We are proud to introduce today the new lobby for Board Game Arena.
The lobby is where you choose your games and meet your opponents, so this is definitely the most important piece of an online gaming service.
The previous lobby had been designed in 2013. Since then, the number of games on BGA and the number of players has exploded, and the audience of BGA is way larger than before.
Because of that, we worked on a new lobby design.
Our first priority was to make sure that casual players AND core gamers both got a lobby adapted to their needs. If you want to keep things simple, you can use the "Automatic mode" and you'll be able to get into a game in ONE click. If you want to have more control, you can use the "Manual mode". And if you play a lot of different games, the "Manual mode" with the "Small icons" display is the way to go.
In the end, the new lobby is more simple for beginners, and more efficient for the most demanding players of BGA.
An amazing feature of this new lobby is the possibility to join several realtime tables at the same time. This way, you don't have to "wait" anymore at just one game table that does not start! You can join other tables, and the first table to start will be the one you play at.
This evolution is one of the most important changes we've done on Board Game Arena. Like any big change, and despite all our efforts, there may be some unexpected consequences (or bugs) remaining. Please do not hesitate to report them in the comments or in our bug report system so that we can fix them quickly. There are also probably a lot of minor improvements we can do to make this new lobby even better, so please do not hesitate to provide your feedback!
We've built this FAQ which will answer most of your questions about this new lobby. Please read it before asking your questions
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... =5&t=13974
We would also like to take advantage of this news to talk a little about changes and evolutions on BGA. We all know that change can be difficult, especially when we are really used to something.
We know that a lot of you may think that keeping the same interface year after year would be the best solution... and it would probably be the easiest solution for us too! However, the old lobby is exactly like your old basket shoes: quite comfortable, but they look terrible, and you know that your new shoes will be way better once you get used to them.
Each time we bring a new change to BGA, many of you are posting comments like "Please get back the old version" or "Please disable it or make it an option". However, we're 100% sure that if we brought back the service exactly as it was existing a few years ago, ALL of you would be pretty disappointed and realize that you actually prefer the current version.
We know that we do!
In conclusion: from time to time we may be doing some mistakes, but most of time we are doing quite useful changes. At least that's what we try really hard to do! And one thing is certain: we're going to continue making BGA evolve to make it better
Hope you'll enjoy this new lobby! Please do not hesitate to post your kind and warmhearted feedback!
UPDATE September 13th: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=13978&p=50117#p50117
