Board Game Arena

Jellby wrote: ↑08 October 2025, 08:23

Vad55 wrote: ↑07 October 2025, 23:37 Firstly, I think 5 days per turn in Arena is too long.

Where do you get 5 days per turn? The slowest speed I know is 2 days per turn. You may have 5 days for some turn if you use your whole time bank, or a holiday joker, but you only get +2 days back each turn.

In any case, you can choose choose the speeds you do or do not want to play at in your per-game Arena settings (in the "old" lobby).

I also don't understand why I'm being forced to play, including with the one-move-every-5-day limit—I've participated in these games many times, even though there's no such setting. Everyone was given five days, without the use of "weekend tokens" or anything like that.

Can you share a link to one such game?

Jellby wrote: ↑08 October 2025, 08:57 Can you share a link to one such game?

https://boardgamearena.com/1/coltexpres ... =727857272

After reading the comments, I noticed that people were focusing on the impossibility of determining whether a player was intentionally wasting time or under extraordinary circumstances that prevented them from taking a turn. My opinion is that such situations actually occur in about 1%. But that's not the point. Initially, I asked how BGA enforces its rule: if a turn-based Arena game isn't finished, a penalty is assessed to the player who spent the most time thinking. Let me clarify that the rules don't say anything about requiring proof that the time was wasted on purpose. On the contrary, the rules clearly state that the penalty is assessed in any case, automatically, without any investigation. People in the comments clearly couldn't agree on what these penalties are or how to verify that they were actually assessed. I'm starting to think that BGA is breaking its own rules - there are no penalties for unfinished turn-based Arena games for the player who spent the most time thinking about moves.

Vad55 wrote: ↑08 October 2025, 09:53 https://boardgamearena.com/1/coltexpres ... =727857272

We can't see the time settings there, because it was converted to friendly mode. But in https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=727857272 (scroll to the bottom) we see that the maximum time is 6 days. That's not 6 days per turn, but 6 days time bank, and you probably get max 2 days per turn. Do you have any such game with "5 days per turn" that was not converted to friendly?

Vad55 wrote: ↑08 October 2025, 08:54 I also don't understand why I'm being forced to play, including with the one-move-every-5-day limit—I've participated in these games many times, even though there's no such setting. Everyone was given five days, without the use of "weekend tokens" or anything like that.

You're not. Choose a different speed than 1 turn per 2 days OR make sure your time setting is not flexible. Or use the old lobby (Play Now) if you want to preference some speeds but not others - the new lobbies (game pages) do not allow this, only single speed or "flexible" (any speed).

In a 1 turn per 2 days game, every player starts with a time bank of 6 days (3x the single turn time). You can accrue time on your turn up to that time bank, so it may look like a player has 5 days for every turn, but they don't. They have 2 days for every turn, and a time bank of an additional four days. If their time is staying at 5 days, that would suggest they are playing faster than 1 turn per 2 days.

Stick to 1 turn per day games, or possibly faster, since 1 turn per day comes with a 3 day time bank. Additionally, 1 turn per day games doesn't mean each player takes a turn per day, it means each player gets a day per turn. In a 4p game, this means it could be 4 days before you're asked to take your next turn (but depends on the speed of your opponents) If you want each player to be taking a turn no more than every 24 hours, stick to n turns/day games where n is the number of players at the table. I personally tend to stick to 4 turns/day when playing strangers because I like my games to NOT drag on.

Vad55 wrote: ↑08 October 2025, 11:01 People in the comments clearly couldn't agree on what these penalties are or how to verify that they were actually assessed. I'm starting to think that BGA is breaking its own rules - there are no penalties for unfinished turn-based Arena games for the player who spent the most time thinking about moves.

As has already been quoted to your in the thread from the FAQ:

...the player who consumed the most thinking time during the game will lose League Points as if the game ended with that player being considered the absolute loser. All other players will neither lose or win any points, regardless of the current state of the game.

