Summary of suggestions

[Jest Phulin]

So, I've been reading this forum for a while, and I think these are the suggestions that keep reappearing. Did I miss any?

These are not in any particular order.

1. Game-specific suggestions
   Too many to list, and most of them involve making a "house rule" variant which goes against the BGA license with the publisher.
2. Open tables -- Do not display tables one cannot join in the same way that tables one can play at are displayed.
   If the table is restricted to a certain group, ranking, or reputation that the player is not part of, either don't display it or display it in a different color.
3. Turn based -- A note system.
   Useful in trying to remember what the strategy was for this incarnation of the game, as opposed to the 15 other games being played at the same time. Also useful for remembering items that are normally stored in short-term memory but not in long-term memory.
4. Mobile/tablet friendlier games.
   Mouse hover should not be a general interface, as people are wanting to play with devices that don't have mice.
5. Turn based -- End of Game scoring recap without playing through the entire game.
   Several games have end-game scoring, and it would be nice to see just those scores without having to replay the entire game.
6. Automatic moves
   If a player only has one legal move (and that information is public knowledge), the game should make the move. IE, in Stone Age the last person to choose an item in the lottery (or last X if there are X of the same item), in Hearts the last card being played, etc.
7. Real-time pause
   If all players agree, a real-time game can be suspended for a while, or changed to turn-based.
   Extension -- turn-based vacation pause
   If all players agree, turn-based games can be suspended for several days.
8. Real-time set time limit
   Greater variability in setting time per turn. Instead of Fast/Normal/Slow, which seem arbitrary to the players, allow players to set number of seconds (with suggestions of what would be considered fast/normal/slow).
9. "Fix" ELO
   A change was recently made to the ELO system, so I'll assume this suggestion is actually taken care of. Besides, the number of times this comes up and the number of different suggested ways to fix it are almost the same...
10. "Fix" reputation system.
    Greater control rather than just "no opinion"/green/red. Right now there is no way to differentiate between "they didn't upset me" and "they were really helpful, explaining the game to a new player," nor can one differentiate between "they were one step away from getting reported to the moderators" and "their favorite football team is my team's rival, so of course I have to not play with them ever again." The personal notes system does allow one to do this privately, but it doesn't allow others to see the reputation.
11. Turn based, see who opponents are before starting table.
    In a turn-based game, all players may end up being people the table creator has given red thumbs to.
12. Separate lists of favorite games (turn-based vs real-time)
    Some games people want to play turn-based only, some real-time only, and getting suggestions for when they want to play one way for tables that are set up the other way is frustrating.
13. Greater control over user interface
    a) Greater control over sounds
    Enable/disable/set specific sounds (or be able to set any sound to "no sound").
    b) Choose player color
    It shouldn't matter if I am red and my opponent blue on my screen, and on their screen they are green and I am yellow.
14. Game-specific forums
    With 70+ games currently, and more coming all the time, a post about a specific game can get lost.

[derscheid]

Re: #11, if I have red-thumbed someone, I want a bright red warning if I'm attempting to enter an already-created game with them, and I want them banned from games I create.

This request comes up over and over again, and the response is: "We don't want people to know who red-thumbed them."

(Some of you don't like this. Tough. If the bottom 0.1% weren't incredibly awful people who harass women in chat, it wouldn't be an issue.)

[twodot]

I've not read this forum for very long, but this looks like a good list. Is there a similar summary of why these aren't being done. Both #2 and #6 are cases where the system understands you can't do something (can't join a table, can't play a legal move) and gives you the option to do it anyways. Not offering options the system already knows to be invalid seems like a slam dunk feature that improves usability and play speed. I was personally pretty confused when playing Race for the Galaxy and it asked me which of my non-existent windfall worlds I'd like to produce on.

[Jest Phulin]

Is there a similar summary of why these aren't being done

Because development is on a volunteer basis

Also, they just did a recent site update that did address many of these issues (#3, #13a, a poll for #14, ...)

[twodot]

Because development is on a volunteer basis

Is the site open source somewhere? I wouldn't mind implementing some of these. I see instructions for adding new games, but not for core functionality.