We answer YOUR questions (2)

[sourisdudesert]

A few days ago, we invited you to ask us questions. Thank you all for your questions and your interest for BGA

Sorry, we can't answer ALL questions, but we tried to picked the most interesting/popular ones.

Can you please add game XXXX (or expansion XXX) to Board Game Arena? When will game XXX be on BGA? What will be the next games on BGA?

As it was last year, this is your most frequent question

You can read the answer on the FAQ right here.


Why there is no UNDO button on BGA?

• This is really difficult to implement. This is difficult to explain to non-developers, but basically on BGA we let programmers do whatever visual effects they want when a move is played. In consequence, the is no generic solution to revert these move on the interface. Some games build a game-specific system to do it (ex: Tash Kalar, Dungeon Twister) which cannot be extended to others games without a lot of pain. A game (TTA) finds a solution that requires a browser refresh, which is acceptable in turn-based mode, but not in real-time (imagine your browser has to refresh for every opponent's undo).
• We don't consider this as a priority. Yes a lot of players are complaining about this, but is there really a majority of players that would accept to wait that some opponents take back their move 2 or 3 times before deciding? So sometimes we are considering specific situation, and especially game-specific situation, but I'm not sure this option will be used by the majority of players here once proposed in the future.
• The final solution to this is an update of BGA Framework with a complete different approach, and many other improvements. Let's call it "BGA 2.0". And yes, we are working on it, for a long time, but this is a long-terme challenge .

Some games are practically not played : are you going to remove them?

Of course not. We are thinking about solutions to make them played!


My game interface is too big / too little

BGA is browser based : you can use your browser zoom in / zoom out function to adapt the interface to your taste (CTRL + / CTRL -).


Will you implement Pass and play functionality?

Maybe ... but at now we suggest you to buy this board game and play it in real life


Questions on reputation : Red thumb are unfair / I cannot block a player / ...

BGA reputation system is quite efficient to exclude problematic players, but it has some flaws : quite complex, not beginner-friendly, sometimes unfair ...

We are now thinking on an evolution of this system in the next months. This is not going to be easy because we want this system to be as efficient as it is now for experienced players, and more simple and fair for beginners.


A BGA founder is now working full time on BGA : are you satisfied of the first months and what to expect for the future?

Yes, we are very satisfied. This service is really big now, and it was really required to have someone working full time on BGA. Since the beginning of this year, a lot of improvements has been accomplished to make this service more reliable and more professional. Some of this work is visible (mobile version, secured version), some is invisible but make this service more fast/reliable.

Of course, all of this multiplied the cost to make this service run : the Club memberships does not cover at now the total cost of the service BUT we expect that this will be the case before the end of this year. To convince more of you to become members, we introduced "Premium games" - games that only members can start. In the future we'd like to build a solid catalog of "Premium games" for Club members so a lot of new games or game expansion will join BGA as "Premium games" in 2016.

So what you can expect from this in the future? There is a single answer : more. More games, more reliable&fast service, better design, more functionalities, and so on ...


Do you have an office?

No. We are nomads


When will bug XXX be fixed?

There are 90 different games, most of them are quite complex, on BGA and +13.000 games played here.

We care about bugs, and that's why we developed a Bug section on BGA that allow everyone of you to report a bug even if you are not a developer.

Based on this, you'll not be surprised that we get a lot of bug reports from you (approximately 5 to 10 per day). Even if a lot of different developers are working on BGA, this is way too much to handle them all, especially when you consider that a lot of these bugs are not really bugs but feature requests, temporary server failure, duplicate of previously reported bugs, or game rules misunderstanding.

This is why we need you to tell us what bugs are the most important ones, using the "voting" system. When fixing a bug on a game, we always give priority to the bugs with the highest number of votes (even this is not the only decision criteria). So please use this system to help us.


Can we have tournaments with 3 players games?

We did a lot for tournaments recently : last year we open tournament creation to the community. At the beginning of this year we added a new tournament style (round robin).

Even in real-life, tournaments are mostly 2 players : for a lot of reasons, tournaments with games involving more than 2 opponents can be quite difficult (ex: some tournaments configuration may encourage kingmaking). So yes, it is a possibility for the future, but there is no plan to have it in the near future.


How is compute prestige points for tournaments?

Like in real life, the prestige of a tournament depends mostly on the level of registered players.


