We could try asking nicely...

thats a start

Usually I only ask nicely if all other avenues have been exhausted.

Im with Ruthless! and if he isnt doing it to you then why bitch unless you are just as concerned as he is in scores!

Who is saying they don't care about ratings? Not me. I care about their integrity and accuracy. Lets not forget that this affects other people's ratings as well. People that have lost to Doushibag are not losing as much rating as they should be, because his rating is artificially inflated to some degree. Likewise, when he does take his first loss, the opponent will gain more than they should.

I am soooo going down on the ladder now -- Teddy and SHogun have me on the ropes in both their games. Losing those two should drop me back to around 1900. Oh well. I didn't do anythign to climb from 5th to 2nd accept not finish a game for a few days.

wouldnt leaving the ladder to get better affect the accuracy? Im not happy with my score at all but i think its fair and the more games i play the more it confirms this.All Im saying is if it doesnt directly affect you why complain? And if it does then like Ruthless said why not try asking nice to start.

Doushi are you just trying to get a great high score and then leveling out and playing fair? or are you intending to continue holding out on losses? I dont really care but there it is it has been asked nicely.I only say fair because it is a valid point that if everyone did this it wouldnt be good

I'd never be able to stall games. I go nuts waiting for my opponents to make their moves as it is. Especially when I see you making like 10 different forum posts in the two days I've been waiting for you to make your move -_O

If you mean me. I make forum posts when I'm stalling about making a move. Right now I have to move in 5 games that I'm stalling on. I should just surrender them all and wipe the slate clean. Yank off the bandage as it were. Sometimes I do that and no one will accept the surrender -- those stalls are only half my fault :)

I didn't mean anyone in particular. Sorta ^_^

What Doushi is doing is perfectly legal. It's not cheating. It's entirely done by following the rules of the system in place. You can't really label it as unethical either, because again he is simply following the rules of the game he is playing. However, what it does do is highlight a flaw in the current system. One player is capable of temporarily dominating the ladder by cleverly manipulating the boot timers.

Here are some potential solutions: Change the ELO system. A 10-0 player who just exited the provisional phase is going to have a high rating, but they aren't going to be number 1. They are going to have to earn that through winning more games, because 10 wins simply isn't enough points to get to the 2100 or whatever rating the top player is going to have in that system. This limits the effectiveness of the "stall your losses" plan because the way to the top is by winning more games, not losing less. The current ELO system rewards low total number of losses, and doesn't really care how many games you win. Being undefeated means the system doesn't know where to place you, and it can only assume you're the best. Playing less games means you have less chances to lose to much lower ranked players by the natural variance present in Warlight due to the random nature of starting spots and luck.

Another solution is to change the booting system. One idea would be to use banking boot times. I don't like this idea for the reason Waya suggested. Some players move quickly during the week but take off for the weekend and this hurts them because they have to fear a weekend boot. Another would be to use something like "decaying" boot times, where if you consistently stall a game to the maximum limit you will eventually get less and less time to make each move.

|> Doushi are you just trying to get a great high score and then leveling out and playing fair? or are you intending to continue holding out on losses?

That was my original intent and primary desire, yes. I didn't and don't intend to keep doing it once I've started taking losses and will then play more normally. Although it should be noted I am a slower player on average so it's not like I'm going to suddenly get fast on every move. And like some people when the going gets tough I do like to take extra time on my turns to think them through more. So being slower isn't necessarily the same thing as stalling whereby I've intentionally delayed and waited to commit orders.

Also I agree with Impaller, losses weigh to heavily in this system. I think the rating system will change at some point. Just not sure exactly what the other options are and their respective strengths and weaknesses.

This is all a solution in search of a problem. It's not really that big a deal that Doushi gamed the system. Maybe I'll never be number 1 on the 1x1 ladder and I'll certainly never break 2125 or whatever Doushi ends up maxing out at. It's not that big a deal.

For those who had to endure the slow play -- you have 4 other games to play.

Annoying - yes. Quitting WL over - definitely not.

I wouldn't change anything about WL based on Doushi's antics.

Just checked that I topped out at 2146, still higher than Doushibag's current score of 2130. In light of that,

Shame on you for your unethical gaming practices! Can't you see the suffering your actions cause??? You are ruining peoples' lives! Have you no sense of decency??Lose a game immediately or your next reincarnation will surely be as a one-legged mule. At best ;)

I have yet to chime in on this, so here goes.

