Game Starts without Notification?

[Kaiyoot]

Hello,

I am new to the site (<2 weeks) and have just started seriously looking into getting some games played this weekend. Maybe the experience I'm about to tell below can be corrected by settings in my profile - I don't know...

The first thing that took me by surprise and caused my first game to go on hold forever was I joined a game table and then suddenly it disappeared. I had no idea what happened to it so I went and looked for a different game and after 10 minutes I clicked on the top and saw that the game I had joined 10 minutes ago that had disappeared had actually started. Since I had not joined in the newly started game, the guy running the table eventually started a different game and I am pretty sure he was upset with me (I would have!). When I did realize the error I made, I did my turn but he has since logged off and maybe we will finish the game tomorrow.

If there is a way to make it more obvious that a game table you have joined has started, I'd like to know how. Otherwise, maybe this is an issue that can be fixed by adding some functionality to each main games list of tables. Make it so that in a games list of tables on the main menu it could show that there is a table you are sitting at that has started. Only people involved at the table see this entry so it is not join able by any one else. If you are supposed to be in that game, you have the option to click on to go straight to it without accessing the top menu bar of the web page. Thoughts?

Darren

[Jest Phulin]

Most likely you were in the Arena lobby, or playing a turn-based game. If you switch to Simple Game/real-time in the PLAY NOW screen, this shouldn't happen.

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And, the overly long why it is done this way....
History of the site: Originally there was only one ranking system, each player's ELO. However, this led to people achieving a high ELO, and then never playing another game with ELO. This was done by either not playing at all or turning ELO off (originally done via a setting in table creation, now duplicated by playing in Training Mode). This made people who were ranked high, but not at the top, upset. They could not realistically advance in the rankings.
So, Arena mode was devised. The rankings would reset every so often, so if people wanted to stay at the top of the rankings they would have to defend their position. But, an offshoot of this became (or was envisioned, I don't remember exactly) that the table administrator would kick people from the table they didn't think they could beat. To prevent this, the normal "do you commit to playing the whole game" screen that shows up when all players are at the table in Simple mode was removed -- you were assumed to commit to playing the game when you joined the table.

For turn-based games, originally it worked like real-time games: the table would form, people would sit at it, then once all players said they wanted to play the system asked them to commit to playing. But, with many people playing for relatively short periods of time once per day, this led to many tables being created, waiting 24 hours to fill up and the administrator click "launch game", and another 24 hours for each person to commit. If the administrator was player 5 and everyone took a day to play their move, this meant a full week went by from table creation until the administrator made their first move. To shorten this time, the commit screen was added when a player joined the table and the game launched automatically when the table was full.

[Kaiyoot]

Thanks Jest for the background history lesson! I have not yet played in the Arena mode yet but might in the future. The games were definitely turn based games as I had not yet figured out when selecting a table to pay attention to those details. Even now I am stuck in three games that are turn based and will take forever to play as the players involved are in different time zones which means there is little chance of all of us being online at the same time to finish the games quickly. I pay way more attention to the type of game that is setup now that I am aware of it.

Now that I have played a few games and am MUCH more careful on what I click on, things are going smoother. I've figured out that the little table icon at the top of the page is vital to keep track of your games. When it is red, it is your turn at one or more of your tables. I do dislike that I have to scroll to the top to check it all the time. I would request for a option be made to have it always at the top so it doesn't scroll off screen?

I had my first penalty given to me yesterday prior to writing this post as apparently I had joined two games with the same players (I clicked on them and they disappeared as I originally wrote about in this thread). I found the one game and played but had no idea that I was in a second game with them as I had not yet figured out how things worked. As a result, the second table "timed out"? (or I some how left the table as I was unaware of how everything worked at that point) and I was assigned a penalty for not playing the second game.

Harsh, but I understand why due to how much time people put into playing these games. When they go through the motions to setup and gather a bunch of people to play and then not getting to play because 1 person never takes their turn, it would be frustrating. I would have liked a better way to notify me as a beginner that I was in this situation as my intention was to never abandon a game - I just had no idea of what was going on and it doesn't appear that you can message some one directly to give them a "nudge" in the right direction (this may exist but no one "nudged" me yesterday to guide me so I'm assuming it doesn't exist). Either way, things are going smoother now and I am enjoying the web site. Well done!

Thanks!
Darren