Please stop putting timers on confirmation buttons

[ufm]

+1. Imo loss from timer >> gain.

[nik592]

The only gain I see is for people who might make their move, then shut down their browser/computer/app thinking they're done, without realising they're being asked to confirm. I guess such people might exist, although it seems like strange behaviour to me (if it's a game I don't know that well, then I always wait until it says it's waiting for another player to do something before moving on, because why wouldn't you? and if I know the game well, I probably know the BGA adaptation is going to ask me to confirm - and even if I don't remember, it's pretty obvious when it actually does that, closing the window after a fraction of a second without even waiting seems pretty weird to me).

They do exist, I am one of those players - although to be fair, I don't close the browser. If I've finished what I know to be my turn (particularly where the move is short, like picking up your whole hand, or scoring an objective, or something - basically a one-click kind of move) I just move on to the next game in my list, and I keep moving until BGA tells me I have no more moves to play. So it's not like I time out based on a hanging confirm, but I may have somewhat frustrated my opponents by not finishing a turn. It's a minor problem for everyone, but I can see the point of the timer. I can also absolutely see why there are those who might want to turn it off.

Of course, I also disagree that there aren't reasons beyond a misclick for confirmation. Especially when players are new to a game, it's very easy to say, Oh, I'll do this thing, then realise you don't have the appropriate pre-requisites, resources, whatever and you actually can't do your action and wasted the turn. IRL, most people I play with would absolutely offer for you to backtrack and change your move to something more appropriate (perhaps gathering the missing resources, etc.), so I don't see why the same isn't possible in a game, providing no information has been revealed to make this not possible (eg. a hidden card/tile, a dice roll, etc.). I have occasionally played with people who insist that everything you do is final as soon as you do it, even if it's a complete novice mistake, where doing so has stalled my game out, making it impossible to be competitive in the game. Those games aren't much fun, and I've also been the player on the other side (more typically on BGA) where a player has made poor moves due to inexperience, and they essentially may as well not be at the table anymore and that's not super fun either. I personally take far more pleasure from a victory (or even a loss) in a hard-fought, well played game (even where the result may not have been that close) than I do from one that's a walkover on either side. And if you take the attitude that newbies must just fend for themselves and if they make game-ruining mistakes early on, that's their problem, you may as well write off games with a newbie at the table. Not to mention, you're very possibly that newbie from joining your game community.

[Ceaseless]

Maybe the word "misplay" in GTSchemer's response should be "misclick", at least that's how I interpreted it. If you win because of an opponent's misclick that ruins their game and dramatically improves your position, is that really a victory and cause for celebration? If you lose solely because of your own misclick, is there anything to learn from that game? It's better if everybody makes the moves they intended to make, especially in a long game.

Champions of the timer have argued that it is a compromise between the desire of players to have a way to correct their move if they misclicked and the BGA Studio Guidelines rule of thumb to not allow undo or create undo/confirm states. A user preference for whether to have a confirm state or not is a compromise. A timer isn't a compromise, it is introducing a new element into the design. If some people want the lights on and some want them off, is it a compromise to turn on a strobe light?

It's very easy for us to sit comfortably theorizing and calculating the optimal number of seconds, but as you can see from the shared experiences on this thread, it is stressful being presented with an unexpected question in a new environment and having a very short time to react. "A few seconds" has a very different meaning for different people. A developer who knows rules of the game better than almost everyone on earth, knows BGA, and has designed the implementation would have a very different idea about how much time is appropriate to confirm than a person playing this implementation for the first time who is new to the game and/or BGA in general.

The problem isn't the number of seconds, it's that we are counting in seconds.

I'm reminded of a famous video from several years ago of Billy on the Street asking a girl to "name a woman...any woman" and the girl is flustered for several seconds, unable to answer a simple question because of the sudden pressure of a man screaming with a microphone. These timers are like Billy running up to you putting a microphone in your face and yelling "Confirm your move! you have 5 seconds! 4! 3!..." I wouldn't want to play at a physical table with someone who does that, why should it be the default here?

It's not an unknown question though, you know ahead of time what the question is. "Did you make your intended move?" You have plenty of time to calculate what it should look like, what the board is, etc. All you are doing is saying "yeah, I hit exactly what I meant to hit". Billy basically sent you a note ahead of time with the question, let you give the answer, and it isn't until then that they go asking "are you sure?"

Sorry, but this is a ridiculous response. Of course you don't "know ahead of time" you're going to get this ridiculous timer confirmation. Sure, I've seen it enough on BGA that it is no longer a huge shock when I get it in a game I haven't played before - but its guaranteed effect on me then is to get me to panic a bit, likely click the button without thinking anything through, then explore the UI options menu hoping against hope the developer was at least thoughtful enough to turn it off.

