mctrivia: sure, but temperature of this board goes way beyond a silent wish list ...

KnightFighter: true he has to do nothing. but this is the request board. people make and debate request here. not weather fencer truely has to make them.

mctrivia: And you expect the owner of this site to make you happy (and many others) and do nothing but to listen to your demands ? Show me other site like this one that the owner is "visible" and you can actually talk to him ... show me ... tell me please, because I am getting lost ... do you still have fun playing a game or making a move after 7 days of vacations ? Do you still remember what you were planning to do ?
Fencer granted you services but he never promised you to add/modify anything ... and this is what you want constantly ... and MadMonkey has the whole arsenal of site remodeling ... sometimes changes are so unimportant that it makes me laugh when I read them ...
Andy.

Fencer: if you want to act like that you should be willing to refund people's memberships. Those of us that paid for longer memeberships have done so believing you will continue to grant the same services you have in the past. You are not obligated to add anything more but to take away the major privileges of posting in public forums is breaking the trust and reason people signed up.

To say his messages were off topic would be fair though.

KnightFighter: Playing games is something I do for fun. I work some times 40 hours a week some times 80. I can't promise to get on a sight every day of the week as some times my job requires me to travel so I pick 7 days because I know I can play it. I usually play in 1 though. But it is possible at 7 days for a game to take months or years and I can't post pone my honeymoon next year because of a game I started this year. My point was just that the most vacation days this site even offers is 50 so how does someone use 120.

diogenysos: I don't know, maybe I am really funny ... If it was me, the owner and programmer, there would be only half the features you "enjoy" ... it will be pure gaming site with probably many more games, but much less forums, boards, talks and albums ... but this is me and Fencer probably pays the price for what I would try to avoid ...

KnightFighter:

Although i agree with the idea of more competetion, i would find it unfair to remove the option of vacation.

If my priority will change temporarily tomorrow due to the circumstances of life, i am still happy
to stay here and play slower tourneys,

like Bobes right now - he used to be a smart, quick and competetive player here but now he decided to
slow down in order to have more time for his baby. Thats how it is - and he is right.

All usere here are free to chose how they want to play, to start fellowships that feed their needs etc., like Marfitalu did, for example.
The "here-and-now"-players can come together and play here and now, but it wouldnt be good,  neither for a paid-site-owner nor for its various members, to disable a good feature named vacations... .

Jason: I don't think so ... they are coming here to play not seeking vacations ... Even if we loose some players, new players will come ...

KnightFighter: Brainking would lose alot of players if that ever happend , you are funny though ,

KnightFighter:

I lost a cruel high amount of self-created "one-day-per-move - no-vacation-days" games... ;-)

i created them because i like those games with players who put their priority on the "competetion here and now".
and if i finally lose by timing out, i deserve that loss because the game was not so important for me then for my opponent.
(of course there are exceptions: three years ago my home burnt down and i didnt play for a couple of days, that was bad luck...
but this is life).

for the same reason, being focussed even more on one game, i created the idea of those new time-limits i mentiond at the beginning of this thread, by the way... ;-))

but of course it is not the solution to cancel the vacation days completely. the players who want the competetion here and now should create and sign in in more tourneys with no vacation days and/or simply _not_ play the vacation-tournaments... ;-)

mctrivia: You know what ? I do not really understand this kind of arguments. You say: " I can't play no vacation games because I like to take vacations some times and work forces me to keep to 7 days per move ..." ... then you should probably try to find a correspondence club and if you take vacations, just blame UPS for any delay ... if you don't care if someone takes 40 days +seven then PLEASE accept also 120 days BECAUSE someone likes to take vacations, but a little bit longer than yours ... all these makes no sense ... internet made you lazy, you abuse the privilage of not being forced to move like in life tournaments ... If I want to play in a tournament I like the competition, NOW and HERE and taking vacations kills the whole fun ...
If I were Fencer I would never create any vacation option ... forget it ... you would like my torunament
from day 1 and you would take your vacations after the tournament is over ... period. Fencer was trying to please you, to be as flexible as possible, but like in a famous saying: give someone a finger and he/she soon will take you the whole hand.
Vacation idea should be completely removed from this site. I someone cannot find time to play 28 days of tournament, or 21 days tournament, then I have a proposal ... find another job or stop playing tournaments ... vacations are good after the job is done and not in the middle of it.
Andy.

Fencer: i can't play no vacation games because I like to take vacations some times and work forces me to keep to 7 days per move. I don't care if someone takes 40 days of vacations +7 days to make his first move. I would care though if he took 120 days of vacations to make his first move. There needs to be a feesible limit of say no more then 40 days vacation can be used in 1 game in a 6 month time frame. For most people this would not effect what so ever since they do not get that many days off but would fix those that abuse the sites.

