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I've got a game in Alpha (Sheep Boom Bah) that includes cards which may be played in reaction to certain actions on another player's turn. It's hard to find the right balance between game pace and protecting secret information.

If the game prompts every player to react every time, the game will take forever (especially in turn-based mode), so I added an action where each player can toggle on/off an Auto-Pass feature, which will let them get skipped if they don't have a relevant card for the situation (It defaults ON). However, this basically gives away the information of who does or doesn't have some specific cards.

I got a suggestion to hide the hourglass, or fake it on everyone, so it's not obvious who is being waited on. I'm not sure if this is something I can manipulate, and if done, I can imagine issues with less reliable players, or the game being stuck waiting with no hint of who is being slow.

Any suggestions welcome (either how to accomplish this technically, or design ideas to resolve the issue another way). Thanks!

To be able to hide who you actully waiting on you have to keep all player multiactve during this time,
but for the current player if you know he does not really have any action you just override the prompt on client side,
there is method for this on recipies wiki.
I don't know specific API to hide the hour glass but you can find it in dom and replace with something else.

Don't do this! It is useful and important to know who is slow, so that person can be ejected from the game. With that information missing, it will appear every player is not ready and it won't be possible to move on with the game if one person never takes the action.

Can the automatic skip be delayed by a random amount (5 - 12 seconds) so as to simulate real player?

Of course you can't do this for turn based because it's obvious if a person makes a move while offline. But then it may mean the game is unsuitable for turn based (like Coup) due to high interaction.

I have the same exact problem. But in my case a player may have no special action to do (so it can pass after 0 seconds) or a special action, for what it can discuss via private chat with team members; and this action can take some minute. So the difference is a lot and I cannot kill the hourglass-metagame simply adding some random seconds.
The best choice should be hide or disable hourglass but I understand that it could be a problems for disconnected/afk players.
Any other suggestion?

I agree with others, I don't think you want to get into a weird spot trying to fake it. Perhaps checkout 6 nimmt! - in that game they implement two things to help with game pacing - one is an auto pass feature when you run out of coins and have no choice but to take the card. The button simply counts down from a certain value and when it hits 0, it auto presses and the game moves on.

The other thing they do is allow players to select an upcoming action - so I can auto-bid each round until the pile of coins for the current card reaches a certain value. That's obviously isn't what you're asking for here - but perhaps something like that where the user opts in for a random delay skip.

I will say, in 6 nimmt!, it's also part of the strategy to pause when you have coins and you are considering taking the card in a live game. Even if you don't really want it, you might want to appear that you want it so hopefully someone else will take it. I mention that as to say, perhaps it's not the worse case to let players have some thinking time, even if you think it's not needed from the view of someone who wants to speed play.

One final thought, don't get hung up on how long a turn based game takes. People that want to play turned based over live are usually ok with the longer play time. There, you won't be able to rely on the client to implement an auto-pass, that will need to be server based since you can't count on the client being loaded to do the auto-pass. Also, in that setup - you'll always see the real expected turn player in the list of all games. You won't be able to modify anything in that list (whereas you could actually hide the hourglass element by applying a display none style on top of it).

I was curious - a quick inspection shows that the id is simply avatar_active_ +playerid - so you will always be able to work that out and set the display to none if needed during a live game. But-again, seems like an odd thing to mess around with.

I have to do it, because in my game there are secret teams and secret roles with some powers and I don't want to reveal them with hourglass metagame.
However hiding hourglasses in game is a partial solution because they are still visible in the "game in progress" list. And there I cannot hide them.

I have no ideas

I took a quick look at the rules & it would seem like your best option is:

State 1: Reveal card about to play. Active player only

State 2: React to card-multiplayer active. Choices are "react with EIEI...No" or "No reaction" (at least everyone can react at same time) If "No reaction" is the only choice, auto select it with a countdown timer (maybe?)

State 3: If EIEI...No is played, trigger state 2 again to give a chance negate that card., otherwise go to state 4

State 4: Resolve card-active player only

The other cards that are played out-of-turn only happen when bumped into a mine, so you can limit who needs to react to those and when. But I would treat it basically the same as above.

DexterHugo wrote: ↑28 December 2021, 23:40 Perhaps checkout 6 nimmt! - in that game they implement two things to help with game pacing - one is an auto pass feature when you run out of coins and have no choice but to take the card. The button simply counts down from a certain value and when it hits 0, it auto presses and the game moves on.

The other thing they do is allow players to select an upcoming action - so I can auto-bid each round until the pile of coins for the current card reaches a certain value. That's obviously isn't what you're asking for here - but perhaps something like that where the user opts in for a random delay skip.

I will say, in 6 nimmt!, it's also part of the strategy to pause when you have coins and you are considering taking the card in a live game. Even if you don't really want it, you might want to appear that you want it so hopefully someone else will take it.

What you describe is not 6 nimmt!, but No thanks:
https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=nothanks

cigma wrote: ↑02 January 2022, 01:44 What you describe is not 6 nimmt!, but No thanks:
https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=nothanks

Oh of course! Good catch! Thank you!