Bending Time

[AshleyShea]

I am in a game of Kings in the Corner where time doesn’t seem to advance most of the time. When my opponent plays, more time is added. For example, this past weekend, their time stayed at 19 hours all weekend. When they made their first move yesterday, their time jumped to 26 hours. After their next move, their time jumped to 35 hours. The maximum amount of time for this game is 36 hours. We’ve been playing since Aug. 8. Could there be a time bug with this particular game?

[Ceaseless]

I am in a game of Kings in the Corner where time doesn’t seem to advance most of the time. When my opponent plays, more time is added. For example, this past weekend, their time stayed at 19 hours all weekend. When they made their first move yesterday, their time jumped to 26 hours. After their next move, their time jumped to 35 hours. The maximum amount of time for this game is 36 hours. We’ve been playing since Aug. 8. Could there be a time bug with this particular game?

What makes you think there's a bug? All you've described so far is that the game has an increment and that the players have not gone above the maximum time.

[Meeplelowda]

I am in a game of Kings in the Corner where time doesn’t seem to advance most of the time. When my opponent plays, more time is added. For example, this past weekend, their time stayed at 19 hours all weekend. When they made their first move yesterday, their time jumped to 26 hours. After their next move, their time jumped to 35 hours. The maximum amount of time for this game is 36 hours. We’ve been playing since Aug. 8. Could there be a time bug with this particular game?

This sounds like a two moves per day turn-based game. 12 hours gets added at the beginning of every turn up to a maximum of 36 hours. All turn-based games work this way. 24/M gets added up to a maximum of 3 x 24/M for slow turn-based games, and 12/M gets added up maximum of 3 x 12/M for fast turn-based games, where M is the number of moves per day.

But that's for new players reading this thread. You've been a member for 9.years with well over 10,000 games played, so I'm guessing you know all that and have a specific concern that isn't clear from your post. When you say "their time stayed at 19 hours all weekend," was it ever their turn over the weekend? Even if it was, how do you know they hadn't taken ~12 hours to make their move so the times you happened to check they had 19 hours?

[Shivaware]

I am in a game of Kings in the Corner where time doesn’t seem to advance most of the time. When my opponent plays, more time is added. For example, this past weekend, their time stayed at 19 hours all weekend. When they made their first move yesterday, their time jumped to 26 hours. After their next move, their time jumped to 35 hours. The maximum amount of time for this game is 36 hours. We’ve been playing since Aug. 8. Could there be a time bug with this particular game?

I'm guessing that it's this game: https://en.boardgamearena.com/tableview?table=896163224

I agree that something looks weird about the game. From the log, it looks like you started a move on Aug 13th, and then finished it on Aug 17th. That doesn't really make sense, since you would have run out of time. As you mentioned, the other player also didn't run out of time. I see no evidence that either of you used a time joker, so I don't know what's going on.

[AshleyShea]

I am in a game of Kings in the Corner where time doesn’t seem to advance most of the time. When my opponent plays, more time is added. For example, this past weekend, their time stayed at 19 hours all weekend. When they made their first move yesterday, their time jumped to 26 hours. After their next move, their time jumped to 35 hours. The maximum amount of time for this game is 36 hours. We’ve been playing since Aug. 8. Could there be a time bug with this particular game?

I'm guessing that it's this game: https://en.boardgamearena.com/tableview?table=896163224

I agree that something looks weird about the game. From the log, it looks like you started a move on Aug 13th, and then finished it on Aug 17th. That doesn't really make sense, since you would have run out of time. As you mentioned, the other player also didn't run out of time. I see no evidence that either of you used a time joker, so I don't know what's going on.

Yes, this is the game. You are right that the log is weird, too. It doesn’t show most turns.

Someone else mentioned that time is added to all games, but I have never seen 7 hours of time added for 1 turn played. If that were the case, I would never run out of time.

[BarnardsStar]

Someone else mentioned that time is added to all games, but I have never seen 7 hours of time added for 1 turn played. If that were the case, I would never run out of time.

Excluding tournaments, that is how the site works. Each time it becomes your turn, you get an increment of time added to your clock, but you can never exceed a predefined cap. The "speed" of the game is often expressed as 2 turns/day or 4 turns/day etc, ranging between 1 turn every 2 days up to 24 turns per day. Expressing the speed in these terms is a bit misleading, because what it is really saying is that when it becomes your turn in 2x/day games, you get 12 hours added. In 4x/day you get 6 hours. In 1x/2 day games, you get 48 hours added.

You can see under "table configuration" that this is a 2x/day table, so 12 hours is added to each player's clock when it becomes their turn: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=896163224 -- but there is a cap of 36 hours which can not be exceeded (well, except for using time jokers).

If somebody hits the cap, or waited 5 hours before taking their turn, it would look like 7 hours were added, but technically, it's 12 hours.

[tbhp]

Not everyone is aware that this is how those games work. My first few hundreds of games on here were real time games and tournament games (which as you know have a fixed maximum duration), so when I first started playing Arena in turn based, I was also confused why people were able to gain time on each turn.

I might have understood it better if my first experience of it had been with normal turn based games, but for a competitive mode, it seemed off that you'd be able to constantly delay things like that.

[Jellby]

Real-time games work the same: you get some extra time per turn. Except for some beta games which are buggy (I don't mean any specific game now, but I have encountered several times new beta games that fail to give extra time). Only tournament games (real-time or turn-based) behave differently. And friendly games, of course, but there's no time at all there.

[tbhp]

Indeed, but in real time we are talking about gaining minutes at most, whereas in turn based, the same system can allow players to extend games for ludicrous amounts of time. So it seemed surprising to me that the same system was used.

I thought the difference of system used was based on real time vs turn based, not tournament vs non tournament.

[Jellby]

Real-time games say something like +3 min per turn, turn-based games say something like +12 hours per turn. I think it's pretty clear, and they do as they say. But there's always expectations and not reading the fine print...

There's one subtle/minor difference. In real-time games the amount of time you get per turn is game-dependent and apparently set automatically based on how much time people actually spend. There's fast, normal and slow, but the specific time is different from game to game, and even in the same game it changes with time. In turn-based games the time per turn is hard-set by the speed you choose, no matter the game.