Question to other game admins at PBW

[Gorgo]

What do you do when players withdraw? I would prefer a replacement player to fill up the spot, but in my experience this seems to impose problems, as the replacements tend to leave again after a few turns.

Just pressing the "Finished"-button to terminate that empire is not very sexy in my opinion, or is it the best in the long term?

What are your experiences?

[Puke]

very mixed experiences there. sometimes replacement players are really on the ball, they pickup the roleplaying of the Last empire, and they really fight it out.

i discovered its best to take the first come first serve approach rather than holding the spot for someone who sounds cool, as either way you get the same odds that the person will stick around. in the junkyard game, i had two replacement players for the same slot, neither of them panned out, and i eventually gave up and clicked finished.

another game, i tried to hold a spot for someone, and i ended up with more serious players waiting in line because the person i was holding for never came through.

looking back, i think i would click the finished buton unless 1, there were 5 or less players, since in small games things can turn about and every player counts. or 2, the player who dropped was in a position of some influence or power in the game, and the game would really turn into a chicken shoot if they became AI. of course, there is always 3, if they are the enemy of my enemy and i want a human to be there to put up a fight.

just kidding about 3.

------------------
"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

[Gorgo]

"i discovered its best to take the first come first serve approach rather than holding the spot for someone who sounds cool, as either way you get the same odds that the person will stick around. in the junkyard game, i had two replacement players for the same slot, neither of them panned out, and i eventually gave up and clicked finished."

So you decide that on your own and don't ask the other players? Of course you're the game admin, otherwise it could be quite sexy to define a policy about this at the start of the game, like: only if the first (or second etc.) replacement player fails, the empire goes AI, so nobody can suspect the game admin is exploiting his position.

In Ender's game, we know have the third person for the same spot, and it's the empire that is second of five in the game, so I wonder what's the deal! Maybe they're disappointed because it's 2406 and not a single shot has been fired.

[Slaughtermeyer]

Statistics not being visible can contribute to a high dropout rate among replacement players since they probably have no idea how the race in question is doing and might be disappointed if the race is in a hopeless position or in the lead so far as to not offer much of a challenge.

[Gorgo]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Slaughtermeyer:
Statistics not being visible can contribute to a high dropout rate among replacement players since they probably have no idea how the race in question is doing and might be disappointed if the race is in a hopeless position or in the lead so far as to not offer much of a challenge.

---

That's interesting. Can anyone else confirm this? Would be nice if we could get some more empirical evidence on this.

[Dragonlord]

One thing I want to mention:

If a player shows signs of wanting to give up, exhort him to NOT surrender to another race if the game is still in the early stages, since that would really upset the balance of the game. Get a replacement player in stead and make sure the original player gives you the empire's password in case he changed it.

In one of my games I had to kick 3 replacement candidates because (#&@(*#*@ Kull the Conqueror up and left all his games without giving notice, he changed his password so nobody can take over now, and his empire is in 1st place after some 20 turns played, so I don't really want to have it AI controlled.