Allow Custom Settings for Group Ladders

yebellz · February 2, 2020, 12:11am

Feature request: allow groups to customize the settings/rules of their ladders.

Various settings that could be customized:

Time settings
Game play rules (e.g., Japanese, Chinese, AGA, New Zealand, etc.)
Whether analysis is enabled
Number of active challenges
Handicap settings?

This proposal has been brought up in several discussions in the past:

I just opened the following GitHub issue to request it there as well:

Kosh · February 2, 2020, 12:34am

This has the potential to be a great feature of OGS which is already strong in correspondence.

The only thing I would reluctantly add is that the current bug of ladder game results sometimes not being processed (positions adjusted) should be fixed first so that the new feature makes a good first impression.

and thankyou @yebellz for putting it on Github which was long overdue.

yebellz · February 2, 2020, 12:50am

I know both you and I, and several others, have discussed and suggested this feature in the past (which I’ve linked above). I was actually quite surprised that no one had opened an issue suggesting it yet.

Thanks for raising and documenting the timeout bug on the issue list.

benjito · February 8, 2020, 3:22am

Yes please

yebellz · September 14, 2020, 3:23pm

I forgot about board size customization. OGS currently supports only 9x9, 13x13, and 19x19, but there seems to at least be some interest for a 25x25 ladder

BHydden · September 14, 2020, 3:28pm

This seems like the least likely to be implemented. I would consider the others possibly plausible though

yebellz · September 14, 2020, 3:29pm

Do you say that because ladders are ranked, and 25x25 games are not ranked at the moment?

I guess another customization option could be to allow group ladders to be unranked, which might allow enabling some other customization options (like non-standard board sizes).

shinuito · September 15, 2020, 3:50pm

There’s this really old one about Free ladders in private groups

yebellz · September 16, 2020, 2:34am

I just want to stress this customization in particular, since I think this is the most impactful change to ladders that could be made. Of course, if customization is going to happen, implementing any or all of the other options would be really nice as well.

Personally, I would love to see faster ladders, and I imagine many in the Fast Correspondence group would like this as well. However, for me, faster ladders is just a “nice to have” and not really preventing me from participating.

On the other hand, custom time settings would be a real game changer for all those players that can’t sustain the normal 1-day increment pace of the current ladder system, which essentially excludes such players for being too slow. Ladders offer the unique form of an ongoing competition structure. Enabling custom time settings could really allow a lot more people to share this experience.

shinuito · September 16, 2020, 8:06am

‘The blitz ladder, forever changing’

‘I live for the live ladder’

Some campaign slogans

Sighris · September 20, 2020, 10:32pm

One of the reasons I’d like to see a 21x21 or 25x25 ladder is that AFAIK it is difficult for the average Go Player to analyze the game with computer software. AI’s have now mastered 19x19 Go… Time for humans to move on up to bigger Go-Bans? I know if enough humans play on bigger boards AIs will follow eventually, but for a little while at least we can have games in which we are very confident we are playing a human (who is not getting help from an AI).

Jirogo36 · October 14, 2020, 1:07pm

@shinuito suggested a board with even side-length before:

I’m curious about 20 x 20.