Disable Chat and/or ignore players

more or less what Hod said. Don't want to move for whatever reason? fine just end your turn. Making the clock run out on purpose is just trolling the other player and in my opinion should be reported.

People should do what they want, they only get 40 secs anyway. It is poor form from a poor player if it is done purely to cause annoyance. I sometimes use an activation quickly but then use the remaining 20-30 seconds exploring options and examining some of the units/abilities that I do not frequently encounter. Reporting for this would be an absolute headache. Some people would report because you took the whole 40secs regardless of the reason.

People should do what they want, they only get 40 secs anyway. It is poor form from a poor player if it is done purely to cause annoyance. I sometimes use an activation quickly but then use the remaining 20-30 seconds exploring options and examining some of the units/abilities that I do not frequently encounter. Reporting for this would be an absolute headache. Some people would report because you took the whole 40secs regardless of the reason.

obviously nobody will report if once , twice , thrice you won't activate a unit and leave the 40 seconds pass, come on lets be serious. This is applied if the player wastes 2-3+ whole turns not moving and wasting 40 seconds because unless he has some mental issues he is doing it on purpose. Also it is ALWAYS the players' choice if they wants to report it....you know you are giving options to those people who do not enjoy this kind of trolling. You don't want to move? fine, go for the spacebar. You don't want to report a guy which is wasting your time on purpose? fine don't do it

Reports have always existed in any game as wrong/trollish reports. I'm sure devs can investigate any bad behavior and act accordingly depending if the report was right or wrong (and maybe even ban temporarily the reporter if he is abusing of this function for whaever reason). Probably if 10 players report the same guy something might be wrong, same as if one guy is reporting lot of players.

as always a nice story to end my post: there was a guy having 3xnecros and many cheap creatures + 1 gargoyle. He would basically don't move (not even 1 hexagon) and at some point use is gargoyle to run around the map, aiming for a draw. If you enjoy to spend time with guys like him around i dont know what to tell you

[Jigoku]

Hello,

we need to work on our report tool right now, but sadly it is not the highest priority for the moment.
But we definitely want to have a working tool for you to point out really bad sportsmanship / trolling (etc) because we feel it can prove very detrimental to the player's experience when that sort of things happens.

On the "defensive game" problem: we've been thinking a lot about that lately.
There is nothing wrong with how the players play the game here; it's our responsibility, as devs, to prevent some boring situations like that to happen.

After some analysis, we noticed that these patterns (turtle, running for draw) happened a lot more on "Deathmatch" mode than on any other mode. I'm not sure if I wrote about that before; if I already did, sorry for the repetition.

For quite some time now, we have been working to improve the game modes in this regard, but it is a very long task.
I can't give any deadline, but I can say that we are really concerned about these situations, and that we aim to fix it in a way that will satisfy everyone.

I feel the issue with the other game modes is that they are not 'neutral'. In DM any race with a decent build is viable. The others have the potential to favour fast moving heavy hitters like the wolves.

I agree with the above. I haven't played VIP in weeks because Wolfen have such an advantage. I try to surround my VIP with my RAM players as well as I can, but those freakin' wolfen can run half way across the map, hit me three times in a row, kill the weakest part of the wall and then pursuit strike my vip and nearly (if not completely) kill him and then I'm screwed. That's why I pretty much gave up VIP awhile ago. Just writing about it is bringing back rage quit memories.

[Jigoku]

I agree with the above. I haven't played VIP in weeks because Wolfen have such an advantage. I try to surround my VIP with my RAM players as well as I can, but those freakin' wolfen can run half way across the map, hit me three times in a row, kill the weakest part of the wall and then pursuit strike my vip and nearly (if not completely) kill him and then I'm screwed. That's why I pretty much gave up VIP awhile ago. Just writing about it is bringing back rage quit memories.

Thanks for the feedback.
It's pretty heavy stuff. If it is an opinion shared by everyone here, maybe it is not feedbacked enough in the forum threads - or I didn't read them enough.
I will open a thread about that, because this kind of comment is really concerning about stuff we could not see.
(We were in fact aware of the Wolfen vs VIP problem, however I feel we need to dig deeper into that stuff with you guys to make sure our next steps will be right).

I'm completly against reporting a player for making the activation last the whole time to force the other player to break his turtle formation, there are only 40 seconds per activation, so i don't understand whats the big deal. We already talked about this before in chat many times, turtling could be taken by many players as a form of trolling too, do we need to punish that behavior too? i dont think so.

On competitive Chess games you have a clock and you can make use of that time how ever the hell you want, if you want to use to it play mental games with the oponent you can use it for that too. If some people find it boring then thats their problem and they are playing the wrong kind of game if they can't deal with some minor mental stress.

The solution for this "trolling" (if you want to call it that) as i see it, is to force a player to move a unit for a minimum amount (let say 4 hexes or 6 hexes) every set number of rounds (let say 3), if such movement doesn't happen then the player is considered AFK and is given a loss. Or maybe you can aslo make it so if the player doesn't move a unit and wait for the whole timer to run out to reduce his timer for the next move let say from 40 to 30, if he doesnt move that turn again then the timer reduces to 20 for the next turn with a notice of AFK status and would be given a loss if he doesn't move soon, if no movement that turn too reduce the timer to 10 with the same notice, if no movement there then the player is considered AFK and loses.

