Please review tournament - unfair rules

[mrdoctor]

In a tournament game that times out, players are sorted strictly by time left on their clock. As you pointed out, this is stupid and unfair to you because of your timezone.

The player who posted this had already 'won' a game earlier in the same tournament by it timing out and having the most time on the clock, despite the replay indicating they were in 3rd place on points close to the actual game-end: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=814406766&gs=1

Again I will highlight what is stated in the Tournament FAQ:
If you register to a tournament and then don't come, you receive a "leave" penalty on your profile. Consequently, this is very important to check that you are available for ALL planned matches.

The FAQ was written long ago. The "players can't be skipped" option was added since then.

[tbhp]

I agree that timeouts should always come with sanctions. It seems weird to say that you can avoid the sanction as long as the other players don't decide to kick you out. This doesn't change that what you did was wrong.

On the topic of using remaining time to determine the order, I don't know what else can be done unfortunately. A game can't go on indefinitely, so if it has to end, what would be a more fair metric to use?

[Evilgenius1979]

The FAQ was written long ago. The "players can't be skipped" option was added since then.

I find this defence of the site fascinating. They charge people for premium in order to maintain the game. Please don’t argue that all the money they make goes towards servers, because they are constantly unstable too. So now the argument is the FAQ is old. Why isn’t it maintained? What am I supposed to reference in this case.

Seems like this is just a losing argument on my side, I won’t bother any more and I will just not support tournaments and premium going forward, as minimum that impact will be.

[mrdoctor]

The FAQ was written long ago. The "players can't be skipped" option was added since then.

I find this defence of the site fascinating.

That's not a defence. It's literally just a statement of fact.

[BananaHarambe]

The FAQ was written long ago. The "players can't be skipped" option was added since then.

I find this defence of the site fascinating. They charge people for premium in order to maintain the game. Please don’t argue that all the money they make goes towards servers, because they are constantly unstable too. So now the argument is the FAQ is old. Why isn’t it maintained? What am I supposed to reference in this case.

Seems like this is just a losing argument on my side, I won’t bother any more and I will just not support tournaments and premium going forward, as minimum that impact will be.

Updating the FAQ and improving the site isn't the priority for the website. The focus is primarily on adding as many new games as possible and has been for many years.

The most recent exception was the latest round of tournament updates, which was a mixed bag of changes and had some very harsh feedback. Tournaments don't make BGA any money, they might even make them LOSE money because it is a way for players to get matchmaking for premium games without a subscription.

[RazorOz]

I find this defence of the site fascinating. They charge people for premium in order to maintain the game. Please don’t argue that all the money they make goes towards servers, because they are constantly unstable too. So now the argument is the FAQ is old. Why isn’t it maintained? What am I supposed to reference in this case.

Seems like this is just a losing argument on my side, I won’t bother any more and I will just not support tournaments and premium going forward, as minimum that impact will be.

What can the site really do here, the game followed standard tournament procedure, which as has been pointed out you already benefited from yourself this tournament.

The onus is both on players to stop creating bad tournaments, and on players to stop joining them. It has been recommended in the past that they implement some kind of thumbs up/thumbs down for tournaments to make it easier for players to understand if a tournament is bad, but I understand why they don't implement it, because it's very combative, and some creators will get upset if their tournament gets red thumbed I suspect. Bad tournaments are an issue though as has been written on here before, for the exact reasons you're demonstrating, they leave most the field with a bad impression of all tournaments, where the actual problem here was the tournament was created with a clock that was never going to work.

Updating the FAQ and improving the site isn't the priority for the website. The focus is primarily on adding as many new games as possible and has been for many years.

The most recent exception was the latest round of tournament updates, which was a mixed bag of changes and had some very harsh feedback. Tournaments don't make BGA any money, they might even make them LOSE money because it is a way for players to get matchmaking for premium games without a subscription.

To be fair, done well, tournaments should make them money. Players love competition, a thriving tournament scene will draw more players to play those tournaments, which in turn will lead to more subscriptions.

[BananaHarambe]

To be fair, done well, tournaments should make them money. Players love competition, a thriving tournament scene will draw more players to play those tournaments, which in turn will lead to more subscriptions.

I would say that tournament COULD make BGA money if they were implemented with that in mind. I would support different monetization around tournaments as long as that meant higher quality support for tournaments, more staff hours on it, better tuned features, better UI, a few more options.

The current system allows players to sign up for and participate in an unlimited number of tournaments, premium or regular games regardless of membership. I would argue it kind of clashed with the premium membership incentive. Premium = easier to match in premium games. Tournaments = automatic matchmaking.