Board Game Arena

So I've been experimenting with some of the faster time settings for asynchronous games. I've found that 1 move/day games go pretty slowly for my liking, and playing on 12/24 moves/day works a lot better for me. But, I'm unsure how the playing hours setting interacts with arena matchmaking. I get that for non-arena games, I put up my preferred time range for playing and people join the table based on whether or not that time range works for them. But for arena games where matchmaking is done for me, does that mean I'll only ever get matched with people who have selected my exact time range? I've noticed that I have some games sitting it matchmaking for a couple days now, and I'm wondering if that's because nobody is selecting my exact 12:00 - 0:00. I'm happy to be a little flexible on the hours (eg 14:00 - 2:00 instead of 12:00 - 0:00), but I'm just worried that if I choose that option BGA is going to pair me with somebody who plays primarily in the middle of the night.

Doing 14 to 2 is doing any good, if you keep setting a 12 housr interval you will not increase the chance of being matched and in a time window
which is more inconvenient to you. You should elnarge the time window say 10 am to 2 am so that you will overlap with a wider set of time
windows. You can still skip most part of the night and have a time window larger than 12 hours. I wolud try 8 moves per day first to have an idea of how it works and then move slowly to fastest settings.

How do I set a 16 hour time window? There's a dropdown menu that lists 24 options, starting with '0:00 - 12:00', '1:00 - 13:00' etc, all the way up to '23:00 - 11:00', with no options larger than 12 hours.

I believe this is one area where the old lobby (Play Now) is vastly superior to the new - in the old, under the gear, you can select a number of 12 hour windows, even a decreasing hierarchy (eg. 11-11, 12-12, 1-1 might be your preferred windows, but you'll also accept 10-10 and 2-2, so you can set those two at a lower preference). The new lobby (game page) doesn't do this - it lets you be flexible, but I'm pretty sure flexible means "I'll take ANY setting" so could end up with the exact scenario you don't want.

As far as I know, you can only set Playing Hours as 12 hour windows, but I'm not sure if gmrsmrt means to choose additional windows so you get more options - but that isn't setting a longer window, just offering more options for matching.

nik592 wrote: ↑13 February 2025, 00:18 As far as I know, you can only set Playing Hours as 12 hour windows, but I'm not sure if gmrsmrt means to choose additional windows so you get more options - but that isn't setting a longer window, just offering more options for matching.

Yes, exactly. In any game, BGA playing hours must be a 12-hour period. Proposal to change that: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=59394

3 years now.