why did I get a laugh out of the above
on topic: seems like an awesome idea. Will need a 3rd party staff member to audit to avoid host bias though.
Hopefully emergencies are super rare, but when they happen the game host can cc a staff member.
Made some wording corrections to in the system (more than 4 to at least 4) - to make it clear, if someone flakes once, they’re automatically in bad standing.
Ehh I think more than 4 is okay. Flaking just once shouldn’t make it automatically someone getting bad standing, but puts them very close!
Hard disagree. Outside of emergencies it’s not hard to pop in and at least say you’re replacing out.
If that’s the case then we should have some guidelines regarding what constitutes flaking as well as an emergency — I don’t think it’s an issue now but good for future proofing. Game hosts, at least new ones, shouldn’t have absolute power over adding or deducting points for someone’s standing level, which was why I suggested a staff member to audit and possibly handle dispute cases (if ever relevant, apply).
I’ve hate flakes and replacements as much as (or even more than) the next guy, but I’ve had ridiculous experiences on mafiascum where the game host force replaced players (ahem including me ahem) just because they felt like it. It was extremely unprofessional!
As a game host myself I’ve also sometimes had the desire to replace a player out of my game at the earliest possible opportunity!
Do you think that this may ever be a concern for our community?
I think emergencies can be treated case by case, hosts can cc staff for those.
If someone doesn’t given any response to a prod for 24 hours a host has the right to claim that someone flaked. I think most hosts prod at reasonable times (e.g. at least 24 hours without posting, I think most even wait more).
If the accused player wants to say the host is acting unreasonably they should contact me or any staff member. I doubt this’ll happen often since if the host misread a timstamp, the player can just contact the host and sort it out, and if the host is purposefully trying to screw someone over, all the timestamps are there for a staff member to review.
I think most cases about whether someone flaked or not are pretty straightforward. If some corner cases happen, we’ll deal with them as they come.
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I like this. I can only think of two improvements:
- The icon could be better and doesn’t really indicate that the reason for it is because you flaked that one time 3 months ago. Maybe a tooltip or something would help.
- Harsher punishments for repeat offenders pls. Like maybe the number of points you get is multiplied by the # of times you’ve flaked or replaced out in the past 5 years.
Also a general question: do you get 8 points if you flake out of two games at once?
Have we defined what flaking is?
If someone posts a couple of words, once every 24 hours?
Or just once when prodded?
Isn’t this more annoying and disruptive to the game than disappearing completely?
You’re thinking of lurking. Flaking is disappearing completely.
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@catspurr , this is our preliminary definition for flaking:
Most hosts have rules about how many times a player can get prodded before they’ll start looking for replacements (usually 3?). In the discrete-time games we’ll be developing this’ll even be more concrete (missing a phase).
The content of a post is of 0 concern to us when it comes to this policy, we only look at posting vs. not posting.
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We can make a better description appear on hover yeah. I’ll think of something. If you better ideas for the symbol let me know…I don’t want it to be one that players might want to get haha.
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Sure. I optimisitically didn’t draft stuff about repeat offenders with hope that it won’t happen. There’s obviously a point where it goes from bad standing to “you can’t play games here until you discuss why you’re more responsible now to a staff member”. So basically we’ll consider increasing penalties when we get to needing them.
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Eh. There are arguments for both sides isn’t there? I’m leaning just getting 4 for a single site flake.
I’m hoping this stuff isn’t something we’ll have to spend a lot of time making super precise. I think just having this sort of policy makes it clear what our stance on replacements/flaking is in general and is hopefully already a sufficient detriment.
I also want to highlight the type of interaction between skitter and metal here, in metal’s game sign up, as what we encourage.
Most of the time just being fairly responsible and discussing your availability and potential issues with a host/other players BEFORE a game starts just solves a lot of problems.
Specifics aside, this is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see from when 451 started. Replacements ruin games and are likely the #1 culprit at that, full stop. 
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Regarding tracking flaking:
It should just be like a mark on your account or something. Don’t flake for a couple of games and it is removed.
Flaking isn’t forever
I kinda dislike the borderline draconian measures (in my view, at least) being looked at here, but I understand I’m probably in the minority on this subject.
I really am a big believer that, especially on a site like this where we’re starting small, a self-policing community is the way to go (and I think you see some of that already), with GMs empowered to say no to a player with a history of flaking or fill their game on a non-first come first served basis. I think that in the long run a self-policing community that establishes a culture of anti-flaking is going to be more effective than the site-dictated punishments discussed here.
But, I’m in the minority with that opinion I’m sure, so I’m not putting up much of a fight.
Oh ha! You suggested exactly what I came up with. I’d give them two flakes before x tho
The “punishment” here is almost purely visual - if anything it’s to make it easier for players and hosts to recognize when a player has had a replacement/flaking history.
A big part of why I want a top-down policy like this is to make it clear to people that replacing out/flaking - save for in emergency scenarios - is not a good thing and shouldn’t be acceptable. A lot of targetted long-form text mafia works strategies don’t work just because replacement exists.
Most replacements not in the "emergency’ category end up being because of 1) very poor planning (e.g. joining a long game when you have finals in a week) or 2) semi-game-related (Someone made me unhappy/mad). Both are usually preventable.
But yeah, I think policies like these will end up empowering the community and it’s culture to be more anti-replace/flake. If it makes everyone double check the playerlist or their schedule or the game they’re joining - I think it’s a win.
Eh, my general opinion on non-emergency flakes is that it takes close to no time to inform someone that you need to replace out for whatever reason. Maybe we can lower threshold of time it takes for the X to disappear.
Probably just going to have this be our policy for now and see what happens. If it ends up causing problems or just ‘feeling unfair’ for whatever reason we’ll refine or iterate. The values/names/everything isn’t set in stone.
Oh yeah, if a flake is just completely ghosting then I agree with that