Board Game Arena

I'm having the worst time ever in Arena - while waiting for games during matchmaking, and I'm still on my phone, reading a news article or checking email or something, and there is no chime or anything to let me know that the Arena game I've been waiting for is starting, and the next thing I hear is that dreadful sound when I've lost and I didn't even get to play the game! It costs me Karma and Arena points and it is extremely frustrating. There needs to be an Accept button before the game starts like in non-Arena games. PLEASE FIX THIS.

twiddly2 wrote: ↑03 August 2025, 05:33 I'm having the worst time ever in Arena - while waiting for games during matchmaking, and I'm still on my phone, reading a news article or checking email or something, and there is no chime or anything to let me know that the Arena game I've been waiting for is starting, and the next thing I hear is that dreadful sound when I've lost and I didn't even get to play the game! It costs me Karma and Arena points and it is extremely frustrating. There needs to be an Accept button before the game starts like in non-Arena games. PLEASE FIX THIS.

Yes, I feel your pain, has happened to me in tournaments. Fixing your reputation when you get capped at 10 tables is for punishment is not what I want to be doing in my time here.

I believe the reason there isn't one is because you're not supposed to know who your opponent is. That's not to say they couldn't hide that information, but it does make it an extra step in the process. I suspect there'd also be concerns about people using it to control the matchmaking (which apparently there are already ways to do, but I don't think BGA would want there to be more).

I would suggest that if you're waiting for a real-time game, you probably shouldn't be navigating away from the screen. I get it, I'd want to do the same, but when I play RT games (which isn't often), I make sure the screen where I'm waiting is still visible, whether that's me splitting the screen on my PC, or using my phone to browse while waiting on my PC. If I'm away from my PC and only had my phone, I'd either choose to not browse elsewhere while waiting, or not to play a RT game. But up to you.

For both Play Now and Arena real time it should be possible to have an audible “game starting” notice. Please suggest it via “report a bug” as a site improvement or add to an existing similar suggestion.

Ideally you shouldn't navigate away from the page. However I get that you might want to do something else while waiting in queue. If you play from your phone that makes it more difficult. I've suggested that players be dropped from queue or time out from queue.

In games that I am in, I try to notify players that seem slow starting a new game/ playing a first turn with a "are you still there?". Which does make a chime. You can't count on other players doing that for you and some players will take any opportunity to kick another player for a freebie point.
So unfortunatly as it stands now, it would be best to keep the BGA window open so you dn't miss a new game starting.

Possibly a different issue, but I haven't been getting notifications of turn-based arena games starting, either. Normally BGA sends email when it's my turn on a turn-based table, but that hadn't been happening recently when I'm the first player on a new arena table. Second move & later email notifications arrive as expected.

I understand your frustration. I've been playing since 2019, and it's always been a problem. Unfortunately, there seems to be no intention to resolve this. Watching your screen while queued isn't viable; some games have wait times of over 30 minutes.

While I take your point that it would be nice if they fixed the problem, as you note, there doesn't seem to be any intention to do so. And since there isn't, the choice left to you is to make other choices about queuing. Like not queuing for games that take 30 minutes when all you have is your phone and you don't want it tied up waiting for a game for 30 minutes. As I said, I don't queue for RT games when I can't keep the screen open while queuing because I don't want to get booted from a game I didn't know was starting.

(and you can also vote for bug reports to fix the problem too, but until they do, there's not much else you can do)