I'm a noob. Last night I was playing a team game, 3 v. 3, with a five minute boot time. One player on the opposing team is gone past five minutes. At 8 minutes, One of my teammates says, in private chat "boot at 10?" I say yes. We ask the guy in public chat a couple of times if he's here, no response. His teammates are mute. At 10 minutes, I boot him. Immediately one of the formerly mute teammates says "Vote to end." I say no, because at this point, we've spent well over an hour playing, and I'd like to finish. Also, cravenly, I want the win. However, the host was most upset with me and told me I was being unfair. She said I had bad faith (mauvaise foi) and was being mean, etc. She said voting to end would have been the right thing to do.

One question I have is this. Do you really vote to end every time someone leaves the game or gets booted? It seems to me this would result in a very high percentage of games ending early with no winner. I come here to play (however badly), not to spend an hour playing and then abort the game cause one player leaves.

Question 2: What's the point of the little box that pops up and says "this is a fast game, so be quick!" And the littler box that says "ok, I'll be quick!"? (I'm paraphrasing, obviously). Is it just decoration? It seems utterly pointless to have those little boxes, if, after booting a player (no matter how many times you ask if he's here), the one who did the booting is excoriated, yelled at, called mean names, etc. The one who left (for who knows what reason) bears no responsibility, even though he saw, and clicked on, that little box.

I like this game, but the drama around the absentee player/boot thing is a big bummer.

Yes, I'm afraid those little boxes you mentioned seem to be purely decorative.

Actually, a lot of people assume, after losing connection or whatever, that we know that they're there. I'm not sure why. Whenever boot time approaches I like to say something in the public chat so people know I'm still here. Likewise, I wouldn't boot anyone if they did the same.

It seems that in most of the quick games, somebody loses connection or forgets that they're playing or whatever. I don't know why people just stop playing.

I really wish that there was some way to get more personal with the other players. I can't think of anything that wouldn't just turn the site into MySpace but it would be nice to have some kind of incentive to be quick in fast games.

It is always okay to boot at twice the boot time, especially when the bootee is unresponsive. The word of their teammate means very little to me because if you have time to tell your teammate you're here you have time to tell everyone who is likely to boot you for being unresponsive.

When one person takes a long turn it seems to increase the likelihood that another player will take a long turn which seems to increase the likelihood of a third player taking a long turn. I suspect this is because after they take their turn they go check out some other website. I do it all the time and I've been booted for it a couple times but now I'm pretty good at checking my Warlight tab. I also don't mind devoting a half hour to just playing a fast game. What I mean is that I'll only have the WL tab open. I have played a few games where it was all I could do not to be the last person to click commit. That's usually with the Polish players, though.

Sorry for all the blablabla.

Most players tend to give 2-3 times the boot for various reasons. Booting should be a last resort because,as you stated, it does ruin good games. Some people (not naming any names ^^^^^^^^^) tend to boot right at the timer, as if they had been waiting for the second the boot became available. As long as you are not in the second category I think youll be okay.

booting at 2X the boot time, well into the game, is not a vote to end situation, imho..


voting to end is the kind of thing you do when the game is at an obvious standstill, or if someone is booted in the first couple of turns, and generally a rematch is made with someone else replacing that person.

Agreed with Perrin -- there is no reason to vote to end in that situation. It sounds like you were being reasonable. I would only vote to end if that happened in the first couple of turns.

Really, I think it depends on the situation. Lots of players stop making moves rather than surrender when they think they are far behind. If you think your ahead, boot away, take the win, and move on. However, if its a close game or they are ahead its polite to use the chat and ask what the hold up is. If its just that there thinking... your right... the "quick game" makes it explicit thats it not a game to go over every scenario in your head and select the right one. Having said that, a few minute grace period is fairly standard rather than a trigger happy all-for-the-win mentality.

If wins is what really motivates you, its more beneficial to get better by playing to the end - even if that means losing. Getting lopsided wins through the boot will not help you in the long run.

I think more people need to implement the sliding boot timer into their games to see how it will work out, I have not used it but will experiment with it to see if it will be a solution to these the trigger happy booters, I have noticed and influx this past week, maybe I am just playing more lately. Noobs often boot as they are eager to get the win/ and pad thier stats.

2cents

As most people have already stated, I also agree that booting after twice the limit that far into the game is completely fair. It is not your fault the opposing team was not able to keep all of their players. And I am willing to bet that if the sides happened to be flipped they would have been more than happy to boot you with not a chance of voting to end the game. Compare this to a sport. If one of the two teams happened to lose a player and could not continue. They would be forced to forfeit the game and take a loss. Certainly the team that played by the rules shouldn't have to forfeit a win for something they did not cause.

That's a good point.