I, for one, will boot someone if they go over the allotted time. In real time games, especially in later stages, I don't typically boot immediately (there's a point where you have to stop checking history, though, and take your damn turn, and if you have gone over 3 minutes without finishing your turn 3, then go away), but otherwise... if I can boot you after 2 days of inactivity, well, you had 2 days to move or go on vacation. I feel no guilt.

That said, I wanted to hear what others thought. What is your personal etiquette over booting in real-time games? Multi-day?

unless you urgently want to play the game, i dont really see the point in booting. better to wait a little while than not play the game at all. so i only boot inactive players in multiday, or in real time if i have something to do and cant wait around for them/am going off the computer.

although, im playing in like 80 games, so its not like i care much if one of them takes an extra week to move along.

Thanks for being upfront about it Bill. Makes it easier for me to blacklist you now. I have little interest in playing games where someone is booted. It ruins things. Win or lose I prefer to do it against humans. As long as the person has a reasonable boot rate I'll wait at least a week before I even consider booting someone. We all have lives. And unless someone is actually going on a vacation most of us don't think to set the vacation mode first. Warlight is supposed to be a game - if it becomes some responsibility that forces us to keep a tight schedule then where's the fun? What's the point in joining?

In real time games I think 10 minutes is appropriate.

I won't join a game if folks with a boot rate higher than 15% would be on my team. And I don't allow folks with anything higher than a 10% boot rate to join my games.

Doesn't sound like you should blacklist bill - just create your RT games with 10 minute boot timers and if bill joins, he won't boot you until your 10 minutes are up :)

I used to be closer to Bill's response, but I've become more like WM x's over the last couple of months.

I always ask myself this question before booting: "Will the game be better off without this person?"

Not "Will I, personally, enjoy the game more?" or even "Will this game go faster?" but actually improved by the boot. Improvement is relative, but it always goes back to the reason that I play this game. I want a challenge in a strategic game. If I wanted to roll people then I would play against the AI or invite people with less than 10 games. Booting sometimes makes the game better, but usually it makes the game worse. I do boot people who are acting poorly or dragging the game down somehow, but those instances are very rare.

Now, I still want to be able to play, and I don't want to load myself up with 100 games so that I always have one to play. Because of that, booting is sometimes necessary to get stuck games going again. It's the last option for me, though.

Since adopting that stance I find myself hardly ever booting, even for people well above their allotted time. Real time is different, but that's because the expectation is to finish in one sitting. Multi-day games don't have that expectation, so there is rarely ever a reason to boot someone from one.

I think a really high autoboot (3-5 days) is the best method for booting someone at this point. I've seen a fair number of people get booted on that schedule, but most of the time it doesn't happen. It's also very fair.

Oddly enough, I think every person who has gone above 2 days in a game with me has gone all the way to three or five days and been booted.

I forgot to mention real time, because I don't play a lot of that.

I prefer to warn people and talk to them about their lateness, before booting. Setting a fairly high autoboot (10+ minutes) also helps with that, since they should know it's coming and can't be mad at you for booting too early.

If they go above time several turns and either don't respond or don't care about my warnings, then I feel okay booting. I'm not going to waste my time with somebody, even in a 1v1, who doesn't value my time.

I tend to boot based on how likely I think the person is to come back and whether I'm winning or not.
The guy with a 20 percent boot rate that just lost his last bonus gets booted the first chance I get. The guy with only 2 boots in 500 games who is playing evenly with me, I'll wait for.

Team games are where you really have to think about booting because it will ruin the game. If you do boot you should also be prepared to vote to end right away.

At least that's my philosophy and no ones yelled at me yet and I boot people all the darn time.

I like boot, i always trying boot so fast as i can. Sometimes I be in time 1 second or 2 after boot time start to boot. Honour be first and to do this very fast

emg, along those lines, the few times I have had to boot in 2v2 games I have discussed the matter with their teammate first. Let them know my intentions and made sure they wanted to VTE. Have actually had some that want to keep playing regardless (even though they got obliterated because of it).

Of course, as you pointed out in 1v1 games, if the game is essentially decided I won't VTE simply because that would be rewarding such behavior in a way. At least rewarding his teammate.


Random question regarding booting... does it still go on your record if it is a practice game? Or is booting only reserved for ranked games?

Booting goes on record even in practice games.

Thanks Diogenes... doesn't make much sense to me that it does but no big deal.

In games I create, I always do no vote or direct boot, but only auto boot, I put it in the title and warn people for it, and do not let people enter who've been booted more than 10 times, if they still get booted, it's their own fault.

I find that percentage boot is more reliable then boot amount, personally..

Devil, if people want to blacklist me, then that's fine. It's a game, and people who take it so seriously that an opinion causes that... well, I'm not missing much.

I, for one, see the difference like this; if the boot time weren't good enough, the boot time would be longer. If you can't sign on and play for 5 minutes even once in 3 days, then I'm not the one showing disrespect by booting. I don't join games that I can't expect to finish fairly, and if I do disappear, then I think it's right that I should be booted. I'm not exactly certain what the problem is here? Do people not like having boots on their records? Then make smart choices.

