Board Game Arena

How is there a selection for choosing language preference when playing with others but no time zones? When i play turn based games (which is 90% of the time) i don’t want to match with people with very different time zones than myself. Because when I’m awake and taking my turns they’re sleeping… and vice versa.
It’d be great to be able to choose how wide of a range in time zone you’d like to be matched up against. For example I only want to play turn based games against those with +/-3 hrs of my time zone.

Timezones are useless. Some play in the morning, some play in the evening, some play all day long, some play during the night... What you want is active times, which may be related to timezone, but it's not one-to-one. Choose fast turn-based (8 turns per day or more) and you'll be able to choose play times.

Jellby wrote: ↑19 May 2025, 08:46 Choose fast turn-based (8 turns per day or more) and you'll be able to choose play times.

Unfortunately that's not an option when playing turn based arena. You have 2 days for a turn. You can't change that, as far as I know.

And timezones are not useless. For example I know for a fact that I don't want to play with anyone in Australia because they're almost always sleeping when I'm awake.

OverzealousMonk wrote: ↑19 May 2025, 11:57

Jellby wrote: ↑19 May 2025, 08:46 Choose fast turn-based (8 turns per day or more) and you'll be able to choose play times.

Unfortunately that's not an option when playing turn based arena. You have 2 days for a turn. You can't change that, as far as I know.

And timezones are not useless. For example I know for a fact that I don't want to play with anyone in Australia because they're almost always sleeping when I'm awake.

Arena has the same speed options for turn based as far as I remember (I used to play a lot of arena, but haven't for a long time). Most people seem to either not know this (like you) or don't bother changing their settings if they are aware of it, so it can take a lot longer to find matches at faster speeds (which may be another reason people don't set their speeds options faster).

All the settings are in the little cog menu by each individual game (you can have different speed settings for each game).

OverzealousMonk wrote: ↑19 May 2025, 11:57 And timezones are not useless. For example I know for a fact that I don't want to play with anyone in Australia because they're almost always sleeping when I'm awake.

I often find people from Australia (or at least with an Australian flag in their profile) who are awake when I'm awake (during daytime in Europe). It's sometimes very late or early for them, but they're awake, because we play real-time games. I can also easily find people in Europe who are never awake (or at least in BGA) when I'm awake. So filtering by timezone would only probably give too many false positives and false negatives, because you don't really care about timezones, you care about when people are active playing games.

Remkar wrote: ↑19 May 2025, 12:18

OverzealousMonk wrote: ↑19 May 2025, 11:57

Jellby wrote: ↑19 May 2025, 08:46 Choose fast turn-based (8 turns per day or more) and you'll be able to choose play times.

Unfortunately that's not an option when playing turn based arena. You have 2 days for a turn. You can't change that, as far as I know.

And timezones are not useless. For example I know for a fact that I don't want to play with anyone in Australia because they're almost always sleeping when I'm awake.

Arena has the same speed options for turn based as far as I remember (I used to play a lot of arena, but haven't for a long time). Most people seem to either not know this (like you) or don't bother changing their settings if they are aware of it, so it can take a lot longer to find matches at faster speeds (which may be another reason people don't set their speeds options faster).

All the settings are in the little cog menu by each individual game (you can have different speed settings for each game).

Yep, Remkar is correct, you can choose your table speed in Arena same as anywhere else. Automatic settings in the old lobby are controlled by the cog, but if you're setting up via the game pages, you can set the speed. That said, if you're open to more than one time setting, you may find yourself on a non-preferred time setting - but on the flip side, if you restrict to only a single time setting, it will probably take longer to get a game.

I can be found on BGA at all sorts of times - including 3am-4am when my insomnia kicks up. Right now it's about 7.30am. I was also on here yesterday a couple of times during my workday (between 9am-2pm), again around 4pm, 6pm and 10pm (and only not again as all my games were quiet after that). I'll probably be checking in here a bunch of times today. My partner on the other hand typically only plays first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Everyone's individual. Timezone tells you where the night-time is for them, but not when they play. I've had fast games with people from other countries than mine and slow games with people in my country.

nik592 wrote: ↑19 May 2025, 22:50 I can be found on BGA at all sorts of times - including 3am-4am when my insomnia kicks up. Right now it's about 7.30am. I was also on here yesterday a couple of times during my workday (between 9am-2pm), again around 4pm, 6pm and 10pm (and only not again as all my games were quiet after that). I'll probably be checking in here a bunch of times today. My partner on the other hand typically only plays first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Everyone's individual. Timezone tells you where the night-time is for them, but not when they play. I've had fast games with people from other countries than mine and slow games with people in my country.

