Board Game Arena

I am hosting 7 Wonders games. Unfortunately, I often have to wait much longer before I can play than non-paying players who are only joining games rather than hosting games.

What happens is that these players simply join multiple games. Whenever one of these games fills up, that game starts and they automatically leave the other games where they were waiting. So the hosts of these other games lose their players. This happens fast and frequently, and it's frustrating when you're trying to host a game with your preferred settings.

This also creates a strong bias towards games with lower player numbers. Not because people actually prefer low player numbers, but because these games fill up faster. Players who are waiting in both a 4 player game and a 6 player game, will automatically be chucked out of the 6 player game lobby once the 4 player game starts.

If non-paying members couldn't join multiple game lobbies, this effect would be mitigated. This also stimulates these players to make a more conscious choice of which game to join (i.e. which settings they prefer).

The players were open to multiple options. This lets them have it and reach a game faster. There is no reason they should be forced to wait at a slower table when they could be playing something they wanted instead.

That's auto join feature, not a bug.

Ceaseless wrote: ↑01 February 2025, 04:31 There is no reason [...]

I literally just listed some reasons in my opening post.

Kataphraktos wrote: ↑02 February 2025, 22:13

Ceaseless wrote: ↑01 February 2025, 04:31 There is no reason [...]

I literally just listed some reasons in my opening post.

Stopping players from playing games they want to play isn't what I'd call a reason.

I wonder if you actually read the OP.

So you're surprised that there is a tradeoff between having your games start faster and choosing less popular table settings? Also, nothing is stopping you from creating multiple tables with varying settings and play whichever table fills up first, if you are not picky about it.

A player who joins multiple tables with different settings prefers the faster start of the game over some settings like number of players. So let's say they are not allowed to join multiple tables at once and they joined your table that still misses, let's say, 4 players. Another table opens for a smaller number of players and quickly it nearly fills so that only one or two players are missed there. What makes you think the player who couldn't join both tables will not just manually leave your table and join another that is closer to start? Why do you think anything except for the amount of clicking that a player needs to make will change?