slow play

Previous topic - Next topic

Moyen

Started playing online yesterday. Currently getting slow played to the maximum in a ranked game by "Diaw". Can I safely resign the game without having to worry about the ranking because he will get banned or do I have to put up with it?

Moyen

resigned in the end hope there will be some form of punishment

Ingix

If/when that player gets banned, the ratings loss for you will be gone. Try to enjoy the game as much as possible and if you didn't do it, blacklist that player, so you are not paired with them again.

You can do this at the end-of-game screen by clicking the "ligthning bolt" symbol. After that time, you can add a player to your blacklist by going to the "Friend List" tab, press the "Blacklist" button, enter the name into the field at the bottom of the screen, then press the "Add" button.

I hope that your future experiences are better!

Moyen

another one: https://imgur.com/a/TyjQ7dE
again just leave blacklist and hope for ban right?

Ingix

Yes, that's right. Sorry that you had to play against two slowplayers in such a short time frame.  :(

TomAtrus

Same thing for me. Diaw is a slow playing master. Here's what I don't understand. Can't an administrator go in and manually remove this player? You have a complaint from Moyen from two days ago and you haven't removed them yet. Can you explain to me why, when someone has taken the time to bring it up, the admin doesn't do something about it right away? The fact that Diaw is still around doesn't give your users confidence that a slow player will actually be banned.

I do admit that this is a very infrequent occurrence, but I do believe it should be addressed with a little more seriousness from admin.

Ingix

Quote from: TomAtrus on 03 April 2019, 03:32:14 PM
Can you explain to me why, when someone has taken the time to bring it up, the admin doesn't do something about it right away?

Diaw is AFAIK a free account, that means the player behind it didn't pay anything. If that account is banned, the player will just make a new one, and loose very little. It's not like this is theory, it has been observed for other slowplayers (who then used similar names).

So basically banning an account is easy, banning a player is hard!

AFAIK, the game developer does not want to ban players based on IP address or similar things, as that may affect innocent bystanders. OTOH, once players have blacklisted Diaw, that account will not be a problem for them again. If the reports here are an indication (which, I admit, they might not be), there are a small but active number of slowplayers >:( So once they are blacklisted by a player, that problem is gone for them. The moment that account gets banned, that blacklist entry becomes useless.

TomAtrus

I really appreciate the response. Thank you for the explanation.

ElisabetK

I guess the thinking is that if the developer bans an account and the slow player just creates another one, he might get paired with one of the players who already reported him. So a hassle for them.

But that's got to be balanced with the probability that the slow player is just going to keep doing it, only now with players that are new or not in the loop, so they don't realize they won't be penalized by resigning (eventually).

It would be helpful to have a clear option to BOTH ban and report. Maybe, have an option - would you like to report this player? - when you hit the ban button. As it is, it looks like slow playing, abusive language, and so on is simply tolerated by the developer and the community, and that is a big turnoff. Just my two cents. I've never had to deal with this, maybe because I almost always play bots.

gitsticker8

The obvious underlying problem is that there are no gameplay systems in place to discourage slow play.  4 minutes per card with seemingly limitless cards?  That amount of time is unnecessary and a glaring flaw in game design.  To make things worse, deciding to slow play is essentially auto-win as most players are reasonable people and will concede rather than try to wait it out.  So now you have highly incentivized slow play on top of doing next to nothing about it.  You've effectively given "Diaw" a bazooka and told him to run wild with it.

We complain about slow players but in reality we are lucky that the Dominion community is extremely tame with regards to abusing the rules.  If this community was like LoL's, you would run into slow players regularly.  I think the reason is that this game is niche and doesn't attract the mainstream gamer.  That being said, it's still not an excuse for lazy game design which requires zero effort to abuse and ruin the experience for others.

My suggestion is to tune down the time allowed by a LOT.  Like, give a player 2 minutes for a COMPLETE turn and add 5 seconds per action played.  Once the time is up, the other player gets the option to boot them.  Nobody needs the amount of time that is currently allowed.

Ingix

Good suggestion. The problem is that there are certain times in the game (like the beginning, when you form your original strategy) and late to very late in the game, where it could end 'any turn', that players may actually need to think about what they do, like how to effectively use their deck to draw newly gained cards, etc. In this case, 2 min is not enough time.

But in essence I agree, but the discussions how to best do this without compromising times when you need to think carefully were long and didn't end in any kind of consensus.

markus

Let's be clear: you're not allowed to take 4 minutes on purpose just to hold up your opponent and people get banned for that.

I would also like to see a timer that one could also use to play blitz games. But if you implement something like the suggested 2 mins + increment, this will be the time that IS allowed. If your opponent is a sore loser, they will run down that time, even if they could end their turn faster. So your average opponent might actually take longer with a timer than in the current situation where you just occasionally run into someone who tries to abuse the system.

jeebus

2 minutes is definitely too short on certain turns. To be clear: It's much more than enough on the vast majority of turns. But it's too short on certain turns that happen often enough.

What's needed is logging how much time a player uses per click. Usually you very rarely need to take a long time between each click. What you sometimes need is to take a break once in your turn (usually after drawing), and then decide what to do the rest of the turn. A player taking close to max time for each click should not be very hard to detect, and if performed several times, should give the other player the option for force resign them.

santamonica811

Can someone give me a few examples of situations where it takes more than 2 minutes to make a decision?  I am not saying they do not exist...I'm only saying that I can't think of them.  (Of course, I am excluding the very beginning of games when players may take a few minutes to look at unfamiliar cards, ask their opponent a question in chat about a new card with confusing text, etc.  Taking several minutes makes total sense in those cases, but do not take place once the game starts moving along.)

I am trying to think back about games that I have played.  Near the end, there are sometimes complicated situations where I need to stop and think.  But that seems, to me, to take about 30 seconds at most.  So, doubling that to 60 seconds has been way more than sufficient for my own game situations. 

Of course, it's possible that my personal game approach--which is to have fun, and not to be super-competitive--takes less time than a really serious player needs.  I'm not sure about this.  I guess one way to check this is to look at games from the most recent tournament, to see how long the top players took in complicated situations.  (Assuming there is a built-in game clock in the log.)

If I were designing the game from the ground up, knowing in advance about these slow-playing scumbags, I think I'd develop something like:
1.  Before each person's first move, you have 2 or 3 minutes, which is enough time to look at any unfamiliar cards.
2.  From then on, you have 30 seconds to move.  Each time you move more quickly, you get to 'bank' 10 seconds from the time you did not spend.  So, within a few turns, almost everyone would have a reserve of 30-60 seconds, which could be added to the 30 seconds you already have.
3  This reserve would be capped.  Maybe at 3 minutes?  Maybe at 5 minutes??  Not sure.  That would be to avoid someone about to lose in a long game saying, "I have banked 10 minutes, I'm gonna use them all now, just to be a jerk."
4.  Not sure what to do in cases of requests for an Undo.  Probably just some set "penalty" to avoid situations where you ask me for an Undo, and I wait a super-long time to agree, just to unfairly exhaust your already-banked time.  Maybe lose 30 seconds from the bank for each Undo request that is granted?  Maybe lose half the time in your bank for each request that is granted?

jeebus

Quote from: josh bornstein on 19 April 2019, 10:43:32 PM
Can someone give me a few examples of situations where it takes more than 2 minutes to make a decision?

But you already asked that before, and I gave you an answer: http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=3034.msg13453#msg13453