New Tournament Pages are here: Better, Faster, and Mobile-Friendly!

[_Pethe_]

The new Results view that's just one massive picture that scrolls in every direction is just about the least "mobile-friendly" interface I can imagine.
The Registered Participants view is equally dreadful. Just get rid of horizontal scrolling completely. There's absolutely no benefit to a grid view if it falls off your screen in both dimensions.
Now that I'm actually in a tournament I can agree with what MANY others have said that the Overview and My Progression views give no useful information whatsoever.
No part of this new interface is an upgrade from the old (working) one.

[Eichi05]

not sure whats involved in a Mobile-Friendly update, but my phone cant load the page now at all.
it is a pretty old one but obviously sucks, especially for playing tournaments with a timer

[chrysanthemum454]

Is there a chance that whatever you did to make this more "mobile-friendly" actually broke the site for some phones? I use an older iPhone with Safari and haven't been able to load BGA on my phone since sometime early this afternoon, which seems like it might correspond with when you did this update.

I do have a bug report filed, here: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=206821 but haven't seen any response to it yet.

[nervous-chicken387]

Why did you get rid of the ability to right-click on a tournament from the tournaments menu? I like opening them in separate tabs. Now I have to click on the tournament, then scroll up to the preview and right-click 'open tournament page'. It's less convienent UI. An extra scroll and click for no benefit. While not even fulfilling its purpose, judging by the number of people already in the forums saying that they struggle using it with their phone.

Also, speaking of the tournaments menu, when are you gonna finally add the ability to see the individual thinking time for each player without having to click into the tournament? It would make things so much more convienent and easier to see. I can only play with tournaments with longer playing hours (especially for Formula D, a long game), and many tournaments have short playing hours. I only find out once I click into them (or now click twice into them). It would be so much easier to see which tournaments I should even consider if it said the overall thinking time that each player got in the preview within the tournaments menu.

It shouldn't have the 24h time or the overall game duration time. Those just require extra mental math to determine the overall thinking time. And many tournaments have long game durations but with very short thinking times which are disproportionate. So thinking time and game duration often don't even line up, even if it is easy to calculate (based on assumption that game duration = combined thinking time, which is often false in practice).

But instead of extra convienence and more information that is needed in the tournaments menu and tournament screen, we get something that makes things less convienent, harder to read, and require more scrolling. I see now why other players say that BGA doesn't care for tournaments. As a player that enjoys Arena when I have time, it is sad to see you not use the same care for tournaments. I don't see why both can't have proper feedback integrated. This enshitefication is making me reconsider playing tournaments on here. And to think that these backward steps are permanent.

I would rather you take your time, and leave tournaments without any updates the old way for a long period of time, then rush out something that is not ready and just makes the experience worse. Please consider this next time. The old UI was almost perfect (besides also not including thinking time on tournaments menu). People mainly wanted new features instead (e.g staggered round robins, more thinking time + game durations). Listen to us next time. And actually get someone who shares our passion in tournaments to handle things from here on out. Because that is not the impression that anyone in this forum gets by this update.

[ChiefWhiteHalfoat]

Do you have a UX (user experience) person on staff? I think the new UI needs some help. "A" for effort but a C– for the result.

[leafsnack]

I'll add that the "Recommended for you" addition is not working well, and it's far too prominent.

I'm currently being recommended a tournament for Rallyman:GT, a game I dislike and have played 1 time ever. (Is this a sponsor??)
No matter what I've selected under the "Game library" tab, it still shows it. Even if I change it to "My Favorite Games", about a third of the page is still covered by this Rallyman:GT tournament, despite the fact it's not in my favorites.

IMO, even if it was showing a game in my favorites, its presence means you can only see ONE tournament upon applying a filter. You have to scroll down on the page, moving the filter GUI from view, just to see what you just filtered. That is ridiculous.

[mrdoctor]

Do you have a UX (user experience) person on staff? I think the new UI needs some help. "A" for effort but a C– for the result.

I'm happy to volunteer an hour or so of my time to run through problems and suggestions if they want it. I've created and signed up to a lot of tournaments, so I knew the old user-interface in about as much depth as one was able to know it. I appreciate the attempts to try and give more detail about what the settings mean to both creator/participant, but even they're incorrect/incomplete (from a quick look - the descriptors for 'group stage' don't explain the formats for each of the 2 stages, and the estimated total tournament duration seemed completely wrong on the few I looked at), and almost everything else is basically the same but in a much harder-to-use format, and some features that were useful (detailed score tables, and being able to invite players) have now entirely vanished. As you say - the effort is appreciated, but I'd posit that a return to the old tournaments-menu would be better whilst this new version is revised a lot more, as it currently feels like a version-0.5.

[dgjxqz]

Round robin was introduced before group stage was available. It does not make sense to support table for 3 or more players since either too many table will be created or too few players can be in the tournament. But with group stage, you can organize a tournament for example, of 36 players with 6 players in 6 groups. You just have to create 15 4-player tables for each group and another 15 4-player tables for second stage.

Also, not all cooperative games are cheat prone, those who don't should be allowed in tournaments.

[Rukus McUallas]

Great, the forum ate another of my posts ... so, again ...

There's a big wtf when opening a tournament page (tablet). What are the things I want to know, when selecting a tournament? It's the setup! What expansions are selected by the host? What are the other details and options? And what to I see, when I open the tournament page? Anouncements, activities (aka who joined most recently) and the host. WHO CARES? Sorry, but seriously!

Let's take Terraforming Mars as an example. I want to know the map, is Prelude included, do we draft? What's the player count (min/max) and how much time do we have? How many matches in a round etc. Prior to this update, it was easy access information. Quite prominent. No it's a deep scroll dive and much harder to read because of the formatting. Highlight it! Color it! Whatever it takes, but make it easily visible without much scrolling and clicking!

Or even better, make this information available without opening the tournament page, with a one-click/one-tap popup in the tournament listing. THAT would be a real and substantial improvement for the tournaments. I mean, it's possible for single games. When I click a game in my favs list, every single available game shows all the settings. Why does it have to be that complicated for tournaments? Oh, and a link to explanations about the tournament types would be helpful, especially for newer players. Most people don't have a clue what "swiss system" means.

It's okay on my pc, but on my tablet it's a drag ...

EDIT: Okay, semi-takingback. I accidently turned my tablet (I usually play vertically, not widescreen), and it's totally different now. When holding it vertically, clicking a tournament takes me to the tournament page, holding it horizontally, it opens the same details I get on my pc. BUT, it's still a lot to scroll on a tablet display. Just make the info about the individual rules details "popups" (like the good old mouseovers or so). So only the actual chosen options are visible without much space and distraction, so as much as possible is visible at once without scrolling. Tapping or clicking said option then shows what it means.


Oh, and the (almost) most amazing thing would be a "rules/settings filter". Like only showing Terraforming Mars tournaments that include Prelude or exclude draft. Or only Formula D tournaments with expert rules etc. THAT would be really awesome!

[macpuddock]

I don't set up tournaments but I really liked the change made recently to how we view player positions - thank you!