I'm OK with not getting the opportunity to confirm (assuming I didn't actually misclick), and I'm OK with getting it - but if I'm going to be asked to confirm, I want the time to consider it. And as others have said, it doesn't matter hugely even if that's 60 seconds - that might make me panic a little less, but still seeing seconds count down is at best annoying. If the developer considers it a reasonable courtesy to allow me to confirm that I really meant to do everything I did before ending my turn, great - but why not then trust me to do that check in my own time? Particularly in turn-based games, which are what I almost exclusively play (but even in real-time, it shouldn't slow down the game - I already have a clock ticking against me, so god knows why I need another one imposed on top of it).

Ultimately I'd turn the question on its head and asked: what is gained by this timer? The only gain I see is for people who might make their move, then shut down their browser/computer/app thinking they're done, without realising they're being asked to confirm. I guess such people might exist, although it seems like strange behaviour to me (if it's a game I don't know that well, then I always wait until it says it's waiting for another player to do something before moving on, because why wouldn't you? and if I know the game well, I probably know the BGA adaptation is going to ask me to confirm - and even if I don't remember, it's pretty obvious when it actually does that, closing the window after a fraction of a second without even waiting seems pretty weird to me). But even then, that's why games have timers, or (in non-competitive environments) chat windows that you can use to message the other players.

Really I don't complain too much as long as the developer makes the timer optional, because apparently some like it. But others should accept that many of us don't, and manage much better without. (In an ideal world this also wouldn't be the default, but maybe more prefer it that way than without, and in any case I can't complain too much if I only have to deal with it once.)

(By the way, you're final bit about the strobe-light analogy, which I didn't quote but have decided in the end to comment on, was the most ridiculous part of your whole reply. Someone wants it light, someone wants it dark. Maybe there's a compromise available there - a low/moderate amount of light perhaps. But how can you possibly suggest a sane compromise involves giving neither anything resembling what they want, while risking either/both of them having an epileptic fit? It's a bit of a stretched analogy so I don't want to dwell too long on it, but seriously - what the hell??)

The value? To preventing players from using it "to "test" situations while they should just think instead" for starters. https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/BGA_Undo_policy This way they aren't going "nah, that move doesn't look great, I'm going to try a better one now" instead of using it for honest "yeah, that's what I meant to do".

Not really sure where you're going with "don't know ahead of time". If we're talking about someone who doesn't even know about there being a 5 second confirmation timer, they wouldn't even know that they're getting one at all. As far as they're aware, they get 0 seconds to confirm, they make their move and that's it. The 5 seconds is nothing more than a bonus at that point. The surprise is that they were given any time at all. As for someone xing off the entire browser instantly after a move, it sounds like they didn't even need a confirm option, so I could see this as an argument to delete the confirm button entirely. I haven't tried xing off a tab with a confirm offer, does it just end up confirming the move as a result? That would solve any issues there. It also seems like the most logical outcome to me since if you don't add any input to a confirm it auto-accepts after the timer anyways.

I think the best case to push for changing confirmation timers would be if you wanted to limit it to games where you're trying to justify an undo for "take back moves from a complex series of actions". That said, such an argument would involve specifying games and why those games fall into that category. If we're just dealing with the generic description of "confirmation button is 5 seconds" my default assumption without game specification is that it is in place for missclick prevention since this is a more general concern and because a timed confirmation button leans towards solving this particular issue while sidestepping making it an actual takeback feature, favoring issues like missclicks instead. The arguments would be game specific, explaining why this game's features justify an untimed confirmation.

What's the strobe light for? Apparently, to give 5 seconds for a player to confirm their move in a board game. In the analogy listed? Who knows, it was never clarified, maybe someone thought the lights on crowd needed the light for its brightness but wouldn't need it for much time at all. The poster's analogy suffers the common weakness of analogies for rarely being a one-to-one line-up into the situation, at best the strobe light is just serving as the timer, and the brightness tie-in is shaky. I don't think their analogy was particularly great here.

[Phoxtrot]

I see some people really not wanting other to make their move and then change their opinion and undo.
They allow for misclicks but not for change of mind.

And I really don't see why we should.

At IRL table, you typically don't allow big undoes for multiple reasons : you want things to move on, undoes are error prone, it can be annoying to watch, other players start thinking about their turn and possibly make comments or show emotion once pieces start to move which can give information to the active player.

But none of that really applies to turn-based BGA.
Does it matter whether I test an idea in my head rather than on the board ? Nope
Does that make it slower ? I'm entitled to my thinking time and being able to test the move through the interface can be quicker than testing it in my head or on paper.

Also, at the table, I would certainly allow new players to undo their turn if they forgot a rule, I would even point that rule to them and even allow the undo if some previously hidden information has been gained in the process as long as the info is not too impactful.
Players should know the rules, but not necessarily perfectly (else nobody could ever start playing TTA).