League points are not visible unless you're in Elite League and as players are relegated at the end of the season, you wouldn't be able to observe their points. But they're essentially just considered the loser of that game, it's not a penalty, just an adjustment to their ranking for the loss. You're arguing for "penalties" of karma of "game points" (I assume you mean ELO), which you're quite correct, don't happen and no one ever said they should. The point others (including me) have raised is that to award a "penalty" suggests the user is doing something wrong. That they took the most time in the game is not necessarily an indicator that they're doing anything wrong. You're probably correct that extraordinary circumstances that prevent a player from player are rare (though 1% might be a bit low), but even for players who are taking turns within a reasonable timeframe, a game may not complete before Arena season ends. Likely neither player has done anything "wrong" and deserves penalty, but BGA have decided they will award a "loss" for that game (which does somewhat punish someone intentionally wasting time to avoid losing, if the other players haven't used a large amount of their own turn time).

Vad55 wrote: ↑07 October 2025, 23:37 Besides, I once played with an early-game player who constantly used some kind of "weekend tokens" – our game lasted about two months, and we couldn't finish it on time. He got away with it.

A player gets 4 time jokers for an extension of 4 days per year. That player would have extended the game by 16 days, or about 2 weeks. If your game was set at 1 turn per 2 days, and was a game with sufficient turns, yeah 2 months is entirely possible, even without time jokers. But the speed of the game is entirely within your control.

Also, if it's really THAT insufferable, propose an abandon. Or quit - it's only a 10 point karma penalty, and if it's that frustrating, I'd think it'd be worth taking the penalty and then just make sure you finish enough games to earn it back sooner rather than later. Personally, I'd just play it out, as I'm not particularly worried if a game finishes within Arena season or not, but I'm here to play games, and don't much care about my Arena ranking.

Vad55 wrote: ↑07 October 2025, 23:37 How do you propose to fight so that such situations occur less often and players actually play, rather than suffer for weeks or months, so that the game can then be declared "friendly" without any penalties?

I don't have a proposal, but neither do I think what you're raising here is a problem, since there are already some limits in place to prevent lots of unfinished games at the end of a season. Given your mention of "the 5 days per turn", I'm wondering if you understood my comment, that players CANNOT start new turn-based games within 5 days of Arena end. That rule has nothing to do with table speed (apart from RT speeds vs TB speeds), game length, or anything else. I know I could easily finish a 2p game of Can't Stop in 24 hours, yet, with 5 days remaining in Arena, I can't start a new one. I know that a 4p game of Terraforming Mars is probably going to take a couple weeks to complete, even at 4 turns/day and with 6 days left in Arena, I CAN start one, even though it probably won't complete before end of the season, whether or not I or my opponents are "time-wasting". But I as a player can choose not to start that game of Terraforming Mars, knowing it probably won't complete. My opponents can choose whether to join it. There are some limits, but they are, well, limited. Beyond that, make better choices.

I think your proposal seems to be shorter time limits in the Arena (which is fully up to you, and already exist if you want to use them, and avoid the longer time limits), and a karma penalty in addition to the League Points loss for the "losing" player on an unfinished game? Which would end up punishing lots of players who have done nothing at all wrong - this seems like a bad idea.

About holiday jokers, you may be interested in upvoting this suggestion: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=67850, although nothing will probably change.

If an unfinished game can be converted to friendly mode in Arena,why not in tournaments,too ?

Thank you, I learned something from our conversation. At the same time, I still maintain that a player who, for whatever reason, spent a significant amount of time in a turn-based Arena game that didn't finish before the end of the season is unlikely to be penalized in any way, despite the BGA rules stating otherwise. In any case, if such a player is penalized, they'll likely be deducting league points for the completed season, meaning in most cases it's irrelevant and can only be called a penalty very loosely.

Start turn-based Arena games at your own peril. Even at the beginning of a season, some turn-based games can take far longer than 3 months.

If you start any kind of turn-based game, you may expect it to finish within X hours/days/weeks, but you must be ready for it to last Y days/weeks/months instead. If it takes that long because one or more players just used all the time they're allowed to take (instead of playing when you'd like them to play), no one is to blame and no one needs to be punished. If it causes you to miss some deadline or something, then you're the one responsible for not taking a possibly long game into account.

As already discussed, the handling of games near the end of an Arena season is a special case. But in general, there are no penalties, nor there should be, for just making a game longer than you expected, within the allotted time.