Board Game Arena

When I create a new game, it is in training mode. Is there a way to have the default mode be normal?

I would also find this useful

BGA staff has said that they made training mode the default because they were receiving too many complaints about the penalties for quitting when people were either A) new to the site and didn't fully understand how it works, or B) were playing among friends who didn't care about the time restraints. Since tables should remember the settings from the last time the game was played, you should only need to set it once. Otherwise, you are new to the game, and are considered a subset of A

I found this thread because I couldn't find a way to change my default mode to normal WHEN PLAYING WITH FRIENDS on this site.

I CAN for most ways of starting a game choose a gear on the left side of the game to set my defaults for any number of things.

But when starting a turn-based game with a friend, I have to change the mode from training to normal every time. And doing it once does NOT change it on future occasions.

There may be a way to do this, which I would love to hear about, but I'm not seeing it. I wondered if it's tied to the fact that the user is forced to choose at least one friend first, instead of being able to set up the game and then decide which friend(s) to invite.

It's fine for the default default to be set for Training, but it's a reasonable expectation to hope a user can set their own personal default for playing with friends.

Um, see my section B) above... Wanting time restrictions and ELO when playing with friends is the exception, not the rule.

One workaround is to create a group with your friends as members, and restrict play to members of that group. I think that will make the system think you aren't playing with friends, and not default to training mode.

So Jest,

You are confirming then that the user is NOT allowed WHEN PLAYING WITH FRIENDS to customize their default Mode Setting to Normal, and therefore must select it every time.

The "Um" in your response suggests that my clarification was answered by your "B" when you suggested that the game would change your Mode to the way you set it the first time when it fact it doesn't.

I don't mind the answer being "That is a feature request", or even it probably will never happen, but your response does not seem complete or clarifying to me.

Finally, I'm presuming you are a user/member of the community, and not affiliated with BGA.

I'm not sure that I follow your workaround.

Thanks, and sorry if I'm being dense.

I reread your first B) comment, and now believe you mean that the setting will be remembered when choosing Rematch at the end of a game.

slaaty wrote: ↑01 January 2021, 08:38 I'm presuming you are a user/member of the community, and not affiliated with BGA.

This is correct. I am not affiliated with BGA; I'm just a user who has been here a while.

slaaty wrote: ↑01 January 2021, 08:38 ...your response suggests that my clarification was answered by your "B" when you suggested that the game would change your Mode to the way you set it the first time when it fact it doesn't.

As far as I understand, the logic is something along this line:
When [new user] creates account, set [LastPlayedType] to "Training Mode"
When creating table, if (PlayingWithFriends == TRUE) then {set [mode] to "Training Mode"} else {set [mode] to [LastPlayedType]}

So, yes, the test for friends will always set it to training mode. If you aren't playing with friends, then it checks the last setting, which was set to training mode when the account was created.
The reasoning for this is that there were too many complaints about competitive players taking a break to play with friends, forgetting to switch to the no time penalty mode, and getting penalties. So, friends either overrides or doesn't check previous settings.

slaaty wrote: ↑01 January 2021, 08:38 You are confirming then that the user is NOT allowed WHEN PLAYING WITH FRIENDS to customize their default Mode Setting to Normal, and therefore must select it every time.

As far as I understand it.

slaaty wrote: ↑01 January 2021, 08:38 I'm not sure that I follow your workaround.

In the menu bar, select "Community." In the "My Groups" box should be an option to create a group*. Create a private group that only invited players can join. Invite all of your friends.
Now, when creating a table, instead of using the "Play with friends" option in the lobby, restrict the table access (upper right corner of the box listing the players around the table). You can restrict by skill level, Karma ranking, language, and importantly in this case, to members of a certain group. The game mode will then not default to the "playing with friends" setting, because it thinks it is a normal competitive game.
As a side note to this, the system will also remember this setting, so if you create another table it will still have it restricted to this group.

*I've forgotten if creating groups is a premium feature or not. But for a group of 5 friends, buying a premium membership for one friend costs each person a dime a week.

slaaty wrote: ↑01 January 2021, 08:38 ...your response does not seem complete or clarifying to me.
Thanks, and sorry if I'm being dense.

For the first couple of tries, the onus is on the teacher to make it clear. Hopefully this post clears up the confusion. If not, please state what specific part is still unclear.

very thorough response, thank you