Intro
BGA has gradually become a bigger part of my life, and with other people logging thousands of plays here I can see I'm not alone. That being said, this site does have issues, and I'd love to discuss some of them and maybe propose solutions. Hopefully someone from the site will see this at some point. Having spent some time as a web developer, I'd hope this kind of feedback is useful.
I know the forums are a bit barren here, but I'd love to hear what annoyances you've had or improvements you'd suggest. I'll try to add them to this first post if they seem substantial. Or even just say hi if you think this is a useful post.
Tournaments
Tournaments are awesome. I've enjoyed the few I've participated in on this site. The bad thing is that there are so few, and most of them are for the less-popular BGA games.
Searching the forums here, I've seen many people asking about tournaments for various games. It seems like such an easy way to draw more people to the site. My experience has been that even the less-popular tournaments will attract a handful of participants the day of the tournament, whereas the more popular tournaments (Seasons) are full days in advance. In either case, people log into BGA just to play in the tournaments, and often linger and play afterwards. Tournaments are even advertised on the initial BGA signup page, and I'm sure some people are disappointed that their favorite games don't have tournaments here. By the way, the actual tournaments page is pretty hidden. It took me a while before I realized it was there.
I know that there are people on this site that would be willing to put in a little time to see more tournaments happen, and I'd love to hear from BGA whether any work is being done in this area. I remember them experimenting with a new type of tournament a while ago, but it's been quiet for a while.
Also, for the really popular tournaments, it might be good not to cap them at 32 participants forever.
Groups
For the most part, the BGA community has been great. At some point I came across BGA groups. It's an obscure feature, and even trying to research it now I'm not sure really how to use it. (The only way I've found of creating a group is to google 'Board Game Arena create group'. I'm not sure where that functionality exists on the site. Also, is there a list of public groups somewhere?)
Groups seem like a powerful feature. I've seen at least two groups with very strong communities: Game Tutors (which is an awesome group for new players) and Reliable Beefeaters (a 6 nimmt group that is dedicated enough to track statistics for their members and award monthly titles). The only way I found these groups is by being invited by people or seeing them on the profiles of other players. Again, how am I supposed to find these otherwise?
I wish BGA would do more to promote these communities forming around their games. They definitely make people feel welcome on the site and are great for getting people to stay on the site.
Chat Box
The chat system is fine for small comments during games. It is not great for discussing strategy, or lengthy things. Part of this is that comments are moved down as game actions happen. Splitting comments apart from the list of game actions might solve a lot of the issues here?
It would be really cool to be able to post stuff besides plain text in the comments, or have some less-cramped space in which to write. That would be especially helpful if BGA plans to create more cooperative games.
Forums
These forums are not very easy to use... Especially searching for specific topics. They seem pretty dead too. Perhaps it would be better to split them into more exact topics.
Interface
Error Messages
These often get in the way of things, and they look ugly. If you get multiple error messages they might even cover up some of the links at the top of the screen! Many times I've had to wait for them to disappear before continuing with my game. This is especially annoying when the error messages are useless. How many times have I gotten an error whose text is just 'Hidden for security reasons' (I'm not sure if that's the exact text, but something like that)?
Access to old parts of the site?
What on earth is this section of the site? (arrived at through Community tab -> meetings link)
http://en.boardgamearena.com/#!meetinglobby
General Interface
I'd like to say thank you to BGA for being the most intuitive board game site I've used, interface-wise. That being said, it still feels like an older site compared to non-board-game sites. Which might be a good thing? What do you think? To me it feels like there are parts that could use a re-skinning, but it's not a big issue.
BGA Growth
I'm not exactly sure what BGA's plans for scaling the site are. It seems like it's been growing a bit over the year I've been on here. I'd like to see BGA grow much more. I wonder if there are good ways for it to promote itself more internationally. It's still at the point in the U.S. where the site is fairly dead during some of the hours I'd like to be playing (need to wait for France to come online again
).
Overall, thanks to the BGA team! I hope I haven't come across as overly critical or anything. Looking forward to what will happen to the site in the future.
