No Time Limit shouldn't mean Training Mode

[Benji_Tokala]

yeah, me and my group of 4 really feel like this should be reverted. this was not a thing that needed to be done, and really a poll should be held when making changes such as this.

[cigma]

I don't like this change. 1 move every 2 days is still not a long time limit for some of my friends. Even though the clock is meaningless if we choose not to expel, it's still there and causes some people anxiety that we should not have to deal with. Turn based games always timed out after 30 days of inactivity anyway, how is that not good enough. This change make it feel like we have to choose between having the clock hanging over our heads or having the games not feel as meaningful with no ratings. Please change it back or create a much longer time limit, like 1 move every 30 days.

It's the same for me.

And I feel really uncomfortable to play a game where I am constantly asked if I want to kick the other players when they are out of time. This is destroying a lot of my gaming experience.

[znajder]

Wanted to add yet another voice in opposition of this change.

I find the suggested replacement for the No Time Limit - Friends Only to be highly insufficient, and I find the argument that people getting "stuck" in games to be lacking in validity.

First, since the No Time Limit is already limited to only friends, I find it hard to believe that people often experience other players dropping out from the game on purpose. If so, they should probably just reconsider who they have added as their friends, and then the problem is solved by itself.

Second, I have in my own experience had a couple of tables set up with the No Time Limit where we for various reasons ended up not finishing the game, and some player did not have the chance to go in and vote on agreeing to abandon the game. What this has taught me is that BGA already has a feature that will automatically shut down a table if it is untouched for a week or slightly more. So these abandoned games don't linger for all eternity.

Like many have pointed out already, a common case for using the No Time Limit, is when playing a real time game with friends, and there's a lot of talk going on, and thus you don't want the time pressure. It is quite strange that this should disqualify you from playing a ranked game, or have a chance at scoring gift points when winning a game for the first time.

I have also used the No Time Limit many times to play Turn Based games with friends. Here, the recommendation is to use the slowest paced Turn Based game instead, and the argument is that you don't HAVE to kick a player who runs out of time. While that is true, there is as far as I'm aware still a time penalty that players who run out of time are dealt, which shows up in your stats and may make some people less interested in playing with you. You also receive emails from BGA every time a player is running out of time. So how is this considered a reasonable replacement for the No Time Limit?

The No Time Limit was already implemented to provide very clear warnings that there was no way of expelling other players, and that it really should only be played with people who you trust will finish the game. If people still choose to set up such a game with people who they don't know and end up not finishing a table, and then STILL don't learn and do this again and again, it's perhaps more of a user problem than a usability problem. I struggle to see how one could consider it to be the right decision to cater to those people and remove the option from all the other people who clearly found this setting very useful.

[Jellby]

May I chance a suggestion?

When a player runs out of time, could we have an additional option besides expelling the player? Something like Ignore time limits for this player? That could remove the clock for the player (so no more anxiety seeing your time run out) and still allow to expel the player at any moment (so no being trapped). I guess that could be used between friends.

[Rojaz]

I very much agree with most of the objections to the new implementations.

People who are willingly ELO-boosting by manipulating games together with their friends will have means to do so anyway. Now the option of having friendly games with no time pressure in a competitive environment is shut down altogether. Although I play Arena as well, my main enjoyment is to play these friendly games without time pressure, although we definitely like the competitive ELO aspect for bragging rights purposes

I hope this decision will be overturned.

[Peter D Switzerland]

There is a further problem with the proposed solution of "use the turn-based timing on one move per two days", even for our group where we always play games that fit in one evening. It is not possible to switch to turn-based timing once someone has joined the game.

We already had to be careful not to initiate a game until everyone was back on the main page (one of our group has a setup where it takes quite a while to get back from finishing a game to reappearing as "online" on the main page). Now we also have to be careful that no-one accepts invitations until the initiator has configured the timing option. Both of these are minor irritations, not fundamental, but both of them do create hassle and interrupt the general flow of conversation when there's a glitch for either of those reasons.

[Culkasi]

This is such a weird change. Surely noone actually requested or wanted this? Paying customers should really be able to define the settings of their tables in my opinion. Silly change. Please change it back.

[sourisdudesert]

So, again

• We did not remove the possibility to play without time limit, we just made it non-competitive (= no elo).
• Please use "Training mode" (infinite sign on the new lobby) if you want to play with no time limit
• For those who want to still get/lose ELO points, you cannot do it without time limit BUT a very good alternative is to play with the slowest speed (1 move every 2 days), and even with that, if some player is over allotted time, you can ignore this and do not expel him/her.

[marta_night]

Thanks, that was clear to me from your previous posts. And I know that technically it all has a workaround, but still it is not so easy to accept that we are being protected from our own mistakes this way. I like the ELO in my no time limit games and my OCD doesn’t like the red icon of being out of time

I know we are being a bit of a pain in the ass and you must feel like you can’t make everyone happy, ever. Sorry about that, you’re doing a great job. We’re complaining because from our perspective it’s overprotecting users who make decisions at their own risk.

[T72on1]

Thanks, that was clear to me from your previous posts. And I know that technically it all has a workaround, but still it is not so easy to accept that we are being protected from our own mistakes this way. I like the ELO in my no time limit games and my OCD doesn’t like the red icon of being out of time

I know we are being a bit of a pain in the ass and you must feel like you can’t make everyone happy, ever. Sorry about that, you’re doing a great job. We’re complaining because from our perspective it’s overprotecting users who make decisions at their own risk.

Well said! On all accounts.

So yes, BGA, thanks a lot for all your work. And yes, you can't make everybody happy. But until I see statistics proving otherwise, I still assume that almost no one got trapped in games with people on their friends list, so the situation as it was(no time limit, but with ELO, if the game gets limited to friends list) is by far superior compared to where we are now.