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Modified by ThunderGr (28. September 2015, 18:35:36)
speachless: It is so sad that this had to happen. I am pretty sure none of us wanted to win on time-out like that. Too pity Fencer decided not to suspend the timer for one day...considering it has already happened by mistake more than once...
Fencer: Hi Fencer, thank you very much for your support and email, it took 45 minutes to download your email :-) I appreciate and understand, there is no possibility to prevent fischer clock games to time out *already 100 went time out... it-s fair and i understand the rules... SO SORRY TO MY GAME OPPONENTS FOR ALL TIME OUTS, tomorrow evening im back in zurich switzerland. thanks
I have a main problem. As I-m for 5 days till tuesday evening in a part where the internet infrastructure is mostly of the time down, I-m not able to prevent going time out... is there a possibility for an exception...i mean could an admin think about to stop my games going time out till tuesday evening? Im on a humanitary trip with oppositional from preshevo serbia, the most poor part of the balkan... we are here with our borderfree association from switzerland to document with media the crucial situation of around 3000 to 5000 refugees coming per day... so i try to login before i go to sleep, but there is no way to keep the connection up for more as 10 min. cause the infrastructure is very minimal here and sometimes not possible to play... i wrote yesterday to fencer, but he didnt answer yet... is there another admin that could think about to make 1 exception and prevent me to go time out? i really care about my games, so i would like to be able to play them down as usual after im back in switzerland zuerich *tuesday evening... please help
Brian1971: You're absolutely right, there are lots of great games here and board games are classics, there isn't any need to constantly tinker with them and add new variants as those are often silly; I mean Ponds, really? I'm a huge fan of hyper-backgammon though, great invention. thechosen0ne who started this discussion seldom plays on this site but that is exactly what Brainking needs most, more players!
Does everyone use all that Brainking offers now? Certainly not. I see fellowships dwindling, and those in fellowships not using the boards or participating like they should. How often are there new opinion polls? There is one now. How many noticed? Pond games are becoming fewer and it is harder to get people to play them. I can't remember the last time I used a poker table. Everytime I do look at the tables there is no one at them. So there are some good things here that are not being used to their full potential. That is not Fencer's fault, it is ours. So before expecting Fencer to take lots of time implementing new features, lets take advantage of the ones that currently exist. Fencer has a life outside of brainking too. He worked hard to build it up. I am sure he will not just let it die. If you have comments to him, I am sure you can just message him directly or if you think there is a better place to play, you can go there. I enjoy it here. I routinely have between 300 to 400 games going at a time. Sometimes more. So just enjoy the games. Better yet join my fellowship, Brian's 1971 Pub and play in our battleboats games tournaments that start September 15th. (Paying members only)
thechosen0ne: ... my body has no new features since I first started using it... though I am still pretty ok with it (well, flying would be nice, really, or X-ray vision). Why the assumption that everything needs to get 'better' continuously or be unworthy? Some things are just great as they are. Just generally.
Yes, BrainKing could use some polishing in some corners.
So... why don't we go and code a better variant? There is probably no copyright on it, and I doubt Fencer would care too much. If everyone that complained here in the last ten years writes a (correct) line of code for every complaint, it is probably more than halfway done.
thechosen0ne: Yea, the owner has been spending more time with "real life", so programming & this site has been put on the back burner. Now he still fixes problems and bugs, but not much on "new programming" for awhile now. I hope and think at some point if he doesn't sell the site, he may get board and do some new programming.
As I'm sure he will read this, maybe some easy game variants - like a large logic game with extra color/spaces - or an "express ludo" game with 2 dice instead of 1.... stuff that should be easier to program as he can copy most of the code from the original..... I can hope.
thechosen0ne: The site itself is not dead in the sense that people are logging in every day to play games. But I don't think the creator is planning any new changes other than maybe an occasional bugfix.
Roberto Silva: Why? That is a general issue with the world. I don't want to start a political discussion about today, but just for example, the Crusades were started because the Christian's felt that it is necessary to force their beliefs onto the non-believers. I am sure you can find current similar situations...
Half of the trouble in the world comes from people that think their ideas are so good that they have to force others to follow them. If not more.
Bernice: "why is it I feel like we have had all this conversation before????:"
Because the problem has yet to be solved. Just because you're tired of hearing something doesn't mean it stopped being true.
But I still would like to know why people feel they should have the right to impose their style of play onto everybody else (people who complain about others moving slowly are another example of this), and even worse, why the admin agrees with them. If poeple don't want to use autopass, then don't use it, but what gives them the right to say that other people are not allowed to use it on their own moves?
