Board Game Arena

I played my first arena game today. The timers are absurd! It seems to be set to the fastest setting! Why on earth would that be done with preludes in play? I had almost no time to make my decision. I nearly forfeited on time. And if I played experimental forest or Acquired space agency, it would have been a forfeit.

This needs to be fixed, otherwise real-time play is impossible.

Time settings are not specified in Arena, you are playing with whatever your opponent chose and you didn't block in your settings.

Jellby wrote: ↑17 April 2025, 13:58 Time settings are not specified in Arena, you are playing with whatever your opponent chose and you didn't block in your settings.

My fault. I was informed of this by a friend after I made my post.

Still, even on the slowest real-time settings, Experimental Forest could be a problem.

Why is experimental forest a problem? I don't think the timer goes down while you are waiting for animations.
And if you think the animations are too slow, click the gear icon, and drag the slider for "animation time" to reduce it.

It is definitely true that there is little time to calculate deep lines with the current amount of time, but oh well...

ft029 wrote: ↑18 April 2025, 07:44 Why is experimental forest a problem? I don't think the timer goes down while you are waiting for animations.
And if you think the animations are too slow, click the gear icon, and drag the slider for "animation time" to reduce it.

It is definitely true that there is little time to calculate deep lines with the current amount of time, but oh well...

I thought the timer runs as long as it is the player's turn. I could be wrong.
As for animations - is that considered an "animation"? The game has to show the players the revealed cards.

Has anyone played this prelude in a real-time game with a short timer? If so, please confirm one way or the other whether this is a problem.
Thanks

The timer is paused during animations.
Reducing animation time makes Experimental Forest and Acquired Space Agency **much** faster. Maybe too fast for me to process, but usually I look over them during my opponent's next turn. (And honestly it's not worth paying attention to, other than extremely important cards e.g. multiple 1pt/jovian cards come by, or if you're playing super try-hard).

ft029 wrote: ↑18 April 2025, 08:41 The timer is paused during animations.
Reducing animation time makes Experimental Forest and Acquired Space Agency **much** faster. Maybe too fast for me to process, but usually I look over them during my opponent's next turn. (And honestly it's not worth paying attention to, other than extremely important cards e.g. multiple 1pt/jovian cards come by, or if you're playing super try-hard).

Thank you, that is good to know. I was worrying over a non-problem

Does it show the discarded cards in the game log?

Yes