Board Game Arena

I Hate that arena games start without confirmation. I get why but it's frustrating to wait for a match, end up doing something else before you find an opponent and come back to getting a forfeit.

Why can't the game get pushed to a turn-based game or something? So frustrating to lose without even getting a turn and the penalty is harsh. I feel like losing first turn is a lot different than getting kicked mid-game. Clearly if you were forfeited 1st turn you werent available to play.

whitelaser wrote: ↑17 February 2022, 23:12 I Hate that arena games start without confirmation. I get why but it's frustrating to wait for a match, end up doing something else before you find an opponent and come back to getting a forfeit.

Why can't the game get pushed to a turn-based game or something? So frustrating to lose without even getting a turn and the penalty is harsh. I feel like losing first turn is a lot different than getting kicked mid-game. Clearly if you were forfeited 1st turn you werent available to play.

Because if you allowed confirmation people could decide who to play against based on their arena level.

There was a suggestion in another thread to require confirmation, but hide the identity of the other players. That seems like a fair compromise.

I actually like the current behavior. Arena games should auto-start. In regular mode, all too often I join a game, someone starts it, and then someone is absent. It can take 5 or more tries to actually start a multiplayer game.

If you have to step away from your computer, you should leave the Arena queue. If you want to browse another tab while waiting for a game, you should be prepared to listen for the "game start" sound.

Realtime arena is a mode for "people who want to play right now".

whitelaser wrote: ↑17 February 2022, 23:12 I Hate that arena games start without confirmation. I get why but it's frustrating to wait for a match, end up doing something else before you find an opponent and come back to getting a forfeit.

Why can't the game get pushed to a turn-based game or something? So frustrating to lose without even getting a turn and the penalty is harsh. I feel like losing first turn is a lot different than getting kicked mid-game. Clearly if you were forfeited 1st turn you werent available to play.

I think it's a bit rude really to join a real time queue then go and do something else

If you can't get a game fast enough just leave the queue and come back later

It's also rude to wait 5 minutes for an absent player for a game that takes 10 minutes to finish.

This site really has something for both groups of people. If you want to play realtime mode, play realtime mode, but make sure you are available to finish the game without interruption. If you want to play turn-based mode, play turn-based mode.

Totally agree with others in the thread--sure it's mildly annoying that sometimes you don't get a notification, etc, but if you join the queue to play a real time game, you should be ready to play. It's important that arena games auto start and do not let people filter by opponents.

I also agree it is nice when players try to private message and/or agree to cancel the game or change it to turn based--but that's them being nice, and it's not at all a requirement. When you hit that queue button you're agreeing to play a game if it kicks off. If you don't do that, that's on you, and you can and deserve whatever penalties come your way. If you don't want leave penalties....modify your behavior.

I agree that it's highly undesirable that arena games start without confirmation, but the BGA team does not appear to want to change it. Some games have very long waits, and you're obviously going to do something else while waiting, such as take your turn on your turn-based games. It feels silly that after 20 minutes of waiting if you get distracted for 3 minutes using the restroom, or you just plain don't hear the chime, you come back to find that the result of you being momentarily distracted was a dramatic reduction in your Elo rating and reputation score.

First, the only purpose to a rating system is to help people of similar skill match against each other to prevent uneven matches. Substantial rating changes based on games that have not even had one move made do not improve the accuracy of that goal.

Second, and more importantly, the reputation system serves a valuable purpose to BGA, alerting others to players who quit the game in the middle of play. Being distracted before any moves have been made is a wholly different thing than quitting in the middle of an ongoing game. Conflating the two things is counterproductive to the goals of this system.

For what it's worth, I tried to encourage a change in this practice a year ago to no avail: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 074#p83074