Board Game Arena

Hi,

I'm on the other side of this story, but with the same (bad) experience.

I live in Belgium, but do mostly nightshifts, with some spare time in between clients, and live by night on my days/nights off.

I like Fast Turn Based, cause I don't want to wait for hours on a response, but i can't always play fast enough for Real Time (the number of clients each hour varies).

And indeed: I set the playtime for this games between 19h till 7h (CEST). And exactly as you mentioned: a lot of players that joins don't read this properly, and that ruins the idea for playing at night only. Very annoying, cause by morning, everyone start playing, in the downtime .

So while I agree that there is a problem, I rather would like to see a beter (more clearly) way to see when playtimes are when you join a lobby, to help prevent this. Cause blaming either the player(s) in downtime, or the one that start the party (even if they win a lot this way) feels wrong.

Pokevana wrote: ↑29 May 2025, 01:28 Hi,

I'm on the other side of this story, but with the same (bad) experience.

I live in Belgium, but do mostly nightshifts, with some spare time in between clients, and live by night on my days/nights off.

I like Fast Turn Based, cause I don't want to wait for hours on a response, but i can't always play fast enough for Real Time (the number of clients each hour varies).

And indeed: I set the playtime for this games between 19h till 7h (CEST). And exactly as you mentioned: a lot of players that joins don't read this properly, and that ruins the idea for playing at night only. Very annoying, cause by morning, everyone start playing, in the downtime .

So while I agree that there is a problem, I rather would like to see a beter (more clearly) way to see when playtimes are when you join a lobby, to help prevent this. Cause blaming either the player(s) in downtime, or the one that start the party (even if they win a lot this way) feels wrong.

So I agree that there are a lot of people who join games without reading the times (or simply don’t care and join even though the settings don’t suit them).

It sounds like you actually want to play honestly. The issue with the player in question is they are taking advantage of the fact that most the people on this site (at least the game I played with them) are westerners whose playing hours don’t 100% match theirs. People may think “oh I’m extremely active for 10 of the 12 hours so this shouldn’t be a problem”. No one in their right mind joins a game and is thinking “my opponent is going to study my online activity and not take their turn on the final move all day. In hopes I will fall asleep before them so they can kick me”. Which I have proof this is what they are doing. & this person is not alone. I’ve seen threads about other people using the tactic of studying their opponents online activity & waiting until they go offline to take their turn.

What disgust me about this particular person is that they mastered this dirty tactic & use it habitually. I’m surprised to see any honest gamers back this sort of behavior just because it is legal.

SiRan90 wrote: ↑28 May 2025, 17:22 This is just a gripe. If people looked at game settings before joining then this wouldn't be an issue.

Did you even read my comment? Are you a honest
player yourself? If so, you shouldn’t condone behavior like this. & it isn’t a “gripe”. I played this person years ago, immediately blocked them, and will never see them again (at least under that account). The tiny elo they stole from me didn’t affect me. It’s too bad they keep finding players. It would be nice if the entire site blocked them. All they get is inflated elo but they themselves know they aren’t actually that good of a player

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑29 May 2025, 10:25

SiRan90 wrote: ↑28 May 2025, 17:22 This is just a gripe. If people looked at game settings before joining then this wouldn't be an issue.

Did you even read my comment? Are you a honest
player yourself? If so, you shouldn’t condone behavior like this. & it isn’t a “gripe”. I played this person years ago, immediately blocked them, and will never see them again (at least under that account). The tiny elo they stole from me didn’t affect me. It’s too bad they keep finding players. It would be nice if the entire site blocked them. All they get is inflated elo but they themselves know they aren’t actually that good of a player

It is though. Noone is being tricked into playing at hours that they are not available. Simply put people who sign up for games don't look for the playing time or don't know how to.

I would support a change of making the playing time more visible. But putting in a rule to say that you can't do this is unenforceable. How do you tell when someone is doing it legitimately or when someone is being a bad actor.

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑29 May 2025, 10:25

SiRan90 wrote: ↑28 May 2025, 17:22 This is just a gripe. If people looked at game settings before joining then this wouldn't be an issue.

