Comment by aetherspawn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aetherspawn | Hacker News Reader

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Hey PtaQ, I appreciate the comment and that BAR is putting effort into improving the community, but I raised a pull request to edit the community code of conduct to clarify that players shouldn’t be banned simply for allowing a game to run its natural course, and virtually every dev disagreed with me and favoured the idea of kick banning a player who won’t surrender immediately after front is lost because “the game is clearly won”.

If you want to make the community better, delete all the rules that encourage players to gang up on other players for subjective reasons. These kinds of rules punish non-verbal players, who easily fall prey to verbal players (I’ll just call them bullies) who can use the rules as a justification basically to harass someone whilst getting branded a hero.

Also, a large majority of players have fun, even when they’re losing. Asking those players to accommodate a hyper-competitive few who want the tightest loop possible to winning and restarting is anti-fun. Both from the perspective of the person winning (I get so disappointed when I win front and they just surrender before I get to blow up their base) and from the perspective of the non-front players who are pressured to quit as soon as front is lost.

Won plenty of games in more casual lobbies (kind of rare) where the front player, after dying, was happy to just receive T2/3 units to control, and due to being able to focus on just controlling a few units, won the game.

I can appreciate this sentiment. I am someone who favors a resign vote over a let it play in 8v8, and when i was thinking about why i think its that in a lobby based system like bar, where there are few games I value staying in a lobby rather than skipping around. Thus when a game feels lost to me, id rather play a new game (even to another loss) with a good lobby then play a slow inevitable losing struggle, or worse yet watch someone else play a losing struggle (even if they enjoy playing that loss out).

Something im trying to lean into in my games is to ask the players who are voting no what their win condition or what they think they can make a go of is.

I think what ive said above could make me sound like one of the folks who "want the tightest possible loop to winning and restarting", so to add some nuance there, I think playing a game where the conclusion is foregone lacks agency, and in a game where one team eventually loses of course there is a blurry area where the team agrees that they are in fact never going to win, and then another question on whether they lie to play regardless. Because of the variation there, i like the vote, and i am in favor of coms around why someone wants to resign or stay.

I actually think it is up to players in an open loby system to communicate their intentions and reasons, and while it is true that it means people who spam coms trying to push folks around are possible, i would echo ptaqs sentiment to use that report function! and on a softer level, i really like the mute. if someone is too much, mute them and continue to enjoy your game.

Yes if people don't want to play they can just do a resign vote, majority wins. No need to kick ban anyone.

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