playing hours

[DrSMP]

Can someone explain to me "Playing Hours". If I want to set-up a game that plays between 8:00am to 10pm in my time zone do I check 8:00 - 22:00? Is it based on my time zone or is that time based on some standard time zone that I need to align with? It seems like when I set-up a fast game, I end up getting people from half way around the world who's timer has the moon symbol displayed during a large portion of my play hours. What am I doing wrong?

[Meeplelowda]

Can someone explain to me "Playing Hours". If I want to set-up a game that plays between 8:00am to 10pm in my time zone do I check 8:00 - 22:00? Is it based on my time zone or is that time based on some standard time zone that I need to align with? It seems like when I set-up a fast game, I end up getting people from half way around the world who's timer has the moon symbol displayed during a large portion of my play hours. What am I doing wrong?

Playing hours are displayed in your time zone (as determined by your device's system clock). Anyone who bothers to look at the settings before joining (and many people don't) will see those hours in their local time. To clarify, if you set it to 8 am to 8 pm in your local time (all windows are 12 hours), someone else may see the playing hours as 1 am to 1 pm in their time zone.

So there is no such thing as their being a moon "during a large portion of my playing hours." The moon is only displayed during non-playing hours. So if you thought because you have it set 8 am to 8 pm in your local time that the hours are 8 am to 8 pm in everyone else's local time so why is there a moon when it's 3 pm in their country, that's not how it works.

[OkayishPerson]

Wow, that was kind of a condescending response. I have the same question I can’t seem to get answered DrSMP. I’m currently in a game set 0400-1600 and everyone else has 10, 12, and 14 hours thinking time remaining, while I am somehow 7 hours over so I’m getting all kinds of penalties It’s supposed to be 12 or 24 turns per day between all of us and we get through 4. Ridiculous. Someone’s time is not set correctly is all I can think. It’s pretty disheartening because now my rating has tanked and people keep canceling games with me. I don’t think I’ll play any turn based games again

[Shivaware]

Wow, that was kind of a condescending response. I have the same question I can’t seem to get answered DrSMP. I’m currently in a game set 0400-1600 and everyone else has 10, 12, and 14 hours thinking time remaining, while I am somehow 7 hours over so I’m getting all kinds of penalties It’s supposed to be 12 or 24 turns per day between all of us and we get through 4. Ridiculous. Someone’s time is not set correctly is all I can think. It’s pretty disheartening because now my rating has tanked and people keep canceling games with me. I don’t think I’ll play any turn based games again

I checked the game you are in and your remaining time seems plausible given how quickly you are taking your moves. I notice that the current remaining times for your opponents are now 10h54m, 10h12m, 6h30m, and -3h16m.

You are playing a 24 moves per day fast turn-based game. What this means is that your clock starts with 12 hours on it and every time it is your turn, 30 minutes are added to your clock. The total time on your clock can never exceed 12 hours, but can go negative without limit (actually, I think the game will be deleted after around 40 days of no activity). The clock only counts down during the playing hours which are between 4am and 4pm for you. People are still allowed to make moves outside of the playing hours and they will still get their 30 minutes added to their clock.

Looking at the game log, I can see when all of the moves were taken. The first move is where people choose their initial destination tickets and everyone's clock counts down at the same time. Here are the times you have taken to do all of your moves:

10:49 - 12:26 (1:37)
16:14 - 22:42 (0)
8:05 - 10:02 (1:57)
13:23 - 20:33 (2:37)
8:36 - 10:37 (2:01)
12:12 - 13:32 (1:20)
0:31 - 9:14 (5:14)
11:14 - 11:14 (0)
15:16 - 16:08 (0:44)
22:34 - 8:55 (4:55)
2:26 - 8:26 (4:26)
17:22 - 17:36 (0)

The numbers in brackets are the amount of time lost on your clock, taking the playing hours into account. Your total thinking time adds up to 24h51m and you've gained 5h30m in time for the 11 moves you've taken after the first one. Subtracting that and your initial 12h gives the current -7h21m on your clock at this moment.

The 24 moves per day speed is a very aggressive setting and assumes you can make your move within 30 minutes during your playing hours. That is not realistic for all people, but can be done. Playing hours that start at 4am would definitely not work well for me.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem with these settings is that there are often people that join that are either unaware of the playing hours or they do not care. Many are asleep right in the middle of the playing hours and quickly run out of time. A big contributing factor is that the new playing lobby on the game page allows people to be flexible on the playing speed, and BGA will happily place those people into games with wildly inappropriate playing hours. You can vote for this bug to try to address this problem: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=57379

[Meeplelowda]

Unfortunately, the biggest problem with these settings is that there are often people that join that are either unaware of the playing hours or they do not care.

Or don't understand how they work. Which is understandable, because the best explanations about how they work are in the forums instead of the FAQ where they should be.

[expoolman]

I have seen the Moon symbol during my turn at least a few times. It is some kind of error. Refresh page has fixed this every time so far.

[alexsim]

You don't have to avoid async games - just use the "manual" dropdown in the lobby (vs. "Automatic" or "Friends") and then avoid games that have more than 1 or 2 moves a day. It might be harder to find invitations for some games, but you can always create a new invitation of your own.

(To be clear: "PLAY NOW", then set the filters to Simple/Turn-based/Manual. It works best if you have a short list of games marked as Favorites.)

[geo_rina]

I'm playing turn-based games, 8 turns per day and set my playing time from 9am to 9pm. However, I was added to a game of Age of Innovation with players from China and South Korea and the playing hours are counted based on their time zone. So for me it's night time. And my time is just getting reduced brutally. Normally I play respecting my playing time limit, on average it doesn't take me more than an hour to make my move. But at night I need to sleep and preferably without time penalties. How do I get more control over which games in terms of playing hours I'm added to?

[Meeplelowda]

How do I get more control over which games in terms of playing hours I'm added to?

1) Choose games from the Play Now page with the right (or bottom on mobile) setting on "Manual" (as opposed to Automatic or Friends) and only join games with compatible playing hours, which will be displayed for fast turn-based games, or set those parameters yourself if you're creating the table.

or

2) If you really want to use automatic matching, you set the right (or bottom) option to Automatic, then click the gear icon under your ELO for that game, then click 'Show advanced options," then click "Change" under "Playing Hours."

or

3) From the single game lobby, when you select a fast turn-based speed an option to select playing hours opens up. On the single game lobby, do not...Do Not...DO NOT put the "switch" next to the speed and playing hours option in the right position. This means you may have a preference, but you are flexible to any setting. This is how you might randomly get put in a fast turn-based game with paying hours 1 am to 1 pm your time when you really wanted a 1 turn per day game.

[nik592]

You don't have to avoid async games - just use the "manual" dropdown in the lobby (vs. "Automatic" or "Friends") and then avoid games that have more than 1 or 2 moves a day. It might be harder to find invitations for some games, but you can always create a new invitation of your own.

You can play games up to 4 turns/day without playing hours. For most games, it's not that hard to find players in those speed settings (I almost exclusively play turn-based, generally preferring 4 turns/day but willing to accept a bit slower).