Lobby Update & few extras

[Cheery Dog]

The only problem with the old lobby is how quickly the "other games you know": section can fill up.

You fixed it by making it only the most popular of those games, rather than anything useful like being able to take off games from that list you do not actually know as you played one game of them and it failed to click.

and I do no believe any of these new features will repalce what I'm actually looking for in the lobby.

Although I do appreciate the quick replay page allowing me to jump into arena and casual games depending on the game itself.
Still waiting on being able to easily join an arena and a casual of the same game but with different settings though.

Also what does sorting by "relevance" mean?

[Cheery Dog]

Can there also be a default setting somewhere to turn new games in this new lobby game page that I can set to turn based please?

So many games I accidentally start tables up as real time because of your new lobby. I generally don't want to be playing real time.
To my knowledge I have never played a Castles of Burgundy game real time, yet that is my quick replay option?

[Janabis]

From the latest improvements on the new lobby, we received a lot of feedback from you and continued to improve it, step by step.

First, let me remind you of our initial intent for the lobby update: being easier for new players to discover and start games. I'm quite happy that more and more new players use it- daily!
Indeed, since the latest news on this topic, we have fixed many issues and also silently introduced small features. One example is giving you the capability to set your flexibility on some game settings, so that we can propose tables as close as possible to your favorite options, and so find you a table and opponents quicker.

The “old lobby,” as it is sometimes referred to, is still accessible from the 'Play Now' menu at the top of your screen.
You will find some details about exciting features introduced just now! (and below in a couple of minutes)

As usual, we will keep on listening to your feedback and provide a mini FAQ that will be completed later on.

Is the Game Page Finished?

No, it is not. I know how difficult it could be to explain to a new player how to create or join a table before. Here, the situation clearly improved.

Therefore, to be clear with you, the old lobby prevents us from bringing some new features. At some time, I expect it will be slowly removed.

Ok understood, and so what's next ?

Ding Ding! Introducing the Bell Notification System - Never Miss a Real-Time Table Again!

Toaster: New Notification System

Quick replay page: to allow to quickly relaunch new tables.

Oh ... la première annonce m'attriste car je n'utilise que l'ancien lobby (tout comme la quasi totalité de ma communauté d'amis) après trop de déconvenues avec le nouveau, tellement impraticable & contre-intuitif, il ne m'a causé que des soucis. Tellement que j'en suis venu à jouer de moins en moins souvent ... si l'ancien lobby venait à disparaître, je pense que moi aussi ... Pour les nouveaux joueurs que j'ai fait venir, au lieu de perdre mon temps à expliquer le nouveau lobby, je leur indiquait juste l'ancien & il n'y a rien à expliquer, ils se débrouillent & comprennent tout seul.

Quant aux nouvelles idées :
> La cloche, personnellement, je joue sans le son donc cette nouveauté m'est à première vue totalement inutiles ... les joueurs sourds ont-ils une alternative ? ...
> Le toaster ... non, non & non, c'est pénible (encore sur pc, cela peut aller) mais sur téléphone, c'est la pire chose que j'ai vu. Elle bloque la page & empêche purement & simplement l'utilisation du site. Je n'accepte jamais une partie sans accéder à la page pour en voir les détails & en discuter avant avec le créateur de la partie ... mais là, c'est tout bonnement impossible & cette fenêtre intempestive m'empêche juste de jouer ... (la croix pour la fermer n'apparaît pas sur l'écran du téléphone ... & je ne veux ni refuser ni accepter une partie sans en connaître les détails) la bannière est tellement moins dérangeante ...
> Le quick replay ... je ne vois pas du tout à quoi cela peut servir, donc aucune idée de savoir si c'est bien ou non.

[thoun]

> La cloche, personnellement, je joue sans le son donc cette nouveauté m'est à première vue totalement inutiles ... les joueurs sourds ont-ils une alternative ? ...

Je t'invite à relire le texte, ça n'a rien à voir avec le son

[Janabis]

Ah ... ok. Mon anglais n'est pas très bon, mais de ce que j'avais compris, c'est qu'on pouvait recevoir une alerte pour des parties de nos jeux préférés, sans préciser quel type d'alerte (ou alors j'ai raté le passage), donc vu le titre, j'avais pensé que c'était une alerte sonore.

[ShassDow]

Terrible,totally agree with wreckage

I will attempt to be constructive here.

This is a typical “Play Now” page.


The first 5 points refer to my red marks on the pic.

1. I can see the restrictions of every table on the "Play Now" list easily. I’m looking for a strong and above table. Using the new lobby, I believe I can only see restrictions on tables I create myself. If there is a way to see other tables’ restrictions, I haven’t found it.

