Proposal for guidelines for reporting incomplete games

[Mr Grumpy]

Hi All,

I am trying to get a sense if there is any interest in the community here to introduce some informal guidelines to the game reporting process. As things stand you can report a game (with your opponents permission) after any number of turns have been completed, it has been pointed out that this can skew the results in the scenario database (which some players use as a guide when looking for balanced scenarios) and players are rewarded the same points on the ladder regardless if they have completed 10 turns or 200 turns.

it has been suggested as a informal guideline a game should not be reported until at least 25% of the turns have been played, but that figure is not decided and is open to debate.

As the present reporting procedure has been in place since day one we have no intention of imposing this guideline, if players still wish to report games that have not reached the agreed turn completed percentage they can.

If this is adopted then two situations that might occur have come to mind and will need to be addressed.....

a) Players don't discuss this at the start of a game that then does not reach the guideline limit and one player wish's to report the and the other does not.
b) Games where a players opponent disappears before the guideline limit.

If you wish to post your comments to this thread that is great, perhaps if you agree there should be a guideline you can indicated the percentage level that guideline should be set at, however can you also vote in the poll so your opinion can be counted, thank you.

[Indragnir]

Hi All,

I am trying to get a sense if there is any interest in the community here to introduce some informal guidelines to the game reporting process. As things stand you can report a game (with your opponents permission) after any number of turns have been completed, it has been pointed out that this can skew the results in the scenario database (which some players use as a guide when looking for balanced scenarios) and players are rewarded the same points regardless if they have completed 10 turns or 200 turns.

it has been suggested as a informal guideline a game should not be reported until at least 25% of the turns have been played, but that figure is not decided and is open to debate.

As the present reporting procedure has been in place since day one we have no intention of imposing this guideline, if players still wish to report games that have not reached the agreed turn completed percentage they can.

If this is adopted then two situations that might occur have come to mind and will need to be addressed.....

a) Players don't discuss this at the start of a game that then does not reach the guideline limit and one player wish's to report the and the other does not.
b) Games where a players opponent disappears before the guideline limit.

If you wish to post your comments to this thread that is great, perhaps if you agree there should be a guideline you can indicated the percentage level that guideline should be set at, however can you also vote in the poll so your opinion can be counted, thank you.

There is a third case:
When they agree about % of turns to report and one of the players surrender because he doesn't see any chance.

I, personally, don't report any game I've not played a fair ammount of turns. For example in 2020 I played 3 times BotB 5.3 and never repported a game because we never reached more than 20 turns. I'm aware if I add up all 3 games we would have played about 50-60 turns.

[Mr Grumpy]

Hi All,

I am trying to get a sense if there is any interest in the community here to introduce some informal guidelines to the game reporting process. As things stand you can report a game (with your opponents permission) after any number of turns have been completed, it has been pointed out that this can skew the results in the scenario database (which some players use as a guide when looking for balanced scenarios) and players are rewarded the same points regardless if they have completed 10 turns or 200 turns.

it has been suggested as a informal guideline a game should not be reported until at least 25% of the turns have been played, but that figure is not decided and is open to debate.

As the present reporting procedure has been in place since day one we have no intention of imposing this guideline, if players still wish to report games that have not reached the agreed turn completed percentage they can.

If this is adopted then two situations that might occur have come to mind and will need to be addressed.....

a) Players don't discuss this at the start of a game that then does not reach the guideline limit and one player wish's to report the and the other does not.
b) Games where a players opponent disappears before the guideline limit.

If you wish to post your comments to this thread that is great, perhaps if you agree there should be a guideline you can indicated the percentage level that guideline should be set at, however can you also vote in the poll so your opinion can be counted, thank you.

There is a third case:
When they agree about % of turns to report and one of the players surrender because he doesn't see any chance.

I, personally, don't report any game I've not played a fair ammount of turns. For example in 2020 I played 3 times BotB 5.3 and never repported a game because we never reached more than 20 turns. I'm aware if I add up all 3 games we would have played about 50-60 turns.

Thank you for your feedback, if this was adopted we would require an agreed limit as "a fair amount of turns" would no doubt be different for players when they came round to report a game.

[Indragnir]

Hi All,

I am trying to get a sense if there is any interest in the community here to introduce some informal guidelines to the game reporting process. As things stand you can report a game (with your opponents permission) after any number of turns have been completed, it has been pointed out that this can skew the results in the scenario database (which some players use as a guide when looking for balanced scenarios) and players are rewarded the same points regardless if they have completed 10 turns or 200 turns.

it has been suggested as a informal guideline a game should not be reported until at least 25% of the turns have been played, but that figure is not decided and is open to debate.

