Would it be too extreme an idea to just auto-kick people from ladders if they haven’t played a ladder game in a while.
What I mean is, for a given ladder eg 19x19 ladder, suppose you have no ongoing ladder games, and the last ladder game you played for that ladder was over X months ago (1,2 months?) then you are ejected from the ladder for being inactive.
I understand it’s nice to have a few thousand people in the ladder, but when most are inactive, I just find I’m challenging people who aren’t playing most of the time. I mean I suppose I could limit my challenges to people who also have ongoing games, but it feels like it’s against the idea of the ladder since people who timeout are meant to get ejected (barring the bugs at the moment).
Edit
Maybe a compromise which is less punishing to players who haven’t challenged or received a challenge in a while, but still want to be in the ladder – the DGS (dragon go server - correspondence go) 19x19 ladder says
The user will be withdrawn from the ladder, if player hasn’t accessed the server
within the last 30 days (excluding vacation).
It should do when the bugs get fixed. Still I think it leaves the possibility for a large amount of inactive players to remain if they need to have someone challenge them to actual remove them.
Maybe I should’ve mentioned ‘Site Ladders’ in the main text but I mentioned it in the title. Or at least I should’ve clarified I mean the ‘site-wide Ladders’ as in Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS
I guess now that I think about it, I just don’t see coasting as a crime (even on big ladders). Like why shouldn’t a person be allowed to only accept challenges passively?
I’m not seeing it as a crime so much as a large inconvenience for active players.
I’m not so worried about the person near the top of the ladder refusing challenges or not actually challenging people, but more so that the middle of the ladder is just full of people not actively playing.
Then you have to wait three days for them to time out, then challenge someone else.
Although it is probably problematic for the person at the top of the ladder, and maybe in the top 5/ten etc. Imagining you had to keep challenging people but couldn’t or face removal. Hmm…
I think this is a great idea. If a whole month has gone by (stop the clock for vacation) without someone being involved in a ladder game, whether challenger or challengee then they could surely be kicked. They can always just rejoin if they were just talking a break for some reason.
If you include challenges then people at the top will never be kicked since they are always being challenged!
I think the main issue is that auto-kick on timeout is buggy right now and so not all inactive accounts are getting purged… I don’t think randomly kicking people after an arbitrary amount of time without challenging or being challenged is the best course of action (for instance, what if a new round of a tournament begins and they suddenly have 10 new games, so they decide to wait a few months before challenging other ladder players)
If you want to improve your chances of finding a ladder participant who will respond, maybe you could consider only challenging players who have active challenges against someone else. Not foolproof but probably has a better ROI than players with no active ladder games at all, or else only received challenges and none sent.
You’re missing the main point, they have to rejoin AT THE BOTTOM.
1 month is an insanely short time in the context of correspondence games. If you want faster responses another option is to join the group ladders for one of the fast corr groups… no need to add in rules that force people to play games or else they lose their position for no reason.
I’m not expecting this idea to be adopted because of course some people would object and so the status quo is always the default in that case.
The reason to lose their position is not playing! Seems quite obvious to me. If you join a ladder it’s to play. You accept that you can get up to three random games at any time and with no notice, whether or not a 10 game tourney just started or not. Being obliged to be playing in only a single game in order to remain a participant of the ladder does not seem particularly onerous to me.
And honestly, what’s the hardship admit starting at the bottom. You can jump up 40% of the ladder at a time and it’s just an extra game or so to play. I don’t really see the big deal.
And we are only talking about the main site ladders.
But I’m already starting to sound more passionate and argumentative about this than I really am!
I don’t really care either way. I just think it’s a good idea.
I don’t like the idea of being kicked because of inactivity.
I hope ladders will work correctly soon, so that real inactive players (those who don’t respond) are kicked.
But I don’t think that staying passive waiting for challenges is a good reason to be treated as inactive.
I like big sitewide ladders with thousands of players. It gives the sense of the community.
A community where you could find people with 300 ongoing games and also people who wait for next challenge.
The point of a ladder is to climb. If you are only waiting around to be challenged that’s just like like a really crap slide where you should end up at bottom at some point but not as quick as you might think. There are faster ways of getting there. In fact I have an idea about that…
Personally, I think people who climb ladders too fast should be kicked so that they can enjoy doing it from the beginning again allowing them to remain at the top will only slow them down!
This current thread is specifically proposing the idea of kicking people with 0 games, thus this loophole is totally irrelevant and only applies to people who timed out. This means kicked by timeout would be less severely punished than kicked for no games, despite arguably being worse.
My experience: after fighting to climb the ladder I went to a stall. Above me are just stronger players: those with rank way higher and those with a similar rank against which I fought and lost. I don’t know who to challenge.
Sometimes some new player comes in and I have the opportunity to challenge them, but usually I can’t do anything but wait for those who challenge me.
I must say that I usually have at least a couple games in progress anyway, thanks to those that challenged me, so I don’t really fear to be kicked for inactivity. But it would be sad to be kicked in case nobody challenges me for a while… it wouldn’t depend on me…
should I be kicked?
allowing them to remain at the top will only slow them down!