Disconnection timer

[Lyr]

When forced to leave a game, such as due to disconnection, why is there a mandatory two-minute timer to return to the game?

Two minutes is not enough time to:
Realize connection issues
Determine that it won’t fix itself
Restart a router
Wait for router to boot up
Wait for router to reconnect to internet
Then finally wait for the page to successfully reload.
And this is if it works after one attempt.

Five minutes is the standard on several servers, but on OGS, it is only two… except when it is not:

When playing a game with a standard time setting such as three byo-yomi periods of 30 seconds, in a best case-scenario, a player has 90 seconds to reconnect since the disconnection timer is simply layered on top of whatever the game settings were. So in a blitz game (10 x 3), a player will only have 30 seconds to reconnect.

Issue 1: Two-minute reconnect timer is not long enough
Possible solution: Increase the timer to about five minutes.

Issue 2: Game timer does not pause during disconnection
Possible solution 1: Pause the game timer when an opponent disconnects - use only the disconnect timer.
Possible solution 2: Remove the disconnect timer entirely and rely only on the game timer.

[meili_yinhua]

I believe the main reason for the game timer not being paused is due to a potential exploit where you can get extra time by temporarily disconnecting the internet (which in some cases is extremely easy)

And the reason for the short timer is probably due to complaints about having to wait too long for escapers.

I somewhat agree that we might want to lengthen the timer, but I’m not sold on pausing the game timer.

[AdamR]

There has already been a lot of disussion about this one.

You can check some of these if you want to read some opinions:

Auto Resign after few minutes

to be short, i move a lot for work and use to play trought smartphone hotspot, it works well 90% time, today on a live game (10 min + 2 min x move - https://online-go.com/game/10682685) after the starting moves my connection crash, when i come back, no more than 2min later, i found the system auto resigned for me. When i ask on chat someone answer me this feature is to avoid escapers to force ppl to wait. but makes no sense to me, if i got 10 min to move why the system have to resign after 2…

Am I crazy or system decide that I resign without my permission?

Hi guys. Here is a link on my game https://online-go.com/game/6929940 while I was waiting for opponents move I surfing internet in another tab and when I back I saw that I lose the game by resignation. How is it possible?

As always with human race, some people like it, some people hate it

(pausing the game pauses the timeout countdown as well, if you want to grant your opponent the benefit of the doubt and wait if he/she returns.)

[bugcat]

mekriff is right about the time-gaining exploit being there if the game timer isn’t decremented. I remember hearing about it being a fairly common cheat on (I think) Tygem, or possibly Fox.

To look at things from the other perspective, I don’t think it’s fair to ask the opponent to wait for five minutes, even if the reason for disconnection is innocent (and I think that’s the minority right now). Five minutes could well be equal to the entire main time that the game creator’s specified!