Friends, strangers, people I absolutely despise,

I have played 6 games of warlight today. 4 of the 6 had to come to the end by vote, a violent vote I might add. While I was once able to simply play through the occasion "vote-to-end" game, it is really beginning to waste my time, and all of yours as well.

I think we all need to take a step back a remember a few things

1. Warlight, while a great game, is in beta, occasionally the server does have problems

2. People play warlight from all around the world, and occasionally people have internet problems from other countries. It's a fact of life.


If you have played 30 minutes of a game, and somebody refuses to wait more than 10 minutes to boot someone, followed by a team vs team yelling match which inevitably end with a vote-to-end. then you have wasted 40 minute, instead of just waiting a little longer than ten minutes and finishing the game properly.

It takes more than 10 minutes to A) realize you are have a problem connecting and B) restart your browser/computer/router/etc.

I'm getting so sick and tired of warlight games turning into episodes of gossip girl with flaring emotions, crazy verbal drama, and at the end, nothing gets done.

I'm not saying there aren't occasions when the a player needs to be booted, there are, but in those cases, everyone in the game agrees to boot.

In closing, there is no reason for the direct boot, it causes FAR more problems then it fixes, booting should be left purely to the vote-to-boot system.

seriously, I'm sick of the drama.

Thank you,

OneEyedJack

there are occassions where direct boot is necessary, IE, 2 inactives. but I agree it is used far too leniently by far too many people.

Booting with prior warning and setting a grace time (gentlemans boot) is ok. Lots of players dont surrender when they see that they lost or for being out of time and leave the game without notice. In other cases i totally agree with you: despicable

This lets me propose the following: Why does the boot lead immediately to the booting? Wouldnt it be a good thing that the booting takes place with a delay? For a 5 minute game for example 2 minutes? If the player does his move within that grace period then all is ok again.

That's a thought mosquitero. I mean, the point is that we're thinking about solutions. I think we all agree that there is a problem here.

Two of the most common stories I hear are

1) "one player was afk, his boot timer had expired, I figured since we're all waiting, I might as well change a couple moves, then right when I clicked re-do, we both got booted. wtf."

2) "Nobody said anything in chat, I thought i hit confirm, but I guess I didn't, got booted"

I think the boot should work based on a players interface actions. Like, whether it's been 5 minutes since a player clicked something, similar to the way a screen saver works, instead of 5 minutes from the beginning of the round.

Also, I see now that there a quite a few boot threads in this forum. So I guess this problem is pretty widespread.

I like that idea Mosq, perhaps a pop-up and the timer turned red in top right corner when you've been proc'ed to be booted... and Oneeye, the problem you *could have with 5 minutes from last action would be people trying to be a nuisance.. intentionally stalling a game just cause they are spoilsports, albiet besides from that scenario it seems like a good idea, imho.

I don't think booting is a such a problem.

First of all, if you look at a game and it says 3 minutes boot time and you're playing 4 other games and thus are unable to move within the 3 minutes... it is your fault! You knew the rules going into the game and disregarded them anyway, I have no sympathy for those players if they do happened to get boot. Hell, it's happened to me before but I understand that is my own fault not someone else who just wanted to play a quick game or even a competitor that was losing bitterly.

The only type of bootees I have sympathy for are the Internet connection problems ones. Not having quality internet connection must suck but I do think these players need to communicate to their teammates/other players at the beginning of the game that they have such problems. If someone tells me flat out that they might get dc/ed or need to go to the bathroom etc. I'm pretty sure 99% of the WarLight players will give the affected player the necessary time to go about their business.

Yes, having a teammate get booted in a team game is very frustrating and annoying, but it is only a game. Flame out the opposition that game for wasting your time and move on with your life. There's plenty of more games to play.

Last of all if you want to play without worrying about stupid boots play with people you trust and are respectable to others.

anyone that has an internet connection, can have an unplanned d/c lol.

Have you suggested it on Uservoice.net OneEyedJack? It's a good suggestion, I'd vote for it.

I have played 536 games and have been booted 13 times. Possible solution: when playing in quick games utilize the chat early in the game... get to know your opponent a bit, say good luck, make then laugh, etc. Gaining respect before you go over the time is a surefire way to get opponents to wait a little extra time than usual. Secondly, multi-day games are nice. I don't see a need to spend 40 minutes straight waiting to finish one game. Why not join a handful of games, spend 40 min a day doing all your turns and let the tension/anticipation of the battle build over days... weeks even. Just my take, but boots are a necessary evil IMO. I know this isn't the answer your looking for but it is far easier to change your habits then the habits of thousands of others.

