Playing on BGA is fun. The process of finding and starting a game however is less enjoyable. Below I share some of my observations. If you know how I can improve my experience please help me out!
Relevant settings:
Simple Game, Real-time, Automatic choice of opponents
Observations from playing: 6 nimmt!, Alhambra, Ticket to Ride, Splendor, Puerto Rico
- 1. I see two ways to search a game. From the lobby, or from the dedicated game page (where you end up if you press Play again after a game). What is the difference between these two, and why does it exist?
- 2. Lineup for a game is displayed, Player x declines to start the game, I press Play Now again, and that Player x again is included in the lineup at that new table, again declines to start, and the cycle repeats. And as we have never played with that player before, we cannot block them either. And of course they have not violated the Terms.
- 3. Player x does not press the Accept button for a while, someone else decides to stop waiting and quits, I press Play Now again, and at the next table player x is again in the lineup, again does not Accept, and the cycle repeats.
- 4. Sometimes when trying to start a game it says “Player x refuses to play with player y”, which causes the table to collapse and we need to restart the searching process. Shouldn’t this be checked before seating players?
- 5. Sometimes I get seated at tables that do not match my preferences (“I never want to play with …”). I have only seen this happen when searching from the Lobby, not from the Replay screen.
- 6. In the Lobby the status is “searching for 0 opponents, but no table is created”.
- 7. Every now and then I am suddenly a spectator at a table, when I was only looking to play myself. I'm quite sure this has happened after I confirmed to start the game.
- 8. The table chats are confusing and mostly uninformative to me. When a game has started a player’s typed messages can be fun, useful and appropriate. Endless pop-ups of “player x joined the game”, “player y has left the game” don’t add any useful information. Is there a setting to stop seeing this
Relevant settings:
Simple Game, Real-time, Automatic choice of opponents
Observations from playing: 6 nimmt!, Alhambra, Ticket to Ride, Splendor, Puerto Rico