Rummikub 4+

I actually purchased and set up a tablet for my grandmother for the sole purpose of being able to play this game with her grandchildren during this time since we are all socially distancing from her. Had it all set up and working and got one game in before we encountered the same issue that multiple other people in this thread have mentioned about a lack of connectivity. It is sporadic and unpredictable in when it can and can’t connect. While I understand that servers face and incredible load during this time, it is difficult to do remote tech support for someone who has a very specific set of instructions to follow on how to play a game and now feels like they are just simply doing it wrong, when in fact it is a developer issue that I hope can be addressed in the near future.
I am understanding of the greater issues at hand in the world and won’t let yet another negative element ruin this quarantine period, but I am greatly disappointed that something I looked forward to greatly improving this time only led to further complicating it. I wish that I had looked further into the fact that this has apparently been an ongoing issues for months and not wasted the time, money, and effort that I did. Just taking the time to share so that perhaps others will take that into consideration.

1: There’s not enough time to leave a game before it starts without losing tokens. I don’t like joining games with a 500 token fee! I try to leave as fast as possible, but I still lose tokens often. I see two options: 1. Increase the time to join to allow people enough time to leave once they see the join fee, or 2: give people the option before joining. For example, after clicking Play Now we could have the option of joining a 100 token fee game, a 500 token fee, or whatever other fee levels are available at the moment.

2: Having ALL the tiles removed from the board if even one tile is out of place. Only invalid tiles should be returned. It’s maddening playing a bunch of tiles, trying to place the last tile only for it to not go into place for some reason (the play mechanics aren’t perfect for tile placement), having the timer run out, and then ALL the pieces being returned despite the one tile out of place being from my hand and could easily be returned to my hand while leaving a valid board.

3: This doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the game, but I would like to have more time increments when making a custom game. Increments in 5s, 10s, or even 15s would be preferable to 30s.

UPDATE: UGH!!! The cheating I mentioned in my first review is becoming much more rampant. I’m starting to wonder if these people think that this is how this game is actually supposed to be played?! Whether it’s cheating or people think that’s how it’s played, what’s the fun in that? It’s no fun to play people who save the Wild tiles until the very last round to ensure that they win. This would never happen in an in-person game. It’s become so common now that I no longer wish to play this app. So sad as I really love this game.
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Possible solutions - Remind players that that’s not how this is played. Allow players to block players who choose to play this way. Otherwise, I won’t come back. Deleting the app now. Feel free to respond to this review if you make these changes.
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I love Rummikub, have been playing the in-person game for years. This game is well done, no issues, except that I’d love an option to opt out of ads, such as paying 3.99 or something. Also, it’s easy to cheat, with no repercussions whatsoever. Twice in a row just now, 2 different players saved their joker tiles for their very last play in order to win. Ugh. In a real life game, they’d totally get called out on that and would not be allowed to win. This is an extremely frustrating part of the game and I don’t know how it can be remedied. Surely there must be a way though?