#13887: "UNDO function should be implemented on ALL games where it would not affect rules or play."
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Detailed description
• Please copy/paste the error message you see on your screen, if applicable.
Too many games have moves which require a single click. The example today was Targi. I accidentally pressed ‘keep card in hand’ instead of ‘play’. Fat finger syndrome! It was still my turn and I was helpless to rectify it. I had to discard 2 goods, will need to waste a move placing on ‘Noble’ space, and won’t receive the card advantages! That could easily throw the game for me. There would be no disadvantage having an undo option. It’s starting to put me off playing games on here, as a single error, such as this makes me want to immediately end the game.• Please explain what you wanted to do, what you did and what happened
• Which browser are you using?
Safari v12
• Please copy/paste the text displayed in English instead of your language. If you have a screenshot of this bug (good practice), you can use Imgur.com to upload it and copy/paste the link here.
Too many games have moves which require a single click. The example today was Targi. I accidentally pressed ‘keep card in hand’ instead of ‘play’. Fat finger syndrome! It was still my turn and I was helpless to rectify it. I had to discard 2 goods, will need to waste a move placing on ‘Noble’ space, and won’t receive the card advantages! That could easily throw the game for me. There would be no disadvantage having an undo option. It’s starting to put me off playing games on here, as a single error, such as this makes me want to immediately end the game.• Is this text available in the translation system? If yes, has it been translated for more than 24 hours?
• Which browser are you using?
Safari v12
• Please explain your suggestion precisely and concisely so that it's as easy as possible to understand what you mean.
Too many games have moves which require a single click. The example today was Targi. I accidentally pressed ‘keep card in hand’ instead of ‘play’. Fat finger syndrome! It was still my turn and I was helpless to rectify it. I had to discard 2 goods, will need to waste a move placing on ‘Noble’ space, and won’t receive the card advantages! That could easily throw the game for me. There would be no disadvantage having an undo option. It’s starting to put me off playing games on here, as a single error, such as this makes me want to immediately end the game.• Which browser are you using?
Safari v12
• What was displayed on the screen when you were blocked (Blank screen? Part of the game interface? Error message?)
Too many games have moves which require a single click. The example today was Targi. I accidentally pressed ‘keep card in hand’ instead of ‘play’. Fat finger syndrome! It was still my turn and I was helpless to rectify it. I had to discard 2 goods, will need to waste a move placing on ‘Noble’ space, and won’t receive the card advantages! That could easily throw the game for me. There would be no disadvantage having an undo option. It’s starting to put me off playing games on here, as a single error, such as this makes me want to immediately end the game.• Which browser are you using?
Safari v12
• Which part of the rules was not followed by the BGA adaptation
Too many games have moves which require a single click. The example today was Targi. I accidentally pressed ‘keep card in hand’ instead of ‘play’. Fat finger syndrome! It was still my turn and I was helpless to rectify it. I had to discard 2 goods, will need to waste a move placing on ‘Noble’ space, and won’t receive the card advantages! That could easily throw the game for me. There would be no disadvantage having an undo option. It’s starting to put me off playing games on here, as a single error, such as this makes me want to immediately end the game.• Is the rules violation visible on game replay? If yes, at which move number?
• Which browser are you using?
Safari v12
• What was the game action you wanted to do?
Too many games have moves which require a single click. The example today was Targi. I accidentally pressed ‘keep card in hand’ instead of ‘play’. Fat finger syndrome! It was still my turn and I was helpless to rectify it. I had to discard 2 goods, will need to waste a move placing on ‘Noble’ space, and won’t receive the card advantages! That could easily throw the game for me. There would be no disadvantage having an undo option. It’s starting to put me off playing games on here, as a single error, such as this makes me want to immediately end the game.• What did you try to do to trigger this game action?
• What happened when you tried to do this (error message, game status bar message, ...)?
• Which browser are you using?
Safari v12
• At which step of the game did the problem occur (what was the current game instruction)?
Too many games have moves which require a single click. The example today was Targi. I accidentally pressed ‘keep card in hand’ instead of ‘play’. Fat finger syndrome! It was still my turn and I was helpless to rectify it. I had to discard 2 goods, will need to waste a move placing on ‘Noble’ space, and won’t receive the card advantages! That could easily throw the game for me. There would be no disadvantage having an undo option. It’s starting to put me off playing games on here, as a single error, such as this makes me want to immediately end the game.• What happened when you tried to do this game action (error message, game status bar message, ...)?
