Reducing Time Limit for Turns

[gyzn]

I have voted (4 days) and want to weigh in as well beyond that.

First, thanks to Alex and Adam for this truly awesome game. This is the only game and one of the very few apps where I feel I have a connection to the developer, which is great.

Also great to reach out for feedback here regarding a game design decision although with two challenges to interpreting the survey results: a) the forum is not representative of all players, and probably biased towards frequent, dedicated players and b) the poll does not provide other alternatives like 7 days or 12 hours. Therefore, even if 3 days is the middle choice, it may not be a “fair compromise” as some wrote – it is only the middle choice of the three given.

So in addition to the poll results, here some of my thoughts about this in a more nuanced way than “choose 1 of 3”:

What are the possible reasons that players wait long with taking turns?
A: They are losing, want to draw out the inevitable, and wait the max time limit.
B: They have started more games than they have time to play, and don’t make all their turns in their next “playing session”.
C: They are on vacation, traveling in China, celebrate holidays, have tests at school, climb Everest or some other multiple-day absence.

What are the possible reasons that players are annoyed if opponents take forever?
(Because not everybody gets annoyed with slow opponents – I don’t! I get annoyed if I open the game and there are no turns to take, which is different problem.)
A: They are close to the win, and want to get it done.
B: They open Outwitters, and don’t see any Your Turn games, and are disappointed with the lack of play.
C: They play a turn, and want to see immediately how their opponent reacts.

Maybe there are additional reasons, but those are all I can think off. The reason I list all this is because of the following: I think time-limit reduction is considered because some are annoyed, or the game is less fun without it. I also think that reduced time-limit will accidentally negatively affect others. This is a bad combination, and I think therefore that other measures than time-limit reduction are better.

So for each of the above, here the impact of time-limit reduction:
Slow A: They are abusing the game (using a permitted loop-hole), and whether 3 or 4 or 7 days, will always take that long. The game must not be much fun for them, and I would assume only a small percentage is that way.
Slow B: They will quickly learn not to start so many, and it will self-regulate.
Slow C: It is important to note that almost all of us will be that category every once in a while, on vacation, or on a business trip. Common courtesy would dictate to let games peter out before, but that is not always possible. I could be leaving for a five-day business trip tomorrow without much notice. Or specifically in the 2-day-limit scenario, people who don’t play on the weekend could be under much pressure.

Annoyed A: Just wait, it will happen soon.
Annoyed B: Just start more games! I hope all those who want quicker limits have 35 games open and going at the same time; if you do, only a small number of those ever reach 1-2 days in my experience.
Annoyed C: I don’t think that is the idea, this is more like long-distance chess. Also, if you forgot the history or previous turns, you can just look them up in replay.


So to summarize my post that has gotten much longer than planned:
I don’t claim to have all the insight, or that I can represent any unrepresented group. (But I do think of myself as a very new and also very involved player.) It is also always risky and arrogant to say “the majority isn’t right in this case”.
But I fear that a relatively small group (the ambitious, frequent, dedicated players) wants to stop the “abusive” behavior of another relatively small group (those who maximize the turn limit). But by doing so, a very large group (many players will at some point be on vacation) gets hurt, and can’t really do much about it. (The small abusive group may have to stop their delay-tactics, but the large group will still go on vacation and lose the games because of it.)
Because of this, I think limiting terms to anything much less than a week could have unintended consequences and hurt a large groups of player (even if infrequently so), even though it sounds like a good idea to many people. If every time I go on business trip I lose my game and go back to Fluffy, I don’t know if I want to catch-up again.

I’m also curious how many players there are after all anyway, but will start a new thread for that.