Board Game Arena

Myself and the group I play BGA games with it have become very frustrated with how slow BGA is for us in Canada.

Today (Friday Feb 23rd) it seemed noticeably better for me so I checked with one of the others and they noticed the same thing.

Did BGA make a change in their software, architecture, or hosting? Or did the site just have less traffic today for some reason?

No, only lasted briefly - I guess it was just a low traffic period.

Quite painful to experience the site more usable like that, and get hopeful, and then it goes back to how it was.

I'm assuming it's not nearly as bad in Europe or people would be up in arms.

Hi, could you quantify "slow"? That's pretty subjective unless defined by time measurements. Anyway, no change on our end and no specifically less traffic on our servers on this period: if there was a change in responsiveness for a while, this is most likely a network effect.

Ok, I did some tests using the Google Lighthouse tool and attached a couple of the results.

The best score I got for speed was 1 / 100.

I would say it isn't always that bad, but it is usually bad enough to be very frustrating. And that goes for all of us here. There are four of us that play every day and two more that play sometimes and we are in different places in Ontario (I'm in Toronto), all with excellent high-speed Internet connections. It didn't use to be this bad - I would venture that it has become quite a bit worse over the past year.

Let me know if you want me to run the tests in some other way (I'm a software developer, though not a web developer).

Thanks for looking into this.

Ok. Made a test on RR and got 23, a test on TTA and got 7/4/16 on three consecutive checks.
What we do on BGA is not typical of a classic webpage presenting textual content so it probably doesn't really mean much in absolute terms but it gives a point of comparison to discuss. Note also that measurements can depend on your hardware and system load, so this comparison should not be trusted too much either.

Some questions:
- do you use any browser extensions? some of them can hugely impact performance, especially adblock+ or noscript (even when disabled for BGA, as those extensions still check everything when disabled, just they don't block anything)
- did you try another browser?
- is BGA responsive on a simple game such as Chess? (I got 43/29/28)
- for games with lots of log actions (especially TTA), the log history can get pretty big and the games are slower to load at then end than at the beginning. This is especially perceptible if you play turn based since you load the page each time you come to play a round. You can try to measure the timings at the start of a game and the timings at the end of a game to see the difference. My tests were made on games which just started, in spectator mode.

- When I did the tests I kept the test tab in foreground and had nothing else running.

- The problem I'm describing is happening consistently to 4-6 people on their phones and laptops, so I don't think it has anything to do with extensions etc., but I ran the same audit on another computer, still on Chrome but no extensions, and I got a 4/100.

Also, I'm on the Internet all day and BGA is the only site I have this problem with.

- Chess got an 8 / 100 on a fresh game.

- Regarding the log feature.... yes, I was testing a turn based TTA game that is part way finished so logs could be a factor.

If logs can make a noticeable difference then it would be great if we could turn off them off!

- Do you use any North American hosting? Again, I'm not a webdev, but my understanding is that this can make a big difference, eg. I think this is why most big sites host from multiple data centres - so they can provide good service to users on multiple continents?

- The problem I'm describing is happening consistently to 4-6 people on their phones and laptops, so I don't think it has anything to do with extensions etc., but I ran the same audit on another computer, still on Chrome but no extensions, and I got a 4/100.

Ok, extensions mostly out then.
4-6 people is still a pretty limited subset.
We have an experienced developer in Canada who developed several games for BGA and she never talked with us about excessive slowness.
Other people in Canada or USA experiencing the same type of excessive slowness? Or having a great time? Feedback welcome!

Also, I'm on the Internet all day and BGA is the only site I have this problem with.

Allright, but that doesn't really help or prove anything.
The internet is a large space and you can miss a lot of problems

- Chess got an 8 / 100 on a fresh game.

Ok.

If logs can make a noticeable difference then it would be great if we could turn off them off!

Well, having an option to disable anything and everything is not sustainable. Also, that would break some functionnalities and make it basically impossible to follow what happened on turn based games when coming to take a turn.

- Do you use any North American hosting? Again, I'm not a webdev, but my understanding is that this can make a big difference, eg. I think this is why most big sites host from multiple data centres - so they can provide good service to users on multiple continents?

Yes, we use a CDN for faster download of the site static ressources accross multiple continents.
Everything cannot be deported anywhere though, and comparing BGA to "most big sites" is flattering, but you should consider that maybe we don't have the same time/money ressources as the big players. I wish we did

About measurements, could you also post a "network tab" screenshot from Chrome developer console for the site load?

Ok, I attached some screenshots of network tab. I tried to find a way to save the complete data but only thing I found was saving a .HAR file which is huge.

Let me mention again that this speed problem has become steadily worse over time - a year or two ago it wasn't nearly this bad - and it has some variability. This makes me wonder if it isn't (at least partially) just a matter of server load?

- Yes, 4-6 people is limited, but it helps rule out many types of issues I think. If it was just me I wouldn't have complained in the first place. If even 1 of the people I knew said that they were not frustrated with BGA then I would have started by looking into their setup instead.

- Similarly, I think my comment about BGA being the only problematic site we use is useful context - if lots of sites frustrated us then we would be wasting your time like this.

Just started first game of Terra Mystica and it is visually quite beautiful! Great job.

Just started first game of Terra Mystica and it is visually quite beautiful! Great job.

Thanks, that was a big project it took quite a lot of time

Ok, I attached some screenshots of network tab. I tried to find a way to save the complete data but only thing I found was saving a .HAR file which is huge.

This looks like there may be a trouble accessing the notifications server.

Could you follow the steps on https://boardgamearena.com/troubleshoot and screenshot me the results?

Clearing all data on one of my computers seemed to cause a small improvement in speed (subjectively) but the score was still 1 / 100 (on russian railroads this time).

I've attached the results of the diagnostics. Not problems detected (unfortunately). I did this after clearing the data - maybe I should have done it first.

You mentioned that one of your game designers is in Canada. Maybe you could ask how the site's speed seems to them - I find that most people don't say anything about these things unless asked. (But I shouldn't identify 'Canada' as some sort of Internet routing entity - a West coaster is more closely connected to West coast USA then they are with us here in Ontario.)