This weekend we will be rolling out a patch which will include a change to address the problem where people leave live games and in effect force their opponent to sit and wait for the game to timeout.
After the patch, when leaving a live game players will now automatically resign from the game after 60 seconds (after being prompted and warned that this will happen). The 60 second delay is there so that you can still reload the page or recover from accidentally closing tab / window without worrying about the auto-resign kicking in, so long as you can make it back to the game within the 60 second window.
This timer does not apply for complete internet loss, browser or computer crashes, etc. In those cases, the user still has the full clock time to recover from the problem before timing out naturally. (In the future we will likely be limiting this time as well, but that’s not coming with this patch.)
This change obviously only affects live games, not correspondence games.
Anyone wanting to help test the new feature and help us figure out if we missed anything head on over to https://beta.online-go.com/ and try it out (We’re pretty sure it works when it’s supposed to, if you can get it to kick in when it’s not supposed to though, that would be the biggest thing to test for)
I think the amount of time to return is a bit short… my browser often closes on its own I don’t get “disconnected from my internet” but my browser just closes randomly and sometimes even tabs close out themselves x.X I think the return period should be a bit longer like 3 minutes ? otherwise I think I am afraid to play games at all
It should only be triggered if you actually close the tab.
This timer does not apply for complete internet loss, browser or computer crashes, etc. In those cases, the user still has the full clock time to recover from the problem before timing out naturally. (In the future we will likely be limiting this time as well, but that’s not coming with this patch.)
Very interesting. Most escapes are just plain walking away so… Error codes are awesome (I’m assuming that’s how you tell the difference between a close and a glitch.)
5 minutes is standard. It works well in my experience. To avoid confusion for people with experiences from other servers, I suggest the standard time is used.
I humbly suggest that this solution is one that fixes a non-existent problem.
What is a “real” escaper? It is someone who leaves a ranked game to avoid a loss or—in the case that the proposed policy is implemented—to make his opponent wait until the clock expires. We can see the flaw immediately. The so-called escaper could simply bake a cupcake without leaving the game. It doesn’t fix anything.
May I suggest a simpler option that might be useful in other ways in the future? Just add a “Call Admin” button to all games. We can then call an admin to end the game ex officio and determine the result. We could also use the button to resolve scoring disputes or to call immediate attention to rude behavior. It would also prevent these disputes from overflowing into the main chat rooms.
I have observed many games (of all ranks 30k-6d) on OGS and I haven’t noticed any problems with escapers.
I will now humbly suggest my own cynical theory about why people think that escapers are a problem: Some people are too proud to have an “annulled resignation” in their game list. While escapers are not common, people leaving games on Move #1 because they don’t want to play the person who accepted their challenge is quite common here. These people are not true escapers in the sense that they are not running away from a likely loss based on board position. Of course, if either player just resigns, then the game is annulled and both people move on. However, I’ve seen more than one person complain in the chat about how annoying it is that they have “lost” an annulled game (in quotes, because you can’t really lose an annulled game). My response is that if you can’t stand having a fake loss that doesn’t count towards ratings (and is publicly known to be a cancelled game due to the text “annulled”) then maybe some character building is in order before go.
EDIT: Yeah, I recognize that we might eventually need something to reduce the burden on admins. It just seems like overkill right now with the current user base.
The chat is pretty noisy right now, so I repeat what I said there here:
Even though the timer applies only when the game is closed manually, I think 5 minutes are better. I imagine someone who doesn’t know how to have multiple tabs open (these people exist), and wants to look at a different site for just 2 minutes.
One more explanation for time losses: The resign button is not obvious enough (I didn’t look at the newest beta). I met at least two people who asked me where the resign button is.
@lemmata: For some context: the escaper load on admins is growing as the population rises. In general, these are not people just leaving the window open while letting the clock run out; they have left the game and are no longer present, and are often in other games. The problem is real, and become more common (in number of times it happens), even if uncommon from any single user’s perspective.
5 minutes is standard. It works well in my experience. To avoid confusion for people with experiences from other servers, I suggest the standard time is used.
5 minutes seems a bit long, from my experience with actually dealing with escaped games. In a 20 minutes start-tie byo-yomi, that can be a significant portion of the actual time remaining.
Would 3 minutes be more reasonable?
Again, this is for actually closing the window, or navigating away. Not for internet hiccups and crashes, which will still have the remaining clock time (though we may adopt the 5-minutes limit from Tygem for those situations, as well).
After the various comments to this topic, I am under the impression that there has to be an additional explanation:
-> If you disconnect.
-> If your browser crashes.
-> If you switch tabs.
-> If your computer crashes.
Nothing happens. The game goes on normally.
-> If you try to close the tab manually.
-> If you try to close the game manually.
OGS asks you to confirm that you want to resign. If you click okay, you have 60 seconds to come back.
I hope this clarifies and eradicates the common fears expressed!
Escapers have been a huge problem on OGS in the past months. 80% of our Mod work has been users complaining about Escapers. It’s not a “non-existent problem”.
(We’re pretty sure it works when it’s supposed to, if you can get it to kick in when it’s not supposed to though, that would be the biggest thing to test for)
