Board Game Arena

We have a very very long discussion here on the forum where everyone is saying how the new style makes it hard to see the gems and colors ( https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37706 ). I agree.

A suggestion in the bugs section is the officially supported way to request changes in how a game is implemented here, so I posted this suggestion:

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=131107

Please vote for it.

Note: I did not suggest that they let people optionally choose the old design, for three reasons:

1. Having two separate designs and letting people choose one or the other is harder to maintain. It would be much easier for the game implementors to have one good design rather than supporting two options.

2. New players would mostly not notice the option, and be stuck with the newer version, which is worse than the old one. Most people don't look at the forums and don't see what's available in the preferences.

3. The old design was better than the new one, yes, but it had some serious playability problems too.

So, if you think the implementors should make a new design that focuses on making it visually clear and easy for you to see the all of the information relevant to the game, click on https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=131107 and click the "vote for this report" button.

what were the "serious playability problems" in the old design?

Shogun_vr wrote: ↑24 July 2024, 06:33 what were the "serious playability problems" in the old design?

Without being able to look at it, now that some time has passed, I can't detail them all, but one I remember is that when you choose your first one or two gem tiles on your turn and are trying to decide which one to pick next, it's extremely hard to see which colors you've already picked. If you forget, it's easier to just start over. The new design has the same problem. Another one, which is also shared with the new design, and which I think is the worst, is how the presentation of your gem tiles in hand and your development card bonuses that you already have is so ambiguous. It's really hard to remember which is which. Even after playing the game many times, I always find myself spending extra time thinking about it, trying to figure out which numbers represent spendable tokens and which numbers represent permanent bonuses. Again, the new design has the same problem, but going back to the old one wouldn't fix it because it was just as bad before.

also vote for this bug report while you're at it:

zilv wrote: ↑23 July 2024, 22:11 repeated PSA: there are two bug reports you can upvote to hopefully encourage developers to fix this issue:

• https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=131106 (option to revert to original graphics)

and

• https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=131107 (fix the new graphics to improve readibility)

Cos- wrote: ↑25 July 2024, 03:13

Shogun_vr wrote: ↑24 July 2024, 06:33 what were the "serious playability problems" in the old design?

Without being able to look at it, now that some time has passed, I can't detail them all, but one I remember is that when you choose your first one or two gem tiles on your turn and are trying to decide which one to pick next, it's extremely hard to see which colors you've already picked. If you forget, it's easier to just start over. The new design has the same problem. Another one, which is also shared with the new design, and which I think is the worst, is how the presentation of your gem tiles in hand and your development card bonuses that you already have is so ambiguous. It's really hard to remember which is which. Even after playing the game many times, I always find myself spending extra time thinking about it, trying to figure out which numbers represent spendable tokens and which numbers represent permanent bonuses. Again, the new design has the same problem, but going back to the old one wouldn't fix it because it was just as bad before.

I never had any issues in the old version. this one is just a car crash of unintelligibility