Pin this to the top of the forum and set this up as an auto-reply to be the first response whenever someone starts a new thread on this same old topic.

Everyone who makes this suggestions has this narrow view that whenever they play in their time zone must be whenever everyone else in the world plays in their own time zone. Therefore, they falsely conclude that it's impossible for someone 12 time zones away to be playing at a time that's compatible, and also falsely conclude that just because someone is in the same time zone they are automatically playing at a time that is compatible.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑20 May 2025, 01:31

nik592 wrote: ↑19 May 2025, 22:50 I can be found on BGA at all sorts of times - including 3am-4am when my insomnia kicks up. Right now it's about 7.30am. I was also on here yesterday a couple of times during my workday (between 9am-2pm), again around 4pm, 6pm and 10pm (and only not again as all my games were quiet after that). I'll probably be checking in here a bunch of times today. My partner on the other hand typically only plays first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Everyone's individual. Timezone tells you where the night-time is for them, but not when they play. I've had fast games with people from other countries than mine and slow games with people in my country.

Pin this to the top of the forum and set this up as an auto-reply to be the first response whenever someone starts a new thread on this same old topic.

Everyone who makes this suggestions has this narrow view that whenever they play in their time zone must be whenever everyone else in the world plays in their own time zone. Therefore, they falsely conclude that it's impossible for someone 12 time zones away to be playing at a time that's compatible, and also falsely conclude that just because someone is in the same time zone they are automatically playing at a time that is compatible.

This is an ask for an optional configuration setting. Not something enforced for all games. You’d be able to set your preference for it or just leave it as default. Just like any other optional preference that currently exists. In my experience of playing turn based games for years, when i play against ppl in my time zone (americas) games go quick… against Europeans? They stop playing when it’s their bedtime… against Australia? Asia? Likewise but nightmarishly slower because our time zones don’t align at all.

OverzealousMonk wrote: ↑20 May 2025, 02:00 This is an ask for an optional configuration setting. Not something enforced for all games.

The point is more that you're asking for a feature to be coded that takes time, effort and maintenance (and potentially introduces its own set of bugs), but that feature is unlikely to get you the outcome you expect. I'm also assuming you're looking for exact matches to your timezone? As that's going to actually reduce the pool of suitable players. A player might be 1-2 hours difference from you and the affect on that may be negligible as far as where their playing time overlaps with yours (in fact, the point being raised is that a person with a time difference 14 hours from you might also work the same way, depending on what time of day both you and they play). And to implement it for overlapping timezones, or within a range introduces more complexity to the solution (not impossible, but more effort/maintenance/etc.).

A better suggestion might be that everyone should set their default playing and/or non-playing hours and have some kind of matching based on that, though that still has the consideration for whether it is implemented as exact matches or overlapping ranges. Possibly they could leverage the existing preferences for playing hours that you can set in the old lobby for automatic matches. That said, this hasn't been implemented in the new lobby, and I'm not sure if that's due to how easy it is (or isn't) or just a feature they haven't got to, or one they don't intend to get to. Allowing a user to manually set their playing hours also requires them to maintain setting it, which not everyone would probably do. And even though I am here off and on all day most days, every now and then, I have a busy weekend or something, and maybe I only login once a day, so then my playing hours are "wrong".

In all honesty, I think you should take the suggestion made by Jellby in the first reply:

Jellby wrote: ↑19 May 2025, 08:46 Choose fast turn-based (8 turns per day or more) and you'll be able to choose play times.

And as others have pointed out, yes, this is an option for Arena games.

OverzealousMonk wrote: ↑19 May 2025, 02:27 How is there a selection for choosing language preference when playing with others but no time zones? When i play turn based games (which is 90% of the time) i don’t want to match with people with very different time zones than myself. Because when I’m awake and taking my turns they’re sleeping… and vice versa.
It’d be great to be able to choose how wide of a range in time zone you’d like to be matched up against. For example I only want to play turn based games against those with +/-3 hrs of my time zone.

But playing with people in different time zones is exactly what turn based mode is meant for. If you're playing with people in your own time zone, play real time.