option to turn off Confirm removed

[X_MIKE_X]

Having to confirm each selection and placement

You don't have to confirm each placement, it has just been turned on by default. I'll concede that many people are not at all curious and never explore the game options and thus won't ever find the option to turn off confirmation....but the option is still there (for each individual).

Exactly... but it should be off by default. Those who need it could turn it on if they care.

[X_MIKE_X]

I just played one of the saddest game ever. When you face players who are already slow, undo their choices a few times and NEVER CONFIRM so you run out the confirm timeout every time, it is just unplayable.

It used to be a quick fun game. Now it is JUST painfully slow. And I get hit with the red "IT IS NOT YOUR TURN TO PLAY" bar many times per game.



I am done with this game.

And since this is only premium game I enjoyed really, I just went and cancelled my Premium subscription to BGA.

[bcp01scu05]

Interesting to see the saltiness. This is an unequivocal improvement, thanks devs.

How?? Slowing down the game is an unequivocal improvement? I wish I could understand you.

Maybe you are too high in score that you only play good players who turned off the option. Good for you.
But for us peasants who play with a lot of casual players, this change is a nightmare.

I play every game I can (now, all of them!) with confirm turned on and typically average about 90 seconds of thinking time per game, so if you're fast we'll finish in under 5 minutes easy. I misclick all the time, especially when colors are piled together in the middle, so turning it off primarily penalizes simple mistakes that can otherwise be remedied quickly. I have no desire to let my opponent control that for me. It's really that straightforward.

If you run across a player who is constantly going back and forth to the point it annoys you, just thumb them down so you don't match with them again. With the thousands of games I've played across all skill levels I can only remember a handful of players doing this and even then... it just says I'm pretty likely to beat them, so that seems OK to me.

[thoun]

First : the confirm option" has been moved, NOT removed : its now in the user preferences (top-right menu), and it's now set by player. You'll find it here : https://imgur.com/a/uMOxIyy
It's enabled by default, like the table option, because 90% of the games were played with confirm activated, so most people wants it.

It's an improvement:

• for players who don't want it, but play with players who wants it

• for Arena players, who are stuck in locked settings and couldn't disable it at all

• for newcomers, joining a random table and not checking the table settings before joining

• for BGA consistency, as all other games with confirm allow to activate it by player.

• if some players activated it hoping their opponents would make a big mistake they can't cancel, it's just bad sportmanship

About the new choice slowing down the game : the players have the same timer, no matter if the undo is enable or not (1:30 in fast speed or something similar). Undoing does not restore the timer! So a player without confirm can wait up to 1:30min to play his move, and a player with confirm, exactly the same. But with undoing on, beginners / mobile players are less likely to make a move that ruins their game.

If you thinks it's too slow now, here are some solutions :

• obviously, disable it for yourself

• join only fast speed table, because it's the timer defining the speed of the table in the end

• play in arena, where most players are experienced and will usually play way faster than beginners

• create a group called "Azul players without confirm", post the link of the group here, and play with players in this group, so your opponents will have the option disabled too

[gdman]

First : the confirm option" has been moved, NOT removed : its now in the user preferences (top-right menu), and it's now set by player. You'll find it here : https://imgur.com/a/uMOxIyy

It's not the same now though. Previously it was a game wide preference that put players on a level playing field - they choose to use confirm or not and it was the same for both players. Now you can choose to disadvantage yourself whilst you still have to watch your opponent flick through different options. In my experience, true miss-clicks are rare and a price worth paying for a quick game. But if people disagreed, they had the option to play games with confirm. Players wishing to play without confirm now can't.

It's enabled by default, like the table option, because 90% of the games were played with confirm activated, so most people wants it.

Well, this was the default so it's hardly a surprise that most games used it. It also means that 10% of people explicitly changed their settings for a mode that no longer exists. If anything, this proves that the way before worked - people could choose which way they wanted to play. If I was a betting man, I'd guess that the 10% are the ones that play the game regularly.

About the new choice slowing down the game : the players have the same timer, no matter if the undo is enable or not (1:30 in fast speed or something similar). Undoing does not restore the timer! So a player without confirm can wait up to 1:30min to play his move, and a player with confirm, exactly the same. But with undoing on, beginners / mobile players are less likely to make a move that ruins their game.

It's entirely fair to say, yes a player is entitled to the full time limit. The point is they can still use that time either way. The reality is, games without confirm are a lot quicker because a lot of the time players just wait for the countdown to timeout. Where you are matched with players that don't use confirm - you know you are in for a good fast paced game. Beginners and mobile players can still opt to not join games with confirm.

None of the suggested workarounds are good options. Fundamentally, the way it worked before was the best solution. Taking away choice is never an improvement, no matter how you spin it.