Why don't you provide a "guest" access on BGA?

We don't want to have "guest" players that don't care about their reputation playing on BGA. BGA provides an access to 90 games with hours of pleasure and registration takes less than a minute, so this is not really a problem


I'm not a programmer but I want to add a game on BGA?

Stay tuned. We may have something for you soon.

[kaneaaa]

cool, sounds good. I think you need to also concentrate on getting some of the bigger bordgame titles (higly-ranked bgg titles) on your site, they have a lot of longevity and will be great permanent assets to your site! keep up the good work.

[sourisdudesert]

Thanks.

Yes, this is why we added Keyflower and Dungeon Twister

[nanell]

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions and for making this a great site!

[karpify]

As for an "undo" button, I'm not sure why you are treating it as a one-size-fits-all problem. I think a lot of users, myself included, would at least like this option in turn-based games, understanding that it is not nearly as practical for real-time games. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to have a 2-week-long turn-based game of something as tight as Tzolk'in ruined by one misclick.

[Oso]

As for an "undo" button, I'm not sure why you are treating it as a one-size-fits-all problem. I think a lot of users, myself included, would at least like this option in turn-based games, understanding that it is not nearly as practical for real-time games. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to have a 2-week-long turn-based game of something as tight as Tzolk'in ruined by one misclick.

No, if they add options, should be added for both, turn based and real time.

"Misclicks" are just for non-concentrated players, in real life when you get a mistake, you can't back to.

[OutOfHabit]

As for an "undo" button, I'm not sure why you are treating it as a one-size-fits-all problem. I think a lot of users, myself included, would at least like this option in turn-based games, understanding that it is not nearly as practical for real-time games. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to have a 2-week-long turn-based game of something as tight as Tzolk'in ruined by one misclick.

No, if they add options, should be added for both, turn based and real time.

"Misclicks" are just for non-concentrated players, in real life when you get a mistake, you can't back to.

Hmmm... I believe the undo feature would only be until your turn ended and should be able to be disabled in situations where you get additional information by choosing that action. That way, just like in real life, it only matters if it actually impacted things. So if you didn't mean to continue in Can't Stop, well you are out of luck cuz you already saw the rolls. But if you didn't mean to select A certain combination of dice (in the same game), you can undo as long as you haven't taken the next decision yet. Which absolutely applies in real life and on here.

[Oso]

I'm not a programmer but I want to add a game on BGA?

Stay tuned. We may have something for you soon.

I hope it would be nice, should be awesome "a client" or a "easy-maker" for the studio...

[Liallan]

As for an "undo" button, I'm not sure why you are treating it as a one-size-fits-all problem. I think a lot of users, myself included, would at least like this option in turn-based games, understanding that it is not nearly as practical for real-time games. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to have a 2-week-long turn-based game of something as tight as Tzolk'in ruined by one misclick.

No, if they add options, should be added for both, turn based and real time.

Why does it have to be for both? Real time and turn based simply are not the same thing. Examples of differences: Notes are needed for turn-based because you have a huge amount of time between turns and can be playing many at once. No reason this needs to exist for real time because that's playing live and the same problem doesn't exist. The skip turn thing doesn't work very well for turn based, and I believe is an entirely different concept between real time and turn based.

And Undo can be a different concept as well. The ability to have plenty of time to make your move is part of what turn based is about, for those who don't like being rushed by a clock ticking, and no one is waiting on them, no one can see anything they are doing (unless they're around by pure coincidence) - so not having this option real time, but allowing it for turn based totally makes sense.

If the site wants to do turn based equally well, it has to distinguish the differences between these two modes and not treat them like the same thing! Karpify is totally right - it's just not right to make everything a one-size-fits-all. The idea that the majority of players won't use it cause they won't like it in real-time? That's no excuse at all. The majority of turn-based players would indeed probably use it.

(Now, being difficult to program is another matter.)

[Oso]

I understand your point, but you read about it, admins told us "isn't easy to program"..., both modes use the same module, and some games should be edited a lot just for add a simple option.

Maybe in "near future", when BGA will get their 2.0, we will do this, but it's just a "pending" (I think)

=========

Now, If I propose to talk about "why people needs undo?", I will discover 80% of cases for "mistakes of players". In my house playing chess we have a rule, "touched piece = you should move this piece"