No Time Limit games restricted to friends only? Terrible for gaming groups

[fieldeffect]

My gaming group likes to arrange games every week on BGA, so I start up the games restricted to just people in our group, and always with no time limit. A change seems to have been made in the last week to only allow no time limit games with people on your friends list, so now I have to make sure that everyone in the group is my friend (I just sent out about 30 friend requests) and I'm going to have to maintain that periodiaclly to make sure I'm everyone's friend.

Why was this done, and is there any chance of it being reversed?

We are still grumpy about the change that was made to prevent games from auto starting after the timeout if they had enough players (I used to be able to set them up for maximum player count but if they didn't get that full number they would still start - now I have to set them up for maximum player count but remember to come back just before they time out and force them to start).

It seems like there are lots of changes being made that are making the service more and more hostile to gaming groups. Is there something somewhere that's like a reverse feature request list "things you made worse that a bunch of your paying subscribers wish you'd back out"?

Sorry for the grumpiness. Just seems like every change made to BGA these days makes my life a little bit more hassle

[bananasplay]

I, too, am exceedingly frustrated with this yet-another-unannounced change that reflects BGA's effective policy of erecting "invisible walls": restrictions that one only learns about when one runs face first into them.

This particular change is triply aggravating when one has been around for a while and knows for a fact that the wall wasn't there before.

Last night, I spent 30+ minutes looking to see if this change was announced anywhere that I somehow missed, but I won't lose sight of the fact that if BGA had actually bothered to announce the change 1) properly and 1a) in advance, I wouldn't have had to spend such time digging. So very, very aggravating.

On top of this, when I clicked Rematch on a table with someone who's already a friend, BGA ignored that fact and refused to respect the "no time limit" setting of the previous table. But it didn't do only that; it went ahead and made the new table into a real-time game. Because of course we'd want to go from turn-based-no-time-limit to real-time, why wouldn't we?

The sheer stupidity of this on top of the "invisible walls" policy just has me gobsmacked.

And this is also happening in the context of the many bugs that have been reported and upvoted and left outstanding for years that BGA just refuses to look into, to the point where some of them essentially auto-expire with a generic message saying "Report closed automatically because it has not been upvoted or commented for a while."

It truly boggles my mind that BGA spent time to code that kind of "feature" into the bug-reporting system and to make these other programming changes that no one asked for—and which actively detract from the user experience on this site—rather than spending time actually fixing bugs.

Geez.

[ufm]

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=24766
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=47043

Just check current Prestige #4's games from front page. The feature was abused up to eleven. Good riddance.
Start training mode if you don't need any time limitations. That's way better.
FYI currently there is a bug regarding rematch: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=24773

[sourisdudesert]

A change seems to have been made in the last week to only allow no time limit games with people on your friends list, so now I have to make sure that everyone in the group is my friend

What you are looking for is "game mode: training mode".

Using this, there is no time limit and you dont have to restrict to friends.

[Een]

Also, please note that this change was announced. We announce user-facing changes here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5 in the "Release summaries" or in a dedicated post for bigger changes. You can subscribe to this forum if you want to follow closely on our work.

It's ok to be grumpy from time to time, but please reserve part of that grumpiness to the players abusing the system and forcing us to introduce restrictions. It was not especially fun to have to work on that, I would have rather done some more fun things

[Silene]

Can't you all instead of setting up with "no time limit" just set up with the slowest possible turn-based setting? I do that when i want to play live with a friend on a game we're both new to. No need to add as a friend for that.

And even if someone runs ouf of time on a 1 move per 2 days table, you don't need to kick them. So basically you have a no-time-limit table. Going overtime doesn't hurt your karma, if nobody kicks you. (and if someone decides to kick anyway, then no-time-limit wasn't the right setting for this group after all)

[YBreaz]

I'm trying to start a turn-based game of Dice Forge with a person on my friends list. It's saying "No time limit" is restricted to friends only. I've played games this way many times with this friend. We are on each others friends list. Is this set up no longer available?