Pedro Martínez:
a life time member does not meen they are happy with a site. There was a time when Fencer was happy to fix bugs take suggestions and even if he did not want to do something he was nice about it. I liked these qualities in him and bought a life time membership. I was fooled though because the things I liked most about this site are no longer here. The only good thing about it is there are still lots of great people in fellowships to chat with. sadly many are slowly choosing to leave when there memberships run out.

Fencer: Do not take the above wrong I do not mean it as a personal attak against you. I do not know what sircumstances are in your life and can completely understand being busy(I have not updated aigamez.com in several months). The time limit problem does not even effect me. I am just trying to push that some fix needs to be made to stop people from using unlimited days off in a row. Maybe even something as simple as adding an abuse button so people can report games they think people are abusing vacation time.

Fencer:

Well, we all know the internet and we all know our computers (that might crash in such a situation, too ;-)) )
Such a thing can happen all the time, and the user who decides to play such a game knows about that possible risk before.

It may be interesting to give it a try
and a very special amplification of BK's power!

...and btw. we already have a similar risk here, on one-hour-games...
the ones who like that take that risk!

Fencer: That would be the part about balancing happy users against unhappy users

diogenysos: Until the server goes down after you click on a game and before you make the move.

Fencer:

This is exactly why i asked.
Knowing that an idea may not but into life easily.

But i still might not have been able to show my point: Its a time-setting system which does not affect the game-time-limits.
But a limit, a countdown that counts backward _as soon as you accepted to move now_.
By clicking on a certain game, the time you have to think for one move starts counting.

The downtime is n ot affected, because if the server is down, noone can accept to make a move anyway...

diogenysos: It is a good idea. However, it would require to change the way how BrainKing handles occasional site down events (caused by upgrades, temporary line down problems etc.).
As you know, BrainKing automatically disables timeouts for 24 hours if a downtime is longer than 60 minutes. It would not help in case of, say, 10 minutes site inactivity, which would cause all 3 minutes games timeouted just when the site comes back to online status.
What do you propose now?

MadMonkey:Aaah! Now i can see _your_ point at least and yes, this should be fixed in a way!

But i still believe my request was a different one: if a player _accepts_ to move by clicking on the game, then the countdown counts
and the timing out may happen within that move, e.g. after 10 seconds for _oned_ backgammon-move or three minutes for one logic-move. or lets say there is a 7-day time-limit for a chess game but as soon as you move, you can not exceed ten minutes moving time for the whole match.

And fencer, i agree that the option "no vacation" excludes the discussed problem - but tell me what dou you think of the mentioned idea of mine!

mctrivia: There is an option to play games with no vacation. Then nothing like that could happen. Furthermore, this problem is more an exception than a rule.

Fitzmertz: 1) Some people will be always unhappy (I don't mean MadMonkey but I could name a few).
2) No product can make you 100% happy forever. When I bought my current home computer in 2006, I had been very happy and satisfied with it. Now I am not but it does not mean that I would start to send unhappy emails to the vendor and ask him to make the disks faster and WiFi adaptor more stable.
3) The Paid Membership page clearly describes what you get when you buy a membership. It says nothing like "once you become a paying member, the site owner is committed to make you happy until your membership expires".
4) It is very important to keep a balance between happy and unhappy people on BrainKing. The past showed us that all attempts to make everyone satisfied are direct ways to our doom.

Thad: So you think that in order to make a good business, it is necessary to make everyone happy? That's funny. The world is fully of small companies which bankrupted only because of following this kind of business plan.
Read KnightFighter's response once more. He is right in every word.

I may get a move before my Membership runs out in 2010 ....... you never know

Fitzmertz: Ask him, not me. I just wanted to point out the ridiculousness of your argument.

Pedro Martínez:
yes of course it is but why enter a tournament if you are not going to move?

Fitzmertz:
mad monkey is a paying member until 2010 is that not commitment to your site?

Bobes is a paying member until the day he dies. Is that not commitment to Fencer's site?

Fencer: And making some people upset is a part of the strategy.

What book on how to run a good business did you read?

Fencer: i do beleive the example given was a 3day/move game where a player has not moved at all in 4 months. 3 days is a fast game and 4 months no moves should be a forfit.

Fencer
mad monkey is a paying member until 2010 is that not commitment to your site? i think it is, but who am i to argue with you. to me it is not that important. but if people are unhappy you should be more approachable.

mctrivia: BrainKing always gives you a choice. Who does not like slow tournaments, can join or create fast ones. Who does not like that a couple of games take years to finish, can upgrade his account to a level with no limit of simultaneously started games - then why should a long lasting tournament be a problem?
"It needs to be fixed" is a relative concept. If something is really important, it is fixed, of course. Everything else depends on my choice. When I choose not to fix it, it won't be fixed (or it might be fixed later). Who does not like it, there is always a choice to find another site to play on. Plain and simple.
That was the "short answer". Sort of.
And making some people upset is a part of the strategy. Especially the previous sentence.

