Fox Better Than OGS

General Go Discussion
21

The title is provocative. What I understand is that there are several types of go players:

A. Loves concepts and asian culture, wants to learn and improve fast, likes to study and to think deeply in front of a go board.
B. Doesn’t like concepts, just wants to play fast games, considers go as just another board game that is meant to be played casually, and is happy to stay DDK for life.

Applications, go platforms and teaching materials are well adapted to players close to profile A, not so much to profile B. The main handicap of OGS compared to Fox is that its player base is smaller, so we need to attract new players.

  1. Automatch settings: currently we have two options for live games: blitz and normal. Let’s compare with Fox:

Capture d'écran 2023-09-10 091525

I personally prefer 20 min + 3x60s, however the two other options, 1 min + 3x20s and 5 min + 3x30s, are more popular. So we probably need an intermediate automatch setting that we could call “rapid”, intermediate between blitz and normal. Or if we think that our player base is not large enough to have three different playing speeds, just make “normal” games shorter.

  1. Develop teaching materials for beginners and DDKs.

  2. Make OGS a better teaching platform. I don’t know exactly what is needed, go teachers are probably more aware of what OGS is lacking, but I’d just mention one fact. Currently, voice chat doesn’t work. We need to use an extra application like Discord, and this is not convenient.

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22

For the record, I think the mistake was entirely mine, most of the rest of the thread does not seem to have fallen for that…

23

It has been my experience as a whole, I won’t single you out and I won’t single this specific thread out.

24

I selected some of @Clossius1’s suggestions.

If it ain’t fun, there is no hope for the future.

Certainly for beginners 9x9 is big enough.

Faster, play more games and progress faster?

It will be quite a switch for a lot of players (including myself), but it might work.

Ah, not so simple to explain in my opinion.

Good!
Always had the feeling that those terms were used as a means of making go more sophisticated and elitist (also make the game a bit unapproachable for outsiders).

I think that OGS is on the right track with Learn how to play go and the Kids Go Server.

By the way, KGS link under the Learn to play go?

Scherm­afbeelding 2023-09-10 om 09.30.51

Not a very good way to make go fun.
Handicap and/or negative komi so that games between uneven ranks can be more equal contests?

Yep.

Constructive discussion on how to make OGS a bigger and better place for go players would be nice.

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25

French speakers do have a substantial amount of go material at their disposal:

  • Fulgurogo has, among others, a playlist of 8 short videos (2 min 30 each) explaining the basics.
  • Several books have been written in French or translated into French: this online library lists 31 books among which 17 are still available, Amazon may have a few others but search results are less relevant so I didn’t count.
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26

Over the years, I’ve come to terms with the fact that Go is not very popular. I question the need to change this. Still I want to create a welcoming athmosphere for all kinds of people at my local club, but whether our community grows or stays as is, I’m fine with it either way.

Are we running a business or a community?

I strongly agree with this. Limit your explanations to the core rules and let them play immediately. Don’t go overboard with explaining the counting phase. They’ll come up with questions when they find interesting positions. Any strategic ideas should be introduced later on (and sparingly). They need to reinforce their understanding of the rules first, before they can learn the next thing.

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27

I don’t like to talk about server vs server, but I’m on the discussion of time commitment, so unordered things on my mind sorry.

This is a thing I’m discussing with Go players since I’m in the Go Community. As a chess player, I saw how in chess happened something similar. In the past, community just wanted to play long games, because shorts games are not chess. Reality is, what made chess to be so popular was blitz games. If chess community stuck on 1hour games long, chess would not be so popular as it is today.

I like to compare chess time controls with Go board sizes, because is so difficult to play a blitz game on 19x19, but we have more “standard” board sizes forgotten by the community. On the other side, in Go we need to finish a game and we don’t have checkmate that finish instantly the game, then, chesstime vs gotime is not a good comparison IMHO.

BTW, GoQuest is a lot of fun because fast games. You can jump and play 9x9 (3m+1?) or 13x13 (5m + 3 AFAIR) so fast, enjoy and finish the game. sometimes opens 19x19 but never played there and I don’t know wich time settings. have you 30min? You can play a couple of games or more. On the other side, with 19x19 you need a 40min minimum time commitment to play ,and all of us live a busy life with a lot of things to do (and lot of hobbys others than Go)

Some people just say, anything different to 19x19 and with 1h and a half game, is not go. This is the elitism chess had in the past. Right now, you can see in last decades 3+2 is probably the most popular time control. This don’t avoids anybody to play slower formats, and in tournaments and serious games, slow format is predominant, but in casual play, people want to have fun ,and have fun, fast. BTW, I don’t like 3+2 at all, I like more 10m or 15m

In chess average player don’t cares about chess history, elite players, or “picture of the game”, they just want to play, and enjoy

On the other side, we need to change the motto “9x9 is for learn”. 9x9 is for fight and fast games, 13x13 (the ugly duckling) is for fast strategic games, and 19x19 is the original experience.