Did you even read my comment? Are you a honest
player yourself? If so, you shouldn’t condone behavior like this. & it isn’t a “gripe”. I played this person years ago, immediately blocked them, and will never see them again (at least under that account). The tiny elo they stole from me didn’t affect me. It’s too bad they keep finding players. It would be nice if the entire site blocked them. All they get is inflated elo but they themselves know they aren’t actually that good of a player

I wonder if we're talking about the same person. For the player I think the OP is talking about, you played 7 games together and this player won 5 of them without skipping you.

Edit: Sorry, as you pointed out below, they won only 4 of the games.

Shivaware wrote: ↑29 May 2025, 15:54

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑29 May 2025, 10:25

SiRan90 wrote: ↑28 May 2025, 17:22 This is just a gripe. If people looked at game settings before joining then this wouldn't be an issue.

Did you even read my comment? Are you a honest
player yourself? If so, you shouldn’t condone behavior like this. & it isn’t a “gripe”. I played this person years ago, immediately blocked them, and will never see them again (at least under that account). The tiny elo they stole from me didn’t affect me. It’s too bad they keep finding players. It would be nice if the entire site blocked them. All they get is inflated elo but they themselves know they aren’t actually that good of a player

I wonder if we're talking about the same person. For the player I think the OP is talking about, you played 7 games together and this player won 5 of them without skipping you.

I saw the familiar name in op history so I assumed.
If so they won 4 of 6 games. Skipping me once. And 1 collective abandon.

If you look at this persons game history the majority of their games this year are kicks or coops. The games that weren’t kicks were probably games they felt comfortable winning.

When they did this tactic to me I looked at their history. I watched 5 of their recent kicks. All were games they were 1 move away from losing. No honest player should condone this person just because they are technically allowed to do what they are doing under the rules.

I can’t speak for all players that they’ve played against. But I played within time the entire game until the final move. They purposefully didn’t take their move all day on the final turn while actively playing another game they were winning with me. & took their final turn the exact minute I logged out lol (I looked at game log). & kicked me the exact second they could Why play games and go through such extreme lengths not to lose? Once again how gaming like this is fun for this person is beyond me.

I made a suggestion for this issue. Feel free to vote it up.

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=170799

SiRan90 wrote: ↑29 May 2025, 10:44 I would support a change of making the playing time more visible. But putting in a rule to say that you can't do this is unenforceable. How do you tell when someone is doing it legitimately or when someone is being a bad actor.

Proving intent is difficult but not impossible. In my case, their game history shows they won 10 of their last 10 games. In 6 of those they were loosing on points but their opponent for forced out for running out of time. It would be really hard to argue that this was anything other than an intentional plan to for opponents to run out of clock time.

Pokevana wrote: ↑29 May 2025, 01:28 Hi,

I'm on the other side of this story, but with the same (bad) experience.

I live in Belgium, but do mostly nightshifts, with some spare time in between clients, and live by night on my days/nights off.

I like Fast Turn Based, cause I don't want to wait for hours on a response, but i can't always play fast enough for Real Time (the number of clients each hour varies).

And indeed: I set the playtime for this games between 19h till 7h (CEST). And exactly as you mentioned: a lot of players that joins don't read this properly, and that ruins the idea for playing at night only. Very annoying, cause by morning, everyone start playing, in the downtime .

So while I agree that there is a problem, I rather would like to see a beter (more clearly) way to see when playtimes are when you join a lobby, to help prevent this. Cause blaming either the player(s) in downtime, or the one that start the party (even if they win a lot this way) feels wrong.

Still no solution

Right now "playing" 6 different games with 6 different groups, and already waiting for over 7 hours until someone makes a move in any of them. I don't want to kick players, but what else is possible And even kickin' players don't provide a solution

Ken Corbin wrote: ↑08 May 2025, 02:10 I have run into a player who opens games with a 24 move/day turn based option with a very odd sleep range. Players who accept the game do not realize what is happening and inevitably run out of time, at which point they are kicked out. It can be argued that they are doing nothing unethical, just taking advantage of a quirk in the BGA UI. But it is probably leaving a lot of opponents pissed off at the BGA platform, and that got me wondering if something should be done to close that potential loophole. Does anyone really use the fast turn based options for real? It seems like they all invite this kind of potential abuse.

1) Different people have different available playing windows.
2) Why would you join a game with a 12-hour window that is "odd" for you.
3) It's not "abusing the system" for a player to select a preference for the 12-hour window.
4) If those hours are a problem for you, it's on you for agreeing to join the game.