Is the thinking time too long?

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SRZW
Posts: 3
Joined: 10 September 2021, 16:48

Is the thinking time too long?

Post by SRZW »

As a Riichi Mahjong player, I found the thinking time on BGA is TOO LONG. Here on BGA the settings of normal thinking time is 2m06s (+14 secs per move), and 1m42s (+14 secs) for fast games, which does not seem to be reasonable compared with other popular online Riich Mahjong platforms. A south (hanchan) game can cost nearly 2.5 hrs. For me, it is torture.
Take Tenhou as an example, it's timing policy (for normal speed ranked games) goes: 5 secs per move (calling or discarding, cannot be saved for next move), plus 15 secs extra supplementary time for each hand.
I'm not sure that such policy can be implemented on BGA. Considering the network reliability and the fact that most players here and I are not experienced for this the game, I suggest a timing setting of 1min (+5 secs per move) for normal speed and 30s (+3 secs per move) for fast speed. To me myself, this seems to be acceptable.
As far as I know, many professional games do not limit players' thinking time, their reasons are: Limits on thinking time causes mistakes. And for timing like 5 secs per move, players make their moves largely based on their intuitions rather than on their thinking and analysis. My opinion for this is: For online games, let mistakes be mistakes. Riich Mahjong is just such a game requiring rapid analyzing and intuitions for game situations. And greater chances making mistakes is better than being kept waiting for a thoughtful move, for we are just human beings.
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ufm
Posts: 1327
Joined: 06 January 2017, 08:38

Re: Is the thinking time too long?

Post by ufm »

I agree (I usually played on 5s tables elsewhere) but the system automatically calculates thinking time based on BGA table statistics.
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Altacura
Posts: 5
Joined: 08 April 2019, 23:21

Re: Is the thinking time too long?

Post by Altacura »

I agree. An east only game is already excruciating and have cancelled games because I do not want to play for 1:30 hours because there is a slow player in the game.
Maybe we're used on Tenhou times and responses but if this is meant to be a serious Riichi game, 10s thinking time is the way to go.
Parcly Taxel
Posts: 5
Joined: 16 March 2022, 10:58

Re: Is the thinking time too long?

Post by Parcly Taxel »

I currently (as of this post) have three turn-based mahjong games on BGA, and for them they aren't even halfway finished despite them being started many days ago.

I wholeheartedly support disabling turn-based mahjong games altogether and making only a 20+5s time control available for all real-time games (this is used in MahjongSoul).
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Lotus Blossom
Posts: 149
Joined: 12 November 2017, 01:45

Re: Is the thinking time too long?

Post by Lotus Blossom »

I enjoy this game but only play turn-based due to my circumstances. I seriously hope this game is not disabled for turn-based! If you don't like it, play real time instead, why take turn-based away from the rest of us who are happy with it?!
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Altacura
Posts: 5
Joined: 08 April 2019, 23:21

Re: Is the thinking time too long?

Post by Altacura »

Lotus, you are correct. Turn-based should not be totally banned, just ARENA turn-based. And I'll tell you why.

Let's take a look at this table Lotus Blossom is playing at: https://boardgamearena.com/3/riichimahj ... =246460617
This game started on 2nd of march, 2022. Currently, the date of making this post is 29th or march 2022.
The status of this game is that they are 2/3 of they way, Still in the east round, without any seat-wind changes (still in east-1).
That is 27 days and the first round, first round has not been finished yet at all!
At this rate the game is going means it will be rougly 5 months to finish, IF the east-seat does not have continous wins or locked in tenpai.
And this is just a tonpuusen (east only game/single rotation), not a hanchan (east-south game/two rotations) or it would take slightly less than a year!
Imagine the arena season is over and there are games like this still ongoing.

I'm also worried about the formats the guru's can change this game into.
There should be only Tenhou or WRC, since those twos are the only viabale options.
And even then most Japanese usually only playT enhou rules, And the majority of europeans are use to WRC rules.

So in short:
There should be decicion times added in Real-time of about 15s to 5s or be forced to put down a tile.
Remove/Delete the manual pass option and have it passed automatically if it is the only option.
Turn-based only for casual since there are just too many moves and not to mention the manual pass option in those turn-based.
Tenhou/WRC should be the only settings in Ricchi, the only two official ways to play it.
Parcly Taxel
Posts: 5
Joined: 16 March 2022, 10:58

Re: Is the thinking time too long?

Post by Parcly Taxel »

Lotus Blossom wrote: 29 March 2022, 12:33 I enjoy this game but only play turn-based due to my circumstances. I seriously hope this game is not disabled for turn-based! If you don't like it, play real time instead, why take turn-based away from the rest of us who are happy with it?!
I have found that (1) every turn-based mahjong game on this site ends up playing far too slowly and (2) nobody wants to play real-time mahjong here.
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Xom
Posts: 28
Joined: 30 September 2014, 19:21

Re: Is the thinking time too long?

Post by Xom »

In theory, the BGA timer could be circumvented by a clientside game-logic timer that passes or does tsumogiri when it runs out.
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