Board Game Arena

I recently played a game across 3 or 4 days, but one of those evenings I was not able to play and my timer went over. All players kept playing once I responded, and we had a whole other day of play after this.

Then 1 turn before I was about to win, someone quit because I took too long the day before.

What are people's thoughts on this?

I think if someone is taking too long, then sure, time them out, but if you choose to continue, then I think the option to time them out should disappear unless they time out again as it feels like the opponents were OK with time but abused the situation to avoid losing on their stats.

Interested in what people think.

Someone quit or someone expelled you?

If they quit, they took a penalty and the lost the game, they avoided nothing except playing the rest of the game.

If they expelled you, it's because you were still in red time, and it's their right to do it at any time, even in the last turn, for whatever reason, even to avoid losing. The moment you went in red (and remained in red) you gave them the power to do that.

They expelled me, sorry I am not used to all the terminology.

My issue is that is seems unfair to continue playing but expel if you will lose. Just looking to see what others think.

Sure, I took too l long one evening. But all players kept on for another day and there was no more lateness. So should there not be some sort of acceptance and they lose the ability to expel for the past lateness if they continue playing?

And yes, I understand they had the right under the current system, just wondering what people think of it and this situation.

Lobotnik wrote: ↑03 February 2024, 07:52 Then 1 turn before I was about to win, someone quit because I took too long the day before.

What are people's thoughts on this?

I has come up repeatedly. You were over your time when they expelled you (the terminology is important). They cannot expel you if you are in your time, regardless of how much or how long you were over time earlier in the game - so at the moment they expelled you this was a completely legal move.

This differs between two player games and multi-player games (by your description yours was a multiplayer game):

In a two player game 'clocking' the opponent is a perfectly valid way to win - it is fine to play for it, it is as valid as any other victory, it doesn't matter if you are a million points ahead if you go over you time your presented your opponent a valid move to win - you have no cause for complaint.

Its still a legal move in multi-player games and the person who does it has not done anything wrong but no-one likes the way the system works. If a player is expelled the other players draw for first place and the expelled player comes last. This is of modest importance for the game itself, but in terms of tournament standings, Elo ratings, Arena scores, etc. it is always in the interest of the person in last place to expel somebody who is over their time - because it improves their standing. That is not an issue for the expelled player (you lost, you should come last, works fine). The problem is for all of the people who neither expel (so are not in last place) nor are expelled (so have not played badly). And it is the impact it has on those players which cause the problem - unfortunately no-one has been able to come up with a system that would work better.

So, in the case you describe you don't have any reason to complain. You screwed up and were punished for it (ie you made a bad move and came last). You would have had a cause for complaint if you were in first place and somebody expelled the player in second and thus moved themselves from last to drawing with you in first. That happens a lot, and its problem, and if there was an easy way to fix it that would be worth pressing BGA.


P.S. One partial fix that has been suggested but would not be straighforward to implement would be for people to be auto-expelled if they go over time, which would remove any ambiguity. Unfortunately it would almost certainly require an option to be added to disable it for non-Arena, non-tournament games, for players playing more casual turn based games.

It’s not a very friendly thing to have done to you, but the rules are the same for everyone and they have a right to do it.

Well, if they stated in chat that, that was their reasoning then it probably does have something to do with not wanting to lose. I've had issues where people who were going to lose went over their time. Other players got tired of waiting and expelled them. It's frustrating when things like this happen, but it is what it is. I had someone who I played with that wasn't going to come in first, purposely time out and was expelled after a while. They won the other game I was in with them and based on the trend I noticed [sorry, I'm a snoop] they seem to timeout on games they aren't doing well on.