Board Game Arena

I've found this with a few games so thought I'd do a quick post here. Many of the games implemented on here do deeply clever things interpreting the rules. Sometimes this means that a decision a player makes about using cards or gaining point or something has only one option and the game just goes ahead and does that. Some games give some notice that this has happens in the play account on the right hand side of the screen, other seem to give no explanation at all and this can be confusing because the player isn't as quick as the game at deciding this and suddenly it's the next players turn and we don;t know why.

Could I suggest when a game implements something like a 'this is the only thing you can do so I'm going to do it for you' routine, what's been done should appear in a modal window in the actual play space so the player has to read it and will understand why their tun has suddenly ended or why a certain play has been made for them. It also helps you know if what happened is a bug or just (more likely) the player not having read the rules carefully enough.

Thanks :O)

Grumbs

It would be helpful if you would share which games you think suffer from this issue.

Hi,
Game implementations on BGA are supposed to clearly show to players what happens. So if you think that a game fails to do this, you should feel free to make a suggestion in the bug report system, it is also made for this kind of suggestions. If you're not sure about your suggestion, you can ask for thoughts about it in the dedicated game forum before submitting your suggestion.
You can find a link to the bug report system in the Community page of the website, or on the forum page.

Grumbletweezer wrote: ↑02 June 2020, 16:51 Could I suggest when a game implements something like a 'this is the only thing you can do so I'm going to do it for you' routine, what's been done should appear in a modal window in the actual play space

Just a few words about this: a window within the actual play space could be too disturbing, and more programming work for not much benefit, so the usual place for this kind of informations is the game log on the right. Even if I don't think it should be a strict rule, I think that players should really take care of what's written in the game log, it's the most convenient way in most situations.
If you think that for some games, a window in the play space would be better (it could be optional), I suggest you to ask in the game forum to see if other players agree.
Hope it helps.

Thanks for these replies. It looks like the best thing I can do here is comment on specific points in specific games, which I will do.

Grumbs