Maybe you could make all games start at once, but then make the boot time something like 5 or 7 days. This gives players the ability to spread out.

@Pushover: have you investigated already the possiblity to use the banking boot times?
25 hours auto boot plus set X days as banking boot times?
If you choose the correct X days, maybe it can be useable :O
And you can further refine it with the + X% to boot time if faster moves.

I'd honestly refrain from using anything else then 3 days boot.

I see your standpoint, but if you choose the proper values for banking boot times setting, then for a player with average or faster playing speed will change actually nothing, at the same time possible to prevent the extrem stalling.

What about games in progress? We could use either overall turn speed or just the turn speed within the game. But either one can lead to some unfair behavior. Hunta is beating Math Wolf on turn speed 5 hours to 18, but the start of this game was actually delayed by other games in the group! Does it make sense for Hunta to take the automatic win?

This could encourage players to delay surrendering as we approach the cut-off date if they are losing, but can ensure a faster turn speed.

Yeah, the more I think about edge cases the more I think we have no choice but to wait for the games to complete.

So that leaves three main settings to play with, all of them controversial: (1) Number of games (2) boot settings including banked boot (3) disallowing vacations, perhaps making up for it with banked time. If I want to change the status quo and have more than 4 seasons per year (it would be nice to have 5 or 6!) then it means alienating people who are:

* Slow to join tournaments
* Slow to take turns
* Wary of their game count

I think by far the easiest change to make that would have the most impact is raising the number of concurrent games from 2 to 3.

Edited 10/28/2016 04:21:51

Season 21 new players:
Master Farah♦ https://www.warlight.net/Profile?p=4543063534
ViralGoat https://www.warlight.net/Profile?p=7841556925
Kaerox https://www.warlight.net/Profile?p=5873144373
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.. this guy https://www.warlight.net/Profile?p=9373696672
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Waitlist:
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Andresso https://www.warlight.net/Profile?p=6441410851
Apollo https://www.warlight.net/Profile?p=5755701451

Edited 10/30/2016 22:42:20

Excuse me if I'm being dense, but those are the new joiners this season, correct?

If not, was I supposed to sign up again?

Don't worry Electric_Kitten, you will be participating next season. Pushover is only listing new players, not those players who are currently participating.

I didn't participate before but i see why this is such a huge problem and i understand that it's difficult for some players to stay in this League when the game count will be raised to 3 games at the same time. So it's really hard to find a good solution.

From my understanding this League is competitive but fun should always be the main reason to participate. I don't get why people are stalling intentionally. I don't see any other reason than fucking all your opponents/the entire League up by stalling.

From my understanding such players doesn't belong to play in this League, if they only want to take the fun from the others.

So i actually like the idea of a 60 day deadline. It shouldn't a deadline to decide who will win the remaning games. It should be a deadline to make sure that everybody who plays longer than the deadline has to fear a ban from the entire league.

Ofc only obvious stallers should get such a ban. U're saying Metatron is obviously stalling this season. If he does it again next season than ban him.
Players who had to take a vacation like Platinum shouldn't get banned, if they didn't stall before their vacation.

Depending on the individual situations players could also get a warning or no punishment at all.

It's a different idea and i'm sure i will get criticism from people because banning would be the hardest punishment someone can get and ofc it's a subjectice view to decide who will get a ban, warning or no punishment at all. People are doing so much work to make concepts like this work and to make sure everybody has fun with it, that i just think people don't deserve to play this league if they are obviously trying to influence the league in a negative way.

There are also slower players participating but i think it should be possible to play 6 games in a time span of 60 days. It works in the Seasonal Ladder too so why shouldn't it work here with fewer games?

So i don't think slower players will be affected by this.

I think Edge idea is the best we can do. Do not make any changes and decide whether or not a player is allowed to keep playing.

Only downside, you might get Clan League levels of complainment about your decisions :p

I thought about it. That could really be the only problem, but on the other hand i expect a ban to happen if there is totally clear that a player is stalling. So i don't see many people, expect the guy himself and maybe his clanmates be angry about the decision. I do think everything else will be handed properly and decided on a good basis from Pushover. Especially if there weren't different former decision, like it was in CL. Different persons made different decisions and set different bars, so that lead to misunderstanding in a part of the community. Here u have 1 guy who can make his own decisions and set his own bars. I think that won't lead to much complains.

