Board Game Arena

i have been doing some tournaments for my favourite game at the moment, terra mystica, but it dosent seem like there is enough time. i administrated a tournament, and this player is almost already timed out (using max time of 6 days) and some players stratagy is to just force the closest person timewise to make a move, and thus advance. if maybe there was a max time of 12 or even 24 days, it would be useful for the longer games. another thing, as that being form new zealand, the timer is always a problem for me as people like to move just as i am going to sleep. with gaining time, i can often manage fast turnbased, but not in the harsh torunament enviroment. my idea is that you can set torunaments to the same times as you can set a simple game, this would make it so that people wont meta game like i said before, and there is just less overall timer pressure. sure a max time of 6 days will be good for shorter games like connect 4, but wont work toe terra mystica.

Couldnt you just set up your tournaments with a time per move setting, instead of a total time setting?

I just tried setting up a tournament, and there is no "time per move" setting. But there is a 15 day and a 30 day option for turn-based tournaments. This was tried with multiple games (including Terra Mystica), so it isn't a per-game setting.

A timer per move setting would be great! Been asking for that for ages.

The reason tournaments don't use "time per move" is that they want every round to take a fixed amount of time. If you give each player 6 days thinking time in a 4 player game, then you know the game will take 24 days maximum. If you give each player 12 hours of thinking time per move, then there is no upper bound to how long the game will take.

The main unfairness of tournaments someone pointed out is timezone differences. You go to bed at 9:00 while someone else goes to bed at 10:00. If both of you make a move before bed and when you wake up, you'll lose 1 hour of time while sleeping but the other person loses 7 hours.

FSKFSK wrote: ↑18 December 2021, 02:13 The reason tournaments don't use "time per move" is that they want every round to take a fixed amount of time. If you give each player 6 days thinking time in a 4 player game, then you know the game will take 24 days maximum. If you give each player 12 hours of thinking time per move, then there is no upper bound to how long the game will take.

Happy to see some criticism & discussion.

I don't think the "upper bound" argument is a big issue, unless two players conspire to game the system and make it so that the tournament takes as long of a time as possible, but here's the thing, it'd be a loss-loss situation and there's no incentive for anyone to do that.

In fact, I'd argue that the current system is easier to exploit, if for example, you take notes of when your opponents tend to play their games, and try to play at their off-times to cause them to lose time. In this scenario you have an incentive in that it might cause you to win the game.

We already have an option for people who want to ensure the tournament finishes in a month or so, why don't we have another option for regular people who want to play tournaments at a more relaxed pace?

I guess variable time in tournaments isn't that big of a deal, provided players don't mind sometimes waiting for the next round to start. It is turn-based and not realtime mode anyway. There probably should be some anti-stalling provisions. In a game like 7 Wonders, you know it's a fixed 18 moves per game. In other games, players can collude to drag it out if they want to.

There is a suggestion in the bug report section :
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=29010

Jest Phulin wrote: ↑17 December 2021, 05:09 I just tried setting up a tournament, and there is no "time per move" setting. But there is a 15 day and a 30 day option for turn-based tournaments. This was tried with multiple games (including Terra Mystica), so it isn't a per-game setting.

Sorry, I would have made high bets that I was in such tournaments, but I was wrong, my bad