Board Game Arena

I love BGA - I think it is worth the money to be a premium member.

However, I am disappointed that some games (The Castles of Burgundy, as an example) have many bugs, lots of which have been sitting "open" for months or longer with no action.

Please stop adding new games until you've fixed the bugs in existing games.

fr0 wrote: ↑18 February 2022, 05:27 Please stop adding new games until you've fixed the bugs in existing games.

Someone clearly doesn't understand how BGA works, and who does the work.

Anyone who's a premium member is justified complaining about bugs not being fixed. Personally, I'd rather pay more for a higher quality product.

Adding a new game is a high priority. It lets them say "we added a new game" and also makes the game publisher happy.

Fixing bugs is lower visibility, but important.

Back when BGA was a volunteer project, people were willing to donate their time to implement games. Now that BGA is owned by a hedge fund, there really isn't any desire to donate free developer time if it's just going to benefit some billionaire hedge fund owners.

There are so many bugs and flaws in the tournament system. It's a nice idea, but the implementation is lacking in so many ways.

FSKFSK wrote: ↑19 February 2022, 06:09 Back when BGA was a volunteer project, people were willing to donate their time to implement games. Now that BGA is owned by a hedge fund, there really isn't any desire to donate free developer time if it's just going to benefit some billionaire hedge fund owners.

Any proof of that ??? I havent noticed any differences on the dev side since the change of owner.
Fixing game bugs was always an issue on bga, that's why they introduced the bounty hunter feature but it never took off that much.

FSKFSK wrote: ↑19 February 2022, 06:09 Now that BGA is owned by a hedge fund, there really isn't any desire to donate free developer time if it's just going to benefit some billionaire hedge fund owners.

I guess you speak for yourself, and it's a perfectly legitimate point of view. But please don't assume you speak for others. I've been volunteering my time over the past year to develop games for BGA (less so recently but that's only for personal reasons of time and other priorities). I do it because I find it enjoyable, and also because in my opinion, far from benefitting just "billionaire hedge fund owners" (I assume you refer to whoever currently owns Asmodee - I really doubt they see much profit from BGA's tiny premium membership subscription cost compared to the money that goes out paying developers' salaries, server/infrastructure costs and compensating publishers for premium-only games), it gives BGA users a chance to play more of their favourite games here, or discover new games they wouldn't have tried out in real life.

To go back to the original topic - yes, it would be nice if BGA had a better system to ensure bugs were fixed quickly. But in the vast majority of cases they are relying on volunteer developers to have the time and inclination not only to fix bugs that for the most part only affect a small number of users, but to be able to reproduce the bug and understand the issue in the first place. It's really not a case of "just fix this already" - many issues are reported that, while I don't doubt they're genuine issues for the players reporting them, just cannot be reliably reproduced by the developer. It's hard, as someone who is not getting paid for the task, to be motivated to try to fix a bug when you don't know where to start even figuring out what it is.

FSKFSK wrote: ↑19 February 2022, 06:09Anyone who's a premium member is justified complaining about bugs not being fixed.

I don't see what premium membership has to do with it. Anyone, regardless of whether they pay or not, is justified (or not) in complaining.

When you pay for premium membership, you pay to get access to the premium features (play premium games, do not wait, play from the same place, video/voice chat, statistics, choose your color, create tournaments, cancel your membership anytime). Does it say anywhere that you pay to get priority support, custom bug fixing, or better quality service than non-paying members?

I understand the frustration. BGA does tend to present itself as if it's the one developing and releasing the games, so it's natural to blame them if there's a lack of support. In reality it's more like a platform that independent developers use to build games on top of, although the lines can be blurred, with some in-house developers and some regular pros in addition to pure volunteers. They seem to want to have their cake and eat it too, saying "look at this game we just released, you're going to have so much fun playing it. Pay for Premium!" but then quietly also saying that the bugs aren't their responsibility and if you dare complain people will jump in to defend them.

Take Railroad Ink, released in June last year. In their news post, BGA made a big deal about how much they loved the work of the developer: "You can be confident it works well, but don't forget that you can post any feedback in our bug report form if needed." Now the game certainly isn't riddled with bugs, and it works pretty well, but there is a major Elo exploit still unfixed and it's possible to cheat and see what your opponent has done before you make your own move. In fact, in the 8 months since release zero bugs have been fixed, at least according to the bug tracker. And I'm not blaming the developer for that, for all the reasons mentioned above. But you have to admit there's a disconnect there.

So yeah, @voriki, I don't think the OP does understand how BGA works. But I don't really blame them for that.

Jellby wrote: ↑19 February 2022, 12:52

FSKFSK wrote: ↑19 February 2022, 06:09Anyone who's a premium member is justified complaining about bugs not being fixed.

I don't see what premium membership has to do with it. Anyone, regarding on whether they pay or not, is justified (or not) in complaining.

When you pay for premium membership, you pay to get access to the premium features (play premium games, do not wait, play from the same place, video/voice chat, statistics, choose your color, create tournaments, cancel your membership anytime). Does it say anywhere that you pay to get priority support, custom bug fixing, or better quality service than non-paying members?

Indeed, ALL games are available for standard members, so all games are free to play, in a way.
So Premium is NOT for game access.

So can people really complain about those free games, no, they cannot. They should be grateful they even got them.
Can they complain when one of the premium features doesn't work, yes, they can.

FSKFSK wrote: ↑19 February 2022, 06:09 Back when BGA was a volunteer project, people were willing to donate their time to implement games. Now that BGA is owned by a hedge fund, there really isn't any desire to donate free developer time if it's just going to benefit some billionaire hedge fund owners.

Yet another evil empire narrative...

msclark wrote: ↑19 February 2022, 14:45 Take Railroad Ink, released in June last year. In their news post, BGA made a big deal about how much they loved the work of the developer: "You can be confident it works well, but don't forget that you can post any feedback in our bug report form if needed." Now the game certainly isn't riddled with bugs, and it works pretty well, but there is a major Elo exploit still unfixed and it's possible to cheat and see what your opponent has done before you make your own move. In fact, in the 8 months since release zero bugs have been fixed, at least according to the bug tracker. And I'm not blaming the developer for that, for all the reasons mentioned above. But you have to admit there's a disconnect there.

Let's just assume bugs in games developed by admins, developers already developing other games, or developers who left BGA will not be fixed.
Someone may jump in and try to fix the bugs, but usually it doesn't happen.

robinzig wrote: ↑19 February 2022, 11:27

+1

I know there are bug reports and suggestions with many votes, open for years without ANY comments from the officials. Isn't that a shame?

[Edited to add:]

BGA does a lot to give this site a new look and new functions with it. This is fine! But nobody has asked for it, whereas things which are really important to the community seem to be ignored.

[End of edit]

Examples:
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=25075 and https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=29258 - both on the same theme.
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=11297
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=17508
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=13887

I would like to add more examples, but you can't even sort the reports for the oldest or lowest numbers, so they are hard to find. The list is crowded and a mess. I guess that is one of the reasons it can not be handled properly any more.

I am glad Sourisdudesert recently began to mark reports as "closed automatically because it has not been upvoted or commented for a while". Even better if they were deleted (or at least not shown in the list). So I really hope BGA has started to do something about these reports...