd have to agree with the current system, as i'll just eat up the person missing. but returning after 2 turns, i can understand wanting to limit what they can receive for whatever armies they have left... it is interesting... the black jesus has spoken and semi flip flopped...-0
I concede the point that 5 minutes is not long enough and using a fixed cut off point like that would invariably catch out players that brought premium, like myself for instance.
For whatever strange reason some players still think it's a good idea despite it's obvious flaws. Thus they still draw out and delay games that they're in somewhat degrading the experience for other players, a troop penalty on their deferred troops would give them a deterrent against doing this.
spiesr wrote:Can you come up with some way this would give them an advantage?
How about in an escalating game where a player has 5 cards and is due to trade in before several others with 5 after him. He's comfortable enough that he thinks he won't be eliminated in the meantime, so he misses his turn to guarantee he gets a much larger card bonus the next time around. The advantage would be amplified if this happens right around the transition from +2 bonus increases to +5 and there are enough players.
Aurens wrote:The advantage would be amplified if this happens right around the transition from +2 bonus increases to +5 and there are enough players.
That's something I hadn't thought of, that's very nasty. Clearly deliberate turn missing can pose a more detrimental threat to the gaming experience of everyone than I thought. This is not just about causing undue delay any more, such a tactic in escalating games is about as cheap and nasty as you can get.
Aurens wrote:The advantage would be amplified if this happens right around the transition from +2 bonus increases to +5 and there are enough players.
That's something I hadn't thought of, that's very nasty. Clearly deliberate turn missing can pose a more detrimental threat to the gaming experience of everyone than I thought. This is not just about causing undue delay any more, such a tactic in escalating games is about as cheap and nasty as you can get.
You've stumbled upon one of the two primary reasons why I play only no-spoils games.
(The other being that it requires actual...you know...skill to win them. <evil grin>)
You do realise that sometimes I log in just to check tournaments/send games when I don't want to play one. So this would instantly make me a turn misser
max is gr8 wrote:You do realise that sometimes I log in just to check tournaments/send games when I don't want to play one. So this would instantly make me a turn misser
That's why I modified it with a formula to tailor the amount of time that could pass before it flagged a player as deliberately not taking their turn. It's not missed turns that need addressing, it's the deliberate missing of turns to play dead or avoid being forced to cash when you have 5 spoils in addition to unduly delaying a game and making other players wait without any legitimate reason.
Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:46 am