Board Game Arena

The very first game I joined using automatic on here is a game in which we have been sitting 1 move into the game for almost 2 weeks now. The account in question seems to have either been made and abandoned on the same day but that's not the actual issue. Another player at the table seems to have abandoned their account as well so we can't get consensus to abandon the game and the play timers are still racking up (-5 days on the "current" player). I want my table spot back so i can use it towards an active game (and more importantly earn more playable tables async) but I also don't want to ruin someones karma if the account comes back eventually and don't think this counts as reportable (might also help to remind people of what are reportable offences instead of saying "we may punish you instead" for not having the time or inclination to make sure something is reportable).

suggestion comes down to this: make sure player timers drain when abandon game is called for so game slots aren't kept in limbo forever. Or rethink how to apply punishments to games so players in such situations won't be punished for abandoning a game in this probably super rare scenario.

frustrated enough with the whole situation that I kicked the new player (something I did not want to do) and left the game since it wasn't worth anything to stay for a game where we hadn't really started yet because a player with bad karma wouldn't abandon the game. Luckily it seems this issue is covered by exactly this scenario but it was my first game ever and it's hard to read "this may negatively impact you" over and over when trying to deal with something in a way that negatively impacts no one.

I had a similar frustration with my first several turn-based games here, and I appreciate your intent to resolve situations like this as amicably as possible. What you described is a perfectly reasonable use of the "Skip This player" feature. I don't remember the warning for skipping a player mentioning that it may negatively impact you, the one who skips. You may get red thumbed by players you skipped, but if they have no intention of coming back, that's not likely. Other than that, I'm not aware of any negative impact to your account. The player who went over time did not fulfill their commitment to play the game in a timely manner and you are justified to skip them and cancel the game.

There is an interface problem with the Automatic Turn Based mode on this site causing tables to be filled by new users who didn't intend to join a game. There is a warning when creating a new table in Manual mode that you are committing to play the game to completion, but there is no warning when queuing for a table in Automatic (default) Turn-based mode. It is not clear to new users that they will still end up in a table if they leave the page after queuing for a game. They'll just see a timer saying "40 minutes" and think "I have to wait 40 minutes to play a game???", then leave the page and never come back. I've brought this issue up in a previous thread, and created a suggestion report here: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=20485

Came back with a clearer head to update. There was some mixed messaging going on that led to me personally feeling like the system was punishing me for being proactive.

The message when a persons time runs out of time and you can now skip them warns you from taking that course of action and instead recommends abandoning the game because the game if ran to completion wouldn't grant you anything anymore. It also implies this would be your fault that their account is no longer in good standing.

After taking the action to abandon the game (something the person who was able to be skipped is forced to do) no other players timers which led to the second problem of a player with a bad karma score (probably for the exact same reason) made it such that the abandon couldn't happen. When I tried to report the player since i noticed 3 days after the abandon was proposed that their timer wasn't being affected by waiting forever I got similar messaging of are you sure you want to do this. If the report went through and the second player was deemed not at fault somehow then I would receive a report for false flag reporting and so therefore didn't.

This is what I meant by the system telling me effectively "you're a bad person for wanting something reasonable" and thank you to the other reply for validating that I wanted something reasonable this time.