Reducing Time Limit for Turns

[LeGros01]

I am a bit concerned about the turn the discussion is taking. It seems many people wish games would be quicker, have the feeling two days for a turn is too long, etc. Now, I check the game a dozen times a day or more and I love games with some back-and-forth, when my opponent takes 15 min to respond and the game unfolds in a day or two so I can definitely relate to that feeling but that's not what the limit is about!

Maybe onemanleft has some stats on this but I play one-player league games (Gifted league) and I am yet to meet a single opponent who would regularly take more than two days to play his or her turns. I have played a grand total of one (1) game (still ongoing) in which my opponent took two days more than once.

In more than a few cases, I came across people who play one turn a day, which is a slow pace, but it ought to be OK, not everybody is able to check a game every few minutes. Plus, once a game lasted for a week and each opponent takes a turn per day, it doesn't really matter if lasts for a month or two, it just feels slow anyway.

In any case, it could still happen with a two-day timeout. On the other hand, 50-turn games lasting a year because of the limit is not a real problem; if it's happening at all, it must be exceedingly rare as I have not seen it even once in 100+ games.

The only scenario in which the limit frequently comes up is when people “give up” without actually clicking on the “give up” button (often but not always those are new players who presumably left the game entirely) but in that case the four-day delay is perfectly fine and would only run once. It's a bit annoying if you used up all your slots and are waiting to start a new game but this has nothing to do with the game feeling quick or not. Of course, the slots problem can easily be solved by spending a little, not an entirely unfair requirement for such a great game with none of the usual freemium nonsense.

Because of this, I suspect that lowering the limit would just risk frustrating people who need a few days once in a while while doing precisely nothing to satisfy all those who want a quicker game. Why add a constraint if it's unlikely to change much in practice? Besides, a personal preference or a feeling that I, personally, don't need more time is not a very good reason to force a hard limit on everybody else. People just live different lives, I think we should try to accommodate as many players as possible.