Allow players to win stale games by forfeit

[irilyth]

If one player hasn't moved in a game for a while (two weeks?), the other player should get the choice to win by forfeit.

[irilyth]

We had previously thought that this wouldn't be all that useful until we had tournaments, but it'd be somewhat useful in Mad Robin and UBFC too.

[irilyth]

It'd also be useful for people who accept games from new players, who tend to wander off and never come back at a somewhat above-average rate.

[dwvanstone]

I would encourage that we store something internally that marks the win as Win By Forfeit so the button stats can ignore these games. (Or Win By Stale or something like that...)

[irilyth]

Definitely. I also suspect that there'll be different use cases for this: For example, a forfeit is the same as a loss for UBFC purposes, so I'd like it not to be implemented as something like "the game is retroactively deleted as if it never existed" or something (which is sort of how I recall it working on the old site).

[AdmiralJota]

One option would be to keep the current behavior (i.e., let the game remain stale forever), but once a game goes stale, display that fact on the game page, and allow things like tournaments to treat the stale game like a completed one, even though it's technically not.

[irilyth]

I think I'd rather differentiate between stale and forfeits; among other things, I like that forcing a forfeit requires action from the other player, so if they know of some extenuating circumstances, or just don't want to end the game, they can make that decision. I like that better than having it be purely clock based.

Also, what would happen if the tournament ignores it, and moves on as if it had ended, but then the other player comes back and resumes it? Would something indicate that the game was out of the tournament or whatever?

That all sounds needlessly complicated -- I just think adding an extra bit to say "this game was forfeited" lets you distinguish between them and any other completed game. What's a use case where that wouldn't be sufficient, or where something else would have some advantages?

[AdmiralJota]

Is it fair to the other tournament players to have the game sit indefinitely because one player doesn't want to forcibly end the game? Or if both players go idle?

(And I think adding a comment to the game log indicating that it was forfeited out of the tournament seems straightforward enough.)

I'm not saying that I'm opposed to players force forfeits from idle opponents. I'm just positing some responses to the points you've made.

[irilyth]

That used to happen sometimes on the old site, and I agree it's something we should try to avoid. Here's a proposal: After N days without action, a game becomes eligible for forfeit, at which point any of these people can trigger a forfeit loss to the idle player:

• The idle player. Perhaps they've given up on the site, have come back one last time to clean up, and would like to forfeit the whole game, not just surrender rounds and otherwise slog through the rest of the game. Perhaps uncommon, but why not allow it.
• The other player. This is probably the most common case.
• The tournament organizer, if the game is part of a tournament.
• The person who created the game, if that's different from the players. This wouldn't have any effect until we allow third-party game creation (Allow third-party game creation #1784), but when we do, it'd be nice if I (as e.g. UBFC or Mad Robin wrangler) could forfeit games that have gone idle. (This is basically equivalent to "the tournament organizer", but for games that aren't part of formal tournaments.)

Whatcha think?

[cgolubi1]

Irilyth's proposal seems reasonable to me. I think we can always expand/change the set of players who can forfeit a game later, so the initial value of that access control list doesn't strike me as fundamental to the proposal (and, again, the proposed set seems fine as a starting point).

For me, the two main design features i want to see are:

• There should be some way to move forward from a game which is stuck (whether that's by letting a player win by forfeit, or by having the context which cares about the game (e.g. a tournament) be able to declare a forfeit outcome separate from whether the actual underlying game is actually over)
• It should not be mandatory for stale games to be forfeited outside of tournaments --- my stale games are nicely hidden on my Overview, and i'd just as soon keep them all around in case any of those players come back.

One question i have is: why are we talking about this before we have tournaments? That is, what's the use case for forfeiting stale games right now (when we don't have tournaments or third party game creation or any of those things)? Or are we just planning for tournaments?

[irilyth]

I mentioned two recently: Mad Robin and UBFC, and people who accept games from new players, who tend to wander off and never come back at a somewhat above-average rate.

Hiding the stale games may be fine for the second one -- I thought someone said something on the forums that made me think of that, but I can't find it now. The Mad Robin and UBFC part would make things smoother for me even today.