Sometimes when I'm losing I "stall" but not in a way to manipulate the ladder.

What happens is I realize I'm behind, but think there's probably still a chance, so I don't surrender yet. But I delay taking my turn because I know it's going to require more thought and effort to keep up the fight.

This is a bad habit obviously--it often results in needing to play a turn to avoid a boot which rarely improves my position.

being behind encourages procrastionation, i agree smileyleg. i've pulled back a notable amount of games after getting behind by actually thinking about the game for 2d+

i remember Math Wolf did some calculation a while ago and noticed there is visible difference between turn time in won and lost games.

One thing that could be done that would be less punishing; is that players who have been flagged as stalling could be forced into an anti stall setting for ladder games. This would work whereby the player can only commit in the game that is closest to the boot. This would mean that in order to slow down a defeat, a player is forced to also slow down their wins, and so gain much less advantage from stalling. The benefit of this is that due to the inherent subjectivity any system is going to create false positives, and those players aren't being punished, but forced into a play style where they can't accidentally game the system.

Please no, this punishes people who stall games they think they are losing, because they need more time to think. I do that very often. I take easy turns during breaks or even loading screens of other games, while more difficult games are stalled until I find the time to really think out all possible moves. This often results in 2d+ turns. Why shouldnt I be able to make use of all 3 days? Afterall this is the point of MD.

4.) A player may only play on a team ladder if there is no team consisting of the same players (not accounts) with unexpired games. They may join the ladder on a new team if at least one of their teammates is a new different player or if one or more of the players on the old team is not on the new team. Violations will be punished with a warning and then bans.

5.) Egregious stalling can be reported and the game will be reviewed by Fizzer and the mods to see if it is a blatant attempt to thwart fair-play by stalling a loss. Automated tools will be used when possible to confirm stalling. Enforcement will err on the side of caution to result in the fewest amount of false positives. Violations will be punished with a warning and then bans.

These rules need more clarity.
It wouldn't be easy to detect if or when a play is stalling based on the duration that it takes for players to take their turn as they would have a reason for taking a long or short amount of time to take their turns such as not having internet access, having the weekend off or having the time to play.

6.) Manipulation of the force-finish in the Seasonal Ladder is not allowed, and the use of vacations towards the end of a season leading to force-finish will be considered especially suspicious. Violations will be punished with a ban.

What if a player wanted to or planned in advance to go on vacation though? If the length of seasons are extended, then it's likely for more players to go on vacation during a season. I dislike the idea of banning or warning someone for just going on vacations. If people who took a 'long' amount of time to do their moves in games, then about 4 or 5 accounts would be banned per month (going by the amount of reports that I've seen for players to warn or ban a another player for this reason within the last couple of months). This may discourage player to take part in the ladder or quit the game completely.

Rules 1 to 4 are fair, breaking rule 5 shouldn't result in a ban and rule 6 should be removed, in my opinion.

I really like these potential new rules, my only problem with those being again the definitions and clarity of some that could be worked out.

One thing that could be done that would be less punishing; is that players who have been flagged as stalling could be forced into an anti stall setting for ladder games. This would work whereby the player can only commit in the game that is closest to the boot. This would mean that in order to slow down a defeat, a player is forced to also slow down their wins, and so gain much less advantage from stalling. The benefit of this is that due to the inherent subjectivity any system is going to create false positives, and those players aren't being punished, but forced into a play style where they can't accidentally game the system.

I like this as a solution for when you're not entirely sure someone is staling, as a mean of giving a punishment that isn't too bad in case it was non-proposital staling but still prevents stalers from doing it again without punishment or correction to their actions.

Edited 9/4/2017 13:05:08

All the others could be solved implementing a better rating system

Agreed, a better rating system would certainly help, and hopefully that will come in the future. However, I should have mentioned in my first post that one of the constraints on the rules we are allowed to draft is that they would not entail any code changes. Fizzer is completely tied up with the Unity launch and won't be able to commit to any code changes until that happens.

Sometimes when I'm losing I "stall" but not in a way to manipulate the ladder.

What happens is I realize I'm behind, but think there's probably still a chance, so I don't surrender yet. But I delay taking my turn because I know it's going to require more thought and effort to keep up the fight.

This is a bad habit obviously--it often results in needing to play a turn to avoid a boot which rarely improves my position.

I think everyone tends to do this to some extent, so any consideration of stalling will definitely have to take this into account. As I said before, while our official guidelines for determining stalling are still being developed, they will be heavily biased against false positives.

I dislike the idea of banning or warning someone for just going on vacations.

People wouldn't be banned for going on vacation during a season. They would be banned for going on vacation in order to manipulate the force finish and get a free win.

As many people have said, the wording of some of these rules could still use some work, especially the team ladder one, and they will be made clearer.

