Just cancelled Premium due to complete lack of support

[Arien Malec]

For context, I enjoyed premium membership and would absolutely re-subscribe. However, I have a persistent issue that seemingly affects only me. I dutifully created a bug, and created copious amounts of documentation for the bug, validating and reproducing it. Prior to creating the bug, I created a message on the forums to see if anyone had any suggestions, and got zero response.

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=145302

This bug documents that once I have created a game in Arena mode, I can't then create a regular play mode game, because it silently converts the game to Arena. This makes BGA mostly unusable for me, at least for any game that I've ever done an Arena game with.

As far as I can tell, zero developers or support people have looked at the bug.

In desperation, I cancelled Premium hoping at least to flag attention to the bug -- nope, got a "sorry to see you go, if you have an issue, post to the forums".

BGA is awesome when it works, and when it is completely down, there does seem to be a development team that will bring it back up. But it appears that if there are bugs that affect individuals, there are zero workable support paths.

I'd honestly re-up my subscription if only a BGA support person or developer told me they were looking into the issue....

[GTSchemer]

For context, I enjoyed premium membership and would absolutely re-subscribe. However, I have a persistent issue that seemingly affects only me. I dutifully created a bug, and created copious amounts of documentation for the bug, validating and reproducing it. Prior to creating the bug, I created a message on the forums to see if anyone had any suggestions, and got zero response.

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=145302

This bug documents that once I have created a game in Arena mode, I can't then create a regular play mode game, because it silently converts the game to Arena. This makes BGA mostly unusable for me, at least for any game that I've ever done an Arena game with.

As far as I can tell, zero developers or support people have looked at the bug.

In desperation, I cancelled Premium hoping at least to flag attention to the bug -- nope, got a "sorry to see you go, if you have an issue, post to the forums".

BGA is awesome when it works, and when it is completely down, there does seem to be a development team that will bring it back up. But it appears that if there are bugs that affect individuals, there are zero workable support paths.

I'd honestly re-up my subscription if only a BGA support person or developer told me they were looking into the issue....

I'm only a game developer, but I don't play arena mode so I may not be useful.

Have you tried creating a turn-based game in the "Play Now" lobby? (https://boardgamearena.com/lobby) I avoid the game page lobby creation shown in your screenshots, since it does not provide a good user experience or control that I want as a power user.

[GTSchemer]

I will note that the general BGA website bug category (where your bug ended up) is probably a blackhole. There are likely too many reports to ever be properly sorted out and addressed since the BGA team is very small, and I don't know what they're tasked with prioritizing.

[Arien Malec]

Do you have a good alternative bug reporting location for support ticket items like this?

[Arien Malec]

Have you tried creating a turn-based game in the "Play Now" lobby? (https://boardgamearena.com/lobby) I avoid the game page lobby creation shown in your screenshots, since it does not provide a good user experience or control that I want as a power user.

Testing this now -- thank you!

[nik592]

I'm not anyone associated with BGA, just a member like you, but you can also create games via the Play Now (old lobby) interface (ninja'd by GTSchemer).

As an aside, I do play Arena and tried replicating your bug, but it doesn't occur for me. While I get your frustration and understand your decision to cancel, as someone who develops software (but not for BGA), it is rare that I will have leave to fix a bug that has only been reported by a single customer, especially if there is a workaround to it (which using the Play Now lobby hopefully is), and especially if it is a very strange bug that probably shouldn't be happening. As I'm not a BGA dev, I can't say for certain, but the fact that it's essentially switching modes on you and creating a game with an opponent you selected (which shouldn't be possible in Arena games) is very strange and probably would take a good deal of effort to just investigate, if not also to fix.

[GTSchemer]

Do you have a good alternative bug reporting location for support ticket items like this?

I think it's possible to get through the https://boardgamearena.com/support system to eventually find a form, and that form sends an email to some people on the team.

However as nik592 mentions, this should only be used for serious cases, not average bugs...and in this case it sounds like it is serious, because you can't play certain games at all!

[Arien Malec]

As an aside, I do play Arena and tried replicating your bug, but it doesn't occur for me. While I get your frustration and understand your decision to cancel, as someone who develops software (but not for BGA), it is rare that I will have leave to fix a bug that has only been reported by a single customer, especially if there is a workaround to it (which using the Play Now lobby hopefully is), and especially if it is a very strange bug that probably shouldn't be happening. As I'm not a BGA dev, I can't say for certain, but the fact that it's essentially switching modes on you and creating a game with an opponent you selected (which shouldn't be possible in Arena games) is very strange and probably would take a good deal of effort to just investigate, if not also to fix.

I used to manage SE teams, and a bug that leaves a certain area of functionality unusable was generally considered High -- we'd only close as "won't fix" a minor bug with a workaround that we couldn't reproduce....

[Cile]

I've had issues with that table creation screen as well. I'll create tables at 2 moves/day, check carefully that I don't have "flexible" toggled on, and still end up with a table at 1 move/day. I've even ended up in a game with someone I had red thumbed previously which shouldn't happen.

[nik592]

I used to manage SE teams, and a bug that leaves a certain area of functionality unusable was generally considered High -- we'd only close as "won't fix" a minor bug with a workaround that we couldn't reproduce....

I'm not saying it'd be a won't fix, more that it'd go on a queue and might not be seen again until more customers reported it. A showstopping bug (something that makes a major part of our product unusable) will typically only be fixed where it's reproducible by us and/or affecting multiple customers. Otherwise we might work to figure what it is about that client's environment or setup that's different to cause the problem and suggest they adjust that. But we also have a dedicated team (admittedly only 3 people, one of whom is me) for investigating those kind of issues - I doubt BGA does.

In your case, you seem to be the only one experiencing the bug (that's not to say it's your fault or it's not happening, but there must be something particular about your environment or account that's causing it), so it's not easily reproducible. I couldn't reproduce it, and no one else has spoken up to say they can either. There's a possible workaround as both GTSchemer and I mentioned - you didn't say whether this worked for you when you tested it. I'm hoping it did, but if it did, that means there is a workaround. Every bug that comes into our system (where I work) gets a response, whether this is to tell the reporting person that it'll be added to our general queue, prioritised, or isn't a bug for whatever reason. That doesn't happen at BGA, so while I support your decision to cancel your membership on that basis, that level of support you're expecting isn't likely to happen here.