Please remove the autojoin feature or make it harder to access.

Or create a feature where you can restrict the table from auto joiners.

yeah, restrict autojoin by setting

This is making it especially difficult to start games which have large numbers of players like Werewolves or Saboteur

Thanks for sharing this with the BGA community

Can you please remove the spam?

? If You don't want auto-joiners to join then You may simply not open the table and invite players instead?... And if You don't mind which player joins (within a certain criteriat that You may set, like ELO rating or reputation) why restrict auto-join?...

I'd say auto-join is essentially a mandatory feature ESPECIALLY for large community, so You don't need to manually scan tables but will be joined to an appropriate game when it becomes available!

no

I vote for the option to restrict autojoin

My games continue to auto join while I'm not online and my score was even downgraded because of this because I leave games before they are finished please remove the auto join function and let players accept the game to confirm they are still there and online to play

Auto join (especially in competitive "Arena" mode) is a complete pain!

I have twice recently signed up to play a games (Spades and Cribbage). Twice waited 5 or more minutes, gone off to manage something else whilst I am waiting, not heard the "ping" .. and so been kicked out of the game and got the relevant penalties.

This really is unfair - in my opinion - as some times you the wait for some games is long! If the game was created .. but not all players choose to join (for whatever reason) it should be cancelled as per "normal" games.

Please address this as soon as possible.

Had this problem in Arena mode, waited a long time for a game, it apparently autojoin-ed me, but did not open it, so first thing I noticed was chat for a table saying I was out of time and about to get kicked out, even though game had never opened. Another time was more my fault I got distracted and walked away from my screen, forgetting I had an Arena request in progress

At a bare minimum, system should not heavily penalize (that is, the same as folks who disconnect from game in progress) those who wait a long time for an Arena game and then miss the start because of glitch or inattention. But ideally, after a couple minutes, there should be an "are you still there and ready for Arena?" popup before starting the game. I understand that this would need to be before showing the players to avoid the problem of deliberately wimping out of a match.

I'm coming at this from a different angle, and looking at it this way makes it _incredibly_ easy to observe and reproduce.

Let's use the game Space Base as an example, because that's where I've seen it the most and it's the most pronounced there, even though it's definitely not the only game I've seen it with.

Try it in a high traffic part of the day.

If you're like me, an average player that loves the game but honestly wouldn't have an ELO of average if it was possible to drop below 100 after attaining it, but absolutely don't mind training newbies in it, you'd maybe start by restricting the table to average or lower ELO.

Set the table size to five. Because while the directions to the game say it's "best for two players" — you know that it actually just _inflects_ the game play. Blue rewards become less rewarding but deployed red rewards become paramount. It emphasizes the engine building aspects and de-emphasizes certain cards. Plus, it's good practice for when you get together with your friends to play the game. Most importantly, though? _*IT ALSO HIGHLIGHTS WHAT'S GOING WRONG WITH AUTO-JOIN, AND WHY IT BREAKS THE BGA EXPERIENCE FOR MANY OF US*_.

Select real time, probably fast, but flexible on that point.

Select the light speed variant, but flexible on that point.

Start searching.

You'll probably be told an unrealistic wait time of around 22 to 26 seconds. I've come to laugh at that estimate. Average is five times that, easily, even when I decide not to be picky about ELO and play with people who will almost certainly trounce me.

Dismiss any offer to be flexible on the number of players. Just keep watching.

If you're _super fortunate_, maybe in a minute you'll get a table. Probably not. I've been lucky maybe one time in ten, this way.

If you are _fortunate_, after waiting around five minutes, a table will start, you'll accept the participants, and the table will actually fully instance. A few might be pokey to okay the table, but that's fine.

You will, however, have noticed that because of the flexible settings there are _three_ virtual tables created that can be joined. That actually makes it easier to watch the mechanics of this. Easier yet if you show tables that _could_ be joined. People will sit there having "joined" multiple tables, but not actually. They've just got a placeholder there which could vanish at any moment. If any _one_ of those placeholders matches their criteria, one of those tables could be activated by them, and they will instantly "quit" the table you're trying to build.

If you are _unfortunate_, after waiting around five minutes, a table will start, you'll accept the participants, and after a short-ish delay (shorter than an actual timeout for accepting the table), you'll be told that one or more players failed to join or actively quit the game.

While I can't _prove_ that's because of auto-join, I can surmise it is. The unfortunate case happens around three times as often as the fortunate case. Likely much more often than someone, say, seeing someone they recognize and are refusing to play with. The indirect evidence supporting that it's because of auto-join is both the existence of auto-join and the observed behavior above.

Long story made very short:

1. The lobby's table-search design starves searches for larger tables by way of a greedy table matching algorithm matching to smaller tables faster.

2. That bias is compounded by the introduction of prompts to potential players to be "flexible" on their settings and accept a smaller table.

3. The UX presentation made to people searching for larger tables is effectively _a cycle of "promise / break-promise"_.

4. In other words, this is not a programming error, but a _design-level_ bug.

I have questions:

1. Did the testing population favor two-player games?

2. Were testers instructed to take the flexible offers, yet no UX testing done on how not accepting those offers impacted wait time?

Finally:

On the whole, I am not _merely_ just a little disappointed with this issue.

This is a board game website, and the mechanics of this are entirely similar to many a board game's rules. The current mechanics of the lobby blithely make the lobby itself an unbalanced game to play.

I'm not sure if this is another issue related to auto-join or not, but it might be - I have filed a separate bug report explicitly covering the full situation I am facing: boardgamearena.com/bug?id=90089

I have twice now started a game, restricting it to "My Friends" only. Not enough of my BGA friends ended up joining, so the game eventually got abandoned (this part is fine).

At that point, though, I was also auto-joined into another game (of the same type I started), with complete strangers, that I did not ask to join!

If I quit, then I get a rep hit. I suspect auto-join might be at fault here, too.

autojoin is really good for turnbased mode, but I can agree on the problem for realtime games

This comment is only for Arena games, as I pretty much only play there on auto-join.

Auto-join is great for turn based, but it's a nightmare for real time.

I try to join a table, wait a while, no tables/opponents, ok, I navigate away.
At some point, while I am not in the app and there is no sound reminder or anything, I get joined to a table. I'm not there, so my time runs out, and I get a reputation penalty.

To avoid this, all you need to do is implement that the "Accept" button actually has a function and I can't be joined to a game unless I actively "Accept" it, thereby proving I'm online and paying attention.

This could auto-time out in a short space of time to avoid annoying actually online players, but also avoid penalising people who are no longer there. In fact, even the online player is more disadvantaged by the current system, as they have to wait for the time to run out, expel you, and then find a new game, which is way more time consuming than just not starting a game.

I have once again had a game I started, restricted to my "My Friends" group, force-abandoned on me before it filled up (after less than a day waiting), and at the same time been force-added to another game (of the same type) with strangers. I have a separate bug report that covers this specific occurence, but it may be related.

Potentially related bug: boardgamearena.com/bug?id=90089

Removing this feature would basically grind turn-based matchmaking to a halt.

I don't know why, but my account keep auto joining the arena game play without my knowledge. And then, I got kicked and lost my karma. I'm not sure why and how to solve it.