This site is so mediocre

[ufm]

[1] Not sure where the right place to post feedback is, but off the top of my head:

Suggestion forum would be the best place, obviously.

- Refreshing the page seems to reload the full game art assets from the server, which could be cached for a faster page load, particularly on mobile?

Based on the recurring connection issues, I think BGA should make various things more efficient.

- Would be nice if the clocks were configured for better increment time (lower increment per move, higher base of starting time and time bank limit). This is particularly nice for games like Terraforming Mars or Great Western Trail that have a lot of analysis on the opening position before the first move, or generally have fast per-turn play but once or twice a game you want to really stop and think hard about a critical move.

Definitely.

- Would be nice to "step in" to a game and replay from that point on for more detailed analysis. Requires using psuedo-RNG with seeds instead of "true" RNG for most games though.

Imo the gain is too little compared to the hassle.
There was a similar debate regarding Terraforming Mars in the dev community, but afaik the conclusion was 'it isn't worth the effort'.

- For devs, would be nice if there were git commits and change history on the game source code, instead of an FTP server rsync; as it is it seems hard to collaborate toolchain wise (but I haven't done much dev work).

Many devs already do this themselves, especially when dealing with complex games.

- Elo system would be nice if it didn't have the floor at 100, so it would be more of a true elo system without introducing inflation over time.

Actually BGA did this until 2017, then shifted to the current system because true Elo system didn't work well.

[Mathew5000]

- Would be nice if the clocks were configured for better increment time (lower increment per move, higher base of starting time and time bank limit). This is particularly nice for games like Terraforming Mars or Great Western Trail that have a lot of analysis on the opening position before the first move, or generally have fast per-turn play but once or twice a game you want to really stop and think hard about a critical move.

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=144459

[Lucy Tania]

Don't waste your time telling me that the site is good, actually. I said it was mediocre, not bad.

I've both played a lot and paid a lot, and I would have done neither if the site was outright bad.

The mediocrity is 100% the responsibility of the owners of the site. Obviously volunteers make nearly everything run and deserve almost all the credit for what is successful on BGA.

And that is the problem. Have you seen the owners put ANYTHING into site quality?

Do they review the site to ensure the user experience is optimal? No.
Do they invest in the quality of gameplay, hire experienced developers and programmers to review code and perform quality control? No.

Almost everything is exactly the same as when they took over from the previous owners. They are happy just raking in the cash and putting all the work on volunteers, who they pay nothing for. They haven't made a single improvement.

No vision. If you are happy with stasis and good enough, feel free to mindlessly wallow in it. But if no one every asks for anything better they certainly will not provide it.

[nik592]

No vision. If you are happy with stasis and good enough, feel free to mindlessly wallow in it. But if no one every asks for anything better they certainly will not provide it.

Many people in this thread don't wallow in it, but they address specific concerns and discuss solutions, rather than just complaining that things aren't better.

Games with reported bugs that go uncorrected for years.
Absentee developers.

BGA works on volunteer devs for games (mostly). If all games were monitored by paid devs, I can't imagine the cost to play here. There certainly wouldn't be any free games (or possibly not much beyond simple card games).

More and more games with no improvements to what already exists.

While your opinion may be to fix existing games, plenty want new ones. Again, if the devs are volunteer, they kind of get to pick and choose what they work on. If a dev is motivated to develop (and/or maintain) a new game, should they say, nope, sorry, we only want devs to maintain old games. Typically I think what happens is a dev develops a game, maintains it for some period, but eventually life gets in the way/they get tired of it/etc. and move on. And a new dev isn't always available to step in. Each game really needs a dev who understands the game fairly well, so not every game is going to suit every dev. If the game is so broken that you can't play it, pretend it isn't here. If it just has some bugs that are annoying, well, that's a bit of life. Make sure the bugs are raised and/or bug reports are voted for, post about it in the relevant game forums if you feel passionate about it (and get more votes, maybe someone willing to develop it).

A ‘volunteer’ model with no accountability for the owners.

I'm not sure what your point is here. Plenty of users hold the "owners" of BGA responsible for decisions they have made (see the ELO thread, among others). They don't often seem to want to listen to their user base, and that is a problem, with minimal solutions for a user to affect things apart from leaving the platform, or reverting to a free account - but somehow I don't see the owners setting themselves up to be more accountable. But the volunteer model is a separate thing, and as you note, volunteers do a lot of good work. If you mean the volunteers aren't accountable because they're volunteers, well, yeah. You can't change that without making it something other than a volunteer system. Which again, see above re: cost of paid devs.

