Problem with Arena waiting time

[Gunslinger99]

I need to waste dozens and dozens and minutes before joining in Arena game. The wait is not a problem, of course. The problem is that, as you can understand, I'm not paying focus to my screen all the time while waiting. And what happens next is the game runs, I forgot to look, and I finished last because I'm out of time.

Being able to confirm before running the game would be great. For the Arena mode, the confirmation screen should not allow to see who I'll face, so that players can't choose their opponents.

I could understand I'd lost karma if I don't confirm, because it's annoying for other players, and it's not my intention to make them lose time. But the amount of Arena points lost is huge, and because of this behavior, it prevents competition.

I suppose other players are in the same case.

Do you think you can do something ?

[dschingis27]

There is already a suggestion made for this that you can upvote: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=14271

Already we have sound indication and a changing tab title if a game started. However I would also like that game readiness has to be confirmed. My suggestion: Give each player 1:30 to 2:30 minutes to confirm (depending on game length) with a sound indication every 20-30 seconds. If player doesn't confirm he/she loses karma but the game doesn't influence Arena points.

[Gunslinger99]

Upvoted

[sourisdudesert]

The thing is: adding an extra explicit "accept" step for Arena would make the waiting time longer.

In fact, we are already doing a "behind the scene" accept step. We are checking that the browser of each player is aware that the game has started (which leads to a sound warning).

So basically:
_ we are 100% sure the browsers of all players are opened.
_ we are playing a sound.
_ we are changing (and animating) the browser tab to warn you.
_ optionally, you can enable notifications, which gives you additional warning.

There are not much additional things we can do: if, despite all of this, some players are not aware that the game has started, then it's probably for the best that they are punished by a game expulsion (and associated karma penalty + arena penalty).

[dschingis27]

Ok, valid points. I am all in for Karma penalty. But I have a strong problem with gaining and losing Arena points from games not played - it feels unjust. And gives the wrong incentive for players at a table to remove timed out players.

Often if you wait very long for a time-consuming game to start you will be willing to wait a several more minutes if one player is not yet present at game start (or at least all the available players can try to chat about). But since you gain Arena points by executing the timeout instead of waiting a bit longer and actually playing the game, available players are very much incentivised to execute the player remove.

Ex.: I wait in low-traffic 2P game for 30 mins to find a matching Elite opponent. I see after game start that my opponent is not present, Actually I would be willing to wait 5-10 more minutes for the game to happen, but I am incentivised to just execute the timeout to gain the valuable EAS and hurt my opponent. That way, the game does not happen and my EAS earned feel unjust.

[Jest Phulin]

The thing is: adding an extra explicit "accept" step for Arena would make the waiting time longer.

How much longer? More time than waiting for an opponent to time out who isn't there? If the waiting time to click accept is less than the time per move, all players will know the others at the table are engaged, and the wait time will be less than the administrative time to click accept plus the time waiting for the other player to time out.

This also causes a problem for turn-based games. If several matches are requested, the system stays in the lobby. It never notifies (or at least didn't when I tested it) that the game actually has started if it was able to find a match quickly.