Some background...
I joined BGA in March 2021 and then signed up for Premium in December 2022, and the latter, I did so specifically to play Space Base without limitations.
For the first few months, I just played 'locally' with a friend of mine (1v1). We played ELO games, but that wasn't the focus, and obviously you can't really climb in ELO at all, playing the same person constantly. My friend sort of lost steam on it after playing almost constantly for those few months, but I didn't. So when she stopped playing, I started playing games with random folks from the cohort, so to speak. ELO games.
I signed up for and played in Season 15. Ended up 65th, for whatever that's worth.
For reasons I won't share here, I stopped playing ELO games altogether shortly thereafter, and now I play non-ELO games, exclusively.
The Issue:
There is obviously no option to play non-ELO games at faster pace. When you choose non-ELO, you are also choosing No Time Limit, because there literally is no other option.
And recently, I've begun to question why that is. Why would we be this far into game development/play here, and yet there is no non-ELO fast-paced game option? Is there some reason why the devs would intentionally drive everyone toward playing ELO games? It makes no sense to me - particularly when you look at other "variant" request threads, and over and over, they say "We have to get permission from the game creator each time" before they implement any variants. News flash: the original game is by its very nature non-ELO. You don't need anyone's permission.
So again, I find myself wondering: how are we in this state of affairs? Is is possible that after 3,200,000+ games, no one has ever considered that it'd be fun to just play the game without having to be weighted down by the ELO implications...but still play at a fast pace? Absent that, one would have to conclude that it's an intentional choice not to have such an obvious option. But still - I find myself wondering what sense it makes.
The Problem:
For those few (perhaps just me, out of however many thousands of people play this game) who prefer a fast, non-ELO option?
I initiate a game and then literally wait hours. I've spoken with several members, and they've flat-out said it's because they don't want to play slowly (particularly, they don't want to wait on some newbie to take 2 minutes each turn, and they shouldn't be expected to figure out that I've actually played 2,000+ games). Two players...I might wait 10-20 minutes. Three players? 45 minutes to several hours, sometimes. Four players? I've tried a few times, and waited an entire day, and never got a game, so I don't even try that anymore.
Don't get me wrong. It's really, really fun to sit there and watch the thing say it's looking for games and the expected wait time is ~1 minute...for hours, plural. But when I'm paying for a Premium membership? I've been invited to be a game Guru, and still...this?
How is it cool for those to be the only options to play the game the way I'd play the game IRL?
I joined BGA in March 2021 and then signed up for Premium in December 2022, and the latter, I did so specifically to play Space Base without limitations.
For the first few months, I just played 'locally' with a friend of mine (1v1). We played ELO games, but that wasn't the focus, and obviously you can't really climb in ELO at all, playing the same person constantly. My friend sort of lost steam on it after playing almost constantly for those few months, but I didn't. So when she stopped playing, I started playing games with random folks from the cohort, so to speak. ELO games.
I signed up for and played in Season 15. Ended up 65th, for whatever that's worth.
For reasons I won't share here, I stopped playing ELO games altogether shortly thereafter, and now I play non-ELO games, exclusively.
The Issue:
There is obviously no option to play non-ELO games at faster pace. When you choose non-ELO, you are also choosing No Time Limit, because there literally is no other option.
And recently, I've begun to question why that is. Why would we be this far into game development/play here, and yet there is no non-ELO fast-paced game option? Is there some reason why the devs would intentionally drive everyone toward playing ELO games? It makes no sense to me - particularly when you look at other "variant" request threads, and over and over, they say "We have to get permission from the game creator each time" before they implement any variants. News flash: the original game is by its very nature non-ELO. You don't need anyone's permission.
So again, I find myself wondering: how are we in this state of affairs? Is is possible that after 3,200,000+ games, no one has ever considered that it'd be fun to just play the game without having to be weighted down by the ELO implications...but still play at a fast pace? Absent that, one would have to conclude that it's an intentional choice not to have such an obvious option. But still - I find myself wondering what sense it makes.
The Problem:
For those few (perhaps just me, out of however many thousands of people play this game) who prefer a fast, non-ELO option?
I initiate a game and then literally wait hours. I've spoken with several members, and they've flat-out said it's because they don't want to play slowly (particularly, they don't want to wait on some newbie to take 2 minutes each turn, and they shouldn't be expected to figure out that I've actually played 2,000+ games). Two players...I might wait 10-20 minutes. Three players? 45 minutes to several hours, sometimes. Four players? I've tried a few times, and waited an entire day, and never got a game, so I don't even try that anymore.
Don't get me wrong. It's really, really fun to sit there and watch the thing say it's looking for games and the expected wait time is ~1 minute...for hours, plural. But when I'm paying for a Premium membership? I've been invited to be a game Guru, and still...this?
How is it cool for those to be the only options to play the game the way I'd play the game IRL?
