I like the idea of knowing how many times a player has let there game go to auto-play due to them missing turns, but I just noticed that this number is very deceiving. I looked at my stats for the first time and was confused that I was ranked "8th worst" with a total of 11 auto-played turns. I was confused because I have never missed 2 turns and had the auto-play kick in, but then I realized that this stat for me is comprised of 2 games that I officially surrendered and set the game to dormant.

Is there a way to differentiate between when the game automatically goes to auto-play due to missed turns and when a player manually sets their game to auto-play?

Good point Jacob.

Maybe if it can't be differentiated easily in the stat, the way to surrender is to vacate the capital and just click submit til they take you (usually when surrendering the enemy is not far off anyway).

Well there are actually already three turn stats for players.

• Submitted Turns

• Autoplay Turns

• Missed Turns

Hunt around and you will see some players with all three stats. Proteus is a good example.

So perhaps we should display autoplay counts but not rank them (so there will not be the offending worst text). Autoplay, as you have both pointed out does not necessarily indicate an absent player. Missed counts would still have the worst ranking.

Worthwhile enhancement?

@GameAdmin I think the "worst"/"best" works. My inquiry boils down to whether or not there could be a distinction between manually setting to auto-play vs having the game automatically switch to auto-play after missing 2 consecutive turns. I do see how taking the missed turn stat into account when looking at the auto-played turn stat does give it a little more meaning, but I could still see some confusion by players trying to make sense of the numbers.

Take for instance a hypothetical Extreme membership player who keeps about 15 active games going at once. After a year of play has missed a total of 4 days of inputting turns due to work/family/life but has never missed 2 consecutive turns and had the game switch to auto-play. Over the course of the same year he was going to lose 30 game that he switched to dormant after surrendering so as to not be confronted with the monument to his loss every time he logs in to submit and that those games averaged about 6 turns from when he switched to auto-play until he was actually eliminated. This player would have a total of 60 missed turns and 180 auto-played turns. These stats would not be reflective of the type of player this actually was and over time the stats would become meaningless.

That being said I see 2 ways to avoid the potential meaninglessness that these stats would revert to over time:

1. Have a way to differentiate between manually switching to auto-play vs automatically switching to auto-play (perhaps a stat for both or simply only count when it happens automatically)
2. Instead of ranking by raw number alone, rank as a percentage of total game activity along with the raw numbers. This would not avoid all confusion, but it at least would give a better indication of the type of player being dealt with. A player who has only submitted a total of 50 turns with 10 of them auto-played gives an auto-play percentage of 20% but a player who has submitted 500 turns with the same number of auto-played turns would have only 2%. (I do see that this could be calculated by individuals looking at other player stats as all the required information is there, but some peoples math skills are not great and having to pull up the calculator and plug in some numbers could be considered time consuming by others)

P.S. I like number 1 better as it takes into account manual vs automatic switching which is really the heart of the issue.

EDIT: The second suggestion is junk. If the first one can not be done there is nothing wrong with not using percentages.

Lets go through an example of what happens right now. Ignoring the ranking stuff for now.

Say a player is only in one game.
They submit 3 turns.
Then they miss 2 turns, which then autoplay get auto enabled.
Since autoplay is on, they then auto play 5 turns.

This is how their stats would look:

Submitted: 3 Autoplay: 5: Missed: 2

An example of another player:
They submit 3 games.
Then they manually put their autoplay on.
Since autoplay is on, they then autoplay 7 turns.

This would be their stats:

Submitted: 3 Autoplay: 7 Missed: 0

So Autoplay should not have any negative influence, it is the Missed value that should attract scorn.

Doesn't this cover the concerns in your example?

We could add some percentage displays as well, that would assist the viewer.

Yes, my hypothetical player would have thousands of submitted turns, so when looking at all three stats, having 60 missed turns and 180 auto played turns, it would give a fair representation.

Percentages ARE be a good idea (even though I edited my earlier post to say they are not needed). I'm not sure why I changed my mind on them yesterday. If it is not too much work to add them I can't think of reason not to.