Recently, I played a blitz game. I lost the connection to the server – probably my communication powerline adaptor or my router is damaged.
It looked to me like my opponent was thinking long for his/her move, only when the time run out, but the game didn’t end, I understood that my connection was lost.
Only shortly after that, the “connection to the game server lost” banner was displayed, apparently because the client wasn’t sure before whether the connection was actually lost, or just rather slow.
I immediately reset my adaptor (this always fixes the problem), refreshed the page, and saw that I had lost by time.
As I understand it, this is because my clock kept running even when the server knew that I lost connection. On KGS or on Tygem, the clock would have stopped and I wouldn’t have lost by time.
So I propose doing it similar like on Tygem: When a player loses the connection, the game stops, until the player returns, or 5 minutes pass (leading to a time loss). If I remember correctly, a player who loses the connection 5 times loses automatically.
It’d be possible to abuse this: A player could interrupt the connection willfully to get 5 extra minutes to think. But I don’t think it is a serious problem. Is this potential abuse the reason why OGS has implemented it differently?
Surely this has been discussed before, but I couldn’t find threads about it. I hope I didn’t misunderstand anything.
1 Like
This is unthinkable in a blitz game. It would mean that the opponent waits 5 minutes before the screen without looking away because they would lose the blitz if the blitz resumes while they are not ready. In addition, people play blitz when they have little time, so it is just wrong to make a game that much longer.
And I say this as a person who cannot play blitz games at the moment due to touchpad issues.
2 Likes
A blitz game should be a blitz game - its quick. If you lose one game because of lost connection its not the end of the world its only one game, but maybe a player is playing fast because they don’t have much time and have to leave, it would be very unfair to your opponent if they had to leave and lose a game just because someone with a dodgy connection repeatedly delayed a blitz game.
Wulfenia, I wouldn’t say unthinkable, since it is, as far as I know, the way it’s handled on KGS and Tygem. And I have never heard of abuses - though they surely exist.
I see the point about the opponent being forced to wait, so maybe instead of just stopping the clock, the opponent could be asked: “Your opponent lost connection. Do you want to pause the game so your opponent’s time doesn’t run up?” - buttons: “Yes”, “No”; checkbox, checked by default: “never ask this question again”.
Of course, the opponent could have paused the game anyway, without being asked. But, such a question would make sure that the opponent knows that the … opponent’s opponent … lost connection, make sure that the opponent knows that it’s possible to pause the game, and highlight this option. I’m sure it would prevent some unnecessary time losses.
I would answer the question with “Yes”; I could still unpause when I felt like it. Someone who doesn’t like the idea at all could just answer “No” and not be annoyed again by the question.
1 Like
Since there already is a pause mechanic maybe use that. If you disconnect it automatically uses one of your pauses. If you are out of pauses too bad, and if your opponent cannot or will not wait they can always unpause.
Yes, I meant the prompt to be based on the already existing pause mechanic. I like your variant since it seems much easier to implement. I’d still like to have it mentioned: “Game paused, because black’s connection timed out - 4 pauses left for black”
There is a problem with server connection on your site. Twice I’ve lost games to timeout due to this. On each occasion my screen showed I had played already but was showing “submitting”…until timeout, then I lost due to timeout because my last move had disappeared
Still better than KGS, which shows your opponent’s clock ticking down, once it reaches zero the client crashes and when you log in again, you find out you lost on time(even through you had several minutes left). Here you can at least reload the page, which solves most problems.