BGA has gradually become a bigger part of my life, and with other people logging thousands of plays here I can see I'm not alone. That being said, this site does have issues, and I'd love to discuss some of them and maybe propose solutions. Hopefully someone from the site will see this at some point. Having spent some time as a web developer, I'd hope this kind of feedback is useful.
I know the forums are a bit barren here, but I'd love to hear what annoyances you've had or improvements you'd suggest. I'll try to add them to this first post if they seem substantial. Or even just say hi if you think this is a useful post.
Tournaments
Tournaments are awesome. I've enjoyed the few I've participated in on this site. The bad thing is that there are so few, and most of them are for the less-popular BGA games.
Searching the forums here, I've seen many people asking about tournaments for various games. It seems like such an easy way to draw more people to the site. My experience has been that even the less-popular tournaments will attract a handful of participants the day of the tournament, whereas the more popular tournaments (Seasons) are full days in advance. In either case, people log into BGA just to play in the tournaments, and often linger and play afterwards. Tournaments are even advertised on the initial BGA signup page, and I'm sure some people are disappointed that their favorite games don't have tournaments here. By the way, the actual tournaments page is pretty hidden. It took me a while before I realized it was there.
I know that there are people on this site that would be willing to put in a little time to see more tournaments happen, and I'd love to hear from BGA whether any work is being done in this area. I remember them experimenting with a new type of tournament a while ago, but it's been quiet for a while.
Also, for the really popular tournaments, it might be good not to cap them at 32 participants forever.
Groups
For the most part, the BGA community has been great. At some point I came across BGA groups. It's an obscure feature, and even trying to research it now I'm not sure really how to use it. (The only way I've found of creating a group is to google 'Board Game Arena create group'. I'm not sure where that functionality exists on the site. Also, is there a list of public groups somewhere?)
Groups seem like a powerful feature. I've seen at least two groups with very strong communities: Game Tutors (which is an awesome group for new players) and Reliable Beefeaters (a 6 nimmt group that is dedicated enough to track statistics for their members and award monthly titles). The only way I found these groups is by being invited by people or seeing them on the profiles of other players. Again, how am I supposed to find these otherwise?
I wish BGA would do more to promote these communities forming around their games. They definitely make people feel welcome on the site and are great for getting people to stay on the site.
Chat Box
The chat system is fine for small comments during games. It is not great for discussing strategy, or lengthy things. Part of this is that comments are moved down as game actions happen. Splitting comments apart from the list of game actions might solve a lot of the issues here?
It would be really cool to be able to post stuff besides plain text in the comments, or have some less-cramped space in which to write. That would be especially helpful if BGA plans to create more cooperative games.
Forums
These forums are not very easy to use... Especially searching for specific topics. They seem pretty dead too. Perhaps it would be better to split them into more exact topics.
Interface
Error Messages
These often get in the way of things, and they look ugly. If you get multiple error messages they might even cover up some of the links at the top of the screen! Many times I've had to wait for them to disappear before continuing with my game. This is especially annoying when the error messages are useless. How many times have I gotten an error whose text is just 'Hidden for security reasons' (I'm not sure if that's the exact text, but something like that)?
Access to old parts of the site?
What on earth is this section of the site? (arrived at through Community tab -> meetings link)
http://en.boardgamearena.com/#!meetinglobby
General Interface
I'd like to say thank you to BGA for being the most intuitive board game site I've used, interface-wise. That being said, it still feels like an older site compared to non-board-game sites. Which might be a good thing? What do you think? To me it feels like there are parts that could use a re-skinning, but it's not a big issue.
BGA Growth
I'm not exactly sure what BGA's plans for scaling the site are. It seems like it's been growing a bit over the year I've been on here. I'd like to see BGA grow much more. I wonder if there are good ways for it to promote itself more internationally. It's still at the point in the U.S. where the site is fairly dead during some of the hours I'd like to be playing (need to wait for France to come online again
).Overall, thanks to the BGA team! I hope I haven't come across as overly critical or anything. Looking forward to what will happen to the site in the future.