@DanWL: Rule 6 should definitely be there. This rule isn't about vacations, it's about players taking advantage of those vacations to win on force-finish.
With this rule, we can avoid games like these:
https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=13878244
https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=13893060

If a player has a vacation planned during the last week of the seasonal, that's fine, he can take it. But he has to be fair-play about it. He needs to warn his remaining opponents at least a week before he goes on that vacation, and see if they can find a way to finish the game before he leaves, RT or MD.


On rule 5), I'm fine with the vagueness of the rule. It should stay this way in my opinion.
First, because the moment you give a precise definition of stalling, you can be sure that some players will find a new way to stall by circumventing this definition.
And second, because stalling depends on a lot of things, and not only income and armies. Is the staller active on other ladder games? Has he been asked to play faster in the team chat? Does he have a bad income but a good position that still gives him hope?

When we see stalling, we know it. We don't need a mathematical definition for it.
And if we're worried about false positives, let's have a second or a third pair of eyes check the game. It should be enough.

When we see stalling, we know it. We don't need a mathematical definition for it.
And if we're worried about false positives, let's have a second or a third pair of eyes check the game. It should be enough.

This!

If you showed a game to 10 people and 9 or 10 of them said it was a stalled game, I don't think you need metrics to define it. If it's split 7-3, just ignore the report. Or use Buns' metric - If you can show your opponent the entire board and still win easily, you know the game is done.

Not the entire board, but all the moves from that turn on

You're right this is the hardest part in coming up with these rules. Before these rules are accepted, I suggest that we should try as hard as possible to define what is considered stalling and what isn't. I know it's a difficult task, but we should try as much as possible to outline it. This is especially important since you can't rely on one person to do all of the enforcing, so everyone that enforces it need an established guideline that's as specific as possible. The guideline can be changed over time, if needed to combat abuse, but there should always be a guideline.

What you should do is take the avg time per move in games won, avg time per move in games lost, and run a statistical difference of means test:

http://onlinestatbook.com/2/tests_of_means/difference_means.html

you could run this for, say, a difference of 24, 36, and 48, or some other (see below) hours, testing for a 90 or 95% significance bound in each case. Furthermore, the bound could be only one sided, as we don't really care about the upper bound in this case.

Obviously, you would have to claim that the time taken per move for playing in wins is statistically independent of the time taken per move per playing in losses, but this is probably true.

And, of course, the more data a player has accumulated, the more you can be certain there is some degree of stalling. (as standard deviation goes down).

So, how do we determine what difference of means, when statistically reasonable, count as stalling? I think the simplest way to do that is to go out and ask a group of players what they feel are cases of definite stalling, while also checking the forums for the more publicized cases of them as well. You then run the difference of means test on the select cases, find the lowest statistically significant difference, and take an average of them. You should not publicize this number, otherwise players could, in theory, manipulate the system so they could keep barely under the threshold. However, it would provide a robust and numerically based definition of stalling, assuming you take enough cases.

When we see stalling, we know it. We don't need a mathematical definition for it.
And if we're worried about false positives, let's have a second or a third pair of eyes check the game. It should be enough.

Still vague. You have to remember this has to do with the upper echelon of the ladder. Some players don't know, or even won't surrender until their last bonus broken. With the screwy ladder giving way to fluky runs, I think these players could enter the top 25. Saying "I know what stalling is" gets far more complicated when we look at the ladder as a whole.

Also there is discussion of trying to automate this, to me, I wanna see what defines as stalling under this automated system.

If people are unaware that they they should surrender when they don't have a chance to win, rather than play until elimination, that's fine. They will get a warning first anyway. Then they will know.

It's not a question of awareness. It's a question of skill.

When you are in the lower ranks of the ladder, It's the "Oh shit I'm at 5 base income or all my bonuses are broken" which warrants surrendering at this level.

Top level, You can say "surrender when you know you've lost".

Only stalling that's done is by top players for the reward of 1st place. So I wouldn't have any concern over application of the rule anywhere near the worser players. Keep it to keep the top players in check.

EDIT - I think I misread something above but the point still remains relevant.

Edited 9/5/2017 18:48:48

Just wanted to throw out there a recent example of obvious stalling.

https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=13947548

Patience should be taught in school.

Edited 9/5/2017 22:59:17

Playing till elimination is one thing, but how do you explain stalling to someone who doesn't know what stalling is.

@Benoit, yeah, that's clear stalling. But how far do we go, are we gonna punish a player for going 2 days + on a probably lost game. This is too vague, and will likely make it hard to police the ladder as a whole.

Blame the game not the player.

I've mentioned it to Beren, but a not very formal rule against stalling is never going to fix it, either being too tight or too loose, unless gameplay mechanics change. Force double turns, use banked time... whatever works.

Specially because, realistically, a consistently slow player is an annoyance much larger than a selectively slow one.

You are given a set timer, and speed isn't a skill WarLight demands, so you are adding rules on top of flawed systems - masking the problem, if anything.

"When we see stalling, we know it. We don't need a mathematical definition for it.
And if we're worried about false positives, let's have a second or a third pair of eyes check the game. It should be enough."

I will add my own This! To this..