Seems to me that there is a lot of people abandoning games when they go down a big piece or blundered away a nice lead.
I think that it would be easy to end a game quickly when the person who disconnects just had a big material loss or is in a loosing position. -- specially if you kept track of habitual quitters and used that score to decide how long to wait (shorter for folks who do this all the time)
Its really annoying to have to wait for the clock to run out and this happens alot on lichess.
It doesn't always happen (that you have to wait for the clock to time-out). Sometimes you're offered the ability to "Claim Victory" or "Declare Draw."
I'm happy with the way things work right now.
If you haven't noticed, when someone does walk away from a game without moving, letting time run down, "Claim Victory" button aside, there's a message in the chat, warning the offender about temporary bans, which is noted, aggregated, and, if someone has a historical pattern of this, then, the person gets a (temporary) ban.
There's not much that can be done about game-to-game (different players); and some times it might seem like there are a lot of people doing this at the same time.
but thats what i'm talking about -- i think that even waiting for the claim victory button could be made better..
probably there is enough data in the system to have a fairly good guesstimate when the disconnect is a rage quit ... given the board position and last few moves .. a ban doesn't really help the person who is left waiting for "claim victory" .. but a near instant "claim victory" would.
my experience is that a large percentage of players in my ratings band rage quit.
its annoying -- i wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the idea that the system could do a better job at identifying this situation.
"Near instant" isn't going to happen. That would suck. One minor disconnect. How about those "Site Update In Progress" notifications (and recovery thereafter). Or maybe someone has a horrible Internet connection. ("Near Instant" would, however, solve the problem of people conveniently losing focus several times in the course of a game.)
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss either, except I don't hear any suggestion other than "hurry up," make it faster (because, same thing as rage quitting, but irritation from the other direction).
Similar could be said to you: "Be patient."
The same as people who complain about time controls, or who cry about a won game lost on time: You started a game with set time control. You should be prepared to sit for that period of time. (And, if you don't like it, you can resign instead of wait for the "Claim Victory" button. It's really minimal to sit there and think: "Another one bites the dust, and another one's gone, and another one's gone, another one bites the dust." (Bass-line.)
i think with the right heuristic you could do alot better with little to no downside ..
think of a system where a profile is made of every the system is trying to score their likelyhood of rage quitting .. given lots of signals, (and connectivity can be one of those) ..
i dont mind sitting for the entire time as long as the other person is also at the keyboard.
but then again this is just a suggestion .. and i wonder if other people feel the same way ..
It would be good if you could see how much time is left until you can claim victory.
So you would know how much you have to wait.
@ricardo-sf what you're requesting would require a pretty massive amount of data storage and analysis to solve what is, in my opinion, a minor nuisance. In my experience, this is only really an issue in faster time controls like bullet, otherwise the claim victory button tends to appear quite quickly. In slower time controls, while waiting for the claim victory button to appear, it would probably be beneficial if you thought over the tactics and positions of the game, instead of just sitting there all frustrated.
I think the current system is ok, though the only problem is in tournament where you are penalized by players who leave without resigning.
Maybe the tournament should enforce a 10s to rejoin the board ?
one of the most important signals is already being tracked (game completion percentage).
I like what
@dek said about tournaments. We should have the same "Claim Victory" option for tournaments. (If not already in place. I can't think of an instance where it's been offered in a tournament game so that I can return to lobby sooner. Maybe double or 1.5x the individual game measure to implement???)
@Vycm -- Even though, as
@ricardo-sf points out, "game completion" percentage is tracked (and available for review), it seems kind of distracting (in the invasive sense of) to display a count-down timer for moves. And, if such were the case, it could distract players (barring only being shown to an opponent when someone disconnects or has no active ping). -- Maybe a good idea, maybe not. (Depends on implementation; and time it would take to develop the feature.)
Interesting thoughts. -- I could see a count-down timer for being offered the option to claim victory so long as it doesn't distract the player whom needs to move (offered to the person left waiting).