Why I'll never pay for premium again

[Perduicitte]

Well, this is a sad leadership. That's it. They failed to have real-time players matching.

For real-time play, premium gets you access to, well, not as many games as you think because they still can't match you with players when you want to. Even when both americas & europe is jointly awake on weekends.

So... yeah. enjoy the free ride, don't pay for premium! If it was really a "labour of love" as a starter, it evolved to being a dissatisfying teaser about "you MAY, eventually, play with people" but... good luck doing that.

Sincerely,

me

PS: turn-base gets easier matches, but it's not real-time. this post, if not moderated-out, is about real-time games.

[Meeplelowda]

Well, this is a sad leadership. That's it. They failed to have real-time players matching.

For real-time play, premium gets you access to, well, not as many games as you think because they still can't match you with players when you want to. Even when both americas & europe is jointly awake on weekends.

So... yeah. enjoy the free ride, don't pay for premium! If it was really a "labour of love" as a starter, it evolved to being a dissatisfying teaser about "you MAY, eventually, play with people" but... good luck doing that.

Sincerely,

me

PS: turn-base gets easier matches, but it's not real-time. this post, if not moderated-out, is about real-time games.

What games were you trying to play in real time. They can't force other people to play the games you like.

[mturton]

Some games are difficult to find real-time opponents for. Especially longer and more complicated ones, or those that are more niche. It is often hard for me to find people for Obsession or Beyond the Sun. Yahtzee or Azul? No problem.

What positive changes would you have them make? I am sure all of us who prefer real-time games would love to hear them.

[GTSchemer]

It feels like real-time games became far more difficult to get matches for once the new lobby system was added, since it makes it less likely to see all available lobbies. I wonder if there are statistics about the number of real-time games before and after that.

[Meeplelowda]

Some games are more popular than others. Period. You can look at games currently running here: https://boardgamearena.com/gameinprogress

The snapshot I just took shows these games at the top:

Code: Select all

Game		Real-time
Azul		105	
Ticket to Ride	99	
Wingspan	124

A game I like, Insert, literally had zero real time games running. ZERO. But I don't blame BGA for a game I like being unpopular. What are they supposed to do, run TV adverts saying "Play Insert on BGA"?

[Perduicitte]

Y'all can see my profile and predilection for variety.

That said, those "flavor of the day" are not what I would pay premium for.

This is a discussion about paying real money for premium.

PS: I appreciate your comments & perspectives, thank you.

[Perduicitte]

Actually, for "flavor of the day", you don't need to pay premium, a truck-load of people are real-time offering to start game anyways (as that other guy pointed-out in an earlier post), the incentive doesn't work as intended.

Don't pay premium. Not worth it.

me

[cigma]

Well, this is a sad leadership. That's it. They failed to have real-time players matching.

Really? You contradict yourself in your last post:

a truck-load of people are real-time offering to start game anyways

As Meeplelowda has already said:

They can't force other people to play the games you like.

If you say...

those "flavor of the day" are not what I would pay premium for.

...you are free not to do so, but blaming the leadership for not getting real-time players matching in the games you like to play isn’t fair.

Please consider: You started your memebership at the same day than me (december 14th 2020) and I know there were about 200 games to choose from at that time. Now we have more than 600! So it's no wonder if your favorite games of december 2020 are played less today. Surely you won't complain to the leadership for giving us a wider choice?

If you are lacking matching players in a niche game, you may look for a fan group on the community page https://boardgamearena.com/community or you can start a group yourself. Maybe you would like to join here: https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=787 ... ublicinfos

It feels like real-time games became far more difficult to get matches for once the new lobby system was added, since it makes it less likely to see all available lobbies. I wonder if there are statistics about the number of real-time games before and after that.

You can see here https://boardgamearena.com/serverstatus ... mes_played that the number of games played in total (real-time and turn-based) has been very constant during the past 12 months and has even increased since new year. So I think it to be likely that the number of real-time games follows the same line.

I don’t know if the lobby makes any difference, but you can still use the old lobby via Play Now.

[Perduicitte]

Cigma: first and foremost, thank you for a thoughtful answer.

I'm not into "my favourite games". I'm into any game that I find interesting enough to play and, curently, my "favourites" list has 154 games; approx 135 if you discard alpha & beta (yes, I did make an effort for alpha testing, but realized it's money-driven mostly, implementation-driven sometimes) (and yes, testing, not "i want to play this soon 'cause i like it", I submitted bugs regularly).

This is about PAYING REAL MONEY for PREMIUM. And believe me, the cost will not even dent my annual budget, it's not about the cost to my family; premium is cheap.

If this was a work of love at its beginning, that's great! Now though, it's an Asmodée venture. The bottom line is: I can't play what I want, when I want to. Paying premium does not give me greater chances of playing what i want, when i want to. This = failure of leadership, if that's the offer they put out there.

My simple message is, if my "favourites" are 154 games, how can I justify paying premium to... not play them more often?

I was expecting someone to talk about the arena system, games matching system, advantage given to premium on games-matching... not to discuss whether I have appropriate preferences... that's lowball commenting.

Cheers,

me

[Jellby]

Premium does not give you any preferential treatment. It just gives you, mostly, the ability of staring tables for premium games. If you want that, get the subscription. If that is not enough for you, don't.