• Which browser are you using?
Safari v12
• Please describe the display issue. If you have a screenshot of this bug (good practice), you can use Imgur.com to upload it and copy/paste the link here.
Too many games have moves which require a single click. The example today was Targi. I accidentally pressed ‘keep card in hand’ instead of ‘play’. Fat finger syndrome! It was still my turn and I was helpless to rectify it. I had to discard 2 goods, will need to waste a move placing on ‘Noble’ space, and won’t receive the card advantages! That could easily throw the game for me. There would be no disadvantage having an undo option. It’s starting to put me off playing games on here, as a single error, such as this makes me want to immediately end the game.• Which browser are you using?
Safari v12
• Please copy/paste the text displayed in English instead of your language. If you have a screenshot of this bug (good practice), you can use Imgur.com to upload it and copy/paste the link here.
Too many games have moves which require a single click. The example today was Targi. I accidentally pressed ‘keep card in hand’ instead of ‘play’. Fat finger syndrome! It was still my turn and I was helpless to rectify it. I had to discard 2 goods, will need to waste a move placing on ‘Noble’ space, and won’t receive the card advantages! That could easily throw the game for me. There would be no disadvantage having an undo option. It’s starting to put me off playing games on here, as a single error, such as this makes me want to immediately end the game.• Is this text available in the translation system? If yes, has it been translated for more than 24 hours?
• Which browser are you using?
Safari v12
• Please explain your suggestion precisely and concisely so that it's as easy as possible to understand what you mean.
Too many games have moves which require a single click. The example today was Targi. I accidentally pressed ‘keep card in hand’ instead of ‘play’. Fat finger syndrome! It was still my turn and I was helpless to rectify it. I had to discard 2 goods, will need to waste a move placing on ‘Noble’ space, and won’t receive the card advantages! That could easily throw the game for me. There would be no disadvantage having an undo option. It’s starting to put me off playing games on here, as a single error, such as this makes me want to immediately end the game.• Which browser are you using?
Safari v12
Report history
The controversial is how ethical is to undo mistakes in the game because you find out a more advantageous move or because a real mistake using the mouse or understanding the interface.
The BGA has already implemented two features that can be used for the undo feature:
1. A log/history that allows you to see and replay a whole game or from a point when you miss some move
2. A dialog to ask all players to choose a change that affects to the whole game (changing a real-time game to turns or decide to leave the game without penalties)
If you mix both (by adding a button in the log sentence which says "ask everyone to undo movements from here" along with the "replay from here"), you can have an undo feature that meets the user who needs to fix the mistake and solves the controversial issues because everyone needs to agree to move the game to the point in the history asked. It's as easy as to erase the moves on the DB and made a reload on evrey users' pages
The playes who asked for the undo, needs to explain themself in order to make others agree, and the rest can disagree easily if they complain. In addition, I would add information to the user about how often they use this feature, as the "leave the game" information you have on every user.
Maybe before this COVID 19 times users most play with anonymous players, but in few weeks I always play with friends, while we talk on mics or even seeing each other on video, and sometime someone let us know that made a mistake and is not able to perform an undo action. This feature would have been great on some moments
A lighter approach implementation-wise (possibly, depending on the API framework for boardgame implementations — something I haven't yet but will be looking at soon) might be to provide a user-settable option to confirm single-click actions. This would be a deep change obviously, so might not be feasible.
However, it would be useful even if the option was simply global for the user across all games/actions (for frequent mis-clickers), but especially useful if the option could be set per game or even specific actions or action classes.
The lack of undo is a particularly big problem for games where hovering for popup information is common... especially on mobile where a hover is often an accidental click.
In terms of implementation, I really liked the option, as a player, to enable Undo for myself, which is offered in Teotihuacan. When we played that, 3 of us chose the undo option, and one said "Ugh. I'm not doing that". Great that we could do what suited each of us. (Admittedly, on of the players who chose that option kept forgetting to confirm he really wanted to take that move, but hey-ho, you can't win 'em all. :-) )
For games where a player could gain some advantage from foreknowledge if they chose to undo the current action, maybe there could be a game-level setting to allow actions to be undone or not. (As also mentioned in the comment above from June 6, 2020). I think I've seen that on a few games already, although I can't recall which ones. If we take a very simple example: Potion Explosion. If I mistakenly click on "Get Help" instead of "Take ingredient", or vice versa, I may see the marbles further up the track and potentially gain from that knowledge. When I play with friends, I really don't care. I'm happy for people to be able to take back their move despite this. However, when I play with people I don't know, maybe I'd be more conservative about that. So a table-level configuration would be really useful in a case like this.
