Should Chess.com Change How Vacation Works?

Can you still accrue a maximum of 90 days vacation?

What's the logic for such an absurdly high number?

Does it work that way?

I thing we don't accrue more days while we are on vacation. It's a kind of contradiction. The maximum wouldn't be 30 or 60 or 90 in that way, for example for a basic member would be 30 + 2 (a basic member get 1 day every 15, right?)

I'm pretty sure you do accrue more days while on vacation, but obviously not as fast as you use it.

I never thought of that. But, that should be introduced whatever else you do not accept.

The fact, JD, that you are aware of my, and so many others, complaints in the past is heartening.

Quite frankly, delaying tactics, of Vacation abuse type and others, have resulted in me practically giving up Daily. I play some if reasons of friendship, or the need to maintain membership of groups that insist on a minimum involvement.

A substantial change for the better based on common sense would greatly be appreciated by me, and I might start playing more regularly again. 

Why do I not give more concrete suggestions, you may ask. Simply because, in the past, I have simply received specious excuses, or ridicule for my trouble, and a denial that there was any problem, or that there could even be one!

Ok, but it's not literally a vacation. It's just "I can't / don't want to play chess right now."

90 days makes it ripe for abuse.

But whatever. I guess people are free to join no vacation tournaments.

i think the vacation feature is fine as it is and no need to change it

Yeah, like I need open heart surgery on a different continent and my only mode of travel is hot air balloon. 

Now that may be something I'd need 90 days for.

You're missing my point.  I wasn't objecting to your proposed 30-day limit, I was objecting to your five days advance notice.

What if a close family member has a serious heart attack or car accident or something?  It would be very reasonable for you to want to put your games aside for a week or two, and you don't usually have five days advance notice of these things.

I'm not snape, but yeah, I see what you're saying.

At the same time, lets weigh how many people abuse vacation vs how many people need it because a close family member had a sudden heart attack and died.

I think it's obvious the maximum of 90 days is stupid.

Why not have a feature in live chess where I can leave the game and not lose?

As soon as my opponent and I are online again we can start from where we left off.

Sound crazy? ICC (or was it FICS?) had that feature. In fact if you disconnected games were AUTOMATICALLY saved for later (you didn't lose).

How does that sound?

Stupid right? Because frequency of abuse far outweighs the frequency of it being useful.

This is the very essence of policy making. No policy is 100% good or bad, you have to weigh them against each other.

I agree 90 days is too much, but there are many people who have legitimate reasons to go on vacation time without advance warning.  The advance warning requirement would hurt many innocent people with a legitimate unexpected need to go on vacation - as well as those who simply didn't plan ahead or realise it was necessary (since it's a very arbitrary requirement).  There are other ways to address the issue of abuse.

But I agree 90 days is too much.

Aside from vacation, I would want to give propose feedbacks on Premium users' access to lessons and puzzle rush.

I regularly organize premium membership awarded tournaments in my club. There, there usually rises only Gold winners as the number of participants do not reach Platinum or Diamond quota. Then Gold members complain:

"We can not reach interactive video lessons, we can not play puzzle rush as much as it may be  satisfying. We can not watch videos, not even once in a day. What is the point?" they ask.

This is a really bad idea, especially in daily chess.  Having a real prize creates an even stronger incentive to cheat.  I have seen incidents of people who normally played clean cheating in tournaments where someone offered a prize.  And while chess.com puts a lot of effort into detecting cheating, a single tournament may not always provide enough data to prove it with sufficient certainty to take action.

After reading the comments it seems most want to have a reduced vacation time. 

Maybe next step is to give a vote about the length, like 

90 days - 60 days - 45 days - 30 days - 15 days

do get an overview where the majority tend to  

Agree.

I like the idea to get rid of vacation time and have new time controls instead. If people want something similar to vacation time it should be part of the time control for each game. Then games can start with both players agreeing how much vacation is ok. There is no way to find an amount that fits everyone, so it needs to be game specific.

No no, at most my tournaments are 3+2

Since a lot of people like the current time control and the use of vacation time, I think the current time control needs to stay. But I see no problem with making vacation time game specific, have an option to change amount of vacation time allowed when starting a game and adding new time controls (other time controls have been suggested in this thread earlier).

I agree too. I don't think anything really needs to change. And vacation time is absolutely necessary.

To some extent I can understand the objections of people who are frustrated when their opponent is taking a lot of vacation, but patience is required when playing Daily in any case and a bit of extra tolerance for opponents who take their time and their vacations should not be too much to ask. Taking on a few new daily games might be the answer if our current opponents are absent.

Personally, the most frustration for me is when I am in a tournament and waiting for a round to start. I don't start new games, since if the next round starts I would get too many ongoing games. And I don't know when the rounds ends since vacation can really prolong it.

I mean, I have a lot of patience, but not starting new games for 1.5 years because of this is a bit ridiculous. I decided to never join multi-round tournaments that allow vacation again, but I also can't join tournaments that don't allow vacation, since I sometimes need a bit vacation myself (even if only about 7 days/year).

Granted, without vacation I still need to wait for new rounds and I might still not join multi-round tournaments in the future. But without vacation time that wait should be shorter.