Anybody familiar with the zone has probably already complained,
or knows someone who has complained, about the unfairness of the ratings
system. In particular, the way boots and incompletes are handled is almost
criminal, and here is why.
Incompletes are listed in a user's ratings and implies the number of times
that a user disconnected themselves from a game in progress. Thus possibly
robbing their opponent of a win. Users with a large number of incompletes
are frowned upon by other players and are usually not invited to play
a game - which is a double whammy, and will become obvious soon enough.
Thus, incompletes are, in effect, an inverted rating of a player's honestly.
The more incompletes, the less honest the player. Well, that's what the
Zone would like you to believe...
Here are the facts:
Incompletes are caused by disconnects between the player's PC and
the Zone's servers. There are only 4 ways this can happen :
- The user either physically disconnects or hangs up his connection,
or quits the room the game is being played in (not the playing window,
the main room).
- The user's PC hangs or freezes long enough to cause a timeout or disconnect.
- There is a network disconnect somewhere between the host and the player's
PC. A router, gateway, etc takes too long to pass a signal back and
forth, thus causing a "timeout" or disconnect.
- The Zone server "freezes" or hesitates long enough for there
to be a software reset on the connection with the Player. This causes
a disconnect.
As far as the Zone is concerned, an incomplete is an incomplete.
There is no distinction between what is an active attempt to disconnect
from the server, versus a connection or server problem.
Many sysops will tell you that the problem "has to be"
on your side (After all - NT server software is bullet-proof, right?)
Known world-wide is the fact that internet connections do break.
Routers go up and down, phone lines get switched, etc. An average days
consistent connection (no timeouts) is about 2 hours.
The most frequent cause of disconnects on the zone are "boots".
This occurs when a significant number of users simulaneously lose their
connection to the zone. If they are in a rated game at the time, then
they get an incomplete. On average, this will happen more than a few
times a week. Usually half of one room will disappear (upwards of a
hundred users), but another room;s occupants are left untouched.
Let's face it, the likelihood of every user having the same ISP, or
the change that all their PC's chose to freeze at the same time is laughable
at best. It is much more likely that the problem lies in the Zone's
own server software or hardware.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, after 5 incompletes, the player is
hit with a ratings penalty.
Of course, the player can "work off" their unearned incompletes
by playing 50 consecutive matches - provided they can do this without
encountering another boot! HUH???
Conservatively, over 2/3 of the incompletes on the Zone are not the fault
of the player - yet they continually to be penalized. For goodness sakes,
Zone masters - WAKE UP AND SMELL THE BOOTS!!!!
