Why does nobody play this game in real time?

[Archisian]

For a game that goes by quickly, you'd think there'd be more people who would play 99 in real time. However, the overwhelming majority of games in 99 are turn-based while real time says it would take greater than 15 minutes to find a game (essentially never).

Is there a reason why 99 is like this on BGA as compared to other games?

[Ceaseless]

99 addition is a fairly mindless obscure game, so it's not surprising that's it's not particularly popular.

I don't know if it's actually more popular in turn-based though. Real time games only last a few minutes, and turn-based ones can take days, weeks, etc. So of course there will be more ongoing turn-based games when we compared real-time games started a few minutes ago to any ongoing turn-based from the last several what, weeks? A month+? I don't know how far back it stretches, but it's common for turn-based to look bigger than real-time even when real-time is vastly larger.

[Archisian]

99 addition is a fairly mindless obscure game, so it's not surprising that's it's not particularly popular.

I don't know if it's actually more popular in turn-based though. Real time games only last a few minutes, and turn-based ones can take days, weeks, etc. So of course there will be more ongoing turn-based games when we compared real-time games started a few minutes ago to any ongoing turn-based from the last several what, weeks? A month+? I don't know how far back it stretches, but it's common for turn-based to look bigger than real-time even when real-time is vastly larger.

I can get into a turn-based game more easily than I can in real-time. I've been able to find turn-based tables just about every time I search for one, while in real-time it never happens.

I like 99 because sometimes I like quick games to kill some time before I'm off to do something else. And it's easy to understand. Kinda sucks not more people are into that sort of thing on here.

[yuniboshi]

It's significantly easier to queue turn based in multiple simple games that require no thinking each game each move than it is to be physically present and wait for a player to also queue. Lots of arena players climb rank by having 5-10 parallel turn based games at once for each game. It also introduces less stress than real time because BGA is broken and sometimes goes down or gets the page borked and you have to refresh to fix it. In real time if you didn't notice in time your opponent can kick you while it looks like nothing wrong is happening.

[Respublik]

BGA players in general (especially in the Arena) just seem to always prefer playing turn-based and nearly always are voting for least amount of players combos as gurus, who then play in this fashion (exluding a random one-off season, that is then nearly always reverted at next oppurtunity).

And then there is also something to say about chicken and egg - the less popular the game is -> the slimmer the chances that players will be waiting for a table -> the game becomes even less popular -> ... So basically inactivity of any games causes more inactivity and vice-versa due to how incentive reinforcement loops work.

Not sure if there is anything doable about any of this.

[Ceaseless]

BGA players in general (especially in the Arena) just seem to always prefer playing turn-based and nearly always are voting for least amount of players combos as gurus, who then play in this fashion (exluding a random one-off season, that is then nearly always reverted at next oppurtunity).

And then there is also something to say about chicken and egg - the less popular the game is -> the slimmer the chances that players will be waiting for a table -> the game becomes even less popular -> ... So basically inactivity of any games causes more inactivity and vice-versa due to how incentive reinforcement loops work.

Not sure if there is anything doable about any of this.

Real-time generally is played more than turn-based on BGA in games with a decent level of activity, even in games players thought would be preferred in turn-based (such as Ark Nova). I'd say the main chance for turn-based to be played more is when the game is so unpopular pairing in real time takes too long as a result.

As for the least number of players deal, not sure about that. Obviously 2 player is going to win votes when available since it's the best format in most games, but besides that, I'm not aware of there being a player preference for fewer players. For example, games like Bang, which lack a 2-player option, do not favor the minimum count. I've also seen discussions in games like Ticket to Ride, where 2-player is obviously the best format, that the next-best isn't 3-player. So things might be a bit more hit or miss when it comes to player count once you deal with games with over 2 players. You have advantages like shorter games and each player gets to play a greater percentage of the time, as well as easier pairing, but those advantages can be cancelled out by other issues with player counts. Whereas when dealing with 2-player the advantages are much larger and greater than that and so are harder to overturn.