The trade timer being abusable is a huge issue.

[MrBeardy]

I experienced this abuse for the first time yesterday. The player who did it was rated much higher than the other player and myself. He was also winning for most of the game. Once I pulled ahead and it appeared that he might lose, he offered a ridiculous trade, which we both refused. Then he continued to offer the same trade over and over. It took me a moment to realize what he was attempting. I couldn't think of a way out, so I let him run my clock down and kick me out. He got his victory. I got the loss and a penalty.

BGA offers no way to report such cheating that I can find.

I haven't played Catan on BGA yet, but I have a question.

When you deny the trade... wouldn't it kick back to him? And then his timer runs down?

And for you to get kicked... don't you have to be away for 20 consecutive seconds?

I'm having a hard time understanding what the scam is.

The problem is particularly prevalent in mobile but also on desktop. A player launches repeat trades, they can even be the same trade offer just cancelled and relaunched. Each time you have to decline it or your clock runs down. On desktop the trade menu covers the board and on mobile the trade menu has to be scrolled to do you can't see the board at all. If you're trying to plan your own move and go to view the board you can miss these relaunched trades. You then get a nasty shock on your own turn when they kick you out while you're in the middle of playing Dev cards/building etc. I've seen a player launch the same trade request over ten times in a row. I've also seen players repeatedly ask for trades when one opponent has one card and the other none. They knew what the one card was as it had been collected that dice roll. Despite the chat telling them no-one had anything to trade they kept doing it. I can only assume they too were trying to exploit this clock run down as to play the game at all requires sufficient intelligence to understand the futility of asking for trades in that situation.

Perhaps the answer is to have a click option "decline this and all trades this session". There could then be a "allow trades again" button incase you changed your mind before they end their turn but it prevents them trying to get someone expelled by exploiting the timer.

[el cosimo]

I experienced this abuse for the first time yesterday. The player who did it was rated much higher than the other player and myself. He was also winning for most of the game. Once I pulled ahead and it appeared that he might lose, he offered a ridiculous trade, which we both refused. Then he continued to offer the same trade over and over. It took me a moment to realize what he was attempting. I couldn't think of a way out, so I let him run my clock down and kick me out. He got his victory. I got the loss and a penalty.

BGA offers no way to report such cheating that I can find.

I haven't played Catan on BGA yet, but I have a question.

When you deny the trade... wouldn't it kick back to him? And then his timer runs down?

And for you to get kicked... don't you have to be away for 20 consecutive seconds?

I'm having a hard time understanding what the scam is.

The problem is particularly prevalent in mobile but also on desktop. A player launches repeat trades, they can even be the same trade offer just cancelled and relaunched. Each time you have to decline it or your clock runs down. On desktop the trade menu covers the board and on mobile the trade menu has to be scrolled to do you can't see the board at all. If you're trying to plan your own move and go to view the board you can miss these relaunched trades. You then get a nasty shock on your own turn when they kick you out while you're in the middle of playing Dev cards/building etc. I've seen a player launch the same trade request over ten times in a row. I've also seen players repeatedly ask for trades when one opponent has one card and the other none. They knew what the one card was as it had been collected that dice roll. Despite the chat telling them no-one had anything to trade they kept doing it. I can only assume they too were trying to exploit this clock run down as to play the game at all requires sufficient intelligence to understand the futility of asking for trades in that situation.

Perhaps the answer is to have a click option "decline this and all trades this session". There could then be a "allow trades again" button incase you changed your mind before they end their turn but it prevents them trying to get someone expelled by exploiting the timer.

Option exist.. just disable trades and all issue is solved. You can do it for one turn or for always (like when everyone got 7 points or more: I disable it because don’t want to give away points)

[MrBeardy]

The problem with that is if you do decide you want to trade there is no way to undecline / initiate a trade offer when it is not your turn if it has already declined it. If there was that ability to manually override only when you want to then that would be fine (though I've yet to find where I can set this option to auto decline. Any pointers?)

[trulytrue]

Exactly. Came to say same thing. One player just put trade after trade. I said lets move on, no one wants to trade and then I was enemy #1 and he would use robber on me and take my cards.

[Goober58]

AnarchistLynel,

You're right. I had to finally allow the 20 second clock to run down to zero... after wasting about 30 minutes refusing his silly offers and resetting the 20 second clock. The only reason he did it is because I was winning and he was losing. Wasting more time wasn't worth it to me.

[TheBigR]

SO this just happened to me on this table, https://boardgamearena.com/6/catan?table=299869861
The player was LemaVelka. This person spammed trades that where ludacris and then I got timed out trying to refuse.

THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED NOW!