[Een]

I'm trying to start a turn-based game of Dice Forge with a person on my friends list. It's saying "No time limit" is restricted to friends only. I've played games this way many times with this friend. We are on each others friends list. Is this set up no longer available?

You can do one of two things:
1) Select "training mode" and you'll have an unranked/no time limit game.
2) Restrict your table to "My friends" then select "No time limit". Then you'll have a ranked/no time limit game.

[Janabis]

Also, please note that this change was announced. We announce user-facing changes here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5 in the "Release summaries" or in a dedicated post for bigger changes. You can subscribe to this forum if you want to follow closely on our work.

It's ok to be grumpy from time to time, but please reserve part of that grumpiness to the players abusing the system and forcing us to introduce restrictions. It was not especially fun to have to work on that, I would have rather done some more fun things

Pas mal de petites modifications comme celle-ci nuisent un peu à la fluidité du site, je trouve.
Oui, il y a une micro annonce, mais aucune explication donnée. Je me doute évidemment que vous avez de bonnes raisons pour tout ces petits changements & même si je ne m'attends pas vraiment à les connaître, je n'ai jamais eu de réponse quand j'en demandais, mais bon ...

Sur le point dont il est question ici, je suis totalement en accord avec mes prédécesseurs. Avec des amis, nous avons créé un groupe justement pour profiter de cette option ... or, le groupe devient aujourd'hui inutile. Désormais, je ne peux plus jouer avec ce mode avec des amis qui n'ont pas validé mon invitation (ou ne le veulent pas) & certains de mes amis peuvent accéder à mes parties même si je n'ai pas forcément envie de les y voir. Car je n'ai pas qu'un seul type d'amis d'un seul & même groupe.
& je suis navré, mais la solution de se mettre en mode entraînement n'en est pas une, je n'ai aucune envie d'utiliser ce mode.

Quand bien même, je pourrai m'accommoder de ce changement sans broncher, mais ce qui devient pénible, c'est qu'il oblige a des clics supplémentaires inutiles. Par exemple, pourquoi ne pas opérer automatiquement le changement "limité au groupe d'amis" dès lors qu'on clique sur "sans limite de temps" puisque c'est la seule façon d'activer ce mode ?
Pourquoi d'ailleurs, d'une partie à l'autre, même quand on fait une revanche, l'option est remise à zéro ? Je me souviens d'une époque où toutes les options restaient les mêmes d'un partie à l'autre, même des mois après. Maintenant, il faut toujours tout reconfigurer à chaque fois. Bref, toujours cliquer & cliquer plus pour une perte de temps supplémentaire.
D'ailleurs, c'est le cas de nombreux changements. Par exemple, avant pour se déconnecter, il suffisait de "survoler" son profil & de cliquer sur "se déconnecter". Désormais, il faut faire deux ou trois clics avant de pouvoir se déconnecter ...

Bref, je ne suis fondamentalement pas contre les modifications, mais un peu quand même quand elles font régresser la fluidité.

Toutefois, merci quand même pour les autres petites modifications qu'on ne voit pas mais qui font du bien

[The_Living_Tribunal]

Yes, it is really a change I don't understand. If I don't want other people to join a no-time-limit game I can first invite my friends and put the player count to exactly the number of friends I have invited. So once all my friends have accepted the game starts automatically and I don't have to push the "open table for other players" button, so there is no danger of people that I don't want to joining my game. So why do I now have to do 3 more clicks to be able to have a no-time-limit game? Clicking on "Restrict Table access" > Dropdown, Friends only > Ok, for EVERY game I create. That's really annoying, it would be nice if it could be at least a checkbox that is directly available in the create game menu, so I don't have to click around 3 times every time. And then another time because when I click on "Play" to create another game it always asks me if I really want to leave, which yes I do! But that's another question.