Ranting about the site going in the wrong direction

[Phoxtrot]

First, I love BGA, there isn't really any other site that has the quality of BGA.
I'm talking about the site itself, not the game implementations.
It's my perspective and there might be some venting element to it, I still respect the hard work put by the small team operating the site.

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For me, in the last few years, there has been quite a few changes that were for the worse.
I think I understand the objectives behind them to make the site more modern and easier to use and I figure that I'm not the targeted audience of those changes but I believe that they both fail the mark and start from a wrong assumption.

So in chronological order (as much as I can remember that)

1) Language precision :
A long time ago, we were able to split languages in our profile between those we speak fluently and those we understand. That has been scrapped.
Note: you can still see it in the profiles of people (like me) that entered those languages before the change: they will have in bold the languages they claim to speak fluently.

2) New lobby:
The new lobby has one advantage: game options are usually only shown when relevant.
But, IMO, everything else is worse:
- The timing selection with that colored bar is unclear
- You see way less info about the players at the table
- the integration within the game page is such that the table does not stand out
- it is unclear what happens if you leave the page and how you should proceed if you want to create multiple table of different games (as most turn based only players do)
- most importantly : you cannot access the table chat from there which means that you cannot put additional requirements or warnings that have any chance to be read (like: "I can only log once per day at 20h GMT, don't join if you don't like that" or "is it ok if we start the game with only 3 players ?")

3) Min- Max players
Why oh why was this removed ? All that was required, if anything, was to explain it a bit better.
Maybe there could be a site tutorial or whatever.
This wasn't such a hard concept to understand and I cannot believe that a substantial number of the players that actually create tables did not understand it.
Now, if you join a table, the player who created it can start the game even if the table was specified as 6 players and there are only 2, and there is nothing you can do about it.

4)ELO details
Players complained that ELO scoring wasn't clear.
There were multiple bug reports and suggestions because the "p" factor was hidden.
So the site decided to also remove the "k" factor because hey, if we have ZERO idea how it works then we cannot complain right ?
WRONG !

5) New tables page
We cannot access the discussion pages of the games that have not yet started from that page.

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The annoyance of all of the above is compounded by this:

6) Site bug and site suggestions are never answered
I understand that the staff is small and I understand that there is communication between devs and the staffs but players do not feel listened too. I dare say that players ARE not listened too.

There are tons of quality of life ameliorations that should be done, big and small, but aren't :
- show more information and more CONSISTENT information about the players at the table. ELO, Arena ELO, badges etc should be displayed on the table page when the game is ongoing as well as when the game is over
- it should be a lot easier to see our badges (to many clicks to get there) and why is it so near impossible to get to the page that tells you when you received a badge once the initial notification of the badge is gone (you basically need to know the URI of the badge)
- why is the bug sorting bug still not solved
- lots of people want some more options and tunings for the tournaments, why don't we get at least an answer ?
- order of the "game related forums" went crazy a few weeks ago, why no revert, why no communication about working on the issue ?
- ...

[RicardoRix]

A nice summary.
Weird, I have almost the exact same list of gripes. Plus a few more. Month long tournaments can be ruined by bad rep players, and the user experience is just awful and try this from a developer side - it's been 18 months since I fixed a lot of the game bugs in Troyes: multiple emails, tickets, conversations and nothing has happened. Where did the forum translate button go? Why do 10% of my posts go missing on submit?

Here's the bottom line, BGA team don't use the site to play games, rarely they might start a game with other BGA staff members. They don't see any of these problems.
Given they are always swamped by something, it will never change. Best you can do is manage your expectations and use workarounds.

[Phoxtrot]

Well, I hope some of them have a separate account to play incognito.

And yeah, that problem about tournaments and bad rep players is meant to be included in my generic comments about tournaments options that are requested but not answered to.

[GTSchemer]

That is a very good and common list of issues, and I'll agree with most or all.

I've been passionate about BGA for a while, so it does make me sad we can't seem to affect most of these.

[GeraldineMerida]

I agree with many of these issues.

My biggest gripe (which applies to most of these and to multiple other quite recent changes) is that there is inadequate consultation (even though there is now a specific group for pre-testing of changes!) among a range of players before changes are implemented, and that this is compounded by great reluctance to undo very unpopular changes when we complain.

It really feels as if the site is being redesigned to suit a hypothetical vast influx of new, impatient Gen Z players, at the expanse of the many very active paying customers it already has.

[SquashEngineer]

Free-to-Play = ya get what ya get.

Pay-to-Play = ya get what makes them money.

[GTSchemer]

Free-to-Play = ya get what ya get.

Pay-to-Play = ya get what makes them money.

I don't think that's it at all, for many of these changes. They literally spent a lot of time (and therefore money) in them, yet I highly doubt earned any money as a result. It might be intended to draw new players, but then again some of the changes may be driving players away.

It seems much more likely that changes are well-intentioned but perhaps from people who do not play the general public like users on the forum, and therefore priorities are different. Hopefully some of the improvements users call for eventually make it in.

[Jellby]

Have you considered that maybe those changes were a big success, and only a minority of players (those who complain about it in the forums) think otherwise? If the number and vocality of negative reports was the only measure, we'd have to conclude the BGA dice are rigged

[GeraldineMerida]

Have you considered that maybe those changes were a big success, and only a minority of players (those who complain about it in the forums) think otherwise? If the number and vocality of negative reports was the only measure, we'd have to conclude the BGA dice are rigged

No-one can know for sure, I suppose, since BGA does not generally do follow-up surveys to assess satisfaction levels.

So in the absence of objective data, I'm forced to rely on anecdotal evidence: I play in a league with serious players; I play with a lot of more casual players; I read the forums. And thhe majority of this range of people I hear from feel that many of the recent changes have been ill advised and made the site worse for them, not better.

[Lilly-Fee]

Die Seite wird immer schlechter statt besser. Was wirklich wichtig ist das ist noch gleich fehlerhaft seit asmodee übernommen hat. Statt soviel schick schnack was für wenige Spieler interessant ist sollte man sich auf erntere Sachen konzentrieren. Als der translater vom forum entfernt wurde hieß es nur vorübergehend und es wird besser. Davon sieht und hört man nichts mehr. Und das Niveau der Spieler die die Neuerungen toll finden zum Teil zumindest lässt sehr zu wünschen übrig. Ich wünsche mir die Gründer der Seite zurück.