Board Game Arena

I love playing with people from anywhere and everywhere. As someone who plays mostly turned-based games on here, I've noticed that I'll often get in a cycle where I'm in games of Catan or Forest Shuffle and no one will play all day (for me) but when I wake up in the morning, I have a pile of games to catch up on.

Not even sure if it would be hard to set up, but would there be a way to set up a +/- X hours from your time zone filter. That way, the people who join the tables you set up are at least somewhat close to the hours you'd be playing.

Apologies if this is a topic that is brought up a lot.

If you see a player's timezone (or rather, the country/region flag they have chosen in their profile, because that's the closest available setting), are you able to say which hours that player will be active? Really?

MouseRat23 wrote: ↑30 April 2026, 18:25 Apologies if this is a topic that is brought up a lot.

It’s definitely been brought up before, though more commonly in the “Suggestions” forum.

https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 99#p216899
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 78#p213078
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 73#p192373

Here’s my standard response: if you join games faster than 4x/day, they come with “playing hours”; the clocks only count down 12 hours a day. Pay attention to the playing hours and only join/start games with playing yours you deem compatible, and you’ll be all set.

This is preferable to your suggestion because this way you can get night owls in other parts of the world who still have a compatible sleep schedule to you and you avoid players in your own TZ who have incompatible schedules.

There is, however, an issue with the Game page (“new lobby”) wherein people who say they are flexible on game speed can get dropped into fast games with incompatible schedules. To avoid this I recommend a) using the Play Now page with the gear icon next to each game, b) making sure everyone else at the table knows the playing hours, and c) voting for this bug.

That's not a great solution because wanting to play with people with compatible playing hours is not the same as wanting to play games with a very fast clock. Someone may still want a game that gives you a maximum of 36 hours or even 6 days, or a game that gives you +12h when you make a move, yet at the same time wish to play with people who are likely to make one or two moves during your "daytime" more often than not. This would let you sometimes skip a day when you're very busy, or at least not stress about whether you can skip a day even if you do end up moving, but still on average give you games that make progress during your daytime.

I prefer fast-turn based, but sometimes my attempt at a game sits in the queue for a day or more. So, I mark myself "okay with" the slower turn based settings. This gets me a game right away, usually "1 move per day" with a 2 day bank, or something like that. But, most of the time, the games finish in a day or two, often at a "very fast turn-based" pace in one sitting.

Seems players just want that time bank just in case. Emergencies, unexpected events, etc.

There are ways to avoid clock penalties. But if someone wants to always select "fast turn-abased" settings, well, then it's inevitable there will be occasional problems.

I was glad to find this as I was about to post about it.

Ultimately there is no real penalty to going over the play timer. Kicking someone in the middle of a game changes the game usually for the worse, so one's best recourse is to just accept a slower game.

I started a fast Ark Nova game with 12 plays a day and a 12 hour time window, I'm lucky if there are 6 plays a day. I'm in the US East Coast (GMT -4). Someone in the UK (+1) and Hong Kong (+8) joined, I'm in a game with someone 12 hours off from me. They're both a few hours over their allowed time now. I had hoped for a 4 day long game now it's going to be over a week.

Flipping the board and kicking both of them doesn't help me, so I just have to accept that the game speed settings are largely inspirational and otherwise meaningless.


If I were to implement a solution, it would be that the game creator can set a timezone "window" and folks are restricted from joining based on that.

For instance I could say "6 hour window". If someone in the US West coast joins (-7), then BGA would limit subsequent joiners to be 1 hours east of me or 1 hours west of that other person. Effectively limiting folks to the Americas

If someone in the UK joins (+1) then it would limit subsequent joiners to be 1 hour west of me or 1 hour east of the UK.

Rinse and repeat as more folks join.

flamesplash wrote: ↑23 May 2026, 15:25 Flipping the board and kicking both of them doesn't help me, so I just have to accept that the game speed settings are largely inspirational and otherwise meaningless.

Your choice. If I were you, I would just kick and hope to find a better game. I didn't sign for a slow game, I don't need to stay in it.

If I were to implement a solution, it would be that the game creator can set a timezone "window" and folks are restricted from joining based on that.

Won't work. At least not until you can add "preferred playing times" or something to that effect in your profile. A timezone does not define when a player will be active. Some play in the morning, some play in the evening, some play at night, some play all day, some play only once per day.

The closest we could get is if a table could only be joined during its playing hours...

Jellby wrote: ↑23 May 2026, 16:03 The closest we could get is if a table could only be joined during its playing hours...

Interesting idea. Do you know if there is already a suggestion in the queue for this?

I know I already mentioned it many months ago. I don't remember if I created a suggestion or not.

Jellby is correct. What we could really benefit from is a setting for "preferred playing hours", and a setting to exclude players outside of +/- 1 (or 2) hours of those preferred hours.

Time zones are meaningless. Until a month ago, I was often awake until 4 AM local time or later. Now I've been waking up at or before 6 AM local time. Two people in the same time zone might have almost entirely different preferred playing windows.