Anyone else desperate for faster turn-based games?

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bmb91
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Joined: 18 December 2025, 22:52

Anyone else desperate for faster turn-based games?

Post by bmb91 »

I'm just putting feelers out there to see if it's just me who loves BGA but feels a *massive* improvement would be the option for faster turn-based tables. Even 24 turns a day actually in many cases turns out to be 2 turns a day, and the game takes many days to complete. I personally don't like to have multiple games of the same game in play at the same time as it's so difficult to keep track of, but I also don't necessarily want to play real-time games most of the time as it's nice to be able to think freely occasionally and be able to - for example - get up and go to the toilet or do a small task and then return to the game, plus I am fairly limited for consistent windows of time in which I can play real-time. I also find I play too slowly in real-time and invoke the anger of the more impatient players.

I am pretty confident there must be many other players who feel the same, but every so often I get an opponent in a turn-based game who plays pretty quickly and sometimes I can get multiple concurrent games of Ark Nova or TM etc. completed within one day against such opponents if I have a lucky run. However, the frustrating thing is that there's no real way to consistently get matched against those kinds of players, except adding them as friends and inviting them to games, but that would then limit me to not playing Arena or Tournament matches, where the abovementioned problems are frankly completely unavoidable.

I do find myself timing people out quite regularly on these 24-turns-a-day turn-based games. While a part of me feels bad about that, another part of me feels people shouldn't join games where they can't meet the time limits, because in my case I'd rather the game finished that day, or at least within 24 hours or at an absolute maximum around 36 hours, so that I can start a new game and avoid having multiple in play at the same time (granted, if one game of e.g. Ark Nova is almost finished, I might sometimes start a new one as it's then easy to keep track, but I generally avoid having two games open of the same game that are both in the same game phase).

The frustrating part as well is sometimes seeing that other people are in 60 or more async games and clearly not keeping up with the games. I'm currently in a 5-player Wingspan tournament with five days per player, and one player is already minus 3 days on their clock in round 3 of the game, and hasn't played a turn in over 48 hours - this player at one point during the match had more than 60 Wingspan tables in play at the same time, seems a bit excessive?!

Sorry, bit of a rant there, but would be grateful for other's thoughts and whether anyone thinks there is a realistic possibility of an implementation of this. I would play BGA *so much more* if it were implemented.
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Jellby
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Joined: 31 December 2013, 12:22

Re: Anyone else desperate for faster turn-based games?

Post by Jellby »

Is your problem that 24-turn-per-day games are too slow, or that people join them and then do not honor the speed and run out of time?

The former could be "solved" by a faster turn-based game, the latter would just stay the same.
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bmb91
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Joined: 18 December 2025, 22:52

Re: Anyone else desperate for faster turn-based games?

Post by bmb91 »

Both, in some sense. Some people are joining 24-turn-a-day games they can't keep up with. But there are seemingly many players including myself who would get a vast improvement in our experience from being able to enter games where both players have made a mutual choice to play a much faster turn-based game, and hopefully thus avoiding situations in which one player actually wants to get the game completed within a couple of days, playing against a player who is playing 2 or 3 turns a day at most and often eventually timing out the clock.

It's not fun to be timed out but it's also not fun to be involved in games where the desired speed of play is so mismatched between players.
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Jellby
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Re: Anyone else desperate for faster turn-based games?

Post by Jellby »

But having a faster setting would not prevent those who time out in a 24-turn-per-day game from also joining and timing out in any other faster setting.
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tbhp
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Joined: 16 April 2025, 00:35

Re: Anyone else desperate for faster turn-based games?

Post by tbhp »

I agree with this. One solution would be to have a time setting where the increments are deactivated and the time is pretty low (say 24h, 12h, 8h). This way, you’d be guaranteed the game would be over by the next day/the end of the day/the end of the afternoon.

Not sure why BGA never offered those sorts of clocks since they are pretty standard in Chess tournaments.
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tarongot
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Joined: 10 March 2013, 20:30

Re: Anyone else desperate for faster turn-based games?

