quite often, because people are generally a bit clique-ish
let’s say you’re in discord (maybe with someone not usually on OGS) and you don’t know who wants to play, so you put a link in the channel. Happens all the time for lichess links
you’re on a stream and you wanna give a challenge to a small group of people (say, subs, patrons, or viewers) so you put a link in their chat
you have people that don’t normally play go (on OGS or in general), and would have to be a guest so you DM them a link to challenge them so they can play a game as a guest.
You’re playing in a club that’s online for social distancing reasons and you want to play against people in the club but would rather set up a game and wait for someone to come than organize who plays who
People have asked if it was there quite a few times in chat, and it’s been requested a few times on the forums. Quite often, people aren’t here to rank up like many of us and just want to have fun with their friends, not strangers on the internet. There’s a good reason that games with passwords to enter and selectively open challenges exist on many online gaming sites.
It’s a very common situation. The quick invite links are used a lot on Lichess (anecdotally), and when KGS was more popular I often saw people saying in group chats “Who wants to play? Join my game in (insert room name)”. Both these features wouldn’t actually be pulling players away from the main automatch pool / game lobby.
Quick invite links work best for friends and casual games.
Group specific games work best for online clubs, like your Go club that can’t meet due to certain issues. You don’t have to go through the hassle of individually working out who is available, who can pair up, messaging each other, sending out invites, etc, people will just post open invites in the club page and others will accept them, just like how IRL you would go up to someone sitting alone at a board. This would make online club events run extremely smoothly with no real organization necessary.
On OGS in my experience only English chat is any active. Group chats are mostly dead. I imagine no one would sit at a group page waiting for a challenge to pop up except for pre-arranged meetings. So it really seems to me like a lot of hassle for not much use. In my mind, for club meetings, it’s ok to just talk to each other.
I imagine it works somewhat better for KGS because it’s centered around rooms. On KGS rooms are tabs and you can navigate through them very quickly.
My concern is that it wouldn’t look very organic and nice. Even the current “group games view” during my day on OGS mostly takes up space, and I wish it could just go away.
Maybe they should’ve made open challenge instead of making me look for their room. Would be easier for both of us
I don’t want to make OGS a KGS clone.
Maybe people should try to use the OGS functionality, game challenges https://online-go.com/play more, and not expect non-KGS to work like KGS.
I see this comparison all the time, maybe people like the difference enough to prefer one over the other?
Maybe group chats are dead and groups don’t work like that because people don’t want them that much, otherwise they’d be on KGS? A thought.
I think this is a bit too reductive. The challenge setup is not the only difference we have between us and KGS, and quite personally I would prefer the Lichess-style links to the KGS model for ease of people not normally on the site to have ease of access, taking advantage of one of OGS’s primary advantages as a go server over others: it’s browser-based.
I’m hoping for OGS to incorporate the best features of the other servers. I don’t think it’s right to let some features sit un-improved because another server is currently doing them better. I’d rather people came to OGS for them, because honestly it’s the future of Go servers, at least in the west. The work was put in to create this groups feature, why not improve it? Of course this is all up to Anoek.
Agreed. If I could pick between the two I would choose the LIchess style links too. I think that would bring the most benefit, especially towards bringing in newer players.
The room stuff would be more for established groups. It would be great, but I’m not going to argue that it’s of critical important right now. I’m just discussing what I think would improve the site. Not every new feature needs to be widely used by every user to make it worthwhile. I’m probably one of a handful of people using the SGF library here, but I’m super happy it exists and it makes me very grateful for OGS.
I understand where you are coming from, but maybe all the best features don’t lead to the best outcome, that’s what I’m trying to say. Sometimes something works greatly in B, but even if it would be its best version in A, it’s not best suited for A.
I would want a prominent PLAY/ CREATE CHALLENGE button in my homepage, front and center, the same way a challenge sent appears. I think it’s not intuitive enough to create challenges the way it is now and it would make a huge difference. If this actually doesn’t work, I’m open to suggestions.
We agree on that, and the sgf library is a great example, but even if I don’t use it, it seems fitting to the OGS’ “style”, with the review functionalities etc. The room thing doesn’t, to me.
I know I sound like a broken record, but I would really like to know if the data supports the notion that a huge portion of people here migrated from chess and lichess it what they are used to and they also have an account on KGS and really miss the room function that exists there.
The fact that OGS is web-based made me start Go and stay; I wouldn’t make all the fuss of downloading a client etcetcetc as a new player, for a game I didn’t even know. So maybe they are different crowds?
I think that’s missing the point: the goal of the lichess-style links is not to comfort those who are used to lichess/KGS, but to take advantage of what such a thing could bring. The whole process of the current system where you have to search someone up and make a direct challenge, which is a thing that a new player would have to undertake, or set up an open challenge and cancel every time someone from outside the group you want to play against is not really a great experience. While a link would have the ease of you make the challenge, send it, they click it, and can play whether or not they have an account. No searching, no bothering with accounts, no rejecting games you didn’t actually want because you had to put it on the play page.
And what I meant with OGS being browser-based, is that it’s accessible like that. And links in the style of lichess’s challenges would further open up that accessibility, while also making use of our browser-based experience.
Oh, but I like the link idea, I think I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, that’s why I didn’t repeat this here. I understand the troll arguments made above, but I still think it’s a good idea.
My point was, not everyone is a former chess player who misses the room functionality from KGS.
Still think challenge feature should be more prominent.
Definitely agree strongly about the challenge buttons on the homepage. I actually started playing chess after I discovered Go, just casually, but I’ve always been impressed by Lichess. OGS is definitely inspired by Lichess (I’m sure I read that somewhere). I think they are both going for the same goals: free, accessible, browser based and (partly in the case of OGS) open source.
I don’t need or want OGS to be a lichess copy though, and I understand they have a many more supporters and contributers. Just copy a couple features here and there if they make sense.
I don’t think it’s quite fair to apply historical experience in the face of such a huge overhaul, nobody knows how the new system will be utilised yet.
Question: if my games display is set on list for my games, I noticed it turns to list for the group chat thingie as well. I don’t know if it’s a desirable feature, but it would be nice if we could set separate views, or if the toggle worked independently. Ideally, I would like to have my games on thumbnail for home page and group chats, but list for my profile page. I don’t know if this would work, though.
The dead rooms problem is not only a OGS thing, it’s same on IGS and others… Now if a room/ channel stay dead most of the time that doesn’t mean it’s not useful sometimes (events, club meeting…) and that’s a good and enough reason to keep them with all the functionality required. The point is it’s just too separated in small pieces on OGS, you have a chat room here a group room there games happening somewhere else… In my feeling. Maybe the wrong was to create two spaces, the global chat rooms and the group rooms as it’s a bit uneasy to be in both of them even when a specific event happens
