Over the years playing WZ, this hasn't been an issue with me, but lately it's been happening a lot.

Basically, there are players who are in dozens and dozens of games. I can't imagine they have time to keep up with them all. Their boot rate is usually high. But even if they keep their boot rate down, they still only take their turn when they absolutely have to.

I have not blocked anyone yet, but this behavior may well get me started.

It would be nice to add another option to the prerequisites. Currently there is a minimum player level and a minimum boot rate. I would like there to be a "Player must be in less than x active games". Or "Average time waiting between turns must be less than x% of the total game time."

I play and host 3-day games. In my mind that means you try to take a turn every day. We all know that life can get in the way, so feel free to skip a day or two.

What you shouldn't be doing is joining 60 games at a time, then scrambling to not get booted by focusing only on the games that are close to boot time.

Just blocklist captain mak sparrow and tarwolf, everyone else did.

edit: it's tarlwolf apparently

Edited 5/13/2024 22:18:51

Captain MAK Sparrow is one of the GOATs, playing until elimination is true perseverance and dedication

Have you considered creating games with lower boot times, but with added time in bank? Like in the official 1v1 ladder? Because I think modifying the boot settings is the only practical solution to your problem.

Personally I find games with 2d boot time and 1-3 days in bank to be more enjoyable than 3d no bank.

Yup. Tarlwolf. RuelrOfHentai is another. ZUGZWANG plays until elimination a lot.

I try to be nice, but I guess I have to start blocking people.

Max number of games isnt what youre looking for, since some players have more time than others, and some games also take more time than others.

I like the idea of having a minimum average move speed tho!

Average move speed really isn't ideal. I've had real-time games where we would take a break and come back another day (you can see on my profile how often my RT moves took over 10 mins).

MD games are a similar story, I have chat-games where we can take 100 days to make a move,.

Not to mention that player speed for one particular player varies a lot depending on how busy he currently is. Not sure if we should be weighing in move speed from years ago.

I honestly think that the best solution is to make use of the customisable boot settings. I know that 3d-no-bank became a norm but we can always set it to something else.

The problem with using banked time is that WZ treats it as normal boot time. It makes the games sink all the way to the bottom of the dashboard (and for anyone with 15+ games, onto the next page where it will never be found).
So you always end up using banked time way quicker than you want, and not when you actually need it.

@JK_3, I agree this is a problem and would be nice to change it. Especially with the change to 2x2 and 3x3 ladder game bank times, I often get to those games late after letting all the bank times run out, because they are not near the top of my list.

Would be awesome to either include or exclude the bank time (kind of like Ebay lets you include or exclude shipping in price sorts). :-)

Blocklisting them doesn’t prevent QM or tournaments from you being paired with them.

If a person you blocked has joined a game, does it then not show on your open games? If so, you've essentially limited the games that are available for you to join because the person you blocked is joining them all before you get a chance to join and block them.

Shouldn't it be that they are only blocked from joining games that the person who blocked them created, and not be a race situation where the first to join blocks the other from even seeing the game?

You can still see the game, but a icon will show up next to their name to let you know that you blocked them.
Only the blocklist of the host determines who cannot join a game.
(And if the host has you blocked, you can still see the game, but just not join it iirc.)

Edited 5/14/2024 11:53:39

Nice. That's a good way to do blocking. Not as harsh as I imagined.

I created a game where players are booted after 1.3 days. Players start with a banked time of 77 hours, and each day, players receive 0 hours.

It's strange that this is listed as 4 days 12 hours in Open Games, but on My Games, it correctly says 1 day 7 hours. They should add a plus sign to indicate the banked time, though.

I expect the result will be one of the following.

The delaying player will run the first turn out to 4 days 11 hours and take their turn. On turn two they will either play in 1.3 days or get booted.

Or maybe they will use the settings as intended and play once a day or else use banked time. There's plenty of banked time to take a day off every once in a while.

The fix for knowing how much time is banked and how much is normal is to use https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/8936-tidy-up-your-dashboard.

Yeah, I'm on my work computer where I can't install tamper monkey. I'll look at it when I get home.

This is basically what we used to call 'stalling', colloquially.

I think most stallers do it unintentionally because I've been in that position myself where I've joined too many games and it's hard for me to commit on time, but of course stalling in RT games and stalling in MD games can be a bit different.

If you're waiting literally almost 3 full days to commit your moves every single turn ur motives are definitely more questionable imo esp if you make moves that you can tell aren't rushed or low effort but none of that really matters much

Best thing to do is to kindly ask the person to play faster, and if they don't then deal with it. BL if it really makes you feel better lol

Edited 6/10/2024 13:11:35

Taking more time for each turn is needed when you fucked up and joined more tournaments than you can handle. Taking the turn only when you must because you have no time to play all the games you have. I have been there.

Increase banked time a little, and highly reduce normal boot time. Personally, now i only look for tournaments when those settings are applied, since the trolls are indeed out there.

I suspect they are AIs created by FiveSmith, but i have no proof to back my claim.
Blocklisting them and banked instead of normal time are the only reasonable solutions

It's only stalling if you're lost with no hope of winning on the board. When a game is created with a boot time a player is entitled to use all that boot time. You want games to go faster decrease the boot time.

Truth that's a pretty good point. I find myself taking much longer when I'm in too many MD games.

Orcinus orca Yup that's true stalling, I'm one of those who uses the term a bit broadly