Fencer: it is good that you speak your mind and the truth but the fact a fast tournament has been held up for 4 months because someone has not made a single move and has some how not even timed out means you have a serious bug on your site that needs to be fixed. Those complaining here are mainly just upset it seems you do not want to fix it. Addressing the situation and explaining that you will spend some time to fix it will make people happy. Telling them you don't see any reason to fix a bug that makes it so they can not continue a game will make them upset.

KnightFighter: Thank you Andy. Obviously you know what it is all about and I agree with you. It is always a pleasure to read a response of this kind.
Others who still feel "badly treated" or "with an improper attention": There is always a short answer and a long one. The short answer would simply recall what I usually say, the long response is more descriptive, but I should warn you first - it will make certain people annoyed, or even more insulted than before. Anyway, I am not afraid of saying what I really think about it (unlike many other site owners).
Make your choice.

Rose: Are you talking about Fencer ? I think he was too good for many of us ... In my opinion he gave you too much freedom and of course it has been abused ...

MadMonkey:  I think the general feeling may be....... If you don't treat your customers very nicely, they don't return. Like any business you can only stay in business for so long with a bad attitude and improper attention to your paying customers.

Thad: Too many of the 'regular' players are not renewing memberships or just not coming here any more.....its very sad

Nirvana: I have mentioned this before. I posted that I would not renew my paid membership until this was implemented. Fencer said he wouldn't implement it at all because he didn't accept threats (even though I was just making a statement, not a threat). So I'm sorry if I ruined it for everyone, but Fencer won't do it. :-(

Too bad, too. It would remove the biggest problem with this site.

MadMonkey: I know exactly what you mean.

Nirvana: The game i am playing as unreal, not one move in four months. Now thats a lot of vacation days

MadMonkey: I'd like to see a limit as to how many times vacation days can be used in tournaments so that players can avoid timing out. It's not fair the way some people misuse them and hold tournaments up for months on end sometimes, especially on the knights and pawns who wants to play more tourrnaments and join other teams.

Pedro Martínez: I suppose you're right. It doesn't change my first statement, though. ;-)

Thad: Well, people in your tourney move quite fast. I don't know what you're complaining about. Why did you sign up for that tournament in the first place? Note that I'm not advocating the time-limit or vacation system here, I'm just saying that there's nothing wrong in YOUR example, in this respect.

Time limits cause problems and the system needs to be fixed. Period.

I am stuck in my only tournament. It is single elimination and my opponent resigned because of he got tired of waiting. Now, since I 'won' I'll be in the next round (whenever that is) so I can't even PM management and ask them to remove me! This sux.

BBW, MadMonkey: I don't see any difference. If you run into a game with an idiot, the time settings are of no importance, unless it is a no-vacation game.

MadMonkey: Would you accept a system like this one, having 5 options ?
21 days, 14 days, 10 days, 7 days and 3 days tournaments ? It will give what you really want ... flexibility ...what else would you like to have ? Tornament starts and ends on a certain date ... period. you like like it, you sign up, you don't you find or create another one ... all these problems are because of too many options ...
Andy.

Pedro Martínez: I see that lol, but that game is not using time limits, so it will go on & on.

The Team Tournament i posted about has a time per move set, though it does not seem to matter. For Rooks it is not a problem , but Bishops & Knights are effected. They can not enter another Tournament until that one is finished.

I know we can message Fencer and ask to be allowed to enter another Tournament, BUT if we can do that why have the restriction in the first place

diogenysos: No, my friend. I would love to see more varieties of time limits, but the point we are trying to make is as people seem to have a way making games go on on without timing out. As many of us have posted, we need to stop these loop holes before adding to them

coan.net: I think guys this whole system is too complicated ... tournaments should be for 7 days ONLY(or 5, 3 ), including weekends, vacations, and sudden uncle's death .. I f I do not like it, I do not sign up ... period ... when I go to Reno to play my gin ournament I agree to go there for my weekend ... it's too complicated even to read all these complains of yours ...
Andy.
Common,

Pedro Martínez: Well that one at least makes since.... since the 2 players choose to play unlimited time. But 4 months and counting for a game which moves are suppose to take 2 days, 12 hours...... there is something wrong and needs to be fixed in my opinion.

People complain about how long team tournament take, so I made some with shorter time limit - but the abuse of vacation will most likely force most "fast" team tournaments to be no days off tournament.... which I hate to do since sometimes emergencies do come up, but if the abuse of the vacations won't be fixed there is little other options.

MadMonkey: 4 months? That's nothing...compared to this:
Šachy (Harassed vs. lukulus)

MadMonkey:
I dont feel understood... (or my knowledge of the english language is too poor here?!)

you ask for "the point" in offering a larger variety of time limits?

So you do not see the point - the beauty of a "countdown within one move" or a quick 10-minute-chess match?

Hmmm

AbigailII: Nope. I know that I still repeat myself but there are more important things to do.

Fencer: 8 months ago, I asked Would it be possible to mark captured, but not removed checkers? Five minutes later, you responded That could be done.

Made any progress in those 8 months?