server hugging - new fashion or what?

[StDrake]

For some time when I visited the mp servers I would witness a most bizarre thing. People would just start a game, solo, not even do the first turn and go away..leaving the game up. Some are even so 'smart' that they set up a password protected game with no observers and leave it like that. So far the record breaker was noted to sit there on the top of mp games list for several days - day after day being the same thing - game didn't even leave the lobby stage, password protected, no observers allowed, nobody in it except the maker. Now it seems he finally got booted, but already I see a different name doing the same dumb thing - turn 1 forever, and of course nobody allowed in.
I'm , what is this? Some new fashion the kind of "wee first post" but being a "wee first game, and it's gonna be first forever"? I doubt one creep like that is of any relevance to the lobby server performance, but it's still mighty weird.

[TheDreamer]

Take it as a chance to study the many faces (or feces) of human mind.

[Gambit]

What version is this? 1.9 has issues with corrupted games getting stuck IIUC.

[StDrake]

1.8.5 *checks* yep, the guy is still there, still turn 1

[Kalajel]

Hmm, hope you"e not talking about me… last year I did quite a few all AIs test runs of a 6p map I made to see if it was balanced.

[pauxlo]

• An all-AI game should not stay forever on turn 1, so I don't think this is the problem.
• If you don't want anyone to join (or even observe), why do you do it on the public server? You can do your balancing checks as well as a local game (and it will be even quicker then, since no network traffic involved).

[StDrake]

as far as I remember those were always cases of non-bold names, so nobody from the forum, no

[Sapient]

Maybe it's like when you go to the fridge in the middle of the night, but you forgot what you wanted?

I agree that allowing observers makes more sense. You may eventually find someone who is also interested in it, wished to participate, or discuss it. If not, there's no point to advertising it on the lobby if no one else can participate on any level.

[em3]

Maybe there could be some automatic timeout? Like, 12 hours of complete idleness (no network traffic, no changes) would cause the game to be killed?