Awful new interface

[nik592]

I think the confusion in this thread is around the fact that there are several other threads talking about the changes (and generally not positively), and it wasn't clear why the OP needed to create a whole new thread looking for users with similar opinions, rather than joining one of the (several) ongoing discussions.

I didn't see any other posts about this. There isn't any on the first page of "Discussions" and I did a search but the search engine is awful in forums.

Well, considering there's a whole forum about tournaments, that's where I'd expect to find discussions about tournaments. And there's at least two threads in there about the changes.

Furthermore, there's discussion in the announcements forum where BGA actually announced the changes.

I probably haven't seen too much discussion of the bug tracking area, but that probably gets less traffic anyway. The searching isn't any worse, and that's the biggest problem with the bug tracking area anyway.

There are other in game issues as well with confirm leaving friendly games and such.

What's the problem about leaving friendly games?

[yodamus]

I think the confusion in this thread is around the fact that there are several other threads talking about the changes (and generally not positively), and it wasn't clear why the OP needed to create a whole new thread looking for users with similar opinions, rather than joining one of the (several) ongoing discussions.

Because the other threads have been buried. Part of what they knew would happen. Out of sight. Out of mind. The main thread is no longer on the main page of site. Finally buried. So we will be quiet. They have fixed a few things. Much more needed. But. Most of all. Better communication and much more frequent communication needed.

[nik592]

I think the confusion in this thread is around the fact that there are several other threads talking about the changes (and generally not positively), and it wasn't clear why the OP needed to create a whole new thread looking for users with similar opinions, rather than joining one of the (several) ongoing discussions.

Because the other threads have been buried. Part of what they knew would happen. Out of sight. Out of mind. The main thread is no longer on the main page of site. Finally buried. So we will be quiet. They have fixed a few things. Much more needed. But. Most of all. Better communication and much more frequent communication needed.

The forum shows a preview of just one thread. Even if that discussion is pretty active, if ANY other thread gets a comment, then it may not be there anymore at any given point. Considering it's still pinned, I'm not sure it's buried.

I'm not disagreeing with you on them needing better and more frequent communication. But that's not to say they're done with tournament issues. It's going to take a fair amount to get it to a reasonable state again by the sounds of it, and you're probably correct in assuming there's a bunch of things they just won't do. But you can keep poking them about it as much as you want to. Depends how far you want to go.

[yodamus]

The main thread that was on the "news" page. That had 32 pages of complaints. Is now buried from the main page. Never to make it back to the top no matter how many more complaints we make on that thread. So I dont blame the guy for starting a new thread. Yes a thread in forums will get back to the top. But very very few players out of the entire site use this forum. Where as . That main page full of news. Everybody sees. Why it had 32 pages. It needed to stay on the front page of the news.


And now. I do see. No announcement made, that i know of. Many new fixes have occurred as of yesterday. Only happened to notice a new release summary by Balgarmor. . Why was this not on the front page of news today. . Lots of good news in that summary. Much confused about the communication

[nik592]

The main thread that was on the "news" page. That had 32 pages of complaints. Is now buried from the main page. Never to make it back to the top no matter how many more complaints we make on that thread. So I dont blame the guy for starting a new thread. Yes a thread in forums will get back to the top. But very very few players out of the entire site use this forum. Where as . That main page full of news. Everybody sees. Why it had 32 pages. It needed to stay on the front page of the news.


And now. I do see. No announcement made, that i know of. Many new fixes have occurred as of yesterday. Only happened to notice a new release summary by Balgarmor. . Why was this not on the front page of news today. . Lots of good news in that summary. Much confused about the communication

The 32 (33 now) page thread is still pinned in the top part of the announcements forum. I had forgotten it was also a news post, but news posts also happen regularly and do get pushed down from other newer releases. They're not going to stop releasing new games so there will be new news posts.

Could they have done another announcement on the changes made to tournaments since their initial release? Maybe. But I'm not sure most users would be interested in a bunch of additional improvements and minor bug fixes, especially so soon after they announced their new tournament interface. What would make more sense is regular updates in that 33 page thread - those who are interested can subscribe to it and find out when something new is posted there.

Release summaries don't normally go on as news posts. News are generally only releases, and I believe there's some degree of publisher relations in that - when a game is released, it gets a bit of time on the front page of the site to advertise that it's now released. It's the reason why some games sit in beta FOREVER and they periodically have "winter of games" to push them through - because their publishers aren't big enough for them to warrant their own release and time in the spotlight. I once asked why they can't release things from beta without a news post - well, that wouldn't be fair to games to get that bit of publicity. OK, why not more frequent releases in news? Well, that would dilute the promotion - you'd only get a very short time before the next game hit the spotlight. So they do twice weekly releases and put the game on a news post. Every so often they announce something else (such as the tournament changes, or arena season changeover, etc.).

[fruktansvärt]

The Translations page has also gotten the "updated" interface, which is somewhat less functional than the previous. No features were added, so why spend time on changing the interface?

My guess is that the new interface is less processor intensive, and that's why it was changed. Never mind what the users want.

[BarnardsStar]

Taking features away and replacing good interfaces with poor ones seems to be a trend on many websites, so BGA isn't alone. But I don't understand why this happens.

We have a culture of eternal growth. Companies are not perceived as doing well if they “just” maintain the same numbers year after year. So they need to keep attempting to attract new customers, and the way to do that for websites is to make the interface shiny and new and dumbed-down so you don’t overwhelm new users.

They care less about existing users because a) they’re confident in users sticking around despite the dumbing down and b) due to the culture of growth, new users are more important than old users leaving (if they do; see point (a)).

What they need to do is have it both ways. I’m down with having both the “new” lobby and “old” lobby. They didn’t actually remove features, they just set up a new and simpler way of doing things while leaving the old one. To me, that’s fine. But the dumbing down of tournaments is intolerable because they didnt leave an “old” tournaments page, they just got rid of things.

[david060742]

I think the confusion in this thread is around the fact that there are several other threads talking about the changes (and generally not positively), and it wasn't clear why the OP needed to create a whole new thread looking for users with similar opinions, rather than joining one of the (several) ongoing discussions.

I didn't see any other posts about this. There isn't any on the first page of "Discussions" and I did a search but the search engine is awful in forums.

Well, considering there's a whole forum about tournaments, that's where I'd expect to find discussions about tournaments. And there's at least two threads in there about the changes.

Furthermore, there's discussion in the announcements forum where BGA actually announced the changes.

I probably haven't seen too much discussion of the bug tracking area, but that probably gets less traffic anyway. The searching isn't any worse, and that's the biggest problem with the bug tracking area anyway.

There are other in game issues as well with confirm leaving friendly games and such.

What's the problem about leaving friendly games?

I don't know if it's just in the alpha game I'm playing but, when you try to quit the game, it asks you to confirm but doesn't give you a way to confirm. Will have to try a different friendly game and see if it's all of them.

[nik592]

I don't know if it's just in the alpha game I'm playing but, when you try to quit the game, it asks you to confirm but doesn't give you a way to confirm. Will have to try a different friendly game and see if it's all of them.

There should be a confirmation popup (see pic). Possibly there's a bug with it, or it hasn't been implemented properly. Alpha games are like that, hence alpha. You should let the developer of the game know (by raising a bug for that game).