Bring back Turn Based "No Time Limit + Friends Only"

[fmiskolc]

I think a "problem" with ELO on BGA is that you cannot have it separate for different time period / real time games. In an ideal world it would be training - no ELO (as is currently) and real-time vs. turn-based vs. NTL ELO. But having ELO is still better than not so taking it away completely from one group is terrible.

I do think though that for all practical purposes (at least for the games I play) BGA it's not like chess where bullet is very different from rapid or from a tournament clock. I don't feel my score is different whether I play 12 moves / day or 1 move every day or NTL. It's not like I'm sitting there and since I'm in hour 18 of my thinking I'm feeling rushed and thus I'm not as good a player when I make a bad move. The clock is basically just there to keep things flowing a bit and honestly doesn't affect gameplay very much.

I've never played anything except NTL with friends but you bet that my Carcassone ELO score is strong for a reason after playing for over a decade and I would definitely not want to be excluded from a tournament for my cohort. The beginners would hate me and think I'm cheating and I'd be bored thus I wouldn't even join a tournament if my ELO was taken away being forced to only play Training games. And tbh many sports do award ELO for friendly matches, soccer just being the most obvious example... they are WEIGHED completely differently than a WC match of course as they should be.

So if BGA wants to implement a scale for ELO where NTL isn't worth as much as tournament I personally think that would be amazing and definitely support it. But at this point we're still fighting to just get NTL back and I think that my main concern at this point isn't even the "issue" that was "addressed" anymore... it's the how the admins went about it and their communication w/ the community that's wildly frustrating.

[Nullzone]

Worth repeating, since we're a few pages into the ELO topic specifically: ELO is something worth discussing, but is entirely a separate problem from the NTL issue. People want to play games with their friends without being unnecessarily penalized, and the current rationale for why this change was made is absurd on its face.

Currently, training mode forces the game into "real time" table configuration, which means that the table is destroyed after a prohibitively short timespan if there is no activity; if this is intended behavior, then training mode is not a viable solution for asynchronous play. If there is/should be a turn-based training mode, it is not obvious in how to access it from the play lobbies. Training mode also once upon a time limited what rule sets and other play options were available to you in certain games, though I'm not certain if this is still the case (it was an experience specific to my early days on BGA, and I've completely avoided training mode since as a result, so I can't speak to current behavior nor recall what games I observed it in).

[dschingis27]

ELO is something worth discussing, but is entirely a separate problem from the NTL issue. People want to play games with their friends without being unnecessarily penalized, [...]

The Elo topic is the entire issue, there is nothing else to discuss (maybe gift points, I give you that). If you only want to play with your friends without being unnecessarily penalized, just play training mode.

Currently, training mode forces the game into "real time" table configuration, [...]

No, it doesn't.

If there is/should be a turn-based training mode, it is not obvious in how to access it from the play lobbies.

It is very obvious. If you start a Training game from a turn-based lobby (doesn't matter old lobby or new lobby), you have your "turn-based training game" with up to 40 days for a move AFAIK.
Yes, in the old lobby in turn-based mode, it displays that Training is a real-time mode, which is just plain wrong information. You can ignore the wrong wording (and BGA should correct that imho).

Training mode also once upon a time limited what rule sets and other play options were available to you in certain games, [...]

No, training mode doesn't limit rule sets right now.

[JackyTheRipper]

Please bring back the no time limit mode with friends in real-time games. It's the only way I play with my game group, people I know and trust.

We like to play games and chat - opening a videochat on our phones. We also sometimes take little breaks and come back after 5 minutes. That is not possible anymore, for no good reason.

Also, only one of us usually reads the rules of a new game and then teaches the game to the rest of us in a real-time game with no timelimit and from there, we just start playing the game. Now, the start player would always be getting a time penalty because of the rules explanation that comes first.

It was mentioned that the old lobby through the "Play now" button would still have the "no timelimit - only with friends" option. Yes, it does. But it's not working, producing an error message.

So, deleting the no-timelimit option is very frustrating for us. No, we do not want to play training mode with no ELO ranking. That's part of the fun! No, we don't want a ticking clock that stresses us. We play as a group of people who know each other for years. We feel we are being punished. Why? Bring the feature back!

But I'm under the impression that admins have abandoned this thread and do not care about the players who want this feature back badly.

[Silene]

Please bring back the no time limit mode with friends in real-time games. It's the only way I play with my game group, people I know and trust.

We like to play games and chat - opening a videochat on our phones. We also sometimes take little breaks and come back after 5 minutes. That is not possible anymore, for no good reason.

