Just played a straight tournment 2nd round not meantioning names but i went 27-12 up then he was not responding unill the 5mins warning came up then he got a random shot limit and potted then after that he wernt responding again then it got to the 3mins warning he took his shot and potted 1 ball then next shot he took he waited untill last sec then took the shot and potted 2 balls then the 1min warning came up i got to 32 and then it comes up slow punishment both dq thats well unfair if he not responding why did'nt he just go on task mananger and come off funkypool what do you look think? i could have won that tournment

That's rancid, and a great reason for introducing the shot clock, the idea of which has been doing the rounds recently like snuff at a wake.

What did your opponent have to say for himself?

Not all the time people know there not responding as the game does not tell that person there not responding till they do, but it can still take upto another minute before they can take there shot as the game itself needs to catch up.

There are players out there who do wait till the last second when they are way behind, it's happened to me.

There is very little that can be done with time wasters.

And more's the pity.

Don't forget he may NOT be waiting till the last second on purpose.

If he's already suffering from being non-responsive, then he may be lagging. Therefore he may be taking his shot early, but the server takes forever to process that and send it to you.

Don't be so quick to shift the blame.

Or what if it's the flying pigs in green jump suits that have finally come to ruin our little pool game?

I think that what needs to be introduced in this situation is like a shot clock - but call it a "down time clock".

so during a tournament, lets say that you can go "non responsive" 3 times, or for 90 seconds or more before you are booted to the chat room?

it may seem an unfair punishment as people can not control their internet connections, but its more unfair on the person who has a very good connection who can progress without any difficulty.

Precisely.

If someone IS truly struggling with a faulty connection, this is precisely how it will often appear from the other end.

And as lame as it must look from your point of view, you can't blame people for maintaining hope of the connection issue clearing and continuing the match normally.

And agree with cloone - a chess clock would eliminate this issue completely. And even when the laggy player isn't at fault for the slow progress, it's STILL fair that he is DQed and the opponent goes through.

And no need for any downtime clock flumpy, the chess clock addresses this problem perfectly.

Edited at 11:22 Tue 16/06/09 (BST)

but if you dont like the chess clock, like myself - for these exact reasons, then this is a good alternative.

you can address as many problems as you want to - what you can't address is the lack of manners and courtesy displayed by many on this site.


I, and I know cloone would too for example, will simply leave any game rather than cause a double dq in that situation.

Shame common sense can't be all prevailing here - we wouldn't need half these discussions then.

and we are not the ones that will be blamed for nothing (for all you jack the ripper fans out there )

It's easy to see who the person is by looking at the time of your post and the tournament page from the last 24 hours, so you have technically named and shamed.

Another point is you can see from the player in questions profile how they have a fairly high rate of abondoned games. This points towards a bad connection as mentioned in the posts above.

I think this is a backlash thread and the initial post does make it unfairly seem like the opponent was acting up on purpose.

very true - saying "not mentioning names" kind of gives it away mate. if you dont say stuff like that, then you wont get suspiscions that its pure backlash

but this is off topic, so we should get back on it

Im pretty sure this isnt the persons fault that there internet is down, its the internet connection or the modem box's fault.

You cannot play the person for the technical error as there was nothing he/she could do about it.

As for the last second to take there shot, sometimes the time clocks on both screens are sometimes around 10 seconds apart maybe even 15 seconds depending on the amount of time the internet connection is down.

So therefore it could say 5 seconds on your shot clock, but still be 20 seconds on your opponents clock shot.

This is called server lag.

As Spinner once put it:

- For you to take a shot, then for your computer to interpret it, send it out to an external server, define the shot pattern, send it out again to the reciever and finally to visualise the shot on the screen is pretty damn good. Surely a 10 second difference every now and then doesn't hurt

Yeh thats what i tried to say lol.

But if the players connection goes down, then once it comes back up the shot clock remains on 20 seconds but the opponents clock goes down to 0.

Weird but it happens.

Which is precisely why the game needs to be implemented in a way relying as little as possible on how people choose to behave.

Ye it is the persons fault they should kno if its taking bloody ages to take 1 shot they should be sporting and let the other player on because its there connection not the other players i think its proper unfair and unsporting also cloone he left after i got a dq and him then later on that night sent me a message saying haha deservs you right for being a ..... all i said in the game to him is please could you hurry this up dq's comming into play

Technically, it's neither their responsibility, nor have they got any means by which to do that.

Bit of an Oedipus complex that one; if your connection is lagging enough to not get shots through, you are not getting any information about wanting to quit the game through either

In reality it's very rare that you don't get the opportunity to bite the bullet and leave the games in these situations. In two and half years I can't remember playing a match where either myself or my opponent has not had at least one, but usually more, opportunity to step aside rather than have a double dq from being timed out. I am not saying that never happens - but it must be extremely rare.

The problem is really that people are selfish and seem to forget there is a tournament every hour.



Reality check on this - we are asking one person to spend precious time working on minor changes to minor problems - the majority of which are caused by the behavioural limitations of a few 'users' (or substitute for any other word you choose ).

Chess clocks I think would be a good idea - I said that 2 years ago now. But to be honest if Nick does have spare time to make improvements I would far rather see that time go into introducing new additions and varieties to the gametypes available than to addressing any of the problems that tend to appear in these threads.