No immediate resigning

It seems to me that a lot of players these days join a game, only to resign immediately once the game begins. Why? It could be that their drop was not favourable to them, that they changed their mind since joining the game, or for some other random reason. Regardless, while the resigned player can simply join a new game and suffers no negative consequences except for lost tokens, the other players do not have that luxury and are stuck with a game that, for weeks or even months, is not what they expected in terms of the number of opponents. In team games, however, the consequences are worse for one remaining player in particular: the resigned player's teammate. A resigned player's teammate (or teammates) has a severely reduced chance of winning a game on his own against other teams that are intact. Sometimes that can lead to the teammate resigning afterwards out of sheer hopelessness, meaning that an eight-player game, for instance, is suddenly a six-player game with lots of newly spawned neutrals all over the map. I therefore suggest that the 'Resign' button does not become clickable until turn three, so all players who join a game are forced to give it a shot, regardless of their drop, mood, or whatever else is holding them back from playing the game as intended. Granted, players who tend to resign early on can still miss turns one and two successively and hence drop out at the end of turn two, but in theory their mood could have changed by then, so they decide to give the game a shot anyway. Moreover, the game would still be active, so they wouldn't be able to join a new game immediately if they already have five active games in total (unless they have a premium account). After the two turns of thinking time, if the player hasn't missed both of them, and if he still wants to resign, he can do so by turn three. What do you think? [i]Postscript: In the example above I am referring to longterm games, but in live games it would be easier to miss two successive turns and then immediately move on to the next game, so for live games we would have to introduce an extra sanction of some kind. A cooling-off period of 24 hours, where the resigned player can't join a new game, could be the solution. It would probably do the trick for longterm games as well.[/i]

Report it. If a player does this, 2 reports will affect the fairplay score and becomes easier to identify habitual abusers. If you need a second report because someone else did not second yours, send a PM to a staff member or use the support tab to summon staff/ have someone look at it later if no staff are online and they can second your report for the same reason. If a player has used the resign feature a lot and it is for quitting games early, they can have their resign feature disabled. If they do and still miss turns instead of resigning, their attendance score will quickly drop. If the attendance score gets low and we can see this is the reason why, they can then be restricted to 2 player games only and will no longer be a problem in this regard. In short, use the report tabs in game and use the support tabs within games and these players will be found quickly enough and we can then restrict their abilities or allowances based on the situation, just like restricting someone's chat for repeated violations.