why most people i play with that are from US or china are slow?

[superpancho]

real question here , not about judgement but curiosity, so no need for ego triggered response

most people i play with that are either from china or US are really slow i can't figured out why since 4G is now almost everywhere and wifi too

I don't have exact stats here but honestly i talking about at least 50 % maybe even close to 75% of them being really slow when almost any other countries location wil be more like 20 % ... and approximate stats but recurrent things after years of playing thousands games ..
not talking about feeling slow talking about real time taken verified at the end of game

???

[Jellby]

Do you have any real stats or are those simply your impressions?

[euklid314]

Might be a matter of which games you play and at wich times you play. I cannot at all confirm your findings for my games.

But I am interested in your statistic. It sounds like you have no(?) data ("no exact stats") yet you claim it is not just feeling. Can you tell about your data in more detail?

[Edit: Jellby seemed to have the same question at the same time. I wrote in parallel.]

[superpancho]

when i mean no stats i mean i don't really count every game it happens but like i said it is more than 50 % for sure
and it's not an impression cause i check the time given at the end of the game by boardgamearena i don't know in English how they say it in french it's like thinking time ...plus the game time

the game are mostly seasons and lost cities

seasons being a bit particular cause extra combo can take extra time but i am talking about people taking time even to do mostly nothing

respectively seasons is 10 /15 min game that can become a 20 to even 30 minutes in case i am talking about
lost cities a 5 min game become 8 to even 15 minutes

take in account that for example a 15 minutes game that become 25 min the extra 10 minutes is an extra thinking time for the opponent

[Jellby]

When I say impression, I don't mean the fact that they are slow, but the fact that they are more in proportion from those countries than elsewhere. I'm sorry but those "for sure" statistics mean next to nothing, humans are too good at making up patterns and selectively remembering things. Write down all opponents you encounter for a while, with their countries and whether or not they are slow. When you have enough data you'll see if it's just an impression or something real.

Some factors to ponder is that those are both big countries in terms of population, so you'll meet many more players from them than from say Surinam or Madagascar (and if you only ever met one player from Surinam, and they were slow, that would be 100%, but would you remember it? Or would you dismiss it because only one player is not enough for statistics?). Also those are countries with time zones far from yours, and far from the BGA headquarters and possibly servers... that may matter too.

[h_illes]

It could happen that in the player base of those games, the slower players mostly coincide with the US and Chinese people. For a given game and given nationalities, there is a small probability that this would happen, but for some games for some nationalities, the probability is not that small, and you can chalk it up to randomness.

[FroggerWimsey]

Difference of time zones probably explains a big part of that.

The hours someone is awake/playing will correspond most closely with their own geographic area, and conversely players in other time zones will not have as much overlap and thus are more likely to be 'slow' to play when they are not awake or on BGA. Also keep in mind that the US has 5-6 different time zones just for states (not even including territories).

[nik592]

OP is talking about RT games, judging by what they actually play, so timezones are not at play here.

Here's some data for you - I looked at your recent games in Seasons and Lost Cities until I had at least 10 data points (lots more available for Seasons obviously). I did exclude a few games - a couple where a player was booted (since the thinking time wouldn't be complete), and one where the user account was deleted so the nationality is unknown. I got back about 5 days before I had the data points I wanted.

SEASONS
USA 10:04
Japan 4:42
France 5:40
China 7:13
Russia 6:20
Canada 6:10
Italy 8:12
Taiwan 6:40
Taiwan 4:51
China 8:41
Poland 6:17
Belgium 6:32
China 5:14
Japan 8:33
USA 7:55
USA 6:21
Belgium 5:17
France 9:51
Vietnam 4:09
HK 17:37
Spain 5:55
Turkey 7:39

LOST CITIES
Argentina 2:37
USA 1:34
USA 2:16
N/lands 2:02
USA 0:51
Spain 1:40
USA 2:03
France 1:37
China 3:38
France 3:12
USA 2:16

This is a VERY small sample size, but as far as Lost Cities go, I'd say your gut feeling is well off. All the times are pretty close and while China does have the slowest player, the next slowest were players from France and Argentina, and the fastest was a USA player. USA seems to dominate the player pool here, which probably accounts for what you think you're seeing - you're just seeing more USA players, so when you see a slow one, you notice them, but you probably don't look twice at the quick ones.

Seasons is a bit less conclusive? Most of the short player times come from countries that aren't USA or China, but among the 11 longest times, 4 are from either USA or China, while the fastest 11 includes only 2 from USA/China. But the sample size is too small to really be conclusive - you'd need to spend longer recording data. Gather 100 samples and see where you're at - but again, that's probably too small a sample to really draw conclusions either, but it may tell you if your gut feeling is on track or not.

Humans are REALLY bad at detecting patterns. We notice data that sticks out, especially when we THINK we're noticing a pattern, we're really good at spotting data that confirms that, but pretty terrible at noticing data that doesn't.

[yodamus]

I know this sounds crazy. But some truth to it. From personal experience. It could all depend on the terrain your opponents live at. I live in an area full of oak trees. Have 5g. And wifi. But barely work at times. And many of my turns are slowed. Lately a lot of my moves. Go thru this. Waiting for server for 5-10 seconds. Then move is updating for another 5-10 seconds. Even times I have to refresh or leave site and come back to get move to finish. . Big congested cities also slow down and hamper speeds. Some of us. Seem to constantly lose connection to server. Happens to me a lot. Red banners galore. All this may be happening to us in the USA more than others. And most of that is on bga end and they have been working on improving. Been some improvement..That is just my opinion and thoughts.. since I could be one of those slow players.

[tabicat]

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