Based on a lot of feedback and increased levels of pondering the Play page has been updated again.
Most notably:
You may now select multiple board sizes and multiple time settings to search against by activating the “Multiple” option from the drop down
Two new indicators have been added, a green dot which indicates there is someone within your rank range that is ready to play now, and a gray dot which indicates a popular setting in the past 30 minutes by players within your selected rank range.
The rank range has been changed to a relative display instead of an absolute rank range display.
The bot list on the Play page will now gray out bots that won’t accept your selected settings, and briefly explain why
The custom games list has been re-integrated into the Play page but put behind an “Explore custom games” toggle button. When clicked, you’ll see the full custom games list that you’re used to expanded below.
As preliminary feedback, I find all of this quite positive except the first point.
You may now select multiple board sizes and multiple time settings to search against by activating the “Multiple” option from the drop down
My first thought was “here we go with the cockpit again”… It seems very unintuitive to have to select this option through a dropdown menu. Why not have this always on? Users can just select one setting if they want one, or several settings if they want more.
Multi-select was always a point of confusion with the old interface, I think having that be the default would restore that confusing aspect. As is, when you first land, the default is to be able to simply select the settings you want and go. If it was on by default folks would undoubtedly be surprised when the new option they selected was not the one that matched, so I think having it behind a more explicit choice you have to make to enable it is probably a good thing.
I like everything, one small issue (that might be just me, though)
When in exact or flexible, it’s easy to know I only chose one size, but when I switch to multiple for time settings, the little blue line around the sizes isn’t loud enough, and I’ll probably accidentally multichoose settings I didn’t intent to. I think the selected button also turns a bit darker grey but, if possible, I would like to have the selected options stand out more.
If there is a large rank difference I do defer accepting a match until a certain amount of time has passed to give a chance of a more even match coming along. I’ll have to ponder whether that makes sense anymore, and/or if there’s a way to communicate that better.
its not possible to press correspondence button in Multiple mode
it may be unclear that you need to change mode to get access to correspondence again
maybe let users to click it in Multiple mode?
just instead of selecting everything, only correspondence would be suddenly selected
It still seems like the default of “+/-3” (which works out effectively to “maximum two stones of handicap”) is pretty small for those with handicap enabled, and will greatly limit potential matches. In case you missed my comment in the other thread: Upcoming changes to the Play page and general time settings - #209 by dexonsmith
With that as context, wanted to reply to this comment:
Perhaps it makes sense to defer accepting matches where the expected game result is lopsided, but not really where just the expected initial position is lopsided.
Nice change, definitely an improvement. Just out of curiosity, when both players the system matches use multiple select and they overlap in more than one game setting, which setting will the game use? Is it chosen randomly?
I only have some minor complaints now,
I understand keeping the “exact” setting, it simplifies the interface, but having “flexible” there is pointless when “multiple” is also an option.
The matching byo yomi and Fischer settings feel pretty off, I don’t think they really correspond to the same expected game length. The 5m+5x30 and 5m+5s pairing is by far the worst offender, games with the former settings can be expected to be about twice as long as the latter IMO. Multiple select being an option makes this a moot point though, it just slightly irritates my OCD that the matchmaking screen designates both as rapid.
The default Flexible experience is that the user selects an general game speed but the time controls don’t matter too much. If it were exact, it’d starve one of the time control options.
