Reduce penalties in slow games

[LordAnger]

I am not sure how frequently this happens but I have been forced to quit 2 games of Catan that were running into OVERTIME. My average game is about 25 to 35 minutes, 3 player. I feel that when the game goes beyond an hour there should be reduced penalties to quit the game. It is unreasonable for slow * players to hold you hostage at a table whille the try 5 or more trades every turn. I have personally decided to suffer the ELO loss and quit. Playing games is fun to a point but some players seem to purposely make it miserable.

IMO, for Catan, at 1 hour you should be free to quit.

*moderator edit: please stick to family-friendly language on BGA

[RobertBr]

If the other players went over time then you can boot them and end the game without penalty.

If you signed up for the time control and didn't have a large enough period of free time to accommodate that time control then you get a penalty. Your opponents are entitled to use every last second of their time (and no more).

[thoun]

If you feel players are too slow in slow games, play in normal or fast speed, not slow speed

[Sjarmtrollet]

players to hold you hostage at a table whille the try 5 or more trades every turn.

In Catan it's possible to copmletely block trade alerts, or only let trades you're interested in through.

[Romain672]

If you don't already do it, you should first try to ask to play faster. That could work in many cases.

If you signed up for the time control and didn't have a large enough period of free time to accommodate that time control then you get a penalty. Your opponents are entitled to use every last second of their time (and no more).

Let's take a random game: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=469839285
197 turns. +1:09 per turn. 66 turns per player.
So since you play one third of the turns, let's assume your turns are instant, so that is 0min of gameplay.
One other player is average, so in that game it was 10min.
And the last player 'is entitled to use every last second of their time', which is 1 hour and 20 minutes.

So if you plan to play a 30min catan game, you should have a period of free time of 2 hours and 40 minutes in case both players use 'every last second of their time'.

And it is normal speed.


Of course, it's an extreme situation, but that show how weird the system is actually.

[Cile]

If you don't already do it, you should first try to ask to play faster. That could work in many cases.

If you signed up for the time control and didn't have a large enough period of free time to accommodate that time control then you get a penalty. Your opponents are entitled to use every last second of their time (and no more).

Let's take a random game: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=469839285
197 turns. +1:09 per turn. 66 turns per player.
So since you play one third of the turns, let's assume your turns are instant, so that is 0min of gameplay.
One other player is average, so in that game it was 10min.
And the last player 'is entitled to use every last second of their time', which is 1 hour and 20 minutes.

So if you plan to play a 30min catan game, you should have a period of free time of 2 hours and 40 minutes in case both players use 'every last second of their time'.

And it is normal speed.


Of course, it's an extreme situation, but that show how weird the system is actually.

If you don't like other players using every last second of their turn time, and you are able to take your turns instantly, might I suggest playing on Fast speed?

[Romain672]

Yeah it was what was proposed above, but that doesn't resolve the problem (ie having 1h20 of thinking time on a 3 players / 30 minute game) I said.

It doesn't have only downsides though.
In chess, you can have cases where it's 3:00 vs 3:00. And so in some sitations you can waste move to force the other player to waste move too, and win in time by having a 100 move game while most game have only 50 moves.
To counter that, you got things like 3:00 (+0:05) which make longer game have longer thinking time too.


On bga, you got 4:00 (+1:09), so rapport of time is extremely different.

But on many games, you can have lots of actions to do in a single turn. It's hard to find a good example, but let's take Azul. Nearly all games should have 5 rounds, but let's assume a specific game have 6 rounds instead.
You add a whole round which require lots of thinking at the start of the round. Adding like 5s per turn would be really not enough to have a clean game. On the other hand, if you are busy in X minutes, having an undefined amount of time can make you not want to start the game in case it has 6 rounds instead of 5.
While on bga and adding a whole 30s per extra turn is really nice.

If you take the crew deep sea, where you can stop whenever you want, having a maximer timer don't make sense at all.


I feel like you could try to find an even ground between those two main possibilities though. But that look pretty hard to do.

[Ceaseless]

I'm thinking there could be a custom time setting where you can set how much time each player has with how much increment each player has. This would be presented like any other time control when the starting page to confirm goes. If you're really into having generic labels like "fast speed" (I don't know how important those are), they might be rewritten in general ranges. I'd start with the regular mode before trying to work it out for Arena.

[RobertBr]

So if you plan to play a 30min catan game, you should have a period of free time of 2 hours and 40 minutes in case both players use 'every last second of their time'.

Its not a 30min game. Its a potentially 6 hour game so you shouldn't be joining it if you cannot commit to that. That you think it is a 30 min game is your lack of familiarity with time controls.

If I sit down to a Chess game with an opponent with 90 min + 30 min time control, the game is usually going to take 45 minute, but guaranteed the tournament will arrange a 4 hour slot for it to fit in, and if I've arranged a meeting 2 hours after the game starts I'm the one who is out of order, not my opponent.

Use a faster time control, or play turn based, but if you commit to a time control stick to that time control (including all the possible permutations it can produce), don't blame your opponent for your error.