Pet hates and etequette

[TheGrayMouser]

I must be very fortunate in that of the 500-600 games ( more??) I have played only one player has resigned battles (multiple times) for no apparent reason. I have never accepted any of his challenges , it was always him accepting my open ones...

Sure every once in a while a player will gripe a little to much in the chat session about bad dice , bad terrain, bad back, or whatever, which can make it occasionaly a little ackward. However, fog is a reasonably grognardy game and the definition of that is "grumble" so really no issues there

So, I want to thank the other 99.99% of the FOG community at large for making multiplayer such a great experiance, cheers!

[little]

I have to agree with Chillimaster and Ironclad. I know we have all paid for the game and want to enjoy it (but thank goodness it is not like WoW with a lousy subscription deal, just the tempting promise of the next volumes to buy, bless em ) but I think we are all running a number of games at the same time. Occasionally you get the jump on someone on deployment, sometimes they get the jump on you (or often, and I am looking at Harmer here). But the point is that if you enjoy seeing your plan come together, then so does the other guy. Its about give and take - not about resigning when you don‘t like the look of it. Or maybe this is just my Scottish roots coming through and seeing honour in fighting beyond all hope *starts mumbling something about blinking longbows that should have been banned as WMDs….*

PS reading that again I should point out that Harmer always sees the game through to the end, he seems to love seeing my army suffer!

[little]

And looking at the Grey Mousers point above, I will repeat that it is only a very small minority of opponents I am talking about.

[harmer]

I think ive resigned about 2 times and then only because i had waited so long for the game turn to be processed and the other time i had to go away for 3 weeks and i posted that i couldnt finish. But to be sure if you feel like resigning just process a turn with your intent and then the other guy Knows what is about to happen, Sometimes im so Confused at their resignation as they could well go on to win anyway if they took the time to think thru what was happening. But Mostly i have enjoyed most of my Matchups

[Xiggy]

I have never resigned, but I wanted to 2 times. I hate playing people who do 1 turn a week to 10 days. Work and real life happen, but people usually say they are on holiday or business trip. So there is no problem. Sometimes they just disappear due to lack of interest. They should be nice enough to PM you and let you know. Of all the people playing FOG, there are only 2 people that I wont accept a challenge from. The exception is league play and I will play anyone in LOEG.

[harmer]

well im going to name names here Stilico , turn 3 we have had about 5 units meet and i have had the worst of of it so far with an elite Cav disrupting on a combat it should have won and a lc unit being caught as it evades in return ive caught 2 of his li and have his flank open for my Cats to charge in no real blood has been drawn. I see opponent has resigned and open game to see whats up. No explanation at all and i can only assume its because of the relative army positions he was in just as good shape as i was im sorta at a loss or maybe its because i had later Selucid against Republican Rome Brutus& Cassius. Anyway he has done it 2 me before just a waste of time setting up and then have it end before anything happens. rant off

[CheerfullyInsane]

Hmm....
Without trying to tell people how to conduct their business, I'd suggest refraining from naming persons.
It doesn't help, instead it runs the risk of the whole thread being deluged in shouting-matches, and less than polite gainsaying.
(Sermon-mode off)

However, I would like to add another pet peeve.
People who pick up a challenge....And then do nothing.
Been sitting here looking at the latest occurrence of this particular beast for 36 hours, and nothing. Zilch. Nada. Bupkes.
The poor sod hasn't even deigned to pick an army yet.
Now arguably it matters little, since I merely posted the challenge again and had that one picked up by an actual opponent, but why on gods green earth would you pick up a challenge if you're not willing to actually play?!?
It eludes me.....

Lars

[MesaDon]

Maybe these people are hoarders. they just get things and store them here and there but don't do any thing with them except collect more. Do not say anything to them, you can only put them in denial. THEY NEED PROFESSIONAL HELP!

[Gersen]

VENT ON

5 turns in. I'm winning 8BP to nothing. Resignation from my opponent. Yes I will probably win this matchup, as for a very average player, I was playing above myself for a change, but a message to he/she and other early resigners...

It's very, very frustrating. Your opponents are expending precious time on these games. Learn from your mistakes and play it out, you will be a better and more honourable player for it.

VENT OFF

[peterb1201]

My pet peeve: People who can't bring themselves, as a match starts, to say "Good luck".

[Fetrik]

My pet peeve: People who can't bring themselves, as a match starts, to say "Good luck".

Since some of us wouldn't really mean it a simple "trip on my spear" or "may my sword offer you a clean death" should be good too.

[Xiccarph]

I prefer not to resign, but I will if things deterioate early and my opponent offers it, I think this has happened once in hundreds of games I have no problem with someone resigning to me. There are plenty of other challenges to accept or be made.

Cheers!

