ZedTheWanderer wrote: ↑05 March 2025, 19:02
Love the Arena and Tournament options.
However, an issue I've found recently is the time limits on tournaments. Players may not realize when creating a tournament what a good setting is for minimum lengths per match and overall.
What happens is that when players in a match are in different areas of the globe - even with daily participation the match times out (even with players not kicking each other out).
Suggestion is the default values are higher - allowing multiple logins a day but not required for people to check in around the clock. (Can always set it lower, just the default values wouldn't be a low setting).
I believe the default is 10 minutes, real time which is hilarious for most games on this platform. I would say that most tournament creators are aware of the game duration setting otherwise we would see more "10 minute" tournaments. Game duration is the most important setting for any tournament IMO.
I make many monthly tournaments and have studied tournament configurations and time requirements for a few different games to ensure good settings. I aim for >95% game completion in each round, excluding completely inactive players (only players that are actually playing). Time limits are chosen to be popular settings that most players like to ensure good tournament attendance. The most important factor for recommended turn based game duration is EXPECTED NUMBER OF TURNS per player (how many back an forth required). Ideally the game has a fairly predictable number of turns, otherwise you will need to account for the longest possible games.
For 2 player tournaments I aim for 2-3 turns per day for maximum game duration to get a generous, but reasonable amount of time for each player with a low chance of going overtime and risking getting skipped but the opponent. Anything longer than this will feel excessive for the last majority of the tournament participants.
For example, a game that's usually finished in 20 turns would be suited for 7 day game duration (The Vale of Eternity, Faraway) with 2 players. Most of the games are usually finished within 5 days, but I can't use 5 days for the setting because then too many players would go over their time limit and risk skips spoiling the tournament.
Mythicals: the board game is usually complete after 14 turns so 5 day game duration is perfect. Most games are complete in 3 days or less, but again I want to avoid situations of players "playing the clock" rather than playing the game. If the time is too short players can abuse the clock by trying to make the clock run down the player while they are sleeping for a time advantage, then spread their turns out during the day on purpose to try and time out the player, not trying to complete the game when both player are online.
Five Tribes takes longer than 21 turns to complete so I used 10 day game duration for the tournaments. Turns can be quite complex in this game so added time is nice. I wouldn't want to have to take turns for this game on my small mobile screen duration a washroom break!
The settings above assume Single Elimination or Swiss tournament, but what about Round Robin? Always add more time for Round Robin. My targets for RR are to use 1.5x time for groups of 3-10 (up to 9 games at once) and 2.0x time for groups of 11-15 (10+ games at once). All games start at once for round robin so it's best to be more generous with time. These tournaments are supposed to be fun, not stressful. Don't want to turn off players from your RR tournaments by making them too fast. RR doesn't have a bunch of rounds anyways so tournaments always finish quickly regardless of game duration.
What about higher player counts? For 3 player, assuming number of turns remains similar, just use 2.0x time compared to 2 player. A 7 day game now becomes a 15 day game for example. If you do any less than that it's very likely that one player will get very low on time or timeout due to unlucky turn placement versus sleeping/busy hours. For 3+ player tournaments you REALLY do not want the option of skipping to be available to players because it can spoil games with poor sportsmanship players. Losing players can skip out of time players for any reason at any time, spoiling the game/tournament results and wasting players time.
For 4+ player games you almost always want to select 30 days game duration, the maximum. Ideally BGA would make longer durations, let's hope for an update.