Where as Russian Railways gets this right with long interconnected multi-stage turns, highlighting options after each choice, then allowing you to confirm or cancel. So much better while still learning the game, or moments of vagueness during a long, turn based game.
I would rather play against somebody who is playing their best game than beat someone just because they goofed.
to me an undo could be great, especially when playing with friends.
when playing with people we don't know, I believe there should be some limitations: maybe max 1 undo per game? this limitation could avoid opening bad behaviors...
In any case, to me, undo last move needs the acknowledge of all participants of the game.
my 2 cents
cheers
My friend and I played regularly to 7 Wonders Duel and sometimes on its tablet he missed the right button and he is really frustrated....
In this game (7WD) maybe it would be better if the 3 buttons were aligned in only one line and have a square shape!
I recently did such a silly thing when playing a week long turn-based game - cost the game.
The rollback option would also allow for correction of some implementation bugs. For example Welcome To Las Vegas has a bug when taking certain action on phone under certain conditions. If we could rollback, then action could be taken on PC to avoid the bug.
Especially in backgammon it is very easy to hit the wrong point and there is no way to make a correction.
Splendor has a 'start turn over' button - it would be great if all games had that!
(ranked games are obviously a whole different story, but in general yes, if no new information is revealed, or if a game had a meaningful delay between the turn ending and locking in the move, why not?)
I have nothing against UNDO, in fact it should be very welcome especially in games like Seasons. Just that there should also be mechanisms to prevent people abusing UNDO.
I see no point in the objection about the time counter, since in my opinion it should not be reset when you do moves. A possible implementation to avoid games getting stuck is to have a timer (20-30 secs) starting after you do your move. If you don't undo it by then, the move is permanent. That would not require additional clicks or taps from people who are very precise and don't worry about this stuff, but would save many games for people who misclick or mistap (maybe because they play over small screens).
The fairness argument doesn't hold true. In a real life game, you have a much more direct interaction with the board state. For example, you actively put ressources aside, place something on a board. On top of that your screen size is an entire living room table. In complex games, there is often no way to show the impact that will happen on the board with a simple button (as an example, in Gaia Project, you are asked with a button press if you want to upgrade to Academy left or Academy right. Yes, it's an user error to chose the wrong one, but it would just not happen in Real Life because you would take the physical piece into your hand. There is a lot of scrolling involved to really make sure you are doing the right thing.
I'd say almost all of the errors in my game group (that moved from a real life pre-covid game group to a digital one) would just never happen in the real world.
Also, while I can see that competitive players might (wrongly, IMHO, because of the "would not happen in RL" argument above) think an undo feature is cheating, I am pretty sure that with the pandemic, BGA got a lot of new users that actually play with their friends. I might add that my gaming group is highly competitive and suffers from high Analysis Paralysis because of that (as we always try new games), and the no undo policy aggravates the problem to the point that we usually avoid games with no UNDO.
P.S. The specific problem this time? The exchange port in "Clans of Caledonia".
The system doesn't allow you to see both exchanges but urges to confirm after the first one. Once you do, the second exchange is just wasted!
Just because of such situations the 'confirm action' in most situations would be great.
For me the misclick is a bit like touching the board in the wrong place in real life - that doesn't commit you to a move there and it shouldn't do that online. I don't really see a downside to it other than everyone playing games a little bit slower due to more clicks needed. But surely that is a price worth paying? Surely there are more misclicks and ruined games(not just for the one misclicking, but also for others as the balance of the game changes when someone isn't taking it seriously or trying their best to win) than the 'lost time' due to confirmations would be.
It's a huge job obviously, so if it's not possible, then perhaps adding a "confirm move" dialogue across the board is a simpler way of achieving the same purpose of stopping wrong moves.
When the wrong move do not reveal a new element in the game, having an "undo button with player(s) permission" will help.
Thank you.
PLEASE PLEASE I BEG YOU implement undos for all turns one way or another!
The way it works in Century is great: you have a few seconds to click confirm or cancel, then it moves on.
I can't report anything, always the error message. where is the support???????
In Connect 4, there is a user-selectable option to turn on move confirmations. It is off by default. It is done server-side, so sometimes you see your opponent make a move, then take the move back. I find this annoying. I would prefer if I didn't see my opponent's move until they have confirmed it.
