Same site play

[WargasmEternal]

How come two people playing at the same place became a premium feature? I literally only used this site to play with my wife to either try board games we were considering buying or play games we didn't want to do the physical setup/cleanup of (or when we were away from home and didn't bring a particular game.)

Certainly not going to buy a premium membership if I'm being bullied into it.

[sourisdudesert]

Hi,

Thanks for playing on Board Game Arena.

Playing on BGA from the same location is not something common as you can play with the real physical board game. It makes sense to make it a Premium feature, so that we can make sure that practicaly no one would use BGA to avoid buying the real physical game (some game publishers complains about this so we had to do something).

In addition, we introduced recently the "Hotseat mode", a new Premium feature that allow you to play with your friends from the same screen. But it makes no sense to have Hotseat as a Premium feature if you can just open 2 browsers and play from the same screen for free.

Finally, playing from the same location has been used by many players to cheat the ranking system by playing against themselves. By making this a premium feature we strongly limit this.

So there is at least 3 good reasons to take this decision

Our Premium membership is really cheap, allow us to provide this service, and by the way you only need 1 Premium account at a table to remove the "same location limit" for the whole table (even when playing with non-Premium).

Hope this helps.

[WargasmEternal]

Okay, so three reasons that don't apply to either of us, but we should pay for anyway? No thanks.

[RicardoRix]

Certainly not going to buy a premium membership if I'm being bullied into it.

Way to play the victim, passive-aggressive much?

[WargasmEternal]

Uh, well, we lost the ability to do something we could, and no one else lost anything, so yes, we are the victims.

[RicardoRix]

If you look under your player profile it's likely you can get a month or 2 free membership.

[Liallan]

Certainly not going to buy a premium membership if I'm being bullied into it.

Way to play the victim, passive-aggressive much?

That's an interesting stereotype.

[gurthbruins]

Certainly not going to buy a premium membership if I'm being bullied into it.

Way to play the victim, passive-aggressive much?

That's an interesting stereotype.

I'm not going to buy a membership either. But I'm not going to pretend I just MIGHT if you do this or that. I pay nothing, so I have no right to expect anything. So I think: first pay, then complain. Meanwhile I am conscious of the debt I owe, by playing here. That's my problem.

[Holmes108]

Well this is just awful then. I just logged on to find out this new rule. My friend isn't allowed to play because we "play from the same location". We aren't currently at the same location. So, what's happened? Because they took their turn from my house once we've been blacklisted from ever playing again? I understand not allowing playing a game together from the same IP (although I don't agree, I understand), but why can we not play from separate locations now?

If cheating is a concern, same location play should be allowed for private and unranked games. Problem solved. My friends regularly check their turns when we're in the same place, even though we don't live together. This will unfortunately render the site completely unusable for me, as I don't play with randoms.

Edit: scratch some of that. Just started working for us. When I first left friends house, I tried joining a game from a different device
and a different network, and I got the same error. Now it started working. Possible something on BGA's side took time to clear?

Anyways, that's something at least, but I did often play on the couch with friends and the wife. I hope this gets reconsidered in the future.

[Liallan]

Well this is just awful then. I just logged on to find out this new rule. My friend isn't allowed to play because we "play from the same location". We aren't currently at the same location. So, what's happened? Because they took their turn from my house once we've been blacklisted from ever playing again? I understand not allowing playing a game together from the same IP (although I don't agree, I understand), but why can we not play from separate locations now?

If cheating is a concern, same location play should be allowed for private and unranked games. Problem solved. My friends regularly check their turns when we're in the same place, even though we don't live together. This will unfortunately render the site completely unusable for me, as I don't play with randoms.

Edit: scratch some of that. Just started working for us. When I first left friends house, I tried joining a game from a different device
and a different network, and I got the same error. Now it started working. Possible something on BGA's side took time to clear?

Anyways, that's something at least, but I did often play on the couch with friends and the wife. I hope this gets reconsidered in the future.

You apparently have not been here for a while, or at least tried this for a while, because this was changed quite some time ago. I do seem to recall people were having trouble playing at different locations after having played at the same one. I do not recall if that had been a bug or what happened, but yes, maybe it took time "for something to clear." (Or someone saw the post and fixed the issue.)

Sourisdudesert already pretty much explained the reasons, and the cheating issue I think is a minor one, as that could be solved by playing unranked games.

My guess is it won't be reconsidered, cause it they were going to do that, they probably already would have. So no more playing on the couch with your friends and wife, unless one of you wants to become a premium member. (Only needs to be one person.)