Post by tarongot »

bmb91 wrote: ↑13 September 2026, 15:49 .....
You have my axe. I do feel there is need for faster "play by mail" game settings, but mostly there is need for major improvement and change of thinking about that mode. 12 hour window most of the times is to wide window. Time window should be selectable by players more detailed. By start hour and end hour, and moves within that time window. That will give people more options, and more games would be exactly like people wants.

Recently there was Twilight Imperium 4 ed game added to beta, that game is VERY long, and very hard to play, both in real time and "play by mail" modes. What would help that game a lot is playing it in sessions of X hours (X= 3,4 like that for example) for few days, and changes that I would like would allow that.

I think that would also be good topic to introduce bug I recently found regarding time jokers in fast "play by mail" games.
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=242242

It is not fun when people use time jokers (even not bugged ones like there are now) not because they had real emergency, but because they joined table that time criteria they doesn't met, and they use bugged time jokers to take that table hostage.
I have table like that. 5 players game, and already 5 time jokers used in that table, 2 by single player. And what is worst, that you can't do anything about that. BGA staff won't help you with that clear abuse of features. That table is just hostage, and player is hostage.
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GTSchemer
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Re: Anyone else desperate for faster turn-based games?

Post by GTSchemer »

tarongot wrote: ↑13 September 2026, 17:30 You have my axe. I do feel there is need for faster "play by mail" game settings, but mostly there is need for major improvement and change of thinking about that mode. 12 hour window most of the times is to wide window. Time window should be selectable by players more detailed. By start hour and end hour, and moves within that time window. That will give people more options, and more games would be exactly like people wants.
On this note, I am actually unsure as a player. I sometimes see tables with playing hours from 13:00 to 1:00 or whatever the actual values are.

Are these using France local time like the event calendar? I am usually afraid to join tables like that in case I get the time zone calculation incorrect. Is there a way to specify my timezone on my BGA profile? I could not find it, if so.
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tarongot
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Joined: 10 March 2013, 20:30

Re: Anyone else desperate for faster turn-based games?

Post by tarongot »

GTSchemer wrote: ↑13 September 2026, 18:00
tarongot wrote: ↑13 September 2026, 17:30 You have my axe. I do feel there is need for faster "play by mail" game settings, but mostly there is need for major improvement and change of thinking about that mode. 12 hour window most of the times is to wide window. Time window should be selectable by players more detailed. By start hour and end hour, and moves within that time window. That will give people more options, and more games would be exactly like people wants.
On this note, I am actually unsure as a player. I sometimes see tables with playing hours from 13:00 to 1:00 or whatever the actual values are.

Are these using France local time like the event calendar? I am usually afraid to join tables like that in case I get the time zone calculation incorrect. Is there a way to specify my timezone on my BGA profile? I could not find it, if so.
Only BGA staff member can say for sure, good luck with getting answer, and even if you do get that answer, knowing how many not fixed bugs BGA has, it wouldn't be 100% sure that it is correct anyway.

I don't recall when was last time I have joined someone else's table with fast settings, so I only know about one's I create. Those are in my local time, so good assumption would be that when you see hours like mentioned, those are your local hours. And I'm also unsure every time I create or if I would like to join if that is correct.
FrankJones
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Joined: 30 June 2024, 00:24

Re: Anyone else desperate for faster turn-based games?

Post by FrankJones »

How does someone make 2 moves a day in a fast turn based 24 moves a day setting and not forfeit?

Or is the OP saying, "This happens, and because nobody wants to be mean and expel that player, the player continues at that absurd pace" ?
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tarongot
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Joined: 10 March 2013, 20:30

Re: Anyone else desperate for faster turn-based games?

Post by tarongot »

FrankJones wrote: ↑13 September 2026, 18:53 How does someone make 2 moves a day in a fast turn based 24 moves a day setting and not forfeit?

Or is the OP saying, "This happens, and because nobody wants to be mean and expel that player, the player continues at that absurd pace" ?
Or maybe they use bugged Time Joker to get extra 8 days for moves, and even if you want kick them you can't. And if that is still not enough they use another Time Joker for another + 8 days?
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