Azul is a great game and has been incredibly well implemented on BGA, I've loved playing it as I do many other games on this site. I'm very grateful to all the developers who make this site possible. But after ~2,500 games of Azul - I'll be giving it a break for now. Hopefully, this decision will be revisited.

[franck67000]

We had an option so people who pay to play, have the possibility to wait for people who wanna play by host's preferences.
All that you are offering is now, is that people who pay to play have to filter/create groups/kick people who dont wanna play by host's rules.

How fair is that ?

People don't use that option in case of missclicks... They use it to evaluate all the possibilities before picking a move which ruins the dynamic of the game.

On the azul group page https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=10175102 literally 99% of people say it's bad decision. Why not listen to them ?

People who don't want that option, will turn it off, and voila ?

[X_MIKE_X]

First : the confirm option" has been moved, NOT removed : its now in the user preferences (top-right menu), and it's now set by player. You'll find it here : https://imgur.com/a/uMOxIyy

I appreciate the reply but that has been clear from day 1. Saying this makes me think you don't fully understand what we are trying to get across.

I do not disagree with everything you said in your post but sadly losing the opportunity to chose for ourselves the type of game we wanna play forces us out of the game as we loved it.

The way it was set up before gave the option to EVERYONE to play like they wanted: you wanted to play WITHOUT undos, you could do that. You wanted to play WITH undos, you could do that. You didn't care, well, that was fine too.

Except for one guy (who is strong enough to play with top players so he isnt really affected by the change), I do not see anyone supporting this modification.

Can we be heard and considered ?

[euklid314]

I come from chess with the one-touch-rule (no undos). Then I began Backgammon where even Top Grandmasters move their checkers back and forth to visually decide which move they prefer. Took some time to get used to that but these are just the different rules for those games.

That being said, I am on the slower side of Azul players because I like to find the optimal move and *not* treat Azul as a superfast game that requires almost no thinking. I also sometimes use the undo feature to evaluate the position and possibilities (I play with undo, obviously)

If I had to play without undo, I would play *much* slower than with undo. First, I would take extra care that I wont misclick. And secondly, in difficult situations I would use my time to evaluate the position anyways and it would take longer if I do it purely in my head.

I understand those that see visualizing mentally as an important skill (no rocket science, though) and are unhappy if they have to watch their opponent move back and forth (BGA, why show it even to the opponents?). But keep in mind that an opponent who moves back and forth would not play faster if not allowed to undo. He would just sit there and think. You have to wait for such an opponent anyways.

Thus I understand the frustration of those that are taken away the possibility to play the pure Azul. In real life one generally never does an undo because if you move tiles in the middle and take a group, you cannot usually remember which tiles you moved in the middle.

But please do not argue with the time of play because undo can make the game go much faster or can make the game go slower, depending on how it is used. In general games go faster with undo, imho.

Best regards from an slightly above average player (top ELO was 600+).

[Luke P]

Glad i found this thread on the forum, as was starting to lose my mind thinking i had imagined the option had disappeared.

Have to agree with the consensus here - even if it is likely a sample bias of people who are annoyed by the change that have searched for this thread.

The mental visualising of the pieces to see future moves bit is important, and it does break the game somewhat (unless playing with beginners or novices), to have an undo option in the game. It makes learning from the game harder too, as new players having consequences shown to them all the time prior to moves rather than seeing them play out will learn from their mistakes slower, which ultimately will create less long term fans of Azul over time.

I didn't mind joining games hosted by others who had the feature on; I accepted that was either their preference or they did not know how to set the feature in the game options. But I almost never hosted a game with the undo feature enabled for players (unless I was potentially inviting players with ELO under 100 into the game, or maybe if playing a turn based game too). If you know the game well-enough to be at least an average rated player it should not be a necessary feature for the player.

The argument that individuals can remove the feature for themselves that one poster has put here a few times (by the purple colour I'm guessing a BGA admin or a dev?) is a bit of a non-sequitoir. People here want the entire game with or without an undo feature for all players, not some players within the same game having it set on or off.

And yes, we all agree it can be frustrating when making the odd accidental press, especially if playing on a mobile phone by slip of a finger. But there's about 50 more games where you could put an undo feature on if that's the way BGA wants to go (please do not do this however), just for that reason. It's something that for those who like playing the game without an undo feature, we see it as the cons not outweighing the pros enough averaging out over multiple games, to be worth having the feature in.

[aesche]

BGA, why show it [the undoes forth and back] even to the opponents?

Sounds like a good solution here, to just not display the move to the opponent till confirmed. Pretty sure that‘s handled like that in other games as well.

Other than that, mostly here for giving kudos to thoun for a logical action and resisting to the crowd which only cares about their view and no logical arguments against.