Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Dynamic Idling Time

I have an idea, but I want to see if it makes sense before proposing anything:

Whenever the number of players goes up, time to reach quorum goes up, conversely the game slows down. This is terribly counter-intuitive, but kind-of-expected. So I would propose changing the number of days before someone can be set to Idle, to follow this formula:

If the Quorum is 30 or more, time to Idle is 3 days.
If Quorum is between 15 and 29, time to idle is 5 days.
If Quorum is less than 15, time to Idle is 7 days.

Or maybe we could have two levels of Quorum, some “Hot Quorum” and a “Regular Quorum”. People that have been active in the last 3 days are in the Hot Quorum, and the rest of the active players are in the Regular Quorum. If a “Hot Quorum” of FOR / AGAINST votes is reached on Dynastic Proposals, then the Proposal can be enacted or Failed (if it is the last one, I don’t want to screw the queue). This will make gameplay much faster, but it will be a PITA to track who is in the “Hot Quorum”.

Thoughts?

Edit: Another idea - change the minimum time to fail from 48 hours to 36 hours.

posted by arthexis at 25 Oct 2011 21:10:19 UTC Comments (21)

Comments

flurie:

25-10-2011 21:22:12 UTC

Your dynamic idle time has the added benefit of plugging directly into the current ruleset; just replace “idle time is foo” with “idle time is formula foo”. So I’m more in favor of that.

Brendan: he/him

25-10-2011 21:25:15 UTC

Hot Quorum would be much more of a pain for the admins, as you say. I’m cautiously in favor of the dynamic idling time formula.

Bucky:

25-10-2011 21:31:29 UTC

against

redtara: they/them

25-10-2011 21:36:05 UTC

for for the dynamic quorum
against the Hot Quorum per Brendan

Spitemaster:

25-10-2011 21:44:02 UTC

Much more in favour of dynamic idle time.

Amnistar: he/him

25-10-2011 22:02:18 UTC

Dynamic Idling makes sense, I think it could be fun. 

Another alternative could be that after population reaches a certain point Quorum becones 1/3 instead of 1/2?

arthexis: he/him

25-10-2011 22:10:32 UTC

Amnistar: Reducing Quorum would be bad for Core Proposals or CfJs, I think just Dynastic Proposals should have faster enactments.

ais523:

25-10-2011 22:12:59 UTC

I’d go with dynamic idle. Reduced quorum only works with a minimum time to adopt proposals, incidentally (or you’re vulnerable to timing scams).

arthexis: he/him

25-10-2011 22:17:53 UTC

Since we could really use this right now, would it make sense to make this change with a CfJ, or would that be frowned upon? My reasoning is that this is an actual issue (game is awfully slow) that needs to have some attention.

Shadowclaw:

25-10-2011 22:47:33 UTC

I’d like to toss in a for for dynamic idling time.

Clucky: he/him

25-10-2011 22:56:26 UTC

against I just don’t really see the point. Idle people will be a pain in either circumstance.

arthexis: he/him

25-10-2011 23:03:15 UTC

Clucky: A pain yes, but different levels of pain. What about reducing fail time to 36 instead of 48? Approve time can stay at 48.

Amnistar: he/him

25-10-2011 23:06:59 UTC

Actually one that could work would be allowing failure if a quorum has just Voted on the proposal and it has more Against than For.

arthexis: he/him

25-10-2011 23:08:09 UTC

Then again, I’m running the numbers now… using the more aggressive idling time of 3 days, 6 players would be idled now, reducing Quorum to 21, which would be enough to fail the currently outstanding proposals. So perhaps the formula should be less conservative:

Quorum > 20 -> 3 days Idle time
Quorum <= 20 -> 5 days Idle time

arthexis: he/him

25-10-2011 23:08:57 UTC

Amnistar’s suggestion could also work. You should propose that!

Amnistar: he/him

25-10-2011 23:23:41 UTC

Can’t outa proposal slots.

Besides, you don’t want me writting core rules, they will have massive problems.

Pavitra:

25-10-2011 23:51:40 UTC

Version 1 is good, Hot/Cold quorum is bad.

Prince Anduril:

26-10-2011 12:22:10 UTC

Ditto Pavitra and pretty much everyone else.

Kevan: he/him

26-10-2011 13:19:02 UTC

I’m not sure if this is arguing that if the game is busy then most people probably aren’t here to play, or if the game is busy then we should kick out anyone who wants to play it at a slower pace, but both of these seem a little ominous.

Would it make more sense to address the calculation of Quorum itself, if the concern is that a large player base slows down the proposal queue?

Pavitra:

26-10-2011 14:37:29 UTC

Reducing Quorum below half-plus-one could in theory lead to time-zone-based factions trying to get shenanigans passed while each other are asleep. Probably not an issue in practice, though.

Ely:

26-10-2011 17:32:44 UTC

I like dynamic Idle time, 2nd version.