Board Game Arena

This may have been mentioned before, but is there a way of penalising players for not starting games? I’m really fed up with waiting until a table is full only for the host not to start the game. It seems to be happening more and more.

Are these fairly new members? If so, just don't take their invitations.

If they have been around a while and have a good reputation, I doubt they can keep it if they continually don't start their games. While I don't know of any specific penalty for that, it seems that the kind of person who would not start their games would be the same type of person who wouldn't think twice about abandoning another game... and that will affect them.

It seems more logical to me that these are probably new people and that is very easy to avoid.

it is difficult to find opponents in many games here, it often takes a long time, so players usually go afk and look at other web page while waiting
in the long run they don't expect players are coming in because some games can have very very few active players
it could be they cannot hear the sound of joining or they become busy after a long waiting time

you can always start your own game to avoid this problem