A new lobby for BGA

[farfyy]

In few words Too many icons to look at

WHERE ARE THE ACTIVE TABLE ????? Answer:the little table symbol below each icons . TELL ME THIS IS A JOKE ?
How am i supposed to find easily a game ( scroll down and play hide ans seek among 100 icons every 20s to find a game)
In the tab "PLAY NOW" you should see games with OPEN TABLES ONLY . I do not care to see game icons that are not played now (they just dilute the important information which is tables requiring players)

AND PLEASE REMOVE THE SUGGESTION SECTIONS : The lobby looks like a RECOMMENDATION SYSTEM (similar to amazon for instance). I think The tab "GAMES" is more appropiate to make recommendation ( "PLAY NOW" is not for that) .

I respect all the work you put in this website ( probably the best by far ) so dont kill it with inadequate choice. Please listen to your users ( this time this is is not fear of change unfortunately) .

Best

[Black Lioness]

It's nice that you make changes and develop BGA. I have one remark: the window for creating a new table is pointless, it is large and takes up a lot of space. One small "create new table" button would suffice, then the lobby would be more readable.

[xxerox]

UPDATE:

Following the feedback of some of you, we added a "See all available tables" at the bottom of the "Favorite" section.

Using this tab, you are able to see the list of all tables for your favorite games, ordered by creation time (like in the previous lobby).

This way, each of you can choose to use the new design (tables grouped by games) or the old one (tables ordered by creation time).

We are doing this update for the players who are playing a lot of different games here, and prefer to join other tables than creating new ones.

Ok thats good. Now i can find a game.

Althrough i agree with the other user who mentioned this: Empty tables should not show.

[NotoriousCAC]

I despise the new layout. The enhanced graphics on games I already marked as my favorites is unnecessary and irrelevant. The extra steps to join a game is cumbersome. And game tables that were opened over 20 mins are still clogging the feed in Real Time games. It's changes like this that discourage me from continuing my game play experience here.

I urge you to retain a more straightforward interface when one is in the game lobby. Having suggestions of new games based on established player favorites is fine. In truth, the suggestions at the near bottom of the roster are the singular item I can employ use.

[Matasiete]

I still do not understand why you can be "proud" to present this thing!
Another failure more. I rejected a rematch and tried to find another game in the ...(no I can't call it lobby) and could not as I was continously promted to rematch due to my preferences. With no chance to keep watching "the games offering weird page".

[Krunch]

Realtime player here who used to subscribe but no longer does. For me this change is a bad one, its not thaaaat bad but I think its a clumsy implementation in general. Yes you can still expand your games to see all tables at once. But even that appears to reset in my browser sometimes so I would have to do it again next time I want to play something. Okay, not so bad, I dont necessarily want to always play certain games so its not too bad if theyre hidden, I can just pick from my list, and also at least games I dont even play no longer randomly show up in my feed (that used to happen constantly with the old version). On the other hand, having the old feed sometimes made me join tables I wouldnt necessarily seek out. For example, a game like Tzolkin, I usually want to play 2-3 players with no good players or above, but I dont like the game that much that I want to START that table, I want to SEE it and THEN decide to join it. It's kinda like, yeah technically I can still do that, but the old feed just summarized the available tables so well.

But the biggest sadness about it.... I've noticed less activity among the tables since the recent change. It's been way harder to find a good table, or really any table. BGA this might be one of those cases where you didnt realize how perfectly you nailed it on the first try, the old lobby was way better completely by accident - it might be (surely is!) a good move to think about bringing it back.

[sourisdudesert]

it might be (surely is!) a good move to think about bringing it back.

Choose "display options => small icons" and click on "See all available tables", and you got the old lobby back

[eoc]

and you got the old lobby back

Unless I'm mistaken, the old lobby only displayed actual tables that I could actually join. Now I see thirty-something empty tables with misleading player counts, so that would not be a true statement – much as re-implementing the new/old view is appreciated, I stand by my opinion where this fake-table stuff is a bad user experience and not much else. Please have it reflect the actual table configuration for the single-game expanded view, and remove them entirely from the "list of available tables".

[sourisdudesert]

Now I see thirty-something empty tables with misleading player counts

These are tables you can join. They are empty ones, so you create the table when you join it. This is exactly when you arrive at a board game party: you sit the first at a table and place the game on the table.

In the old lobby, the buttons to create new table, which should be one of the most important element of the interface, was small and unexpressive ("play button" => something most related to a music player than a board game).

These empty tables are at the very bottom. There are not "in your way", nor in the middle of something, and they are useful for all of you who want to create a game after they scroll all the available tables and did not find a good one.

So yeah, with "small icons" and "see all available tables", you will not get a pixel perfect simulation of the old lobby, but we know perfectly (5 years experience) what was wrong in the previous lobby so we're not going to keep these mistakes.

[eoc]

These are tables you can join. They are empty ones, so you create the table when you join it.
[...]
These empty tables are at the very bottom. There are not "in your way", nor in the middle of something

Thanks for the reply, I do however disagree with the placement. Each expanded game shows such a table, and with very misleading information! Moving them down to the very end in the old-style lobby list is great, but that doesn't solve the issues I mentioned before:

edit If they stay, could you at least display the correct amount of player slots, or at the very least don't show all slots beyond the minimum as "required"? Many games I configure for a certain number of required + optional players, and the fake table shows the max. possible playercount with all of them required. That is not what's happening when I click on "Create" so why display it like that?

To clarify, having a "prepared" table that I can launch with a single click is very nice! But the table that you show right now is not the table I create by clicking that button, since the player count is wrong and my usual options aren't displayed until afterwards. That's not helpful.