As the present reporting procedure has been in place since day one we have no intention of imposing this guideline, if players still wish to report games that have not reached the agreed turn completed percentage they can.

If this is adopted then two situations that might occur have come to mind and will need to be addressed.....

a) Players don't discuss this at the start of a game that then does not reach the guideline limit and one player wish's to report the and the other does not.
b) Games where a players opponent disappears before the guideline limit.

If you wish to post your comments to this thread that is great, perhaps if you agree there should be a guideline you can indicated the percentage level that guideline should be set at, however can you also vote in the poll so your opinion can be counted, thank you.

There is a third case:
When they agree about % of turns to report and one of the players surrender because he doesn't see any chance.

I, personally, don't report any game I've not played a fair ammount of turns. For example in 2020 I played 3 times BotB 5.3 and never repported a game because we never reached more than 20 turns. I'm aware if I add up all 3 games we would have played about 50-60 turns.

Thank you for your feedback, if this was adopted we would require an agreed limit as "a fair amount of turns" would no doubt be different for players when they came round to report a game.

What I mean is: 2 players agree 30 turns on a campaign of 120 turns, then by turn 20 player A surrenders because he feels he has no chance of winning (nor even getting a draw, and is clearly losing). It should be addressed also. It's an easy gate for slipping away from losing games (for some players not all, of course)

[larsonney]

I voted yes for guidelines...I think at least 25% of the game.

[Big Ivan]

I'm a novice at this game so I can't say either way. But thanks for the poll!

[Green]

If this is adopted then two situations that might occur have come to mind and will need to be addressed.....

a) Players don't discuss this at the start of a game that then does not reach the guideline limit and one player wish's to report the and the other does not.
b) Games where a players opponent disappears before the guideline limit.

Darran,

The issues you mention above are simply unavoidable. Perfection cannot be achieved.
 
If players are not aware of the guideline when they first play, then that is just one of things they will learn. I cannot imagine that a new player would find it surprising that after playing 10 turns of a 200 turn game that it was not valid to report in on the ladder. If the information is on the website, that should be enough. It is just a guideline. 

If someone disappears, then why should that be any different from someone surrendering? This sort of thing is an unavoidable part of normal gaming experience and we just have to live with it. I have had opponents disappear or surrender after the first few turns of campaigns but it would be farcical to report these as victories (although plenty do). If we could redesign the entire reporting system, you could build in some recognition of these failed games but since we cannot it makes no sense to me that we should pollute the data and the ladder with them.

It is interesting that several people have already indicated that they are opposed, but have not provided reasons. If players are thinking it will be a serious inconvenience not to report games when less than 25% of turns are played, then this is presumably because they are doing it regularly. Until some counter arguments are presented, I find it hard to see how anyone could convince themselves that the current approach is fair and reasonable, unless it was working to their benefit. 

John

[Ricky B]

I voted that either way is fine. As we already have 20 years of game reports without a guidance in play, and it will continue to simply be guidance, I don't see any benefit if analyzing results except for new games, and even there you never know what gets reported.

As to fairness of the results, we already skewed the award of points in favor of smaller scenarios, significantly, in part to recognize that the longer scenarios of any kind are less likely to be completed. And then provide a partial balancer through a complete campaign bonus. But there are massive campaigns where one turn takes the same effort as 10 or even 20 turns in a small scenario, so to me, it may be the recommendation be more like complete at least half the turns or 20 turns, whichever is less, or something similar. That is probably more the guideline I have followed in the past for reporting, but never had a fixed rule. But I have played with a quick partner a 10 turn scenario in a single day, whereas I have played campaigns that I couldn't complete one turn in less than 3 or 4 hours, or about the same amount of effort as the 10 turns. And yet finishing the campaign results in no more than about 10 times the points for 100+ times the effort.

Rick

[typhoon]

For me it’s the reporting the turns played for the reporting system that is important. I realise it cannot be back dated. It would also has seen in a recent thread be difficult or impossible to implement without a talented web guru moving forward so it seems no go. A guidance system for reporting games would not matter as a player who had played say 30 turns of a Minsk campaign would feel cheated if honour bound not to report. As Rick just pointed out the effort and time commitment involved in such a game is far greater than playing a scenario like desolate dump on the Desna say 50 times.

[typhoon]

Must also thank mr grumpy for giving us a chance to air our views