Board Game Arena

I've just started playing arena games and the auto game launcher is really annoying. I've had two expels in the last 2 days where I didn't even know the game had started. Why are players allowed to expel you with 0% played? It seems to me that either the action needs to be abort only (no penalty if no play taken place) or else there needs to be some kind of manual acceptance to start the game. I now have penalties applied for not knowing a game has started. How is that fair? It makes it look like I quit games when I haven't.

While not having penalties when abandoning even if at 0% is bad because doing so one could dodge opponents for free, which is fine in simple game but shouldn't be allowed in arena, I fully agree with your suggestion of adding some kind of manual acceptance before the game start. I'm actually very happy to be not the only one feeling the need of such a feature.
(Unlike in simple game the opponent(s) name(s) should not be revealed until you accept of course)

Isn't it more like a bug if you don't get messages that a game has started?

ExaltedAngel wrote: ↑25 February 2023, 13:37 While not having penalties when abandoning even if at 0% is bad because doing so one could dodge opponents for free, which is fine in simple game but shouldn't be allowed in arena, I fully agree with your suggestion of adding some kind of manual acceptance before the game start. I'm actually very happy to be not the only one feeling the need of such a feature.
(Unlike in simple game the opponent(s) name(s) should not be revealed until you accept of course)

Agree

ExaltedAngel wrote: ↑25 February 2023, 13:37 While not having penalties when abandoning even if at 0% is bad because doing so one could dodge opponents for free, which is fine in simple game but shouldn't be allowed in arena, I fully agree with your suggestion of adding some kind of manual acceptance before the game start. I'm actually very happy to be not the only one feeling the need of such a feature.
(Unlike in simple game the opponent(s) name(s) should not be revealed until you accept of course)

This seems sensible to me. The question is whether anyone from the coding / web development team pays any attention to the forums? How do we try and get this change implemented?

KenFin1 wrote: ↑27 February 2023, 21:57 This seems sensible to me. The question is whether anyone from the coding / web development team pays any attention to the forums? How do we try and get this change implemented?

Probably by submitting a suggestion with some sort of ticket, but I'm pretty new on the platform and still don't know how to handle such things

Isn't that only a concern with real time games? I think the solution is to avoid joining the real time queue, from your opponent's perspective it's frustrating to wait 20+ minutes for a game only for it to not actually happen because one of the people joining wasn't actually ready to play.

I got a new one today. I got expelled from an Arena game while I was playing a turnbased game! They didn't attempt to message me to ask "hey are you there"? Just sat and kicked me as soon as they could to get cheap points.

This site is a joke. It should not allow games to launch if you're in a game window on something else. Being afk is one thing, but actually being in another game?!

If you agree, here's an old but still active suggestion to vote for, to confirm readiness to play arena games before starting them (also, OF COURSE don't show the opponents until all players have confirmed ready):

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=14271

I entirely gave up on real-time arena mode for relatively unpopular games because of this problem. It's not worth the hassle, and I assume this very problem contributes to those games being relatively unpopular in real-time arena mode!