Moving to next table now intermediate window appears

[Cappie]

It may not even be the pictures alone.

But I never had any problem with the loading time. I didn't even notice there really was one. Untill BGA decided to put a picture, progress bar and also another progress bar for the game log history on my screen.
Did anyone ever really complain about long loading times and thinking BGA had a bug or something? It seems like a lot of trouble and extra screen and stuff for not a real problem.

I would rather see the really annoying "no table to play" notification gone. Because it keeps coming up when I do have a table to play at. A website becomes quicker by deleting things, not by adding things....

[sourisdudesert]

If you are playing on a computer, with a very recent browser, a wired fast Internet connexion and if you play game with light graphics, there should be absolutely no problem of loading time.

Now, if you try to load a Through the Ages game with +400 moves history from a slow 3G connexion on your 3 years old smartphone, believe me the loading screen is definitely a necessity.

A majority of "heavy" services on the web have a loading screen (see Gmail), and 99% of games you can play on the web have a loading screen... for an excellent reason: when you need to download several Mb to display a page it may takes several seconds and you don't want that your visitor to leave because he/she thinks the service is down.

[Jest Phulin]

... you don't want that your visitor to leave because he/she thinks the service is down.

Wasn't this supposed to be fixed with the "service is normal" update a bit ago?

Again, souris and een, I understand where you are coming from. I just don't think it is a universal viewpoint, and I'm disappointed with how this change was announced -- giving people the chance to see the negatives before digging in the forums (OK, top post isn't that much digging, but a second topic on this was closed for duplication) to see that there may in fact be positives.

[Cappie]

If you are playing on a computer, with a very recent browser, a wired fast Internet connexion and if you play game with light graphics, there should be absolutely no problem of loading time.

Now, if you try to load a Through the Ages game with +400 moves history from a slow 3G connexion on your 3 years old smartphone, believe me the loading screen is definitely a necessity.

A majority of "heavy" services on the web have a loading screen (see Gmail), and 99% of games you can play on the web have a loading screen... for an excellent reason: when you need to download several Mb to display a page it may takes several seconds and you don't want that your visitor to leave because he/she thinks the service is down.

The loading screen isnt a necessity, users with patience is. But okay, I understand that you don't want people to leave your website because they think the service is down. But this again is a bit fixing a problem with users that are "stupid". A problem that you see more often everywhere. Everything should be made so that everyone understands it. Which can be annoying for other people.

And the argument "everyone is doing it, so why shouldn't we?" could be the worst argument ever. But as I said, I understand what you did. But I never had a problem with loading times. Untill now. And yeah, that may as well be my perception and not reality.

[Caffe Latte]

I draw a parallel with famous story when people were complaining about too slow elevators in the new office. Landlords put a lot of mirrors close to elevators and people suddenly stopped complaining, since were busy enjoying mirroring themselves. Speed of elevators did not change.

I think we were busy with analysing game position and next move thus did not notice loading delay, if there even was any. Now the delay is exposed to it's full beauty to us.

[Liallan]

If you are playing on a computer, with a very recent browser, a wired fast Internet connexion and if you play game with light graphics, there should be absolutely no problem of loading time.

Now, if you try to load a Through the Ages game with +400 moves history from a slow 3G connexion on your 3 years old smartphone, believe me the loading screen is definitely a necessity.

A majority of "heavy" services on the web have a loading screen (see Gmail), and 99% of games you can play on the web have a loading screen... for an excellent reason: when you need to download several Mb to display a page it may takes several seconds and you don't want that your visitor to leave because he/she thinks the service is down.

The loading screen isnt a necessity, users with patience is. But okay, I understand that you don't want people to leave your website because they think the service is down. But this again is a bit fixing a problem with users that are "stupid". A problem that you see more often everywhere. Everything should be made so that everyone understands it. Which can be annoying for other people.

And the argument "everyone is doing it, so why shouldn't we?" could be the worst argument ever. But as I said, I understand what you did. But I never had a problem with loading times. Untill now. And yeah, that may as well be my perception and not reality.

Haven't been posting hardly at all (because I've decided to stop caring about this site), but sometimes feel the need to jump in. Totally agree here. Your first paragraph reminds me of a quote I just saw from someone: minority thinks, majority consumes.

I personally have no interest in people who want to try to load and play Through the Ages on a smartphone! They're trying to access a regular website (not an app), play something big and long, through a tiny little screen, and then complain about problems - it's like complaining that my law mower doesn't work very well to get the snow off my driveway. And it implies that those of us not trying to play Through the Ages on a smartphone don't even matter.

And I SOOOO totally agree that "everyone else is doing it" is the worst argument ever. Yeah, and everyone else has tiny little medium gray print that I can't read, but "everyone else doing it" doesn't make it any easier to read. It just means websites can't think for themselves anymore. (I think they're letting google do it for them. Why not? Everyone else lets google run their life. So, no, I won't "see gmail," thanks.)

And I agree with Jest about how this change was announced. And there seems to be a lot of assumption about "universal viewpoints."

I definitely feel like everything is taking longer now, even with games that didn't take that long. Caffe Latte probably has a good point about what things will make us notice, or not notice stuff. Perhaps the total lag time is exactly the same, but it feels like it's longer, and I'm not concerned about what the reason is. Loading the log isn't taking very long, so I'm still mostly waiting on box pictures. But I could repeat again that those of us not playing games with huge game logs apparently don't matter.

[eoc]

So, how about preloading the images (and other possibly large resources) once you click on the "Accept" button? Someone else usually takes their sweet time doing so, which means you'll have to wait there anyways. Why not use that wait time to prepare the table?

[Jest Phulin]

So, how about preloading the images (and other possibly large resources) once you click on the "Accept" button? Someone else usually takes their sweet time doing so, which means you'll have to wait there anyways. Why not use that wait time to prepare the table?

Preloading like this would only affect realtime games, not turn-based. Also, I have no idea how many games don't have everyone accept, but it probably is non-trivial. Tying up server resources to preload a table that never gets played is probably not a good idea.

[Liallan]

Just as an experiment, I tried loading a couple of games on my iPad (mini), just to compare with the smartphones. Carcassonne took forever to load images, like forever. So I stared at that box the whole time. That's the thing that would make me think something was wrong, not waiting for images inside the game. (And Carc works like crap on an iPad anyway.)

So I have a hard time comprehending how this is improving things for smartphones and seems like an odd excuse.

[Jest Phulin]

@Jest:

I agree with you. However, the #1 priority in our communication are new games, and we cannot remove the current game from the news.

The reason of most of our "bells and whistles" are self-explainable, and also quite common (almost all games on the web with heavy images have a loading screen). So we may do not find the need to communicate on this.

Not going to replace a game announcement with website information, huh?

We are proud to introduce today 3 new improvements of the BGA time management system:

We now allow you to change your BGA username, and/or to take over the username from an inactive account.

You can now choose a (much) bigger avatar image for your BGA account

These didn't remove the latest game from the news, they simply moved it into second place. Like all information that isn't new anymore should be.

And, while I did call it bells and whistles work, it does represent a major change to the user experience on the site. I mean, bells and whistles got their own post...

We are proud to announce today an upgrade of Board Game Arena sound environment