I would like to get rid of the Cancel button for live games, and leave it like on KGS, where you have to play or resign, and leaving counts as an escape.
I’m asking this because I find lots of my live open game challenges accepted and cancelled almost immediately. In the end it’s no big deal, just annoying…
To me the best solution would be, like on KGS, a negociation and settings confirmation window before the game begins. It helps the game poster not to be caught by surprise if he/she was waiting for a long time and forgot about the challenge before when the game begins, while the opponent wait for nothing and would like to cancel…
I’m ok with the possibility of cancelling correspondence games though, it comes very handy, for instance, when you suddenly have 8 games starting in the umpteenth round of a non-handicap tournament with only ddk that started 2 years ago
I mean it easier to forget about those corr. tournaments games,
but I think one should be responsible when picking up a live game, and assume, and play it or resign - even if one picked up the game too fast, not realizing he/she didn’t like the settings, (which can still happen with a confirmation window, we all can be high sometimes…)
To me it’s just a matter of respect towards the player posting the challenge.
The flaw with this solution is that letting cancelled games count is actually not a reasonable punishment. Players will have the best experience on this site if they can play people of equal rank and be assured that those people are of roughly the same level as them. By letting people rank down upon cancellation, you lower their rank while they actually haven’t really lost anything. Clearly this results in more incorrect ranks, so it’s not only a “punishment” to the player who cancels, but also to the rest of the community, who now have to deal with a sandbagger.
I want to get a feeling, how big the problem is and how many of the canceled games would be affected by your proposal
I don’t know how KGSs rating system works, but on OGS, the rating system is rather sensitive.
My reasoning would be the following:
If there is no real impact on your rank, than there is no difference between annulling and rating canceled games.
If there is an impact on your rank, ranks get flawed.
I just think there’s no real need for a game cancelling button, when would you need one?
It’s rarely usefull, except when you have an emergency right after picking up a game.
If you do experience that often and feel the need to cancel half of your games, you may have schedule or focusing problems ^^
The cancel button mainly allows some people to abuse it.
I don’t have a problem with resigning a game I can’t finish for some reason, when I decide to play live I’m available for it.
Again, to me the absence of that feature on KGS isn’t an issue , while it’s abuse is on OGS.
Edit @flovo
If I’m not mistaken the KGS ranking system is similar to the OGS one, and games you leave are hold on pause, you can take them back later if you can meet your opponent, but if you abuse it just to not resign when you’re losing, like after ten escapes, it counts as resigning, until you don’t escape so often that we can suppose you really had an emergency or a disconnection.
I don’t know KGS, but for me this sounds like almost like a cancellation option right before the game starts.
I don’t see a realy good reason either.
The cancel button replaces the resign butten, to make clear, that if one ends the game at this point, the game will not be rated.
There are some players, looking at the breakdown graph on the opponents profile, to see, if it is an even game and cancel otherwise. This of course should affect only games matched by the matchmaker and games they created.
@S_Alexander You sum it up well, and I think the best solution to the situations you describe… is the confirmation/negociation window that you have on KGS. I would rather have that than the cancel button which allows abuses, right?
I guess I didn’t really think this through before posting and should have titled my post diferently.
Edit: title edited (the previous was “forbid the cancelling of a live game”)
What are “abuses” in case of cancellation of live games?
I don’t see anything else than trolling. If you suspect this, contact a moderator.
And what is the difference between a popup window or a empty board?
In both cases I would have to create a new challenge afterwards.
Most games end not by annulation by the way. Therefor I would have to click more often without a real benefit.
I’m trying to get my head around about what this is now about, what we try to solve and if it is a solution to this problem.
Some quick queries via the API revealed that the OP has played 869 games with byo yomi time settings. These seem to be the short games (live and blitz).
Of these 59 were canceled (about 6.8%), 27 by the OP.
@flovo ok you don’t get that often, but it’s annoying believe me.
Too many people cancel a game right away when they dislike handicap of time settings they didn’t really check.
On the other hand, as S_Alexander said, you can need to cancel it when the game-creator left of forgot it’s challenge. To me this confirmation thing before playing seems best for both issues, whatever form it takes, pop-up or else.
But the KGS system is really handy, it allow more potential opponents to pick your game, if they have an issue with the settings they can at least ask if you wanna change it - while on OGS they may just skip the open challenge.
Why not, that would be simplier/easier to implement, and I think some people already proposed it, but in the long-term I still would like to get rid of the cancel button and get a kgs style confirmation and negociation feature, which solves it too, while adding the negociation possibility, which again could help you find an opponent faster.
Biggest reason for cancel-button are no-shows. You wouldn’t want wait 40+3x1mins for white player to play his first move or to lose on time.
And we also have something like negiotiation on place. If you’ll create a custom game, you can choose settings as you wish, and anyone who is willing (and able) to have a game with you under those rules, can accept your open challenge.
For quick match finder, when the whole idea is just get a game asap, it would be counter-productive for any extra negotiations to take place. Its also possible to change some automatch preferences, if you want to avoid non-handicap games with players 9 stones apart for example.
I would like it if canceled games that started from my challenges would just recreate the challenge. What I hate right now is I put up challenges (with my preferred settings) for about 6 games. Go to sleep. I wake up and all 6 were accepted and canceled so I have to recreate. Really annoying.
