Time bullies

[Strode]

How about show in player’s stats how they treat time… how often one skips other people’s turns, how often one pushes time to last seconds (like when protesting, and slowing the game…)

People above say if you agreed to the time control, don't complain if you get kicked out for going over.

I'll add that there's nothing wrong with using all the time allotted (i.e., pushing it until the last seconds). And remember, the clock doesn't reset for your next turn, its adds an amount.

[Meeplelowda]

Oh ... It's not about bullies who time travel ...

I'd watch this movie. But probably not the sequel.

I think our civilisation fell appart when people stopped agreements. When you push other people any direction - time bullyng both in a way to force expell them, or time bullying in a way to slow the game on purpose.

There is an agreement at play, and the agreement is the amount of time on the clock. You agree that you can, at the option of your opponent, be expelled if you use too much time, and you also agree that your opponent can use all of the time on their clock.

I'd like another agreement in our civilization: to stop overusing the word "bully."

it is really not a fair sporty play, and I would like yo imagine ways to tag or be able to avoid people who do that often.

The way you tag someone is to give them red thumb if you feel they are being unsporting. Then you won't be matched with them in the future (except potentially in a tournament).

[Cile]

Oh ... It's not about bullies who time travel ...

So ... Isn't there already a way to report players?

100% I am sick to death of PAYING for premium, and I start the game, I set the time... And due to complexity of game AND Internet connection being what it is in this vile city I live in .. WHY do I get time bullies then penalized by BGA itself.

Time for a change.

If I am active in a game, and it is clearly complex, and I started the game, then why am *I* penalized. If people wish for a faster game, make your own, or quit.

BGA STOP treating paying members with such blatant disrespect.

To be fair, the only "penalty" is the loss of some karma that is easy to replace. I see you're at 93% karma so clearly who haven't be penalized very much. The point of Karma is to warn players "this player may not be able to complete the game in the time allotted" which seems to be true. It's unfortunate that you have an unreliable connection, but that is not the fault of your opponents and they deserve to warned about it if it's frequent enough to be an issue.

Also, paying for a subscription doesn't mean you get special treatment like "Gets to ignore the clock that other players have to abide by". If you don't like the clock then don't play real time games.

[Ceaseless]

How about show in player’s stats how they treat time… how often one skips other people’s turns, how often one pushes time to last seconds (like when protesting, and slowing the game…)

I think our civilisation fell appart when people stopped agreements. When you push other people any direction - time bullyng both in a way to force expell them, or time bullying in a way to slow the game on purpose… one can always say it is by the rules… but it is really not a fair sporty play, and I would like yo imagine ways to tag or be able to avoid people who do that often.

I don't see why we'd need to know how often a player has had the misfortune of getting opponent's that abused the clock so badly the player had to expel their opponent from the game. Or how often they needed to use most of their clock. I could understand wanting to know how often a player intentionally stalled/wasted time, but there's no way for an automatic system to credibly separate that from legitimate time usage, it would require player judgments on a case-by-case basis, which is both way too much work to make sense and still open to flaws.

[Shivaware]

For some reason, I found the subject line amusing, so I've created a new group just for Time Bullies.

[tbhp]

Bga gives a 20 sec grace period after running out of time. You can argue this shouldn’t even exist. But it does. So players feel entitled to that 20 seconds and if someone is spamming the expel button then one can argue they were stripped of their right to the extra 20 seconds.

That's an interesting way to look at it. I always thought more of the 20 seconds as giving grace to the person doing the expulsion, giving them some time to change their mind and go back on their decision.

The 20 seconds are also really useful for the person who is out of time though, since it means you don't have to worry too much about being kicked out. If the expulsion was immediate, you probably wouldn't be able to think straight when you are out of time, because of the possibility of being expelled at any moment.

Bga has one universal clock mechanic for all 1400 games. But as you can see having a clock that gives the same amount of time on the first move as it does in the last move for games that have increased difficulty as they progress is problematic.

I think a lot of games are just not made to be played optimally in real time. A few minutes is not enough to make all the construction plannings, complex calculations, probabilities assessments, considerations of all the cards that haven't shown up yet, etc... that you would do if it was a turn based game.

You can still play at high level in real time, but there's probably going to be some oversights in your play, which may or may not have consequences.

[tbhp]

The way you tag someone is to give them red thumb if you feel they are being unsporting. Then you won't be matched with them in the future (except potentially in a tournament).

But a red thumb is only visible and effective for you. I think the other poster was saying there should be a way to communicate with others which players are problematic.

I've seen some people who are very good at "time bullying". For example, I've been in turn based games where I only had one move left and 15 minutes on my clock, and the victory was 100% secured. So I thought "cool, now my opponent is going to make their move and I'll make mine and we'll be done with it, no more stress".

But no, in some cases my opponent randomly decided to stop playing for days (even though they were able to make their moves regularly before that point), forcing me to not sleep for days or have to set up an alarm to wake me up and go check the game every 10 minutes... This is a clear anti-play tactic designed to wear me down and potentially catch me when I'm unavailable for long enough to be able to kick me out.

This behavior is technically within the rules (I think?) but it's abhorrent behavior that should have a way of communicating to other players that this player is not safe to play with. Some people will resort to poor treating of others just to grab a win that they aren't even legitimate to get in the first place.

[FrankJones]

I have to ask...

What was the scenario that resulted in your having only 15 minutes on your clock in a turn-based game while your opponent was able to go days without making a move?

What your opponent did seems to be against the code of conduct:

"
What is the code of conduct?
On Board Game Arena, you should not:
Run out of time on the game clock.
Leave a game in progress on purpose.
Take an unnecessary and unreasonable amount of time at the end of game in an obvious losing position.
Engage in Kingmaking: enabling another player to win on purpose while there is a better move to make for yourself.
Give some piece of information about the current game situation that disturbs the normal game flow.
Communicate with another player about the game privately (for example with an instant messenging app).
Engage in provocation / triumphalism / defeatism... anything which is not fair play.
Use an avatar that may be shocking or offensive to other players (no advertisement, no politics, ...)
Breaking these rules will affect your reputation.
"

[tbhp]

What was the scenario that resulted in your having only 15 minutes on your clock in a turn-based game while your opponent was able to go days without making a move?

Remember that in tournaments you don't gain time increments on each turn. I tend to wait until the last day to start playing my games, because I'm usually quite indecisive and superstitious when having to make my first move, while simultaneously being confident that the remaining hours will be enough for me to complete all my moves in time and win the game. This often leads to situations where my opponent still has days left while my clock is very low.

What your opponent did seems to be against the code of conduct:

That's why I said "I think?". I know that there exists this specification, but I remember a debate on here a while ago where some people were saying this particular case is not actually what is referred to by the specification.

Maybe they were arguing in bad faith, but still, even if it's what it's for, it seems that it would be hard to conclusively prove the player's intentions in this particular scenario. I mean, they could always claim that they just aren't able to decide themselves, even though for all the players who have a certain level at the game, it would be clear that it's a done deal. But you can't expect the people who read the reports to have the necessary expertise at every game out there.

[FrankJones]

I see; I wasn't taking tournaments into consideration, hence my confusion. The scenario described would be very unlikely in a non-tournament turn-based game.

You're right, it would be difficult to prove, though only because it requires subjective analysis. But, based on what you said, that the game was obviously lost for the opponent, and that the opponent was active in other games, I would think any moderator with any knowledge of the game would be able to rule the player to be acting in bad faith.

Therein lies the problem. With 1400 games and (I assume) few moderators, there are likely dozens or hundreds of games that none of the moderators know enough about to make such a ruling.