I agree with Bill's earlier statement.. People shouldn't take the game so seriously..
in RT situations, I tend to give extra time once or twice, how much is relative to original boot time, because there are extra circumstances to take into account..
MD games.. I'm not such a prick as to check each and every game for the chance to boot someone, and will instead play the games that come up and enjoy my gameplaying time...

I find MD games that are booted within an hour \*db* funny, because the booter has nothing better to do then watch to see if someone is playing

booting % is often a prerequisite on games. booting a player ruins games, especially on team games (and it ends the game in 1v1s).

and im not exactly certain what the problem with waiting is. are you so desperate to get to the next turn in your games that you arent willing to wait a few days longer? people have lives outside of warlight, surprisingly. they arent delaying their moves to spite you.

On one hand, Bill is arguing he boots people if they go over the limit because his time is important and he has no patience to wait.

On the other hand, Bill is also saying this is a game and people shouldn't take it seriously?

Okay, guy.


I will agree it's fine to boot someone quickly if they have a high boot rate. It's best to avoid playing with those folk in the first place. I lost a 7v7v7 game because 4 of my teammates inexplicably bailed on the first turn despite us getting GREAT starting spots. Two of them had a boot rate over 40% with more than 150 games played. How does that even happen? Agggh. Still pisses me off.

But if someone has a good boot rate (under 10), there's no reason they shouldn't be given time. Their history indicates they will not bail on the game. Kicking them out so AI can join is nice for the stats but it makes for a crappy game.

Well, yay, a convo is taking place. That's good.

Dio: You can put words in my mouth however you want, that's ok. You can think however you would like about my opinion. I came here to ask the views on others to see if there were better ways, and if you want to try and be condescending, I'm ok with that. You are twisting my point into something it's not, but hey, at least one of us is trying to have an honest convo.

I've played 20 man FFAs where everyone has taken their turn in 8 hours, save johnny yesteryear who we wait 3 days for. By the time he's booted, another player has given up, and the wait is on again.

Constantly waiting on guys beyond the amount of time they're given isn't fair to the rest of the players in general circumstances. In a 1v1, then sure, you can talk with the guy, give him a shot. in a 2v2, though, if someone regularly takes a long time to make a play (nearly 2 days) and then just disappears, then he (or she) is removing the fun of the game, and I don't see why someone thinks booting there is poor sportsmanship. I've even dumped my own teammate and surrendered a game, because the guy was just disrespecting If the argument is it ruins the game, then how is the game not already ruined?

And why is a 3 day wait before booting the preprogrammed time, but not the 'accepted' time? If the preprogrammed time were 5 days, would it still require the players to wait... what, another 3? What is the social pact here? It's not something easy to understand. Hell, it seems like it's 'whatever makes the player feel justified' is the rule. Am I wrong here? These are serious questions.

I don't understand the RT games with big maps and 2 minute boot times; that seems completely strategically mundane. If you are trying to set up 20 attack orders and spread out 100 troops in a turn, 2 minutes just doesn't give you the time. But that would be a special circumstance.

And what's a high boot rate? I've been booted twice since I played, and they were my first 2 games when I didn't understand how to place characters (and I went to RT games instead of MD games because I'm dumb). Now that I have 100 games under my belt, I think I have an understanding of the scope of the game, and basics of strategy. So, I'm here trying to learn more about the social aspect. If instead of talking about it you want to just make this "Dude, you think you're important but no one else is" then go ahead.

hi this is my first post...

i had a very annoying part to play some days before...
we played a 3 vs 3 and yellow was more then 1 time overtime on 5 min...noone cared or said anything.
Then after maybe 1 hour playing yellow booted me on the first sec overtime, so my team lost....

I think people like that dont have the same point of interest in the game...they dont wanna play a nice game they want to win...however.

And then it really pisses me off..on the other hand i play many times 2vs2vs2 on a small map with 2 mins boot and 25% banking boottimes because then the cames keeps flowing..if people are finished after 2 mins and wait 4 more then in team games there are more and more people absent if the move is finished...

ascI

When I started, I booted like hell. I used to join 5-10 games, mostly "welcome newbies" (4 player FFAs), and check everytime if someone was over the limit even before I took my first turn. Even if it were only 1-2 hours, I booted the player (if I saw an advantage in it^^).
Then I joined more and more games and because I hadn't figured out how to change the amount of games warlight shows me on the "my games" tab I still saw only 10 games - out of the 18-20 I really was in. Yep, I missed those little page counter right at the bottom.
Of course, I got booted (those 2 times). By the time I noticed what was going on, I saw like five or six games where people had been waiting for me to make a move for almost a week. This was when I realized how much of a noob (and a dick) I had been...

So now I rather wait a little more, nudge & PM people, post something in the game chat, check on their profile if and how long they're inactive(!!!) plus their boot rate - and in team games I try to ask the teammate if he knows the other player, what's going on etc.
My personal threshold is about a day over the "vote to boot" in multi-day. If nothing happens, noone says anything, I boot away. That said, only if remember that there's a game because I have warlight show me only active games mostly.

Other story with those people who have both more than a few games completed and a ridiculous boot rate, though. Those can be booted right away IMO because they don't seem to get it.

tl,dr: With new players there can be a lot of reasons why they don't move; I try to contact them. I try to contact most people before I boot, actually...
Can't say much about RT, I don't play it much.