The only difference between a surrender and a boot is that a boot gets recorded on your profile as a mark of shame.

If you remove that, and just do auto-surrender, you're giving no incentive for people to actually surrender when they've lost. Instead, they can just close their browser and walk away without any penalty. This is *really* bad in this format, since you'd have to wait the entire bank time for them to be bootable (1-5 days). As an individual game it's just an inconvenience, but in a tournament this would slow things down a ton.

Don't remove boots then.
At the beginning of every turn check if auto-surrender conditions have been met. If not, players have to commit their orders or be booted. It should at least reduce stalling lost games.

It would be an awesome enhancement to the seasonal ladder to make them this kind of hybrid games. Early games could have, say, a week per player or more, the last games could divide the time until the season finishes between the two players, so that there is no end of season "adjudication" that people may or may not try to abuse.

Real-time speed hybrid games (say, an hour per player) would be awesome and tense. I see no reason not to try that if implemented.

1 day limit per player is horrible, though. What that basically says is that you need to be available for that particular game for 24 hours within the next 48 hours (your part of the time on the clock). If you're available, say, 10 hours each of the two days, that lets your opponent boot you even if he misses 4 hours of your absence. But if 1 day is horrible, consider 4 days! Of the next 4 days, you need to be on Warlight for at least 12 hours on average each day!

So it's only playable for people who live in front of the computer with Warlight open - I bet those exist, but I am not in the target group :)

Allow the time to be customised. A 10 minute a side game would be awesome. It's an idea that's been suggested before.

put it into uservoice fizzer.

^+1

My fear is that it will turn into a booting competition. for example Imagine if one player takes his turn once in an hour (quick enough to make 24 turns, at which point most games are decided). While his opponent is a normal human who can't play 16h of the day (sleep/work/school/life/etc). He would not stand a chance against the guy who play once per hour, and eventually be booted. How do you guys plan to prevent strategically waiting like that? (Especially when you can see when your opponent was last active on their profile). Even if you're using push notifications (I don't) I don't think anyone would enjoy playing a game like that.
I do however like the idea, and it could definitely work with something like 1h games.

"Where should the open "Clocked" game be placed? RT or MD area?"
Why not make a separate category? I'd say anything >1 day is multi-day, but if lower time limits are added(like 1h) it is closer to RT. (imo rt are games you can finish in one sitting)

Instead of a boot time of 0, I'd suggest making it something like 2 min, it won't really affect how quick the games finish but will definitely feel better when you play (and encourage quick moves).

Also as this is specifically 1v1 an hourglass system would be cool (especially rt), might wanna make it so you add 50% of the time you spent (more than your opponent) to your opponents time to speed up the games. EX) Player a take 1h, player B takes 2h; player B spent 1h more-> 50% = 30 min->30 min added to player A.

Edited 2/18/2015 15:42:11

Basically just read what Yeon said, not much of a contribution to the thread, but there's not much else to add.

Don't think I'd use this if implemented. Blitz sounds cool though

Yeon's point was pretty solid, though it should be on a different (see: new) ladder and not the seasonal.

This would be for a very select group of players who can check their phone/laptop/desktop constantly and could prove pretty useful for them. Assuming the community explodes once you've implemented the new generic name, it may become more popular, but for the most part MD and RT meet the needs of most the community, I believe.

It's ok to have new features, but I doubt I would use it because I can only check PC at some hours, so I could only play with european players in good conditions (and depends on the day my I play sooner or later, so not the same countries all the days lol).
I'm ok with it but not with using it on ladders, at least the ones we have now, a new one could do it.

As a chess player I agree with the increment idea suggested before, to avoid players stalling games trying to win on boot. 0.25% of the initial time per move could do (3.6 min/move in 1 day games) or a customizable time (1-5min for example)

Using this in RT with little limits would be great. 20-30minutes games or 1hour for example. It's annoying when you join an RT game in a medium/small map thinking it will end "quick" and someone it's playing really slow and it takes 3 hours to finish >_> I stopped playing RT because a lot of games where longer than expected and I had to surrender because I needed to go.

The cocked feature doesn't work over a long period of time. These games need to be played in one sitting. The best use for clocked is to enhance the real time side of things; allowing a chess style timing system (bullet, blitz, etc.).

(from Hennns)
My fear is that it will turn into a booting competition. for example Imagine if one player takes his turn once in an hour

That's why this is (in my opinion) predestinated for a real-time-game. As a host you know you have a specific time for a game you want... maybe 30, 60 or 120 minutes.
With that option you can make a match where the game lasts precise the time you have and want.
No unfair opponent could stretch the game with waiting each allowed time every turn or hide cowardly behind a big blockade.
So this would be a quite useful feature...

I get the idea, that, if you need to leave, you can, and then meet up again later. The problem is that, after a player has to leave, I don't think it's very possible for all of them to 'meet' up again later; likely, when that player has to leave, and he comes back, everyone's not just going to be waiting for him patiently.

Edited 2/19/2015 03:26:34

I just created a "clocked game", but there's a 4hr min per term because of multi-day limits...

https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=8082186

Good idea, only if the game creator can change the initial bank boot time.

Let's imagine a game between two players who live on opposite sides of the earth, 12 hour time zones apart from each other, and assume this is their schedule:

- 8 hrs work, from 8am to 4pm, they will make 1 turn (2 commits) right before
- 8 hrs play, from 4pm to midnight
- 8 hrs sleep

On this scenario, the max number of turns that will be played within 48 hrs is 10, which is sufficient in some cases but it obviously isn't in most of them.

The idea surely is interesting, but it is flawed: a clocked game is either played in one sitting or it becomes a multi day, since it's usually very unlikely for the two players to "meet" again if one of them has to go for several hours.

There is no easy way to build a game mode which is somewhere in between Real-Time and Multi-Day: each of them is the best possible for its purpose, since a fixed time for the turns IMO is needed.

One idea that came to my mind and that maybe is a bit more logical is a "fast" multi-day game with 8 hrs boot time and 4~6 hrs banked, and it confirms that multi day mode is still the optimal one

I think this would actually work better as more of a "real time" style. For example, bank 20 minutes. If one player moves in 30 seconds they have 19:30 for the next turn. If someone else takes 2 minutes, they have 18 minutes left. Since fast moves are emphasized, this model feels like it would work better if yours playing in one sitting

Sephiroth,
Assuming your scenario there are 10 moves in 24 hours. Another scenario is someone has the whole day free and/or they can play at work. [You know who you are ;) ]

Back to your scenario with 10 moves in a day, That is still 9 moves in a day better then waiting for 1 move each day. So a Clocked game that had 3-5 bank days would be more then enough and your scenario person would want to play that range of game.

Right now a multiday game can last over a month.

QB,
We already have bank 20 minute bank option, that is the max available.

Mercer:

I know banking exists, but I thought this would be essentially a set bank time with a boot of zero? that's not possible now

I like it