The site-wide ladders at OGS are supposed to be fun, dynamic and competitive. The #1 place should be fought for and earned not held for weeks through use of vacation time.
I suggest a clear limit to the use of vacation days for people in the #1 position of site-wide ladders because as it is, someone taking vacations at the top could block up the top part of the ladder for weeks. This would be a frustrating experience for other players in the ladder, particularly their challengers, and would mark a precedent - other people might decide it is their right to do the same. This would undermine how the ladder is supposed to work.
It might be simplest just to not allow the games of the person in the #1 position to be paused - just with the standard time limits games can last for several weeks.
Thanks for reading, I look forward to your comments.
Idk, if someone is at the top of a ladder and goes on vacation, folks might see that as an opportunity to pounce then they get back from vacation and theyâve lost like 10 ladder games and theyâve turned into an involuntary sandbagger (also kind of lame if the new #1 got there via timeout right?)
Perhaps an alternative would be to âhideâ any vacationers from the ladder. When they get back, they get their position back, but at least they werenât hogging the position for the weeks they were goneâŚ
Iâm not playing in the ladder much, so I donât have any stakes here. But I do wonder why you see âweeksâ as a problem. The expected timescale for a correspondence game is months. Not at all unusual for a game to take half a year. So whatâs a few weeks?
Probably the vacation feature can be mis-used for keeping the top spot a bit longer. Annoying if that happens. But if we remove all features of the site that somehow can be mis-used, we wouldnât be left with much.
Just an exception for the ladder games of someone in the #1 position. Itâs different from all the other ladder positions because you canât go any higher. Because of this it merits an exception limiting the use of vacation days.
9 x 9 games are quicker and can be finished in a few days. For other board sizes that take longer, why allow them to be extended with vacation time when they already take such a long time? Some people invest time in reading out lines of play and all that gets forgotten and wasted if a game is paused for weeks.
Hiding vacationers sounds too complicated, but this is still an interesting idea. A simpler solution might be to allow everyone full use of their vacations, but someone taking vacations at #1 of a ladder would forfeit their position and swap places with #2.
As someone who had been at the top of the ladder and likes to go on holiday (at least I did pre covid), I wouldnât like this. Correspondence games last months. Just wait, vacation time is limited.
These suggested fixes add unnecessary complications, increase the likelihood of bugs and confusion (imagine the forum posts about magically changing positions) and would be misdirection of precious development resource that would be better spent on long existing bugs in core functionality.
Iâve also been at the top of a ladder, it lasted about 4 days and I didnât use vacation days to extend my stay at the top. Thatâs how it should be, it shouldnât be a place where people get to stay very long unless they are actively and successfully defending their position.
I do understand what you say about not complicating things and not diverting resources from more important issues, though.
I suppose play goes on between the other positions in the ladder. I just hope that it doesnât become a custom for people to use their vacation days to prolong their stay at the top of a ladder. That would be annoying and would make participating in the ladders less enjoyable for other people.
Well, just to give a different perspective on time-scales: I was top of the 19x19 ladder for many months if not years, so losing that because I went on holiday for a week would rankle.
Given that ladders are auto-kick on time out, it seems your argument is that unless someone in the #1 spot can maintain total site access with no interruptions, they should be removed entirely from the ladder and forced to start again from the bottom. Seems a bit extreme. All to prevent someone from hypotethically maybe extending their time at #1 by a month or two?
I wasnât suggesting that although I see how it might be an implication in some cases of not allowing pauses. That said, the OGS ladders offer a reprieve for people who time out - they would just need to win one of their ongoing games to get back to their previous position.
True. So maybe disabling vacation mode is not a good idea. Making the #1 swap with #2 when they take vacations would be more practical, and would make the ladder more dynamic. It wouldnât be so hard for them to get back to #1 on their return.
I understand not wanting to challenge the 5th dans near the top but why not also challenge pos 7, 8, or 9? All of them are above you currently and also have active games with others above them. Just because your challenge with #1 is paused doesnât mean you have no other opportunities to climb. Swapping current pos 1 with current pos 2 wouldnât change any of that.
Seems weird to advocate for the 1st dan on top to be lowered because then if you beat them you get a lower position.
then they get back from vacation and theyâve lost like 10 ladder games and theyâve turned into an involuntary sandbagger (also kind of lame if the new 