[dazzam]

Resigning without any warning/explanation is just poor form..and when you've wasted 6 or 7 turns into a game and then find you've got a result pop up because of your opponent resigning unannounced it's just a little frustrating. I'm fresh from 3 resigns in the last few days so I'm on my high horse right now. 2 of these were without explanation and 1 at least got 4 turns into it and didn't like the terrain ..but at least he bothered to explain that. However for the record I offered to resign a game recently when I was being smashed 30 odd to about 8 by one of the masters of the game, he kindly said that would be ok..but I played on anyway and managed a further zero points! Thank you for the lesson master eric.

In most cases I have seen the resigner has been losing..although in some cases ever so marginally. Personally I like playing better players as I learn something from them but there are those out there that would rather resign as soon as they break a fingernail.

I think part of the reason this occurs is when you accept a challenge often you may not know the experience level of the opponent. Perhaps if the players stats were displayed in the challenge screen it may allow players that to make an informed decision that this Pantherboy chap is about to massacre them and they may decide to wait and play someone more mortal like myself. Additionally stats on resigners could be kept. Possibly when you set up the challenge you could limit it to players with less than 'x' number of resigns in the last month or something similar. Also possibly you could have the facility to limit your challenge to be accepted by someone with say a minimum success ratio. This functionality could be incorporated into creating some kind of ladder as well perhaps.

Maybe this is too much but I'd be interested to hear other players thoughts on these suggestions. Having had my little vent I'm going to dismount from the high horse for a bit.

[stockwellpete]

Yes, resigning without any indication why is just rude really. I get battered quite frequently but I feel that I learn much more from my defeats than my victories - learning how to fight a desperate rearguard action in one battle when you are outnumbered may help you win another battle further on down the road.

[Morbio]

What's worse is where people simply stop playing without any explanation.

[maximvs]

Short of technical difficulties (like loss of internet connection, or PC failure, for example) I can't see why anyone would just stop playing a battle. I can understand in real life where deciding to run off my be a good idea (death normally being something to avoid!) but to 'run off' from a computer game? How ridiculous is that?

[TheGrayMouser]

This has come up before but I dont think "ranking" players is going to help or even be desirable

Firstly, such a ranking system would be voluntary so right there you have an issue..

Two, a win loss ratio is no indication of experiance/skill or guarantee that two players will be equal in skill. Some players might simply be gluttons for punishement and seek out better players, or might simply have a good old fashioned rivalry with someone they know, and who beats them all the time.
Also , not all players bring in the "best armies" to win that they are familiar with , but play all sorts of armies and or experiment...

There are also leagues and campaigns that will skew the "rankings" , as well as many scenario designers that are trying to balance their creations and also might resign a battle once data from a test play is garnered...

Any ways , what I am trying to say is that stats are just that , stats, and can be misued, miscontrued and out right give no indication of the player or his qualities..
How would you like to be ignored challenge wise because you have "8" resigns on you record but they were all by mutual agreement with a player you play all the time.. Perhaps they were experimenting to get a specific map?, yet noone will know that....

In the end Id rather judge people the old fashion way, by personal interaction than cherrypicking down a list with a bunch of meaningless #'s on it.

[petran1978]

I agree with TGM. I had my experience with a player resigning without reason (an obvious ona that is) on me. In a couple of fights the other player had a few points to lose and we decided to give it another try in another fight. I just stopped picking up challenges with those that do not play. there are too many player to chose and fight. I usually get my ass kicked by better players. so what,it is just a game!

[dazzam]

TGM you raise some good points

The rankings I think would be interesting and there are various ways you could make them more meaningful i.e option to have rankings game or not(ie does the game count toward rankings or not), diminishing significance of results against repeat opponents, possibly higher points for winning with armies that seldom win etc. It's never going to be perfect but you could have something that indicated how good you are and may save some people time by looking to accept challenges from people of similar ranking or seek out the good players to see how it's done. The key is it's an indication rather than some sort of prize.

Re the resign there's an easy fix for that..when a player resigns it goes back to the opponent and they can choose to accept or not accept the the surrender. Only unaccepted surrenders would count. It's just a suggestion to encourage players to harden up and finish games.

I'd rather judge people the old fashioned away as well but if there is an easy way to deter serial quitters while protecting genuine agreed resigns then I think it adds value.

[deeter]

I never resign and fortunately seldom play people who don't play to the end. When I face Pantherboy, I know I won't win from the outset, so instead I try to better my score against him for some sort of morale victory.

I'm all for some sort of ranking system, personally, although I pretty much know who all the good players are. The only other on-line game I've ever gotten into was Shogan 1 which was a blast. Players could post either ranked or friendly games and only ranked games counted. I remember a Dutch player who mastered the game and would only play ranked games. To play him, you had to take a hit in your personal ranking -- which I did just for the pleasure of watching him play and learning from him.

I would like to see something similar for FoG. Just as you pick FoW and Double Moves at the beginning, you could choose ranked or friendly. Posting what army you're bringing should be mandatory, however.

Deeter