Same pointless karma system for years and years.

Suggest a better one. If you have ideas, great. Yes, there's a good chance they won't be implemented, because the owners don't seem to hear their users, but just saying a system is bad isn't helpful either. Campaign for the changes you want to see (if you want to - not everyone does and that's fine too). Although as an aside, I'd be willing to be whatever system was in place would have people who were unhappy with it. As someone who used to work with government legislation, you can't design a perfect system to stop people being jerks - there are always edge cases that can be exploited. Typically, the jerks will find way to continue being jerks and some non-jerks will get burned in the process.

Sloppy and ill-thought out user interface and placeholder text with no thought behind it.

Specifically? This isn't a complaint I personally have, I find most of the UI quite good. Bug reports would be the place to deal with this in specific games. If you're talking about places like the home page, well, the new home page also wasn't well-received by the user base and a lot of constructive feedback was given. It wasn't especially listened to (again).

Let me put it another way, I don't work for BGA, I just play here. And yes, my initial reaction to your post was, well, hang on, it's not THAT bad. Whether or not you meant it to sound that bad or not, it did. There are things that could be improved. There is a disconnect with those in charge of the platform and their users. But I'm not sure the way to address that is to post essentially a big ol' non-specific complaint ("you're not doing your job well enough, do better!" as opposed to "hey, it'd be great if you did...."). And yes, it's entirely likely that even if you posted a nicer, constructively worded post, you'd get no response and no action. That's a reason I pick and choose what I fight BGA on. I report and vote for bugs that matter to me. I join in discussions that matter to me. But no, I don't spend a lot of energy campaigning to the BGA admin to actually make changes, cause I feel like that would be wasted effort. To each their own. I mean, to that end, sure, post a big ol' non-specific complaint if you want to. But I'm really not sure what response you were expecting? "Yeah totally" from the users? "We're super sorry, now that you've posted this we'll do better" from the admin?

Ask for things, sure. But ask for THINGS, specifically, raise them as bugs, suggest solutions if you have them, and try to get others to vote for them. Your post just reads like, "stuff bad, do better".

[menettm]

I add one more reason to said that the site is mediocre : "Why Ticket To Ride Switzerland is not a game like the others game ?"
To develop it, it was stand alone.
But now, it is with Ticket To Ride USA !
There is no link with the map and there are rules that are different. Strategy to win is different.

It is true that if you can buy it today, you can’t play to it without having a TTR base game like USA, Europe, Germany,... game to have the train car cards and the train car pieces.
It is like if you group all the games with dice or all the games with standard cards...

[ufm]

I add one more reason to said that the site is mediocre : "Why Ticket To Ride Switzerland is not a game like the others game ?"

You should ask that to the publisher, not BGA. Have you seen Next Station games or Boomerang games on BGA?

There is no link with the map and there are rules that are different. Strategy to win is different.

Also, this is not a valid argument, since many variants/expansions in plenty of games drastically change strategies and still they are doing well.

[menettm]

I add one more reason to said that the site is mediocre : "Why Ticket To Ride Switzerland is not a game like the others game ?"

You should ask that to the publisher, not BGA. Have you seen Next Station games or Boomerang games on BGA?

But BGA joined the Asmodee Group and now Asmodee is also a TTR publisher. I suppose it is not the case of the 2 games you list.

There is no link with the map and there are rules that are different. Strategy to win is different.

Also, this is not a valid argument, since many variants/expansions in plenty of games drastically change strategies and still they are doing well.

It may be true but in the case of TTR, like the maps are different, it looks like a different game and for TTR USA there are already a lot of players and currently there is an official Ticket to Ride 20th Anniversary World Tournament organized on BGA without link to Switzerland.

[ufm]

But BGA joined the Asmodee Group and now Asmodee is also a TTR publisher. I suppose it is not the case of the 2 games you list.

BGA has no direct authority over Days of Wonder.
FYI, BGA being a subsidiary of Asmodee does not mean they control all publishers under Asmodee ownership.

It may be true but in the case of TTR, like the maps are different, it looks like a different game and for TTR USA there are already a lot of players and currently there is an official Ticket to Ride 20th Anniversary World Tournament organized on BGA without link to Switzerland.

Again, if you think so, you have to persuade the publisher.