Board Game Arena

And a "Restart" turn button to go back right to the beginning of your turn too please.

It just feels very bad when you accidentally hit a move you don't want to and there is no way to undo it. This is easy to do on mobile or smartphone. I ask the BGA staff to make it mandatory as a rule for all new games to have this feature, but they refuse to do it saying they don't want to increase the workload for their volunteer coders. So it's up to individual developers to include this function.

Agreed

I also agree, I have made so much mistakes playing with a mobile...
There is already a bug/suggestion opened on that, #13887: "UNDO function should be implemented on ALL games where it would not affect rules or play."
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=13887
Vote for it, if you agree with this request.

Seriously. How is this not already a thing?

I just want to point out that many of the regular developers do this. I am a developer working on my 10th game for BGA, and I always try to include restart and/or undo when feasible.

In some cases it has actually been requested that I REMOVE confirmation steps because players complain about them being slow, but I am very passionate about a positive user experience, especially since I often play on mobile.

Starwarrior1128 wrote: ↑08 July 2023, 19:58 And a "Restart" turn button to go back right to the beginning of your turn too.

It just sucks when you accidentally hit a move you don't want to and there is no way to undo it. I ask the BGA staff to make it mandatory as a rule for all new games to have this feature, but they refuse to do it saying they don't want to increase the workload for their volunteer coders.

Adding Restart / Undo feature is really not the easiest task to do, especially for volunteer coders who do this as a hobby.

But it is better to have an "undo button" than many many games that we won't play !
Our time for playing can't increase as much as the games on bga, so better having less new games with an undo button than many games (that we won't play because they are unknown or because the app doen't correspond well).

Quality and not quantity !

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=13887 is now acknowledged with

Implementing the undo features can be challenging, especially for volunteer development.

However, it's now part of our guidelines for most premium games.

I'm not sure whether that means that any alpha game that will be premium and does not have a appropriate undo should be reported as having a bug and not be approved until it does or it has been explained why undo is not possible for that specific game.

I also don't know whether I can see somewhere that a alpha game will be premium after alpha.

Why is this in the Alpha forum?

Malvolio wrote: ↑08 September 2023, 16:42 https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=13887 is now acknowledged with

Implementing the undo features can be challenging, especially for volunteer development.

However, it's now part of our guidelines for most premium games.

I'm not sure whether that means that any alpha game that will be premium and does not have a appropriate undo should be reported as having a bug and not be approved until it does or it has been explained why undo is not possible for that specific game.

I also don't know whether I can see somewhere that a alpha game will be premium after alpha.

I see that was added by BGA staff member lordalx, but I'm not sure where these guidelines are posted. https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/BGA_Undo_policy still says, "As a rule of thumb, on BGA we advise you to not undo moves." This was written by sourisdudesert in May 2019.

I'll reach out to lordalx, because this has not been communicated very well.

To the more immediate topic: undo is not easy to add to many games, and it's impossible in rare cases (Dobble/Spot It comes to mind). I've added it to most games I've worked on, but some games are designed in a way that sharply limits how much undo you can do -- for example, Daybreak allows players to act in any order at any time, and one player's actions often impact what another can do.

While most games won't have those troubles, there is not a universal solution that BGA can apply across games. Undo has to be implemented on a per-game basis. This is something the comments on that suggestion largely do not understand.

Here's his response:

It's part of the studio guideline and it hasn't change in fact here :
https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/BGA_S ... cel_a_move
And when there is a need / request for undo feature, from us or the publisher, the framework already support this for most situation. Nevertheless, keep in mind that we also need to provide a smooth game experience without to confirm every move : https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/BGA_S ... firmations
To be honest, there are many bugs and suggestions that are left 'unanswered' and we need to look at it, slowly