Casual games - no SP after 3 turn timeout? incentive not to timeout?

Hi,

Am I the only one being annoyed by players timing out during 48 hour games?

I know 48h games are meant to be slow. But when everybody is into the game and playing fast, it's annoying when one player that decided to abandon is timing out for 3 turns (that's 6 days!) before being kicked.
I don't know why players do it. (Carelessness? Or do they earn the SP when their remaining units kill other player units??).
But I would like to see some suggestions to prevent that. Here are a couple:

- Remove the earned SP when timing out. [I doubt this is enough to have players surrender.]
- Give players a "surrender bonus" is probably not a good idea, since just logging into a game and surrendering would give SP. So ... what about giving a % of the SP earned so far? A "surrender rate bonus". If a member has played 5 turns, and earned 400 SP, instead of timing out for 3 turns and earn 30 extra SP by destroying other units, why not give 10% SP bonus upon surrendering, immediately earning the player 40SP?
- Punitive action of some sort after too many 3-turn timeouts? I personnaly don't favor punitive options...

I know the above options are not great. But I was wondering if any of you would have a great one...

Thanks

- Maybe removing the earned SP could be a good idea but a bit rough to certain people with low rank and quite careless for high ranks.
- A surrender bonus doesn't seem the best idea since one already takes the 50% of the SP earned during game. Giving away even more SP wouldn't be fair compared to the winner in my opinion. One does get a bit SP if he's attacked while being inactive, but it's a really little amount of SP.
- And about punitive measures... idk... if I knew they were doing it on purpose, it could be an option but as we don't know the reason behind those timeouts, we can't really judge them...

I don't really have any real solution for this since it's totally dependant on the person and his willingness or possibility of playing. But I do agree that it's an annoying matter.

Napisano od RaulPB, 16.04.2015 at 06:02

- Maybe removing the earned SP could be a good idea but a bit rough to certain people with low rank and quite careless for high ranks.
- A surrender bonus doesn't seem the best idea since one already takes the 50% of the SP earned during game. Giving away even more SP wouldn't be fair compared to the winner in my opinion. One does get a bit SP if he's attacked while being inactive, but it's a really little amount of SP.
- And about punitive measures... idk... if I knew they were doing it on purpose, it could be an option but as we don't know the reason behind those timeouts, we can't really judge them...

I don't really have any real solution for this since it's totally dependant on the person and his willingness or possibility of playing. But I do agree that it's an annoying matter.

Thank you for your reply.
In your first solution, you mean "removing the earned SP" ONLY WHEN YOU TIMEOUT 3 TURNS IN A ROW, right? I think I like that. I am not certain to see how that would be rough on low ranks; they just need to surrender when they feel they lost. Just an extra click. Maybe not even an extra click since their "about to timeout games" will be gone from the rooms, potentially saving them some clicks when browsing for active games!!
I don't know if this can be seen as a "punitive measure". Cause I agree with you: "we can't really judge them". But I don't think that this measure is that rough. What can be seen as rough is the CHANGE in the rules, not the rule itself. If it had been that way since the beginning, I think everybody would know that you surrender, or you don't make SPs.
My (temporary) conclusion would be: we have to choose between allowing players to be careless, or improving the gameplay. I vote for improving the gameplay.

Good day to all,
I almost started my own thread but I took a moment and searched and found this one. I feel this topic needs some more discussion, so I am going to revive it. A little backstory, over the last week I have had up to 5 casual games going at once. In my first two games, I had a player join both of them. At first he played, and then he just quit, he timed out in both of them. And yeah, you meet a player like that, you tag him as an enemy and/or ban him. No big deal right? But, and here's the real issue, it's not just one player. Over the last week, over 5 different games, I have seen at least 2 players per game who just quits playing. Why? If you don't want to play then don't join the game. Or if you do, and you want out, then be polite to your fellow players and just simply abandon or surrender the game. Why do so many players feel it's ok to timeout in a game? I feel there should be some automatic repercussions for timing out in a game. I like the idea above of losing any earned SP if you time out, but I think that on top of that the player should be docked an additional 50 SP for every time out. This would put an absolute stop to people joining games and then just quitting by timing out. And yes, I understand real life happens, I'm not judging anyone for having to drop a game to handle real issues. I feel if you don't have time to play the game to the fullest, then don't bother to log in. But I am judging the rude players who do not have respect enough for their fellow players to give them the courtesy of a mouse click and simply abandon or surrender the game willingly.

Exactly. Thank you. If ever you (or anyone else reading this post) think it could be useful, I started a poll on the matter (http://atwar-game.com/forum/topic.php?topic_id=19576) called "No SPs when timing out"...

I can't figure out how this works. in one game, one player went inactive for five turns without timing out, another player timed out the first inactive turn. how does this work?

It does seem a bit wonky at times. I know after 3 straight, the host has the option of just kicking them.... which if they always auto timed out after 3, wouldn't be a thing that could come up, so something's definitely weird about the timeout system.

As for the idea itself... maybe tone it down a bit? If you lose/surrender, you get half your earned SP right? This includes timeouts. Let's not go so far to say they get 0 as if they flat-out left the game, but rather maybe a compromise like they get 25% of earned SP instead. This would be just in case there were some circumstances where they maybe had no control over the timeout. Maybe it was a 12-hour game and they had a power outage that lasted longer than 36 hours hypothetically? Who knows? But I do believe most people who timeout just stop checking the game for whatever reason.

Unless something odd is happening, players timeout after 5 turns, and host can kick after 3.
I know sometimes players timeout after 3, but when things are working 'normally' it should be 5.

Napisano od brianwl, 11.08.2017 at 07:50

Unless something odd is happening, players timeout after 5 turns, and host can kick after 3.
I know sometimes players timeout after 3, but when things are working 'normally' it should be 5.

I've timed out after only 1 turn before, happened most recently 4 or 5 days ago. I can't remember a time I've timed out after more than 1 turn, maybe my memory's just bad + I haven't played many casual games.

Napisano od yesssssss, 11.08.2017 at 16:26

Napisano od brianwl, 11.08.2017 at 07:50

Unless something odd is happening, players timeout after 5 turns, and host can kick after 3.
I know sometimes players timeout after 3, but when things are working 'normally' it should be 5.

I've timed out after only 1 turn before, happened most recently 4 or 5 days ago. I can't remember a time I've timed out after more than 1 turn, maybe my memory's just bad + I haven't played many casual games.

havent played in a casual for awhile.. maybe i'll join a game and see if that's a new 'normal'

Back to the original topic...

The point of this thread is to avoid situations like this:


The guy has 0 countries left.
The guy did not even bother to end his turn for the last 2 turns (that is, for the last 100 hours), and I am not even talking about surrendering.
These situations happen in AT LEAST 90% of casual games. And not only at the end of the game.

This is annoying, and a lack of respect, in my opinion. Don't talk to me about "real life obligations" that prevented the guy from playing. This is NOT what is happening.
I say it again: no SPs after 3 turn timeouts!

I am just bumping my own thread to add a visual argument to the topic.
But anyways, I guess there are other priorities - i'm just venting a little