Board Game Arena

Jellby wrote: ↑05 January 2023, 09:35 It is supposed to be used with friends only. I would actually go one step further and make everyone lose ELO in such a case:

I don't think any special treatment is necessary and suggesting some makes it seem like issues could be complicated around NTL-setting which they don't need to be.

Yes I agree this is missed feature. It was nice to play no time limited with close friends and family.

A button/option to cancel a play after one week, if the other player don't respond, could be a nice feature instead.

Just adding my voice to bring back the "NTL for Friends" option. I play public games too, as well as with friends, and do not want to play in "training" mode all the time when playing with friends just to avoid time out penalties.

Agree - I mostly play No Time Limit with Friends. Really am not a fan of this change.

bomberah wrote: ↑06 January 2023, 19:49 Agree - I mostly play No Time Limit with Friends. Really am not a fan of this change.

At this point, I don't think there are any people besides the site admins who are fans of this change.

I think it comes down to simple economics. If this site depends on a supportive premium membership to stay in business, knowing that premium members do bring their friends, are willing to spend a little money, and will use the platform respectively, than those business leaders would want to pay attention to what their users/customers are saying.

If, on the other hand, this business does not need the income of a supportive customer base, it makes it very clear that our voices here are meaningless.

The site admins have complained about people being trapped. Our discussion generally suggests that this is a non-issue, and the site admins could ignore people who get into NTL games after being warned there was no help. I doubt any experienced premium supports actually have this as a problem.

There has been a lot of discussion about ELO - but - if you pay to support this site so you have a place to play with (and make new) friends around the world, ELO will probably rarely come up. If there is something - anything - whatever that "trick" might be - that impacts ELO, maybe fix that problem, rather than remove a feature that is clearly quite popular.

Several users have complained about the stress of the warnings of missing players, and just don't want that stress. I'd hope the site admins would care about that, and would listen to their customer base and do what they can to make this site more fun and usable and to remove needless stressors.

But, being an economic decision, I think this may all come own to the points you get for winning/trying/playing games. I just won a game and I got 5 points for winning it. If I help with a tutorial, if I help with translations, if I sponsor a new member, I get points. Those points decay over time, but they can be traded for months of premium membership. The exchange rate for this in-game currency isn't very high - 100 points (so first wins of 20 games) gets you one month. A month of premium (at the annual rate of $30) is $1.50. So arguably not much to worry about from a business perspective. And the translators and tutorial creators should be rewarded, as that is a huge contribution to the site.

This is the one thing they haven't discussed. If you are in a training game, you don't earn any points. If they stop us from earning points, they might save up to $1.50 per month. And maybe that is something that just breaks the bank for the site admins.

Whatever the reason, in two separate very long multi-page discussion forums, the user community has spoken.

We know the site admins are reading this, even if the only response is to copy and paste from their previous posts, almost as if we didn't get what they said the first time, and clearly we have debated and refuted those points multiple times here.

So if the business owners and site admins are going to ignore the requests of their customer base - a simply request, just roll back this change - that is a business decision on their part that may or may not impact the continued "success", however they measure it.

Posting here because the e-mail you get sent when you terminate your Premium renewal says "Did you have any specific reason to stop supporting us? We value our members feedback, so please don't hesitate to contact us to let us know", and I have terminated my Premium renewal until this issue is resolved.

My friends and I have been playing BGA, mostly as a closed group and almost always with No Time Limit since we started with BGA in the pandemic lockdowns in 2020. We use the ELO scores to see how we're playing against each other.

While BGA has always seemed unfriendly to this mode of using the website (no persistent chat sessions, options that default every time to wanting to create an open game, etc.), with a much large focus on playing against strangers from the Internet, this change and the response has shown a level of active hostility to this mode of using the site that we have not seen before. Dismissing concerns with "you can just use training mode" does not make us feel like valued members of the community, and removes the ability for us to establish any ranking amongst ourselves.

rb10006 wrote: ↑07 January 2023, 17:26 Posting here because the e-mail you get sent when you terminate your Premium renewal says "Did you have any specific reason to stop supporting us? We value our members feedback, so please don't hesitate to contact us to let us know", and I have terminated my Premium renewal until this issue is resolved.

My friends and I have been playing BGA, mostly as a closed group and almost always with No Time Limit since we started with BGA in the pandemic lockdowns in 2020. We use the ELO scores to see how we're playing against each other.

While BGA has always seemed unfriendly to this mode of using the website (no persistent chat sessions, options that default every time to wanting to create an open game, etc.), with a much large focus on playing against strangers from the Internet, this change and the response has shown a level of active hostility to this mode of using the site that we have not seen before. Dismissing concerns with "you can just use training mode" does not make us feel like valued members of the community, and removes the ability for us to establish any ranking amongst ourselves.

Wow @Windrisen and @rb10006, your answers are really interesting!

And the amount of people posting for the first time on the forum saying (for the vast majority) that they don't appreciate (to put it politely) this change is really impressive!

The first discussion was 18 pages long, and this one is for the moment 10 pages long: it really became a PR issue !...
Will the users/customers be taken into account?

Philoupino wrote: ↑07 January 2023, 23:00it really became a PR issue !...

I mostly lurk in this thread and rarely post anymore, but this is what I have been thinking about for a few days. The handling of this issue and the miscommunication / confusing communication about keeping the old premium rates are PR malpractice. PR is an art, and tech-focused individuals are not necessarily adept at it. I know that Asmodee has PR folks on staff and someone from that team *really* needs to step up.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑07 January 2023, 23:44 I know that Asmodee has PR folks on staff and someone from that team *really* needs to step up.

This is certainly true, and I think we all know what any professional public relations person would tell this site admin team. "Go fix this now."

But, the site team seems unwilling to talk to us (other than copy-pasta), and might not listen to the PR pros, either. It really is too bad.

rb10006 wrote: ↑07 January 2023, 17:26 Posting here because the e-mail you get sent when you terminate your Premium renewal says "Did you have any specific reason to stop supporting us? We value our members feedback, so please don't hesitate to contact us to let us know"

BGA, are you true to your word?