Reporting players for this kind of play style is just immature and would be a nightmare for the devs that will have to check and recheck every reported game to see if the player reporting is really telling the truth and then you have to set up a punishment if the report turns up to be right and i asure you people won't like to be punished for making use of every tool this game gives you to plan a counter strategy, the result... players leaving for a whole new reason to the ones we have right now that make them leave, this is not bug abusing neither is it "trolling" is just another tool the game gives you to play mental games.

I'm completly against reporting a player for making the activation last the whole time to force the other player to break his turtle formation, there are only 40 seconds per activation, so i don't understand whats the big deal. We already talked about this before in chat many times, turtling could be taken by many players as a form of trolling too, do we need to punish that behavior too? i dont think so

1. You do not need to report anybody. It is the player choice what to do. If you are fine with it, just enjoy the game.
2. Report systems exist in any game as fake reports. Fake reports must be punished as much as "trolls"
3. I do not understand the benefit of wasting 40 seconds to break a turtle formation. Last time i checked you break it by using your units, not by wasting time.
4. There is no mental game by making your enemy waste his time by staring at the screen. You know, these 40 seconds really add up. 4-5 minutes wasted per turn (your activation only) x 3-4 turns = 20 minutes wasted. I'm sure you are sending the message just by quickly using the space bar and pass your activation without moving.
5. i met only once one comp specifically made for trolling with 3x necro. I guess after the first turn he had 12+ units, making each turn last about 10 minutes (not counting my movements). This would have been the only guy which i found his behavior irritating and worth reporting. He was not bothering to even attack, just making the time pass and at some point fly around with the gargoyle aiming for a draw. The fun fact is that i was not even turtling but playing aggresively so it is not like we were staring at each other. In the end i won but im pretty sure it took me an insane amount of time for a game with almost no interaction from the other player which was the boredom festival (im assuming it took me one hour in the end lol)

I'm completly against reporting a player for making the activation last the whole time to force the other player to break his turtle formation, there are only 40 seconds per activation, so i don't understand whats the big deal. We already talked about this before in chat many times, turtling could be taken by many players as a form of trolling too, do we need to punish that behavior too? i dont think so

1. You do not need to report anybody. It is the player choice what to do. If you are fine with it, just enjoy the game.
2. Report systems exist in any game as fake reports. Fake reports must be punished as much as "trolls"
3. I do not understand the benefit of wasting 40 seconds to break a turtle formation. Last time i checked you break it by using your units, not by wasting time.
4. There is no mental game by making your enemy waste his time by staring at the screen. You know, these 40 seconds really add up. 4-5 minutes wasted per turn (your activation only) x 3-4 turns = 20 minutes wasted. I'm sure you are sending the message just by quickly using the space bar and pass your activation without moving.
5. i met only once one comp specifically made for trolling with 3x necro. I guess after the first turn he had 12+ units, making each turn last about 10 minutes (not counting my movements). This would have been the only guy which i found his behavior irritating and worth reporting. He was not bothering to even attack, just making the time pass and at some point fly around with the gargoyle aiming for a draw. The fun fact is that i was not even turtling but playing aggresively so it is not like we were staring at each other. In the end i won but im pretty sure it took me an insane amount of time for a game with almost no interaction from the other player which was the boredom festival (im assuming it took me one hour in the end lol)

1. There is no need to report something that is not foul play, you have 40 seconds per turn you use them how ever you want, I already posted an idea to fix it, if you have other ideas go ahead and tell us about it, i'm sure the more ideas we give the devs to think about the better, reporting a player for doing something he is entitled to do inside the rules of the game is just immature.

2. Most, not all games have reporting system, and most devs will ignore or punish any player that abuse the reporting system to report a player for doing something that he is entitled to do inside the rules, to avoid such situations they change such a rule for other players not to exploit it and make the game less enjoyable for other people.

3. If you don't understand that doesn't change the fact that it actually works, go ahead and try it a couple of times and you will see how the player that is turtling will start moving, he of course won't come straight at you but he will break his initial formation and possible make a misstake in positioning his units. It happens, i have seen it many times.

4. The fact that you are making a person feel or think he is "wasting time" is on itself a mental game, it will put preassure on him to take the initiative seeing how you are not willing to do it. Like i said before if you have not try it, try it out a couple of times and you will see how they will come jumping on you full of insults showing how they lost their composure and thats what mental games are all about.

5. I have been there too on 1 hour games long even without any player trolling each other, it happens. If a player make a special company just to "troll" other people abusing this part of the rules, he is of course at fault but like any rule system if there is a rule that let people abuse it to "troll" other people just for the fun of it, it means the rule it self is the problem and it needs to be changed, untill such a rule is changed the "troll" player is not commiting any foul, even if that is his intention, sadly, he isn't breaking any rule. How do you even know if x player is trolling you if he takes the whole turn? maybe he is just watching tv, or alt-tabing, or AFK, or he is thinking to much, or maybe he is just stupid, who knows?. To report something like that to the devs will just generate additional load to an already small dev team and will probably generate additional confflicts in the chat that will make things less enjoyable for other people.

In short, just change the activation timer system, make it so its impossible for other players to use it as a way to make things less fun for other people.