[paramesis]

The strobe light analogy has perfectly illustrated the problem with the purported compromise of a confirmation timer. It doesn't really satisfy what either side wants and instead creates a new condition that many people are finding particularly disturbing.

As I said before, 5 seconds has a completely different meaning to different people. Not all of us have the reaction time and click accuracy of professional video game players. For me, that is an extremely short amount of time to click a cancel button on top of the screen after misclicking an element in the game interface. I've lost the chance to fix misclicks because I couldn't reach the cancel button in time, which adds a completely unnecessary moment of panic on top of an already frustrating situation. It would have been better not to have the confirm state at all.

Confirmation timers are a hindrance to accessibility. As developers, we have a design responsibility to make our implementations as accessible as reasonably possible to people who are different than us, including neurodivergent people who have communicated in this thread that these timers are a significant source of distress. People abusing the undo system to test their moves instead of thinking them through as described in the policy is at worst a mild annoyance to others at the table - it does not warrant such a significant impact to accessibility.

[Ceaseless]

The only gain I see is for people who might make their move, then shut down their browser/computer/app thinking they're done, without realising they're being asked to confirm. I guess such people might exist, although it seems like strange behaviour to me (if it's a game I don't know that well, then I always wait until it says it's waiting for another player to do something before moving on, because why wouldn't you? and if I know the game well, I probably know the BGA adaptation is going to ask me to confirm - and even if I don't remember, it's pretty obvious when it actually does that, closing the window after a fraction of a second without even waiting seems pretty weird to me).

They do exist, I am one of those players - although to be fair, I don't close the browser. If I've finished what I know to be my turn (particularly where the move is short, like picking up your whole hand, or scoring an objective, or something - basically a one-click kind of move) I just move on to the next game in my list, and I keep moving until BGA tells me I have no more moves to play. So it's not like I time out based on a hanging confirm, but I may have somewhat frustrated my opponents by not finishing a turn. It's a minor problem for everyone, but I can see the point of the timer. I can also absolutely see why there are those who might want to turn it off.

Of course, I also disagree that there aren't reasons beyond a misclick for confirmation. Especially when players are new to a game, it's very easy to say, Oh, I'll do this thing, then realise you don't have the appropriate pre-requisites, resources, whatever and you actually can't do your action and wasted the turn. IRL, most people I play with would absolutely offer for you to backtrack and change your move to something more appropriate (perhaps gathering the missing resources, etc.), so I don't see why the same isn't possible in a game, providing no information has been revealed to make this not possible (eg. a hidden card/tile, a dice roll, etc.). I have occasionally played with people who insist that everything you do is final as soon as you do it, even if it's a complete novice mistake, where doing so has stalled my game out, making it impossible to be competitive in the game. Those games aren't much fun, and I've also been the player on the other side (more typically on BGA) where a player has made poor moves due to inexperience, and they essentially may as well not be at the table anymore and that's not super fun either. I personally take far more pleasure from a victory (or even a loss) in a hard-fought, well played game (even where the result may not have been that close) than I do from one that's a walkover on either side. And if you take the attitude that newbies must just fend for themselves and if they make game-ruining mistakes early on, that's their problem, you may as well write off games with a newbie at the table. Not to mention, you're very possibly that newbie from joining your game community.

I forgot to reply to this one, lol. Does BGA not have the move go through? That's irksome. Would have figured not rejecting the move would amount to them playing it.

Anyways, the main difference in your scenario to me is the agency of the opponent(s) to allow the take back, rather than the obligation. You can choose, for that specific turn, to enable a take back for someone else, they do not force you. You're not locked into it for the game, etc. I have no objections to a takeback request accepted by all of the players at the board. Losing access to the ability to review the specifics of that turn to determine if a takeback is reasonable is a significant change in the situation.

[Ceaseless]

I see some people really not wanting other to make their move and then change their opinion and undo.
They allow for misclicks but not for change of mind.

And I really don't see why we should.

At IRL table, you typically don't allow big undoes for multiple reasons : you want things to move on, undoes are error prone, it can be annoying to watch, other players start thinking about their turn and possibly make comments or show emotion once pieces start to move which can give information to the active player.

But none of that really applies to turn-based BGA.
Does it matter whether I test an idea in my head rather than on the board ? Nope
Does that make it slower ? I'm entitled to my thinking time and being able to test the move through the interface can be quicker than testing it in my head or on paper.

Also, at the table, I would certainly allow new players to undo their turn if they forgot a rule, I would even point that rule to them and even allow the undo if some previously hidden information has been gained in the process as long as the info is not too impactful.
Players should know the rules, but not necessarily perfectly (else nobody could ever start playing TTA).