Unethical - no
Cheating - definitely not.
Annoying - only if everyone did this.

Personally I hate losing... period. I too stall when I'm behind because I want to think of the hail mary I could possibly throw or I just don't want to admit defeat. Also, admittedly, if I'm close to winning another game and am close to a personally best I may stall also (just not for multiple 3-day segments) But, conversely, I love to win so personally I don't mind if someone stalls when its clear that I've won... it brings me great joy knowing that I have a win (points) in the bag. It's almost worse when its close because I hate checking the history repeatedly. I dont mind doing so because I respect my opponents right to try and calculate their best move possible (after all, we all take more satisfaction beating someone who gave it their best) but I mainly classify myself as an intuitive player so I play slightly better in games where theres a flow to it. It makes it easier to predicted opponents moves multiple turns in advance.

As for my solution: amalgamate the boot times. The three days (or perhaps it should increase it to 5 days if implemented) should be a running total of all your ladder games. If you want to play 5 games at a time, fine, but then you better be a regular/semi-regular player. If your like Waya and like to take the weekends off then restrict yourself to only 2-3 games. I see this as a win for everybody. Slower players win because they can take slightly more time to be methodical about their moves. Faster players win because they can simply handle more games at a time and thus can just add another game if they feel as though a slower player is holding them up.

I think this solutions blocks people from adding another game if there current ones aren't going well. With an amalgamated boot timer it could simply always boot you from your longest waiting game once the amalgamated limit has been reached (once one game is booted it recalculates your total so nobody should ever be booted more than one game at a time).

I'd love banking boots in the ladder actually, that would fix some things too. 50% banking on a 1 day boot or so. You can still take 5 days for 1 move, but you can only do it once.
For some reason, banking boots are not possible for automatic boot it seems.

This is what I would suggest to address the "slow players on top" issue.

First, limit the number of games slow players can play. Keep track of an average turn speed for the ladder only. For example, if your turn speed is < 1 day, you can have the max number of games (5?). If your speed is 1-2 days, you can have 2 games max, and if your speed is > 2 days, you're limited to one game. Something along those lines. If you have 4 games open and your limit starts reducing, you simply won't be invited to new games until you drop below your limit (or your ave. speed goes up).

Second, have a shelf life on games. I have no idea how the formula for the ladder works, but I imagine each game won (or lost, for that matter) has a certain value (that changes according to how your opponents are faring). But have that value decrease over time. Say, for example, once a game is 2 months old, it's 90% of its normal value. At 6 months it's 50%, at 1 year 10%, at 2 years it's 0% - ie, it has expired. Those are just numbers I'm tossing out, but the idea is that as a top-level player's victories grow stale, he'll have to get back out there and chalk up some new wins to remain on top.

Hugo I like the start of your post but your second point would just reward this tactic. The top players playing slow is because they are generally behind or a lose is a foregone conclusion. If stalling on a lose made you lose less point then people would have even more incentive to play slow once their behind. .

Well, that's where my disclaimer of not knowing the scoring formula kicks in. :)

I thought your score is based on your victories and who you beat (and losses too?). Say you're 19-1, and stalling on your only 2 games that are sure losses. If the value of those older victories start decreasing, then I would think your score would start decreasing as well. Yes, there would be an incentive to slow down on the losing games, I suppose (as the new losses would contribute more to a negative score relative to the decreased value of the older wins), but if the purpose of stalling is to preserve a high score, that high score would be decreasing until you get out of those slow losing games and get some victories - thus, an incentive to finish the losing games and climb back up the ladder. But again, maybe I misunderstand how the scoring works.

I think BP misunderstood how you meant.. IE, thought you meant games being played lost valued, and not games already completed lost value.

Albiet, if games decay at the 3 month period already implemented, it would effectively cause the same issue.. however that won't prevent people from stalling for the short time *2 months say* just to get a cute lil number saying they had 2200 as their high score.. or w/e

The decreasing system (continuously decreasing) which I already proposed a few weeks ago in another topic, is much better than a discrete cut-off as is done now.

It would punish people who delay their losses, but only if they meanwhile aren't adding any recent wins. The fact that you don't get any new games when you are a slow player, as Hugo Simpson mentions, is a great idea, although it will have consequences for players who are much slower in general.