Board Game Arena

Would BGA consider implementing for all games a strict timer option, where when a player's timer reaches zero, they automatically lose immediately.

This is how online chess is played. In both blitz and classical time settings, when zero is reached it is an automatic loss. A player is responsible for managing their time effectively and wisely.

This would eliminate the awkward nature of pressing the button to end the game when a player is unfairly taking longer than their allotted time.

I wouldn't like that at all. Imagine, we've been playing a time-based multiplayer game where all of us players have invested our time for weeks playing. Then someone was off by a second and the whole game gets scrapped/ruined because one player got kicked out. All those weeks of playing time invested just gets wasted.

Even if this is a real time game, other players have invested their time already and might not want that to go to waste in case someone gets skipped. In fact, I always wait for a player who is out of time to get back in the game and make their move, especially if it's towards the end of the game or last turn, and they usually do, rather than kick someone out due to time out. I'd just be equally upset with that player who kicks someone out near the end of the game for a wasted game.

If someone goes over time, you could just give a red thumb for that player.

An underlying core principal of BGA is that people should have fun playing games. Being able to see your specific ELO, Arena Mode, and other ranking mechanisms have been added on; but the core belief is people should have fun playing.

There are two facets of kicking someone out of a game when they run out of time. One is "I want to make sure you lose." This is a competition aspect. The other is "I don't think I will enjoy waiting for you to honor your commitment to play the game in a timely manner." (The frustration of waiting for a move is going to outweigh the fun of playing the game.)

Putting in an automatic kick of a player the instant they are over time shifts this site from fun to competition.

Hello

To be complete, in fact I think there are two aspects in the suggestion, since this was compared to Blitz:

• 1. Automatic kicking out when somebody gets negative time. I agree with what augustjologs and Jest Phulin said about that, this is a competitive aspect. Disconnections can still happens against the will of the player and a keeping a tolerance option for other players (eg having to expel the player manually if someone wants it) is good IMO. For instance, friends would never kick that player but if the player does not come back rather abandon the game collectively. So, if that feature would be implemented, I would like it restricted on Arena games only (and rather not being implemented at all)

• 2. Fixed amount of time. This one could be interested. PatrickoftheIsles comparing with Blitz and discussing on "management of time" makes me think that this feature could be implemented: each player has a stock of thinking time, for example 20 minutes (the true amount depends on the lenght of the game) and this time can only decrease: there is no extra-time given between turns. If one reaches zero, he then would be expellable (but not automatically). This would mimic a Blitz mechanism, which could be suited or not depending of the game, and finally up to the admin to choose that new management type or stick with the current way to do it (slow/normal/fast game with extra-times). Personnally I think I would not use such option often but I think but some players could be interested?

What do you think?

I have another idea that might be worth thinking about. How about a hard kick time. So, when someone first goes negative you click the kick option, and have to wait 20 seconds. Then, if they reach a certain amount of negative time, you no longer have to wait 20 seconds, you can just kick.

I want to suggest this because I am running in to people who are clearly trying to drag the game out as long as possible. I just played against someone in Stone Age and there was 3:00 starting time and he managed to get to -5:00. It was very obvious that he was trolling because he would wait until he got to the end of the 20 seconds then go. If he can pay enough attention to do that then he could be playing.

So with my idea he when he gets to -3:00 then I could have just clicked an eject button and been done with it.

I see the same suggestion from everybody playing 2-players competitive abstract games (chess, draughts, Lines of Action, Hex, etc.)
It does not have to be the default, but definitely an *OPTION* for hard time limits would be needed to properly organize tournament.

Even better would be different time controls like Fischer, Byo-Yomi, Bronstein, etc.