With respect to allowing new players to undo a turn if they forgot a rule see my reply to Nik.

Does it matter whether I test an idea in my head rather than on the board ? Nope

If we assume that is true, I'd probably be fine with no confirmation timer. Intuitively, I'd want to say yes, it matters, but I don't make the rules for these game. If the rules for correspondence in that game say there's no issue with testing ideas over the board before committing to them in the actual game then I can't think of a reason not to concede the point for confirmation timers not having a time limit in that game at the moment.

[nik592]

I forgot to reply to this one, lol. Does BGA not have the move go through? That's irksome. Would have figured not rejecting the move would amount to them playing it.

If there's a confirm button with no countdown timer, then no, it doesn't. It doesn't happen in many games, but there's a few.

Anyways, the main difference in your scenario to me is the agency of the opponent(s) to allow the take back, rather than the obligation. You can choose, for that specific turn, to enable a take back for someone else, they do not force you. You're not locked into it for the game, etc. I have no objections to a takeback request accepted by all of the players at the board. Losing access to the ability to review the specifics of that turn to determine if a takeback is reasonable is a significant change in the situation.

This is true, but to do otherwise would mean either holding up the game (if another player had to ask the other opponents at the table if their undo was ok), or just denies new players some leeway while learning the rules. The latter scenario as I mentioned is usually not fun for the new player, and may put them off a game altogether, which I don't think is what you want, and often the game isn't fun for others at the table either.

The other point I would raise if that if a confirm (or undo) button is ONLY supposed to guard against misclicks, then they're poorly implemented anyway, since most undo your entire turn. My partner and I play a lot of Memoir 44 where this is the case, and both of us have been annoyed at having to re-do our entire turn (select your card, select your units, move each unit, etc.) when really all we wanted was to undo the last misclick we made. I suspect it's done because undoing the whole turn is easier than undoing move by move (though I've seen the latter implemented as well, so it must be possible) but that kind of setup encourages users to trial their move on the board before proceeding.

The thing is, BGA isn't ever going to be like IRL gaming. There's another gaming platform that just provides the board and the game pieces, with minimal, or often no automation or rule enforcement. You can do what you like, including undoing turns or ignoring rules entirely (either by ignorance or house ruling). In my experience, people tend to find this much more frustrating to use, and prefer a platform like BGA (or others) where rules are enforced by the UI and tasks that can be are automated (eg. deck shuffling, dice rolling). But my experience is also that playing IRL at a table where other players are utterly inflexible on undoing moves is not much fun either. As with all things, a balance somewhere in the middle seems to be best. Hence, undo and confirm exist on BGA. Confirm often exists in real life too - "are you done with your turn?" Rarely is that done as "I assume you're done with your turn, I give you 5 seconds to change your mind... 4... 3... 2... 1..." and I suspect most people would find it more stressful and somewhat rude if people were to do that.

All that said, I'm generally in favour of confirm timers and I generally leave them on in my games. But to have an option to enable or disable seems a reasonable request.

[pjt33]

I forgot to reply to this one, lol. Does BGA not have the move go through? That's irksome. Would have figured not rejecting the move would amount to them playing it.

Ark Nova has complicated turns and a "Confirm" button without a timer. The button is definitely useful, but playing realtime I do sometimes have to prod an opponent who appears to have finished their turn and then sat for two minutes without confirming it. And I do occasionally make the same mistake, especially if I'm distracted by something happening outside the game.

[jesslc]

It does strike me as rather ridiculous when you have 48 hours to make your move and 5 seconds to confirm it. Perhaps it would be best if the timer allowed several minutes for confirmation in turn-based games.

Personally I think it's completely ridiculous to have a confirm countdown timer for turn based games at all. I always turn them off, if the settings let me but I really wish they were always off by default - at least in turn based mode. I can see the argument for having these countdown timers in real time games, though personally I agree more with those who are saying that it's causing accessibility issues.

Regardless, there's zero reason to have these countdown timers in turn based games. Plenty of games require you to confirm (without any countdown timer) at the end of your turn and that system works perfectly fine. On the off chance that you forget to hit the confirm button, BGA will remind you that it's still your turn when you hit the "go to next game" button. There's no downside to removing the confirm countdown timers for all turn based games.

I haven't yet seen a game where it couldn't be turned off.
But yeah, those timers don't make sense in turn based mode.

So far the only game I've played that hasn't let me turn off the countdown timer is Agricola. I've been meaning to submit a bug report suggestion about it. This is the first game on Agricola that I've played on BGA and I won't be playing it here again after this unless they give us the option to turn that countdown timer off. Anyone who is arguing that it doesn't make any difference must have a brain that works in a different way to mine. It makes a big enough difference to me that I'd rather not play a game I'd otherwise enjoy, if there's no option to turn that timer off.