VanHalenLover:
Here ya go andy, enjoy:
To be sure I understand your solution:
It applies to any and all ranked rounds, including single and multiplayer ranked rounds.
Any solo or multiplayer practice rounds will still have the end/quit option in the game play menu.
There will also be a change to the game play window such that if you had previously quit a ranked round, (either by computer/connection crash, game freeze, clicking on the red X to close the browser window, and the like.) you would not be able to start any game until you complete the ranked round you quit.
This is similar to the existing game procedure for single play tournaments where if you close your browser game window during the round then re-open the game client window, you are required choose to either continue the tournament round OR forfeit the tournament and withdraw so you can play some other game. Your proposal would be a bit different in that you only have the choice to continue the ranked round and you cannot choose to play any other game until you complete it.
Based on the above, it appears to me you are proposing a solution to prevent players from manipulating their scores and saying that it also solves the multi-player game quitting problem.
I won't deny players manipulate their scores (and as a result manipulate their average) either by cherry picking and reporting only their good scores or by sandbagging their average and reporting some high scores to offset their low rounds. And I also won't comment here on how well that solution works to prevent average manipulation or even if a solution is needed for cherry picking. That is a topic for another thread on score manipulation.
This thread is about multi-player round quitting. Here are my comments on how well your solution for score manipulation works to combat the issue under discussion.
1. Hundreds if not thousands of multi-player rounds are played each day/week in practice mode and your solution completely ignores quitting in practice mode.
- Multi-player practice rounds are common because players can enjoy the variety of tees and green speeds not offered by ranked rounds.
- People quit, even in practice rounds and especially in random multi-player rounds, for a variety of reasons..Because there are no consequences, because they are getting beat, because they are p.o.'d......etc.
2. The way the multi-player game is set up today, if a player has to excuse himself for a personal reason, (dinner's ready or an important phone call for example) he can politely excuse himself via the chat and use the end game/main menu option to gracefully exit. The player leaving goes to the game play main menu, and the player(s) remaining immediately see the "player disconnected" message and can continue playing.
Removing the end game menu option in multi-player ranked rounds, as you propose, means the only option to exit a multi-player round is by clicking on the red X and closing the browser game play window.
The result is the game play window freezes for the remaining players until the WGT servers realize one of the players is gone and notifies the remaining players. I've been in games where this has taken minutes to sort out. One player is shown as loading for an interminable amount of time, the chat goes "Mark r u there?" "Do u see mark?" "shows loading" " yeah me too" "I see u on the tee" "I can't hit" "Mark r u there?" "Guess he's gone" "sez he disconnected now" "Yeah I can hit" ......very very messy.
This post is getting too long so I'll stop for now.
Your proposed solution to quitting needs to address the above two issues.
- Quitting in practice rounds happens and needs to included in any solution
- The graceful method of exiting ranked mp rounds needs to be retained.