theres no option for this, all the players must vote and this is rarely done, and its much better than direct boot, so if more than the half of the players vote, example 4 of 6, proceed the vote

*proceed the boot

But then they can just boot somebody who is clearly about to win the game.

Needs to be all players in my opinion for the above reason

I can only see this being useful for team games, where usually a VTB never happens because players don't like to vote against someone on their own team. But even then it could only happen something like this:
votes_required = at least one vote from the team who's player is about to get bootet + absolute majority of votes from all players' entitled to vote
For example: in a 6v6v6 team game where the vote is about a player on team A, it would require at least 1 vote from team A plus at least 51% of 5+6+6=17 = 9 votes total.
But even then there would be complaints about illoyal team mates ruining games etc, so I don't think that's a viable option.

What would really help instead would be if votes where weighted according to a player's ingame strength. Pretty much like the current Seasonal Ladder system evaluates a players' strength to determine a winner for those games, that haven't finished at the end of the season. (Force Finish: The winner will be determined by adding up how many armies each player controls on the map, then adding in each player's income times two.)

Example:
4 player FFA,

Player A: 10 armies, 10 income = 30 points
Player B: 20 armies, 15 income = 50 points
Player C: 5 armies, 5 income = 15 points
Player D: 10 armies, 5 income = 20 points

Case 1:
Vote is held on player A.
Sum of points of all players entitled to vote: 50 + 15 + 20 = 85 points
Points required for absolute majority (= greater than 50%):
85/2 = 42,5 = 43 points
A boot would never happen without the consent of the strongest player B, because players C+D's votes combined don't have enough weight (35<43).
Player B cannot vote alone either though he has enough points (50>43), because he alone has not the majority of votes (1 vote out of 3 = only 33% < 51%)

Case 2:
Vote is held on player B.
Sum of points of all players entitled to vote: 30 + 15 + 20 = 65 points
Points required for absolute majority (= greater than 50%):
65/2 = 32,5 = 33 points
A boot could happen without the consent of player A, because C+D combined have enough influence (35>33).
Player A cannot boot alone either, he would need the support of either B or C to cross the 33 point threshold.

Case 3:
Vote is held on player C.
Sum of points of all players entitled to vote: 30 + 50 + 20 = 100 points
Points required for absolute majority (= greater than 50%):
100/2 = 50 = 51 points required for majority.
Neither Player B nor players A+D could force a boot, only player B plus at least one other player can boot together.

Case 4:
Vote is held on player D.
Sum of points of all players entitled to vote: 30 + 50 + 15 = 95 points
Points required for absolute majority (= greater than 50%):
95/2 = 47,5 = 48 points required for majority.
Same as Case 1, nothing happens without the consent of player B, the strongest player, because A+C only have 45<48 points.
Player B cannot vote alone either though he has enough points (50>48), because he alone has not the majority of votes (1 vote out of 3 = only 33% < 51%)

So in short: a VTB should succeed if a majority of players entitled to vote, who at the same time represent the majority of points, vote for it.

Only downside I can see is that by observing the votes one might be able to deduct other players' relative strength, so it would have to be kept hidden who has voted and who not.

Comments?
tl;dr doesn't count as a comment :-)

I personally think that any system that doesn’t require everyone to vote can be manipulated against one player. Especially in Fog

Lets say a player can lies. “Player A is going to run away with this game unless we all vote to end”

Lets say a map has certain starting positions that has a slight edge over others and player A gets it and everyone else decides we didn’t get the nice spot lets vote to end


With your method doesn’t really work in larger FFAs can you imagine player A with 100 points and then 23 other players with 10points and they all vote to stop player A running away with it.


And why should the game end unless everyone agrees. Why should the majority get the vote over one player. I just haven’t experienced personally a time where I wanted to vote to end and everyone didn’t agree. You talk about voting to end being about someone. i.e. vote against player A. I don’t understand this at all I only vote to end when something messed up in the game settings or someone didn’t create the game right for some reason. Any other reason doesn’t warrant Vote to end unless everyone agrees

Mac, this isn't about VTE, but about booting. Booting can only happen if the player in question has gone over their time limit anyway.

I believe the issue being discussed is the fact that voting to boot somebody (generally the first option available) almost never works. There always seems to be somebody that doesn't vote, and generally several people.

Personally, I wish that when somebody votes to boot, that it prompts the other players in some fashion (even a small box that lets them know that a vote boot has been initiated), so that people are even aware of the option. Requiring a certain percentage of people to vote (75%?) rather than all of them might make it more of a vote as well.

