Yes, there does seem to be some misunderstanding here. For the record, I'm with Gamer on this point, I think there is a difference and that it's important.
Perhaps another thread might be appropriate for a fuller discussion on this particular, narrow issue?
Yes, I certainly don't mean to "hijack" this thread. If that is what is bothering people, that is certainly understandable.
Recent points I proposed are points across the recent 7-days, so using vacation mode longer than that 7-day is effectively seen as dropping the games. Only difference is the player can still come back to games and should affect anything if recent points start to increase after another 7-day.
If I do not misunderstand you, Gamer is trying to specifically distinguish different reasons of not taking turns and assign some merit to these reasons. I personally think it is not necessary and also impossible for developer to consider every style of playing GMR. So I say the implementation should focus on the basic thing that GMR is supposed to provide: help players taking turns.
For other things such as reputation or reliability, it is not the job of developer, it is for the forum participants or among players themselves. Personally I think joining the game itself requires the commitment, it doesn't have to speak and say in the forum. Sometimes player simply does not realise the level of commitment required or simply lost interest. Instead of putting a 'tag' on player, I would rather moving on and find new active players (who have many many recent points). If the dropped players decide to come back, just take turns in other new games and start to accumulate recent points, no tag or anything else discourage them.
And if there is some player style such as taking turn every 10 days, it is completely fine, but the majority speed I guess would be within 2 days? Holiday maybe a week? That's why a 7- day period accumulation is proposed. It will not be good experience to mix up players who take turns every 2 days with players who take turns every 10 days.
Anything still missing?
You do misunderstand me, and I clearly must have misunderstood you. You are arguing in favor of a point similar to mine, and I thought you were arguing the point you have just labeled as mine. So we, essentially, agree.
What I AM saying is that I don't want the above to accidentally happen, so I am trying to help point out things that you have suggested that I think will encourage the behaviors we both do not want.
I do not want a tag on the player. Certainly giving hosts the information that allows them to choose who to let into their games is a good idea. The problem is how to provide that information, yes? I am saying that I don't want that information portrayed in a way that would confuse hosts into confusing people who have not played but would like to with people who drop games.
My point of "they don't play games they agreed to play" does not mean I want to differentiate between people who are malevolent and people who are irresponsible. Certainly not, that is not our place to do. My point was every person who drops a game is not playing a game they agreed to play. What this means is that:
-Players who are playing a game they agreed to play should get points for such
-Players who are not playing in the 1/day system should be judged by the statistics that would make them equal to those who have never played GMR in general
-Players who used to play but no longer do, who are NOT dropping games, should not be confused with those who are currently dropping games
-Players who are playing some games in the 1/day system and others not should not be confused for being slow or lazy with the games meant to be that way (so that hosts of 1/day wont think that THEY are personally slow)
These are important points to me. These are design goals, and it is important to lay these out before we actually start figuring out how to do it. I think our misunderstanding lies in this area.
As for HOW to deliver the information, I think we agree on this for the most part. Collect some basic statistics, and allow the host to infer what they mean. Which statistics GMR collects and displays should be chosen based off of the design goals. If hosts get too little or too much information, they may confuse good players for ones they don't want in their games.
Sorry, I just felt like I was reading the same thing over and over again.
I fall somewhere in the middle of this. I would like a system to try and figure out how people are using GMR. A way to know who has the app. figured out and who doesnt.
At the same time, I want to play new people and encourage more to join with no worries about a ranking system. Also to play at there own pace so there is no burn out.
I would give points out just for taking turns and for finishing games. If you get conquered, you still deserve as much credit as the guy that is playing 100 turns down the road.
If I could penalize people, it would be for dropping out of games. I dont know how to do it fairly. The person that dropped out because he didnt like his start doesnt deserve the same as the guy whose computer blew up or the ones that forgot they even joined GMR.
I think an open game where new people could just jump in and play for a few turns would be cool. I dont know if its possible though. It would help with the games that dont get started or bogged down by new players that are just trying to figure it all out. That is my main reason for wanting a point system. Several games I have joined dont even get past 1 turn because of players joining but not having the DLC or they dont get a turn within a few days and decide to just surrender. Then the host starts looking for players again.
It all comes down to what Mel and Tazzik want to do. They are the ones that are putting in the work. For them I want it to be as simple and easy as possible. So just give me 1 million points and everyone else minus 1 million. That should work.
Yes, I agree. When EEE first suggested a points system, I had imagined it could be used to encourage new players AND fair play, while perhaps discouraging irresponsibility. I think that giving points to players for taking turns is the best idea. The GMR app is all about letting more players play how they want, right? Of course some players get stuck with bad people and their fun is ruined. If there is a way to improve that, then that should be considered as well.
Possible design goals for this should be listed as well?
-Encourage players to play how they want
-Discourage players from ruining other players' fun
-Provide hosts with a way to block out spoilsports?
So how do we do this? Let's give points to players for doing good things, shall we? But who are we to say what is good? We want players to play
how they want to. Ok, so we have to give points for playing, indiscriminate of style. Points for each turn played is certainly the only way to do that, right? We can either give a flat amount of points per turn, scale it with number of players (and thus with how often you are allowed to take your turn), and/or scale it with game length (encouraging players to play full games).
How to discourage players from ruining other players' fun? Word of mouth is a great one, and already exists. Anything else?
So we can subtract points for "ruining fun". But how do we know this has happened?
Well how do players ruin fun? Quitting, delaying, and trolling. Well we could discourage these things by subtracting points from those who do them, but do these 3 thing ALWAYS result in "ruining fun"? No, the first 2 are sometimes necessary, sometimes understandable, and sometimes agreed upon. And I don't know how we would detect "trolling" anyways.
Ok so since quitting and delaying are NOT synonymous with ruining fun, how can we find out when they actually ruin fun? Well let's break them down into even smaller units.
Why do people quit?
-Game is over. This should not be punished, clearly.
-Game is bugged/unplayable. Ditto.
-Game is unfun/unwinnable. This is questionable.
-Cannot commit. Should this be punished?
-Never comes back to play. If accidental, perhaps should be punished to discourage. If on purpose, no punishment will help.
It is difficult to differentiate between the reasonings with only our data. Certainly we cannot universally punish for quitting. Perhaps we could differentiate at the source, aka discourage quitting for bad reasons, don't discourage for good reasons.
Well scaling points earned with game length encourages players to stay in the game more the further in you get. That should discourage players from quitting early unless they truly think it is a lost cause. And players who never commit will never earn many points because they only take early turns.
Ok what about delays? Why do these happen?
-Player has no time. Certainly should not have to be punished, but it does ruin fun for others if they are impatient. Maybe punished to prevent them joining games in the future?
-Player is lazy/doesn't check often. Ditto
-Chronic, but one-time problem. Should not be punished.
So again, we can't really punish this either. Perhaps encourage players to only commit to games they truly can, encourage them to be diligent, and find a way to prevent 1-time problems from ruining fun.
Again, the method of giving points for turns, scaled with length does the first 2 points, and vacation mode already does the 3rd. Since you get points as often as you take turns, you get more points for taking them faster. And since you get more points the further in you get, it encourages you to commit to games you won't delay either.
As for trolls, I don't think GMR will have many of those.
So do we need to present statistics? We certainly can. We can also have this point system in place, as it wouldn't be too hard to implement as far as I can tell.
I hope this damn thing posts, its so long...
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