2. At the moment I took this screenshot, there were about 20 tables open for this game. Using the new lobby, I know I can click on each table individually, and then click on each player at each table individually, to see their ratings. However, waiting for a “strong and above” table for this game often takes about 20 minutes. If I have to continually click each table and then click each player at each table for that long, that's going to take hundreds, or possibly thousands of clicks to find a table with all strong players, while the tables are continually changing. Notice from the “Play Now” page this info is displayed easily for me to see with no additional clicks at all. There is some scrolling required when there are lots of tables.

3. The game shown here was created 50 minutes ago. This is useful info. The player who created this game has perhaps forgotten about it. This table most likely wont start. The new lobby should include this as well.

4. The new lobby requires 1 additional step of going to each table specifically to join it. However, if you’d like to join 4-5 tables, you can join them all from the “Play Now” page with as many clicks. With the new lobby, you must go to each of those tables and join, and then back to find the next table and so on. Remember you also can’t see the settings for any of the games until you go to the table, so you may go to many tables to investigate before finding 4-5 you want to join.

5. If you click “View” From the “Play Now” page, you go to the table, where you can, at a glance, see the exact ELO of every player, and their reputations. No clicks are required to get this info. Also if you’re on a PC, you can hover over their ELO to see how many games they have played. From the new lobby, you must click on each player to see their ELO only. Their reputation and number of games played are not available, without going to each of their profiles.

6. Using the new lobby, 95+% of the time when it says "this game matches my preferences", it doesn’t. My suggestion would be that for it to match my preferences, it must match against my preferences of the last game I created.

7. There is no “discuss” button. I understand the button appears once you join the table, but there are many reasons to communicate without joining. For instance “I can’t join because…” if they don’t meet a table restriction. Which if they were allowed to ask, the admin may be willing to adjust, but this might be a whole table discussion. If a person is running an event with multiple tables, they may want to give last minute instructions to the players at one of the tables. however, since there is no discuss button, this is impossible.

I don't believe the premise that the new lobby is easier to use by new players. I have had a number of family members and many friends join BGA before the new lobby was implemented, and I never heard the slightest complaint about it being difficult to navigate. By contrast I have heard hundreds of regulars on the site who hate it, and still can't figure out how it functions.

The old lobby is pleasant. It's possible there are ways to find info using the new lobby that I'm not aware of, it is a difficult page to solve.

[Panthergirl]

Where is the bell? I play Ark Nova and Obsession and can't find a bell anywhere.

[dschingis27]

I just got my first "bell ringing" for an open Tea Time table. Thank you for this feature! I think it should be the default when you click on "Display" in the notification in order to jump to the opened table, it should open in a new browser tab. I was reading through the forum at the time, and I couldn't open the Tea time table in a new tab, not even with a right click. So I had to interrupt reading a forum article to join the Tea Time table.

It's pretty annoying that you have to interrupt whatever you are doing currently on BGA to join a table you got a bell notification for.

[lordalx]

From today update, we introduced some small changes based on your feedback:
- the bells system is for single game only, not for Arena. In the same time, we increase the number of game for whom are concerned. It's only game with small audience (around below top 100), so no need for bell on Arknova or Obsession, you should easilly find opponents on these ones
- when you are invited to a tournament table, the toaster notification now displayed information regarding the tournament, and you can snooze the reminder.

Again, all your feedbacks are valuable. I read many interresting thing on the old lobby, from player who want to have full details on game before joining. The idea behing the game page is to rely on the matchmaking system to automatically find relevant opponents for everyone

6. Using the new lobby, 95+% of the time when it says "this game matches my preferences", it doesn’t. My suggestion would be that for it to match my preferences, it must match against my preferences of the last game I created.

This is something that should work, can you provide more details on this please, since your last preferences are saved for further tables.

[Stroom]

Again, all your feedbacks are valuable. I read many interresting thing on the old lobby, from player who want to have full details on game before joining. The idea behing the game page is to rely on the matchmaking system to automatically find relevant opponents for everyone

6. Using the new lobby, 95+% of the time when it says "this game matches my preferences", it doesn’t. My suggestion would be that for it to match my preferences, it must match against my preferences of the last game I created.

This is something that should work, can you provide more details on this please, since your last preferences are saved for further tables.

As said in another post, implementing matchmakers will kill the community. And you admitted yourself that people want to play with specific settings not with whatever the matchmaker gives. So you split the queue between multiple settings which becomes exponentially slower to find players for.

I have seen it with online *. People who organize games on their own have better communities separated from your platform. Even if they use your platform for playing now, they might more easily jump to other platforms to play the same game if that works better for them.

Also, if you consider how many people are actually in a queue at one moment, your matchmaker will not really work very well. It would have very little variation to choose who plays with who and just picks the first players who join the queue and place them in one game. Very little variation. Same thing keeps happening with online *.

Just stop developing the new UI and improve the existing lobby. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It just makes much more sense to have a lobby in a platform like this. For detecting games to play, you do not need a matchmaker, you need a better visual representation in the lobby. More information on the screen, which is the complete opposite of the new game page UI.

*please do not name specific other sites, just refer to "on another site" generically please