Multiplayer is great; only when both players have their attention on the game. It is so wrong that round 1 takes 10 minutes, me spending < 1 minute and the other player 9 minutes. It is perfectly acceptable to think before making a move, but boring me to death will not work. I am too stubborn for this. I am sure there is some server-side rule that can be implemented to get rid of the worst offenders.
Are you saying 9 minutes for one move, or 9 minutes for the whole game? Because if they take 9 minutes per move, they're going to time out and you're going to win, and you can also report them for stalling if they're doing that. However, taking 10 minutes out of a 20 minute timer is far from unacceptable. Who's an offender of what? Please clarify!
There are many players who take what I would consider to be silly lengths of time to plan out their moves. (See also: I want a ~12-minute match timer.) For example, my current match has a time-used ratio of 1:2 between myself and my opponent, even while I'm browsing the forums and typing out this response. I took 4:20 minutes, he took 8:40. (Didn't help him at all, either...)
I do not remember the name of the other player. He spent >1 minute playing first card. Then another >1 minute playing the second. When I asked why he was so slow, he wrote "working. We only played the first round, but it took 10 minutes. Then he resigned the game. Not a case of planning ahead every move, or great strategi. His mind was elsewhere and he had no respect for the other player. Takes away the joy away.
If people are taking forever and you have a problem with it, try asking if they can speed up a bit. If they don't, they're either being a jerk, or their computer/internet combo is slow. My computer takes about a minute to load the map at the start of a match, and combined with the fact that if the internet hiccups it boots me and it takes the computer another minute to log back in (and sometimes autoboots me again), you have an unpleasant experience for both players. If you're the person slowing things down, close those webcomics, apologize to your opponent for your awful computer/manners, and then play at doubletime to make up for it.
To offer another perspective, some people are just slow players and they want to thoroughly consider every possible option before making a move. I don't think this is a bad thing. You have a game clock for a reason, and as long as you play within its confines, I don't think it's bad to play slowly. The main problem is that the reward system of this game doesn't differentiate based on game length so it feels really bad to play against a slow opponent. This is one of the reasons I suggested adding some kind of time scaled reward awhile back. http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/suggestion-mp-incentives-re-think.6245/#post-69672
It's one reason I don't like MP. I play to pass my mandatory sitting time. Playing slow opponents is more boring to me than "mindlessly" (as it's commonly referred to) grinding out 2 levels of an SP adventure repeatedly. At least I'm doing something other than waiting. I don't say people shouldn't be allowed to play slowly and analyze everything, I just don't want to be in a game with them. A "Bughouse Chess" analogy in MP could be attractive. I liked it in chess. Edit: I think the "1 gp per 10 seconds elapsed on your opponent's clock" is a bad idea because the rate is too high, and it is easily subject to collusion. Should players be awarded an item per 20 seconds of queueing to compensate for the wait? For time spent chatting in the lobby? (Quit thinking about it and just say no, dammit. )
With the current multiplayer loot track, I disagree about the rate being too high. You acquire gold so slowly in multiplayer you need a boost. At 1 gold per 10 seconds you'll probably earn about 150 gold per hour after you factor in queue times. Thats nothing compared to single player farming. Also how does it encourage collusion any more than the current reward system? You cant just go afk for 10 minutes because you'll time out. I don't really see an easy/profitable way to abuse the system. Not that it matters. It looks like Blue Manchu has other ideas on how to increase multiplayer gold. This is my biggest issue with leagues. It's already hard enough to find ranked games when theres a league happening. There is no way the playerbase is large enough to support a third type of queue. Maybe after we've grown a bit.