If we want the community grow (and I think we need it in the west) we need to learn what chess community did last decades. Marketing, and fast games for online playing, you can always play slower games if you want, but promote 9x9 and 13x13 too, and avoid to show “japanese games with a photo book like a wedding, food menu included, with 2 or 3 days games long”.

If we offer 45min games to new players, they will tend to avoid Go because lack of time, and better play a LoL game or whathever

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28

Yeah, I know. Other countries do as well.

However, OGS community always goes on about “OGS western go server this” and “OGS western go server that” and the pressure even here is to use English terms instead of Japanese ones for everyone?!

Basically “we welcome you, if you become like us”.

Also, I guess because of anoek’s own efforts and dedication at least for a big part of it, AGA seems to ask and get tools on OGS to promote their work.

I have not once seen EGF bother.

Also, it’s funny how this discussion is happening alongside the accessibility one. It is very clear that people are very comfortable with excluding people, as long as it’s not the group of people they care about.

Even suing a lone developer for accessibility is on the table now. Please remind me of the excessive scrutiny to ensure that official tournaments are accessible to everyone. You don’t recall any? I thought so.

On and on and on, the discussion of “how to bring more people in Go” is throttled by people who can get by with what is already available anyway.

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29

To be fair, we put a lot of effort into making sure OGS is as completely internationalised as possible…

… and I don’t think that the pressure to use “English terms instead of Japanese” should be read as “we exclude other languages”. It’s more nuanced than that, because there are many places where we have a choice.

In the main site, if were to say “Loop” instead of “Ko”, then we’d make that translateable, and then it could be translated to “Loop” in all languages.

In the forum, we use English because… well, it’s an English forum? Is that right? I think so. Then if we used “Loop” instead of “Ko” here at least non-native-English speakers would be reading one language not two?

I think it’s a bit harsh to be over-the-top about English-centrism on an English site…

… and maybe this reveals a “wrong thinking” - if we want a better “Western Go Site” maybe it should be more international? But is that even possible? Show me a best practice site that achieves this?

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30

I think this is the key point.
The founding principle of OGS (as I understand it) is to have a feature rich server that caters to go players every whim. The aim was to attract existing go players. That is a very different aim to attracting new players to the game. This was maybe also part of it but I think it was really something that came later and has never really been the main point of OGS. We want to be “beginner friendly” sure, but not primarily that. We primarily want to cater for “the community” which essentially means existing players and especially existing players who play on OGS

Now, I don’t think it’s impossible to cater for both but it’s an effort and an effort whose main beneficiaries are not people currently here so it can need hard to persuade us that the changes are worthwhile…

Edit:
So one thing I believe is that it’s not about “teaching” because most people don’t want to “learn” exactly or at least not deliberately through “study”. I.e. we don’t really need teaching tools for this demographic but rather just a simple system that works without effort. This is where I think 9x9 Chinese fast games is the thing. What else do you need? If people decide that they want more then they can discover “proper Go” but meanwhile they can just enjoy Go

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31

Not sure there is any pressure in this direction. I think the suggestion is that if you write something in language L (L could be English or Greek for instance) then it may be better to translate Japanese terms into language L, so that the game feels less esoteric for newbies.

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32

I was referring to the community, not OGS. I’m not targeting you today, for a change. :wink:

(I don’t know if Loop= ko, though. Also, since loop can mean a lot of things, we might end up with “lame rengo” shenanigans again :-P. I think international terms are the best way to go to truly internationalize something. At least the popular and most basic ones, like ko/ tsumego etc. It’s unthinkable to learn a new skill/craft etc and not learn at least some terminology! Why push for it here?)

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33

I understand that being beginner friendly is not the primary goal, but we are far from that:

Beginners need to be taught the rules. That seems obvious to us since we think that other aspects of go are way more difficult, however many people have heard about the game and have a vague idea of how it is played but are confused about the notion of living/dead stones, territory and scoring.

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34

The answer to “why push for it” was given by the person who suggested it:

I’m not in any way agreeing with this, just letting you know the answer to your question :slight_smile:

I actually agree more with this. I’m not keen on the idea of dumbing down Go to attract more players, if those players are only interested in “candy-crush-go”
.

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35

It was a rhetorical question :stuck_out_tongue:

36

Doncha hate it when people answer your rhetorical question!?

Why do they do that!? :wink:

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37

I’m not sure about this. I think there is a difference between “being taught” and “learning”

But only because we make it something people have to learn.
The beauty of online is that all this stuff can be imposed without players having to know it in advance. Playing inside a square? Computer won’t let you. Ko? You can’t play there. Score? Computer will tell you. Living or dead stones? Computer will tell you. Territory? Points for stones on the board? Who even cares?!

Didn’t understand what happened? Just play another game. Enjoying it anyway? Great! Not enjoying it? There are a bazillion other ganes to try!

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They do that so they can answer that question.

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39

Simultaneous posting sorry. I think this is the crux. Why is candy crush go a problem?

40

Perhaps some beginners don’t enjoy the game because they don’t understand the rules. Listening to an explanation is easier than guessing.

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