"Challenge Links" aka "Invitation Links" are available

The basic idea is that you can get a URL for a challenge that you have created, and send it to another person, who can use that URL to find and accept the challenge.

  • You can get the link to open challenges from the Play page.

  • Anyone with the URL can “visit/click” the URL to get to a dialog that will let them accept it.

    • If they aren’t an OGS user and they proceed, they will be created a Guest account to play with.
    • If the person is logged out, but they are a member, they can log-in on the way in.
  • You can mark a Challenge “invite only”. This means that it won’t show up in the Play page, instead it shows up on your home page … and only people with the URL (but anyone with the URL) can accept.

  • Challenge Links work for Rengo. When you “accept” using the URL it joins you into a team.

  • If you click on a link to a game that already started, it pops up telling you that.

Where you see this button: image you can click to get the link to a challenge.

The link to invite-only challenges is copied for you automatically (if your browser allows that) when you create the challenge.


The kinds of things this could be used for include:

  • Inviting a friend to play Go at OGS, who is not yet a user.
  • Setting up a game you want to play with anyone from an “interested group of people”

If you invite someone, and they start playing, it’ll be a good idea for them to set their password, and even change their username if they are keen. They can do that, the normal way. We hope to soon have automatic prompts for people like this.

If you invite a new person to Rengo, you’ll need to let them know what to expect - they arrive on the Play page with the challenge open, but it might be scrolled off the bottom. We hope to get that scrolled into view, and have a prompt explaining.


Planned improvements, possibilities, known bugs:

  • Display challenge-link URLs “specially” in chat, and strike-through when the challenge is accepted

  • Provide helpful popups to HonouredGuests about what they are seeing, where to look, what to do.

  • Fix placement of “invite-only” checkbox on mobile.

  • If you click on an already-accepted game, it probably should show you the game in progress (if not private).

  • Show the “copy the link” button only to the creator of the open challenge
    - Fixed

23 Likes

Real soon NOW.

:grinning:

5 Likes

Fun feature! Who wants to celebrate with a quick game of 7x7? Edit: Claimed!

As a minor bit of feedback the checkbox is dangerously close to the submit button on mobile:

Screenshot_20220623-181306

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OK, I guess. Whatever.

:partying_face::partying_face::partying_face::partying_face::partying_face::partying_face::partying_face::partying_face::partying_face::partying_face:

5 Likes

Hi.

I’ve just put the challenge link for the first time in OGS Group. I wait for a bit but no-one accept, then I forgot about it and go outside. When I get back, I was lost on time, which mean the game start automatically even I don’t play the first move.

I think it’d be nice to abandon the game after 1 or 2 minutes without first move. The opponent won’t need to wait for too long when I afk.

Also, is there a way to notify (outside of OGS tab) when the game is on? Something like FB Messenger little red dot.

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Ah - the practicalities of real life :slight_smile:

In fact, games do terminate after some minutes if no-one plays, and no-one is penalized in that case (though the record does show “Lost by timeout” - people don’t like this but … that’s how it is).

There are third party apps that notify OGS turns, I don’t think OGS has anything like that yet.

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Also i think those 3rd party apps respond reasonably for correspondence but push isn’t supported so i think not prompt enough to catch the start of a live game.

1 Like

This is crazy.

I just copied link of challenge of random 10k and opened it in incognito window of browser.
and… me as “guest” destroyed them.
Protection is needed.
It should be possible to create Custom games that guests can’t accept.
This problem is much greater than sandbaggers.

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Let me get this straight.

You created a new account using a challenge link in an incognito browser then beat someone using it?

What is new about that? You can create a new account any time you like and accept people’s challenges and beat them.

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Rank restriction exists for reason. Canceling each time is awful. Those guests accounts are much more likely to be abandoned than normal new accounts, so “suffer in order to increase OGS population” doesn’t makes sense this time.
DDK should get DDK opponents mostly if they choose DDK rank restriction.
But now they may start to get one Ex Sandbagger SDK/DAN/Bot after another instead…

Creating account wasn’t super easy before. And because of that - banning someone did create some troubles for bot users. It was possible to reduce games against someone evil by blocking their account.
But now account creating no longer needed, you just past link in incognito and game automatically starts. There is nothing to slow down Bot Army now. Nothing.

I see no huge difference between creating a new account and creating a new HonouredGuest account. Creating a new account is not as difficult as you think, and if we see that a user is abusing it in some way, we can also take action on their main account.

1 Like

It seems that you are so cross about us introducing a new feature (heaven forbid) that you are confused about what you are complaining about, and as a result your posts are somewhat incoherent, and loose with the logic.

The same rank restrictions apply to these new accounts as to any other new account.

(Or, if they don’t, then it’s a bug - please report it as such).

Is it sandbagging, abandonned accounts, or botting that you are worried about?’

You completely lost me with the botting one :smiley:

I think that there is a problem with new accounts being able to be created more easily now, off linked open challenges. I’ll be chatting with the mod-team about what to do about that.

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all of it
imagine someone who creates new guest account each time they accept game of someone and then use bot or play 1-1 points.
its different now because its more easy, and because its more easy, its possible to do much bigger destruction than ever before

Ah well, I guess we all react to change differently. Some welcome it with open arms, others fear the end of civilisation as we know it, and lash out wildly at the bringers of change.

On a more practical note, I think that the correct adjustment here will be to show the invitation-link only to the creator of open challenges, not to everyone.

Then they can share it as they want, but random people can’t just sandbag them with a guest account.

5 Likes

I admit I didn’t have time to check the whole thing, but I thought that by default the link was only available to the creator, since the whole thing I think started with “how can I invite someone for a game if they’re not on OGS?”.

Imho it shouldn’t be available to everyone by default, because if the intention is to invite someone, it creates extra steps to either kick an unwanted random opponent or make it private. I think at least the default should be private.

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Yeah - we’ve concluded as much, it is on its way.

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This is in now: only the challenge creator should see the invite link button for their open challenges.

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The new feature is awesome, thank you! :smiley:

About the issues raised by @stone.defender I think all reduces to how you chose to share the invitation link. And the whole purpose of a challenge link is for the challenge be open to everyone with the link.

Now, I have a doubt that I am still trying to figure out: how the challenges behave with respect to ranked play and rank restrictions? These options restricts who can accept and exclude guests?