Also, only one of us usually reads the rules of a new game and then teaches the game to the rest of us in a real-time game with no timelimit and from there, we just start playing the game. Now, the start player would always be getting a time penalty because of the rules explanation that comes first.

It was mentioned that the old lobby through the "Play now" button would still have the "no timelimit - only with friends" option. Yes, it does. But it's not working, producing an error message.

So, deleting the no-timelimit option is very frustrating for us. No, we do not want to play training mode with no ELO ranking. That's part of the fun! No, we don't want a ticking clock that stresses us. We play as a group of people who know each other for years. We feel we are being punished. Why? Bring the feature back!

But I'm under the impression that admins have abandoned this thread and do not care about the players who want this feature back badly.

If you play real-time anyway, there's absolutely no problem for you. Just set it up as turn-based table and play it real-time in your pace. Or do you feel stressed because the timer shows something like only 2 days of thinking time left?

[Cotj]

The fix they should have been pursuing was to remove the ability to do a RealTime friends only game with no time limit. Beyond that This was never really an issue.

If ELO was really the issue that people are "abusing it" they need to remove ELO from anything but tournament play. Because playing a turn based (with our without timer) does not fix this issue.

[Nullzone]

Currently, training mode forces the game into "real time" table configuration, [...]

No, it doesn't.

If there is/should be a turn-based training mode, it is not obvious in how to access it from the play lobbies.

It is very obvious. If you start a Training game from a turn-based lobby (doesn't matter old lobby or new lobby), you have your "turn-based training game" with up to 40 days for a move AFAIK.
Yes, in the old lobby in turn-based mode, it displays that Training is a real-time mode, which is just plain wrong information. You can ignore the wrong wording (and BGA should correct that imho).

Many of the posts from the previous thread on this issue (which was closed as "duplicate" despite being opened first, lol) disagree with you: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28186

[dschingis27]

Many of the posts from the previous thread on this issue (which was closed as "duplicate" despite being opened first, lol) disagree with you: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28186

I know and I already responded in the thread you linked that these posts are wrong (go to page 16 of that thread).

Just try it out yourself and you will see that training games started from the turn-based lobbies are usual turn-based training games without time limit (except for the 40 days limit of course). Since it's training mode, there is absolutely no risk involved for your reputation if you just try it out.

I have now created a bug report for this.
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=79441

[Damac]

ELO is something worth discussing, but is entirely a separate problem from the NTL issue. People want to play games with their friends without being unnecessarily penalized, [...]

The Elo topic is the entire issue, there is nothing else to discuss (maybe gift points, I give you that). If you only want to play with your friends without being unnecessarily penalized, just play training mode.

No, ELO is not the issue at all, they even said the original reason for the change was they had too many people "stuck" in games, who were sending in help requests ("10+ per day") to end their games. I'm sure updating the UI to let people know that games would auto-end after 5 weeks of no play would have been more than fine (our group didn't even know this until we had it happen in one of our games, with a player who couldn't play due to personal reasons).

I don't understand the ELO objection at all. The NTL was already limited to "friends only" play... so if someone timed out a game to avoid a negative ELO score, so what? It's not like it could be regularly abused, any friend group that had a poor sport like this in it would absolutely not keep playing with that player.

ELO is a just-for-fun number, anyone who takes it too seriously needs to re-evaluate things. And if some group really wanted to game the system, they can just as easily do it today with a 2-day time limit as they could with NTL.

Training mode isn't a good option. There's so many people commenting here, who have a friend group who love playing games together, and enjoy the fun of seeing their ELO scores. My group is like this, and we're all working professionals with families, who enjoy the fun of the ELO scores, but realistically can't commit to the maximum 2-day time limit. Why should BGA be forcing someone to get time penalties when the players themselves are all perfectly fine with that person taking a week to play their turn? Makes no sense to me.

It was for sure a bad decision removing the "NTL Turn-Based Friends-Only" option, it should be restored, I think the two threads on this topic make that clear to anyone who is not digging their heels in. But if someone has decided this is the hill they're going to die on, then at least put in something like a "1-month per turn Turn-Based Friends-Only" option, which would be nearly the same as the old system, and more reasonable for players who want to just have some light competitive fun playing games with their friends.

[dschingis27]

No, ELO is not the issue at all, [...]

So what other issue do you have then??

Yes, it wasn't the initial cause for the change. But it is the main thing left to discuss about regarding the question if NTL ranked should be reintroduced or not. Almost your whole post is about Elo. So what is the matter?