I believe the main problem with adding this to more games is that it needs to be done on a game-by-game basis.
If you look at 18xx.games they allow infinite undoing and redoing. You can even undo other player's turns, and it's never a problem. Quite the contrary, it's a godsend. You can experiment and try out all sorts of different moves to see how they look before you commit. You can even clone a game in progress to experiment with it and examine potential future scenarios.
That's how people play board games in real life. They move pieces around to see how different scenarios are going to look before they declare one of them to be their final and official move. On BGA one mis-click or mis-tap and your entire game is ruined. It's extremely frustrating and ruins otherwise wonderful games.
I understand there are situations where previously hidden info will be revealed, so you can't really undo backwards as that would be cheating. That's fine. What you do is let players undo and redo all they want, but right before a secret is about to be revealed, you have a separate confirmation button. That way you can't mis-click. You can play on the board all you want, and you have to click a separate special end turn button to go past the point of no return.
I also understand some people are playing for-serious ranked competition on here. That's fine. Disable undo in those games if you have to. But in a non-serious game, especially a private game with friends only, there's no reason for infinite undoing to not be an option.
If you add proper and complete undo/redo I will pay for this site and play a lot of games here. Otherwise, personally, I just can't deal with it.
Yucata, a site without any major gaming company behind it, has been able to do this for over 20 years. BGA, with a significant backer and a good supply of cash from premium subscribers, should be able to do the same.
Pls look into the following
Carcassonne controls: boardgamearena.com/bug?id=33548
Abalone controls: boardgamearena.com/bug?id=83281
But, that's also obivous that when there is something to earn from the game, undo is just the straight way to cheat and win. Hence why above I talked about "learn, improve, fun".
So at least in training mode, it should be everywhere! To me that's a mandatory part of training. You don't want to play hundred of games just to get back to this unusual configuration you just met and see if this other way you hesitated to take may have been better to term.
Think poker: you can play just for fun and then do how and what you want from table agrement. But if you're about to play for real money, then any error is a real error which really cost. That's on table beginning, and only then, that you can chosse if you want to take real risk. If there is no risk, there should be no gain.
To me that's a more general point around (mean: on BGA): there should be two game modes everywhere.
- a very strict one allowing to earn and lose points, means no talk, no abandon, no undo, ie disabling any way that could allow to cheat!
- a very permissive one allowing to just enjoy and/or improve, means no gain, ie enabling any thing that could allow to take pleasure and experience without pressure!
If undo has to be allowed even on non training mode, it definitely and at least should cancel any scoring , or even come with a malus (as should be abandon, another stuff divinding people), but even that is kind of "cheating".
I think this should be an OPTION in all games.
Certainly, there've been so many times I've clicked in the wrong place and on a phone it'd be basically unplayable without undo imo.
The following player have taken a very long time to play after me.
If UNDO was present, I will have do it and not lose the game and not disturbed the others players.
It is not the first time, with mobile that I lose because the zone touched on screen was not really where I want to play...
In all that cases UNDO will have permit to play again in the right place...
I hope that we will have this UNDO action in the future, not to use it every day.
I will have used it less than once by month since I play on BGA if it existed.
Different games have different devs, so if u really want an undo button, it has to work seperately.
However, it's now part of our guidelines for most premium games.
skip players, vote to abandon are BGA features about the players.
undo a move is specific to the game itself and rely on the developer as game rules are involved...
Comme cela est du un bug de BGA,, j'aimerai que vous fassiez le nécessaire pour rétablir la situation.
Cordialement
To me it seems like the anti voices here are in a minority here, hence this being the most upvoted suggestion. The timer is there already to stop too much mucking about, whether it's thinking, or undoing something because -- as somebody says above -- you're doing a complex, multi-part move and the last part doesn't work how you thought it did, rendering the whole move pointless or actively game-ruining. If you want less, you can play fast games. Worst case, it can be added as a tick-box (opt-out, not opt-in please!), and you can untick it.
The reality is that in newer premium games like Pax Pamir, Ark Nova and Barrage, these systems have been implemented, and almost everyone I speak to thinks it's for the better. It's now part of policy moving forwards. Devs think this is a good idea. So, the only question really is: which games, and how quickly? This is the top voted suggestion/bug. Devs, we appreciate you, we know you don't have unlimited time, but please prioritise this with the time you do have.
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- If you have a screenshot of this bug (good practice), you can use Imgur.com to upload it and copy/paste the link here.