Offering a draw should not result in rating changes

I would like to suggest that any game that is ended as a draw using the draw button should not award or subtract rating points from any of the players.

Recently, it has become much more common to have at least one player disconnect at some point during a game. These issues have been reported and are no doubt worked on. In the mean time however, it has become clear that we lack a way to declare that a game should be ended or unranked because of problems of one kind or another.

Currently, when you use the draw button, the game understands this to mean that both teams are equal. As a consequence, the lower rated team gets assigned points, and the higher rated team loses points. However, unlike games like Chess, it is (near) impossible for a FAF match to end up in a genuine draw. For this reason, this logic does not make sense and the button's function should be changed.

I imagine the the easiest option to fix this issue is to either set the game as unranked, or award a default 0 points to all players, once a draw has been accepted. Alternatively, a new button specifically made to unrank a game could perhaps be implemented. I do not know how to code however, and I am sure that smarter people than me have better ideas.

It has been frustrating to have more than half of my games be spoiled by connection issues, and to lose points on top of that after accepting a draw is just not a great experience. Please make this change.

I can agree with this. Losing or gaining rating on a match that ends in a draw doesn't make sense.
Sometimes both teams even gain rating as well.

If I may, I would also like to offer a suggestion that somewhat correlates to this.
To expand a little, leaving a match early should probably not lose you points either.
More specifically, there is always one player that never offers a draw when the other players do vote.

For example, not too long ago, some buddies and I joined a TMM game, and one player, unfortunately, crashed upon start - after conversing with the opponent team, we all agreed on a draw.
The votes were in, and yet the game did not end as someone did not vote.

After waiting a while, my team and I decided to just leave as we were not getting anywhere...
and in doing so, lost rating. The game lasted about 4 minutes in-game time.

Granted, I can see some issues with this as some players could exploit it if they just leave a match immediately, but, perhaps this could be avoided if most players offer a draw... similar to how the recall feature works. If all but one player agree, the game ends in a draw.

Alternatively, it would be nice to see who voted and who did not.

~ Stryker

@comradestryker I thought it was already a thing that if a game was finished within a certain time, it would not be rated?

@indexlibrorum said in Offering a draw should not result in rating changes:

@comradestryker I thought it was already a thing that if a game was finished within a certain time, it would not be rated?

I believe that goes for Global games only, not TMM games.
TMM games are rated immediately from the start.

I could be wrong, however.

~ Stryker

@comradestryker Oh no, I think you're correct.

There are two types of draws. There are the standard draws from gameplay outcomes, which should be rated. And there are what are defined as “mutual draws” which are an unrank condition. For whatever reason, the draw menu for tmm wasn’t given the latter.

@ftxcommando Possibly an easy fix, then?

Man, I totally agree with this. Nothing feels worse than to draw out of common decency just to get hit with -9. I also can't think of a situation where you would draw in faf because the game is in a stalemate. Normal ELO rules do not work for draws in faf. It should just be an unrate button.

• Peenutzzz

@peenutzzz said in Offering a draw should not result in rating changes:

I also can't think of a situation where you would draw in faf because the game is in a stalemate. Normal ELO rules do not work for draws in faf. It should just be an unrate button.

ACU gun fight with less than 2500 hp difference between both.

It should be an easy fix, yeah.

Could we have an option to be used when a player disconnects, something like Null Game. It would also be good in usage as it would help track games that fail due to DC and as such you could spot the players who are the constant cause.

Just draw a game because 1 guy disconnects in minute 1 and the guy in question wins 42 points and I lost 9
don't want to force a 2 vs 3 next time, but it is totally unfair that I lost points because enemy team have 1 disconnect
#20224019

I haven't heard from any of the devs that this was going te get picked up. Anyone got an update?

We have a distinct lack of active python devs, so I doubt it will be picked up anytime soon

@blackyps I thought everything was Lua and stuff. Who wrote the recall feature?

@indexlibrorum said in Offering a draw should not result in rating changes:

@blackyps I thought everything was Lua and stuff. Who wrote the recall feature?

I believe Jip worked on the recall feature.

But that's recall, not draw.
The draw mechanic was written in Lua as well, but the rating system was written in Python, if I'm not mistaken.

~ Stryker

@indexlibrorum said in Offering a draw should not result in rating changes:

@blackyps I thought everything was Lua and stuff. Who wrote the recall feature?

The messages are sent in the game (Lua), but interpret by the server (Python)

edit: as @ComradeStryker already wrote

I see, that's unfortunate.

TMM game, 10 seconds in, a player DC'd.. we agree on a draw... we lose points.

Sadge.

-sigh-

~ Stryker

Yeah it remains depressing.