Perrin, you're right, my system first proposed would still not solve the problem of people ruining games.

Blue, you also provide a good point, but it doesn't solve the issue of games being wasted.

I came up with a fool-proof solution

When a player in a game gets booted, the game is paused, and placed back in the lobby for another player to take the booted players spot. Once this happens, the game begins again.

This is perfect right? I can't think of a flaw to this.

I disagree 10 minutes is perfect for a 5 minute boot game : / I often have connection problems, but I generally get solved quick enough. If not, apologize and move on

Although the examples givn in your second post have never happened to me yet : /

>When a player in a game gets booted, the game is paused, and placed back in the >lobby for another player to take the booted players spot. Once this happens, the >game begins again.
>
>This is perfect right? I can't think of a flaw to this.


Hmmmm. OEJ, that's a really interesting proposal. I guess one problem that I see is additional delay, but that's preferable to having the game end with acrimony and name-calling. Also, if a game has gone beyond a certain point, it might not be reasonable to assume that someone seeing it in the lobby is going to join it. I mean, say someone on a clearly losing team gets d/ced and then booted. Is anyone going to pick that spot up? I doubt it. So maybe one refinement to your proposal would be that the game goes into pause mode for a short time, perhaps a fixed interval like three minutes, or a percentage of the boot time that's appropriate, and if no one takes the spot by them, the boot becomes permanent and the game moves forward. That would at least give you, and others frustrated by booting, a chance at seeing some games - - particularly early ones where somebody doesn't join in time, and the other team boots and refuses to VTE - - resolved in a more satisfying fashion.

I like the idea of a 2 minute grace-period and a popup. Pretty much all of my boots happen because I don't hear the end of turn buzzer, and forget about it.

The thing I absolutely hate is booting in team games. Don't get me wrong, I think there are times it is appropriate. But, if it's 2v2, booting somebody quickly after they run out of time for the first time is a dick move. By far my biggest pet-peeve of WL.

how about this guys, vote for it

http://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/1399961-a-solution-to-boot-problems

and also: Booting is not really a problem, if you can't make the boot time in a game, you shouldn't join it. booting isn't the problem, people who hold up games are the problem.

one last comment.... if you are on Blue's side: vote for the User-Voice option of Online/Offline status, that way there would be less people that would vote to boot if the player was online, because they might be be just checking another game or going to the bathroom or something, and not signed off.

OneEyedJack this idea -->When a player in a game gets booted, the game is paused, and placed back in the lobby for another player to take the booted players spot. Once this happens, the game begins again<-- is brilliant. I had a game going on where it was a 3v3 at first, then turned to a 2v2 after one from each team got booted. It was a 25 hour boot so it was a relaxed game, then I came back the other day to find my teammate booted to make it a 2v1, which both members of the other team knew it would get them the win. I got verbal, sure, but with justification. People come on this site to have fun, not for the stats...and if you boot someone in a 2v2 game like that, it's like...why? You get the win because you were impatient? Congrats?

I would also like to propose that if someone is booted in a game the end result doesn't show up on your stats, even if you get booted. That way, people quit booting so easily. For some reason I can't get the link to the game previously mentioned, which is annoying. But Marcinek and Vespasian were the players left, and Vespasian was the one that booted my teammate, making it a 2v1. Both are blacklisted, and I suggest that unless you want to stop playing and start taking a game seriously like they have you do the same. Links to their profiles:

http://warlight.net/Profile.aspx?p=771552052


http://warlight.net/Profile.aspx?p=742381460

here's the link to the game I mentioned in my last post:

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer.aspx?GameID=1174075

>When a player in a game gets booted, the game is paused, and placed back in the >lobby for another player to take the booted players spot. Once this happens, the >game begins again.
>
>This is perfect right? I can't think of a flaw to this.

great idea, look at my stats!! i have been booted in 40% of games

You can also solve this by only playing long boot games. Most of the booting problems happen with the 5 min boot games. When I set up a game, I disable vote-to-boot and enable direct boot at a week, and then I just fuggedaboutit... If that doesn't give you enough of a warlight fix, join BUNCHES of long boot games and you'll end up with more turns than you can handle...