That said, anymore I almost never boot (last time I did so the player was inactive for more than 12 days), so I would probably still not vote to boot. I realize that other people want to play, so them voting to boot against my wishes is perfectly reasonable, so long as they make up a sizable majority.

Opps yes sorry looks like i completely miss read that. i dont think i have ever voted to boot so it kind of sliped my mind that you could do it

*shugs head in shame

i actuall still feel the pretty much the same. if everyones isnt happy booting someone then the player shouldnt be booted on a majority. The direct boot is really the time limit. after that its fair game.

however for the record i very rarely boot so voting to boot is never an issue for me. I think though a promt may help so that people know others want to vote to boot

*Why should the majority get the vote over one player.*

counterquestion:
Why should the minority be able to dictate their wishes to the majority?

Right now, vote to boot requires an inanimous 100% vote. I fail to see why? This unnecessarily gives a right to veto to every single player, however insignificant his contribution to the game might still be (think: players with a single army left on a Big US map with 24 players get to blockade decisions in a game they have most likely no chance of ever winning, while maybe 22 others agree to boot).
In most other real-world democratic processes such a setup would lead to a continous lack of quorum and blockade (see UN resolutions, for example). Therefore, democratic decisions are usually made by majority vote.

Imagine the players in a game of warlight as countries in the EU, electing the european parliament: If the EU would work anything like Warlight, each country would have only a single vote, no matter how big or small it is, and all decisions would require total agreement. Nothing would get done.
Thankfully though, seats in the parliamant (roughly *) correspond to the countries' size of population, and (most) votes don't require an inanimous vote. Nothing gets done anyway, but that's a different topic :-)

* because of degressive proportionality

What is suggested here is that each players' vote be weighted according to his or her significance to the game (number or armies, income, maybe also factor in number of territories held, etc.).
A successful vote should then be determined by checking if a) the majority of votes of players (=countries) and also b) the majority of votes of points (=citizens) both lie beyond the threshold (usually >50%, might pick a higher value to force more consent, like 2/3 or 75%).

Diabolicus, are you RvW's second account?

WTH...!? Seriously people, why does everyone think I'm a second account...!? :s

---

Anyway, back on topic. If you're going to change the way how "vote to boot" works, may I suggest something else? How about requiring a unanimous vote of all players *who are not over the boot time themselves*. This would take care of games stalling (for up to 100 days) if two people go "missing" at roughly the same time.

Diabolicus, did you and RvW just trade accounts?

RvW, I think people assume you are an alt because you have a single ranked game complete, yet are on the forums constantly.

huh?

I think most of the time people doesn't notice that sombody has vtb, you have a lot of games in play, looking for the ones with your turn and forget to check the other games. It should have been som kind of notice like the unread chat messages and red flash on the bootbutton

Rather than percentage, it would help to make it a minimum number of people to vote... for example, Boot is effective if 2 people vote.

Semantics, I know, but as the size of the game changes due to Surrenders/Eliminations/Boots, it will change.

Mainly, there is a problem with 1 rogue booter having control of the boot.

What are the chances of playing a game with 2 a@#holes?

Assuming that 5% of the population are a#$holes and you are playing a 3v3 game, then, you'd have a 1 in 6 chance of playing with 1. Can someone better in math find out the percentage you'd play with 2?

Diabolicus, I was referring to you because you suddenly made extremely long posts, and then RvW made a very short one.

John:

If 5% of the population is "less than desirable to play with" (and assuming you yourself aren't), that means only 0.95^5 ~= 77% (roughly 3 in 4) chance of a 3vs3 only having nice people.

Chance of **at least** one "person you're going to blacklist" is therefore 23% (~= 1 in 4)
Chance of exactly one: (5 nCr 1) * 0.05^1 * 0.95^4 ~= 20% (1 in 5)
Chance of exactly two: (5 nCr 2) * 0.05^2 * 0.95^3 ~= 2% (1 in 50)

Conclusion: I sure hope your 5% is a huge overestimation! ;)

Voting to boot usually only allows you to advance a game one day earlier than with direct boot, and it is much tougher to get everyone to agree with you. I understand you want to "fix" the latter, but why not just wait one more day? That one day really won't save you except in very spefific, rare situations (such as when it's the last move you need to take to win, and you're going on a vacation tomorrow, with the game not allowing vacations).

"Why should the minority be able to dictate their wishes to the majority?"

Because this is a game, and not the European parliament. Vote to boot is an agreement between all players other than one player crossing the vote-to-boot time to boot that one player. This is different from direct boot, to not immediately let people boot a person that only once crossed the line.