Timer Grace Period to compensate for network delay

I’ve had it happen very often that I lose a byoyomi period (or just outright the game on the last one) when I click a move very shortly before or on beat with the 0 on the countdown timer. Some other servers have a more or less long grace period here that makes this feel much more like one would expect too. I propose to implement a short (maybe start with 200 ms) grace period to prevent this usablity problem. Alternatively, an option could be given to make the countdown appear a specified offset before it actually ticks, this would achieve the same usability improvement without actually increasing the time that players have available.

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Out of curiosity, do you know how long the grace periods are on other servers?

In my own games I try to pick generous time settings to account for internet-lapses

Edit: also welcome to the forums! I always forget that part :persevere:

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I don’t remember wich server it was, since I saw it in a dwyrin video (some asian server I think but might be wrong on that) but it felt like almost an entire second in that video. I don’t actually know if it’s a real grace period or if they implemented it like the alternative I proposed above, but it felt much less punishing in the video. Actually placing a stone on the 0 on ogs almost always results in the loss of a period, now one can argue that that is as intended, but given the fact that network latency is a thing that exists I think at least an option to make the countdown appear earlier would be nice.

Also thanks for the welcome message <3

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I would love for this to be addressed… 200ms might be an OK starting point but I suspect reworking code would be the real solution.

I’ve personally lost a couple of games here when playing a move with 3-1 seconds (before voice counts 1) in my last period. One of these losses was on enterprise internet provider. I’ve seen this happen to a Twitch streamer as well.

Fox server feels like you have 2 seconds after it counts to 1.

edit: This thread(in the last couple of replies) specifically mentions the problem I am talking about. It seems to be different from a grace period or OP’s idea of offsetting the audio.

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If that bug actually still exists it would definitely explain why the timer feels so punishing.

Yes, I saw that recent Dwyrin video. IIRC it was 1 second grace on Foxy.

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