I and my wife have started playing here about 4 days ago. We are fairly good players but never played on-line before. We both are getting very frustrated with the droppers policy you have here. We have not dropped a single game but we have already accumulated 8 drops on my account and 13 drops on my wife's. None of these drops have been initiated by us.  Now MissManners has banned my wife from initiating new games and I got warned about being banned soon. Most of these droppers have dropped just before we were going to win the game.  In doing so, they also screw up our rating. One of these droppers even used obscenity on my wife when she doubled on him. Two of the droppers invited me to play and when I accepted they rolled once and logged out leaving me with saved games. Since then we are spending all our time to looking for these droppers so we can finish the games and get the list adjusted but we have not been successful
There must be a way to reset the dropping list for these not-guilty players. Don't get us penalized for other people rudeness and malicious behavior. We enjoy the game but we can not play correctly and concentrate on the game in these atmosphere.  By the way, is there a way to automatically set all the droppers to auto invite so we don't have to keep looking for them?

Of course we make a new user name and start over and keep changing it weekly.  In doing so we defeat the purpose of keeping a record and getting a rating.  Is not it what all these droppers do? We want do avoid doing that but if we want to continue playing we may have no choice.  

Please help. Change the software to stop penalizing the innocents for the fault of few bad players. We rather see you disbarring no one until you fix the software.

Sorry that you are having trouble with droppers. Unfortunately, there is no way for FIBS to know which player dropped, so you wind up with a saved game when someone drops you.  Accumulate enough saved games and you are barred from issuing invitations.  That's just how it is.

What you can do about it is to avoid playing droppers.  How do you know? 

1) Ask repbot before invitation or accepting an invitation.  Dont' play users with a bad repbot rating

2) Look at their saved count (show savedcount playername) and don't play anyone with more than a few saved games

3) Look at the client software - avoid playing phone users (OdesysMobile) 

4) Look at experience points - more experience usually implies less propensity to drop (but not always.

Most players finish their matches and don't shout profanities when cubed.  Use the simple steps above to avoid those who do.

I just was told that I have 6 unfinished matches?
Games where play was dropped by opponent who was about to lose the game.

I have resumed the play everytime I had a chance, when I lost connection, no matter if I was about to lose.

I have been kept on hold inactive for very long time, by players who even used offending language too as if trying to force me to quit ....

It must be possible to change the system, reprogram in order to keep track of those who quits their games, when they stand to lose, and avoid resuming to finish game next time both players are online.

Otherwise I find no fun to play here, just stress and frustration

try entering some tourneys and play some bots - if your rep allows you

gl

If your rep doesn't allow you, ask the tourney director and he or she may allow you to play.   

socksey

It is bad...but better than the current alternatives....

It must be possible to change the system, reprogram in order to keep track of those who quits their games, when they stand to lose, and avoid resuming to finish game next time both players are online.

Patti and others do try and augment the code, but as it is quite old now, even small changes can have quite a knock-on effect.
New bits have been added in recent years to try and deal with some of the problems and new clients, but remember there are many software clients that interact with the server code, and not all of them can employ any modifications made.

it is for this reason i personally use javafibs, and have a programmable button "show savedcount %inviter", which i click when someone new invites -- if there are more than 7 or 8 with little experience, i am wary if i have little time.

have a look round these boards, use the 'search' facility, and, as diane has posted elsewhere, if you are a coder - get coding.......but be aware there are many established structural reasons that prevent what might appear simple improvements. Many folks have inputed over the years, and some changes have been possible.

be aware that like many things, there is much paddling below the surface, not seen from above

There are quite a few misunderstandings here...the most important is about the doubling..

When you play a 3 point match with someone, it does not matter what the score is, you will win or lose the same amount of points. That is calculated on rating difference between players. So, with javafibs for instance, it will tell you what you stand to win or lose playing a player, before you start.

So, if you were set to win 3.1 points against digiboy for the three point match, you will win 3.1 points, whether you win it 3-2, or 64-0. If you lose, it will be 3.1 points that is lost, regardless of score.

Do not let the overdoubling intimidate you. When people do it to me, I just think...'what a dork'...and smile quietly to myself.

The next is...that is a classic sign of a dropper btw..but by the time you see that sign, it is too late 

The next is that any client can pick a dropper from a droppee..the only person who can do that is Patti, and she has to do it manually - ie open the file and have a look.  I would not ask, let alone expect her to do that for every dropped match on fibs...so there is no way to get that information.

The clients can do lots though..

Imagine a client that:

-Popped up a warning with an odesys invite 'this is a mobile client with a high likelihood of disconnection before finishing - are you sure you want to accept?'

-Popped up a warning - 'this player has a reputation -10129(bad) and 13 saved games, are you sure you want to accept?' [3dfibs used to do this]

-Told you when players you have unfinished matches with are logged in [repbot used to do this]

-Auto invited when players you have unfinished matches with are ready?

That would help new players avoid so much trouble...lets face it, the vast majority of newbies have just worked out how to register, log in, set ready, invite someone, roll the dice, move the checkers and to double - by then, they just want to play, not go hunting for everything else they need to know!

The biggest problem is finding an angel to code all that...Tom, if you are thinking about doing any of this stuff - you are an angel