Lowering Karma on newly created game

[Rudimus]

Setting up games for live play has caused me a Karma drop. I don't think this should happen. The game was cancelled because it started before the settings were adjusted correctly. There needs to be an option to stop a game within a few minutes of its creation and not affect Karma.

[yodamus]

Pretty sure , you just have to ask all players to abandon the game and nobody gets a karma hit. If you quit. Then yes. Karma hit.

[Jellby]

The other option is to use the lobby (https://boardgamearena.com/lobby) and only open the table once you are satisfied with the settings.

[tbhp]

If you make a mistake and start a game with settings you didn’t intend, then you leave while your opponent is perfectly fine with the game they joined, why should you not get a penalty for that?

Your idea that an exception should be made for games that just started makes no sense. Players leaving games early is precisely something we don’t want.

[Jellby]

... and it woud open the the door for abandoning because you don't like your starting hand or being second in play order...

[lefalaf]

The old lobby was mentioned by Jellby, but even when creating a table on the game pages in real time or turn based, you have to click Start before anyone can join. And once someone joins you are prohibited from changing settings, unless that changed recently, which I doubt.

I do acknowledge that UI is confusing if you are new to it. "Start" is above the settings, implying you may need to click it first, instead of below to start after you are satisfied with your settings. The whole games page is a jumbled mess frankly, IMO.

Better verbiage would be good too. Something instructing to configure settings first. (This is way over on the left instead of with the table creation on the right, so easily missed. I didn't even notice it until checking just now to be sure I didn't misstate things, after creating thousands of tables.)

Plus "Open table for players to join" or similar would be better than "Start". Start what?

[tbhp]

I do acknowledge that UI is confusing if you are new to it.

And as someone found out in a recent thread here, penalties remove zero karma when it's the first time it happens, so that's taken care of too.

[Meeplelowda]

The old lobby was mentioned by Jellby, but even when creating a table on the game pages in real time or turn based, you have to click Start before anyone can join. And once someone joins you are prohibited from changing settings, unless that changed recently, which I doubt.

I do acknowledge that UI is confusing if you are new to it. "Start" is above the settings, implying you may need to click it first, instead of below to start after you are satisfied with your settings. The whole games page is a jumbled mess frankly, IMO.

Better verbiage would be good too. Something instructing to configure settings first. (This is way over on the left instead of with the table creation on the right, so easily missed. I didn't even notice it until checking just now to be sure I didn't misstate things, after creating thousands of tables.)

Plus "Open table for players to join" or similar would be better than "Start". Start what?

Maybe some of these things make more sense in French before they get translated to English.

[tbhp]

Maybe some of these things make more sense in French before they get translated to English.

In French it says "Démarrer", which I understand as "start the search", not start the game per see. Is there a better way to communicate starting a search in English?

[lefalaf]

The old lobby / Play Now page is pretty good about labels.

In English anyway. I cannot comment on other languages.

For manual "Open table to other players"
For automatic it's simply "Play Now!" which isn't too descriptive, but then shows "searching for other players..." over the game image where you clicked Play Now.

The game pages, as far as I can tell, merge manual and automatic into one.

I just rediscovered if you are in a situation where you have to click "Create Additional Table" (such as being in one game of the title already, or, presumably, having one already waiting for players), then it says "Search for additional players" instead of "Start". There is a dropdown in the center column that if expanded says "start a search" and does what the Start button does.

We experienced players can deduce more or less what each of these means, but it's not that user friendly to new players, nor are the sliders (which can automatically switch you into friendly mode if not paying attention, for instance) or hidden player filters. Not everything has tooltips to explain the icons and those don't work well on mobile for those folks. I've seen some folks, including myself, get confused with this page at first.

Anyway, I suppose we've gotten way off topic for this thread now. But maybe BGA is reading.