Pretty sad that game inventor didn't put possibility in tournaments to have banked time. Thus each player will have starting 3 days and after that 1-2 days per turn, and if someone takes vacation, other player will benefit having more time to spend. However, banked time should not increase 20% per turn in tournaments and should last for limited turn span.

Other possibility is that overall time for game is limited to, say, for example but not limited to, 10 days per player (again with some banking time), so players should really be aware of that and if the game looks dim, one will be forced to do moves faster and try to force better one to be booted, depending on strategy.

The last proposal is to set time for ENTIRE tournament (when RR is used), so quicker players in early games will have more time to finish in later games, and vice versa.

But, for this, either some scripts should be added to game creation or Fizzer should involve himself in changing the game mechanism.

Edited 10/28/2016 12:14:42

I'm actually trying my best to play somewhat quicker in the League whenever I can (but you know, work...)

sorry i am taking so long with my turns :/

Helooo :)

Is it possible for me to participate next season?

if yeah, then sign me up! :)

First thing I will note: Metatron in particular is not at fault here. I believe he has legitimate reasons for being slow. He was also unlucky in that he had two long duration games at once that held up all his other games. If anti-stall rules were put in place at the beginning of the season I would assume Metatron would make sure he is in compliance, even if he doesn't play as well.

To group F1 players, I don't blame you guys either. That group was kind of a perfect storm of delays.

I'm just noticing a weakness in the league format and am trying to brainstorm solutions.

@Edge: this is an interesting idea. At the beginning of the season, make the deadline clear, and after the deadline make a judgement call. The purpose would be to exclude slower players from the league if we think they are holding everyone up.

Under this system, Metatron would be tossed out from C1, *both* PhucilliJerry and Platinum would be tossed out from D2, and F1 would be allowed to continue to completion. Tossed players would be removed for inactivity/stalling. If this is too harsh, I could just apply a loss for each outstanding game. When two players stall together, both players get losses.

Of course, given F1 is still continuing, I could wait to toss anyone until we are ready to start the next season.

I feel somewhat uncomfortable with this solution. It means I have to make a judgement call. And then one has to wonder about a decision that also results in a positive result for me. Metatron being tossed means I have a promotion chance when I didn't have one previously. On this surface, this sort of decision is sketchy! On the other hand, fewer players are affected than other changes like 3 games at once.

__________

Aaaand one last thing. I'm going with 5 newbie groups next season, which will bump up 7 players from waitlist to participants. But no more for season 21!

Edited 10/30/2016 23:14:08

I don't feel u need to make a judgement call. At least not during the season. If the deadline is over, than u can let the guys finish their games. Of course that could result in even more stalling, until the elimination but if that's the case the opponent can explain it and just surrender the game. Then u still can take a look at it and receive him/her a win for that, if it's obvious that the guy would have won.

Afterwards u take a look on the players gameplay and tell them if they get any sort of punishment or if they weren't responsible for holding exceeding the deadline.

I wouldn't also toss someone out of his group. Just if someone was an obvious staller and gets banned, but otherwise i would prefer these guys to stay in their group. I do think, that this will take some drama out of the decision, because some other players, maybe yourself would benefit from tossing players out of their current groups.

This idea is basically like a tournament boot time. There is the obvious 3-day boot for each individual game, but I don't think it's a bad idea to implement a time frame for each season.

Any player who is taking a long time could receive a warning at the expiry of the season allotted time (say you give them 10 days to complete their remaining games), and this could be followed by an auto-relegation (not as harsh as kicking someone out of the league) if they fail to complete.

Now obviously, the player in a winning position would want to get the game finished and so speed up their play. I think you could check on the game during that final 10 days and get a pretty good idea if one particular player is stalling.

if im looking at group F1 right, i have won, even if i lose the next two games, as i have beaten the other players with both 2 looses