Actually, I did, thanks.
On that page - the one you linked - it says the following:
"Board Game Arena is dedicated to bringing the joy of board games to a global audience. To achieve this, we offer our core service for free. However, to sustain our operations and ensure fair compensation for game creators and publishers, we rely on the support of our Premium members. By subscribing, you directly contribute to the platform's growth, enabling us to expand our game library, improve our services, and continue to promote the wonderful world of board games."
Fair compensation for game creators and publishers.
Directly contribute to the platform's growth...improve our services...
In general, this discussion seems to have gotten off-topic, largely because people are more interested in discussing my tone or seeming lack of appreciation, when in fact, the website itself says the kinds of things the OP posted are well within the bounds of the compensation provided.
And Meeple...I wasn't being condescending. I'm more than capable of that, but this wasn't that.
This was
frustration. What...you're telling me that in all these years, it never occurred to the devs to offer a default for players to set their game play preferences as OP suggested? Or that it's simply too burdensome, given their existing workload?
If we want to have those discussions, fine...then
say that. Whether they're volunteers or not is irrelevant to the discussion at hand: that there's a game improvement that, quite frankly, should have been made years ago has nothing to do with whether the task is managed by volunteers or not. And yes, it's frustrating to have to keep clicking three times at the beginning of every game - in the same way that it's frustrating to have to go through several clicks to open a new tab in Chrome rather than simply middle-clicking once. These are first-world problems, but again - what is it we're supposed to say?
Please, oh please...gracious volunteers, please do the thing that apparently the website says they pay you to do? And we're not allowed to express the least amount of actual frustration in the process, lest some Grand Master of Communication Tone Judge deems it to be condescending?
The comment I made was, as I said, frustration. It was me saying "Look...I'm no great programmer or anything, but I do know that it's not that hard to program a default." The same as I know it's not that hard to program an actual set of filters for watching games in progress (although offering to sort "by relevance" is awesome when you've provided no filters to determine what would make a game relevant or not). And I'm more than happy to request these things, as Meeple deemed was "fine" for me to do. I
did.
And what was your response to that, Jellby?
Oh, that's right...it was you basically telling me how I'm supposed to enjoy the game. Because it's much easier to tell people that we should change than to actually make the relatively small change I asked for?
So we can pay for a service which says that part of the charge is to continue to improve the services, and we can ask for services to be improved, but when we're basically ignored and/or told to change who we are, we should maintain a tone free of frustration.
That how it works?
*also note: I was asked to be a Guru for this game, which - as I understand it - is to provide inputs, because ostensibly, the inputs I'd give might be valuable to improving the game experience.