Bernice: Yes! - It is August! We always repeat the topics!, monthly. I think in September we need to repeat the discussion about slow players than hold up tournaments for years, and October's topic is Daylight Savings time and its sense or nonsense.
Roberto Silva: And to me, I would love to see a compramise. If someone does not want to use auto-pass, and want's to click "pass" every single time - let them. But on the flip side, if you don't have a move, then auto-pass should happen with the game going back to the other player right away.
The ONLY argument that I've heard is that if the other player is using auto-pass, then if the non-auto pass player wants to send a message with each turn, then some message might be missed or something stupid like that. SOLUTION: Have all the messages turn up once they are able to move. And if it's a big enough problem, then have an auto-message of "Opponent did not have a move, so auto-pass brought the game back to you" message so the non-autopass player who don't understand will then see that the other person has not played, hence have not seen the message.
Anyway..... long argument short: I also don't understand why we don't have a good auto-pass in play.... and let each player decide how they want to play, don't make others force their opinion on them.
Walter Montego: Totally agreed, Ludo desperately needs an autopass system. It's also completely ridiculous that if someone doesn't want to use autopass, they have the right to prevent everyone else from using it when playing against them. It should be up to each person to decide whether to use autopass on their own moves, the anti-autopass brigade shouldn't have the right to dictate their terms to everybody else.
It also amazes me how many people seem unable to understand the concept of randomness, expecting randomness to mean no patterns can arise ever. True randomness means precisely that patterns can in fact emerge every once in a while. Of course, the human brain is set up so as to try and look for patterns wherever it can, which is why so many silly superstitions abound...
crosseyed: In the spirit of aganju's post, I will say that I have "noticed" that publicly complaining about the dice "seems" to quickly result in getting better rolls.
Of course I may be even more paranoid than aganju....
I have never understood the people who argue against auto-pass, nor Fencer's decision to set up the auto-pass so that those that don't want to use it can shut it off in a game created by someone that wants to use it. I think that If I create a game, then I should have the final say in the options and parameters used, not the person that accepts the game or enters the tournament. If that person doesn't like the parameters of my game, they should either create their own game, or write to me and we can discuss it, or they go pound sand and play with themselves.
I do not play Ludo, but auto-pass is a good thing for Backgammon. Yes, I have come back to a game and seen that I've missed six turns sitting on the bar. What a relief! Why would anyone want to roll and enter a move when your opponent has every point in his home base covered and you have a piece on the bar? And I do not mind when there's points open and auto-pass skips my turn either. I can always scroll back through the moves to see the bad rolls if I really want to see them.
crosseyed: No, there doesn't need to be anything wrong - I believe there is approximately a 2% chance of having 23 non-6 rolls in a row, so inevitably it will happen to anyone who plays enough. Now if that happens to you every game, that's a different matter. To me, the bigger issue with Ludo as a game is that the skill element is pretty low in my opinion - but maybe that's just because I'm not skilled enough to understand the subtleties of the game. :D
Aganju - no offense, but that's just silly. I have definitely noticed times when I roll in Dice Poker and the exact same number comes up again, which always make one wonder. But then I think back to all the times that doesn't happen, and realize that the issue is likely just that I take note of the times when it does. But even if there was an issue with the RNG, your time solution would be useless. If the RNG uses the system clock, it will be dealing in fractions of a second, and waiting 15 minutes isn't any more "random" than responding in a couple of seconds. But as you say, there is no risk to waiting, so if you feel it works for you, I'm not here to tell you to do otherwise. :)
crosseyed: The problem is - and that has been discussed many times before - with the random number generator. It generates not-so-random numbers that follow patterns, and one of those patterns is that you get the same numbers many times in a row (and if that is not what you need, you end up passing very often).
One way to avoid that is (aside from not playing here, of course, which works perfectly fine) to not play such a game immediately. The not-so-random-numbers are dependent on the time, so if you wait an hour, you get different numbers. That is my personal theory/analysis, and has been discussed before too, and many people do not believe it. It works just fine for me (for example, in backgammon I sometimes decide to double in fast-played games based only on the fact that I can kind-of-predict my next roll - if the game moves fast enough)
Feel free to try it - waiting even 15 minutes is typically enough, and the risk is nil. And feel also free to ignore this as an absurd variant of paranoia...
rod03801: I stopped playing Ludo for this very reason, too many passes. I only signed to help beach out. Sorry beach I won't signing up for any more Ludo games. Autopass would still 23 passes.
Aganju: For example the finished game pages shows me as having finished 12,271 games and then the wins/draws/losses, when in actual fact i have finished 16,002 games! It's been stuck on 12,271 for a long time now, and i'd just like to see the correct information shown there.
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