whats with the new abonded thing whats the point of it

To stop people leaving b4 the three shots rule! To stop people trying to golden break then leave when they dont! Why do you think its good or not?

no i was jus wondering

The only thing i'm slightly concerned about is when you accept to play and your opponent doesn't you get bored and go to leave, what happens if the opposing player accepts the game within the second that you go to play another game or leave the room? Do you still lose the points?

yes obivously mate... the system works


i was also concerned about this and risked leavin a few times, as the otha person wasn't there and i got bored and wanted to leave.

The only thing i'm slightly concerned about is when you accept to play and your opponent doesn't you get bored and go to leave, what happens if the opposing player accepts the game within the second that you go to play another game or leave the room? Do you still lose the points?

Good question. Something that needed attention when designing.

Basically you can't lose points without confirming the dialogue that asks "are you sure you want to leave the game?".

If you choose to leave before the game has started, but your opponent starts the game at the same time it will refuse the room change (giving an error message at the bottom - "A game has just started, if you leave now you will automatically lose").

However, if you log out (shut the window) at that time you could lose points - so to be safe you should leave the room to a lobby.

One exception to these rules are tournament invites. They will always succeed and could theoretically cause you to lose points.

Edited at 17:42 Sat 17/06/06 (BST)

I was about to answer a tourney invite when the other player also clicked the rack button (I had done so just as the invite showed up), but when i went to accept the invite anyway, i got the confirmation box, so i could cancel and finish the game.

One question - can there be a time limit set that an opponent has to click the rack button after the first player?

After this time the game starts automatically to keep things moving..

The whole point of this new system is to give you the choice of whether or not to play the opponent who's room you join, or visa versa.

Would having a time limit to start the game not be the same as going back to the way things were? What would happen if you had to leave your desktop in a hurry, a malicious player could end up taking points from you without you having agreed to play in the first place.

The new option is there so we can choose whom to play. Forcing games on people would be missing the point. If somebody is too slow for you, leave! Making a whole game play change across the site for a few impatient people does not make sense in my opinion.

5 second games, forced games, you in a rush Spinner?

An easier way to do this would be an unconfirm button kinda thing, saying that you are now not willing to play the game. (This could appear where the confirm to play button is after it's been clicked)

Or from what spinner was saying, after a certain amount of time it makes you click it again in order to begin play, this means that if you wish to leave the room for a tourny invite or need to close the window then you wait a minute and then leave with no risk of losing points. If the opposition starts play then leaving is a forfeit, but at least the player knows the consequences of leaving the game room.

It wouldnt be going back to the way it was before, because there is no 3 ball rule, so the person who wants to play doesnt risk loosing out to someone who wanders away and comes back just in time to leave before 3 balls are down!

But another option, rather than start the game, after, say, 30 secs the user would be removed from the room to allow another to join. Though that would be a little unfair on the willing player.

And yeah, i admit to being kinda impatient! Its the viking blood you see... ;-)

Edited at 23:35 Sat 17/06/06 (BST)

Where would it redirect them after 30 seconds, to the member’s bar?

I can see your point, but out of all the games i play it's just a very tiny minority who choose not to click the magic button.

I can see how it's a pain if you've created a game, and somebody chooses not to respond, leaving you with the only option of creating another in the hope they don't follow you.

In an ideal world you would have a timer of 30 seconds to click start game. If you didn’t press this in time it would be recorded on your stats, detailing how many times you've gone beyond the 30-second limit. This way you could see who the culprits were, and admin could take action if it became obvious they were just wind up merchants.

But...i don't think the problem is widespread enough for Nick to consider something like this at the moment, but who knows!

Agreed pool_life. Especially the part about recording it on a players stats.

But yeah, add it to the lower end of the to-do list Nick!

well try accepting the game...... AFTER the other player accepts therefore you cant lose points if you leave before he accepts the game

Just to clarify - nobody can loose points untill after BOTH people have accepted.

And... you can't lose points unless you confirm the "are you sure?" dialogue.

Nick: "One exception to these rules are tournament invites. They will always succeed and could theoretically cause you to lose points." I thought tournament games were unranked?

Nick was meaning that if you leave a ranked game to accept a tourney invite, you will loose rank.

However there is a warning before this happens, so its nobodys fault but your own if you do!

its a good thing in my opinion