That made me chuckle. I had to imagine you sitting on your chair leaning forwards and just staring at the page intensely for hours 
I believe you might have misunderstood my point. I did not want to talk about the pros of the page itself but about the pros of this approach to the overall site structure.
There are two distinct approaches to the overall site structure. You can either A. have a dedicated Start-page AND a dedicated Play-page OR B. one Merged-page that functions as both.
That is an undeniable fact. You have to decide if you want to do A or B.
Now I would claim that this directly also means that if you do A, you will have a greater focus on the platform’s ecosystem in comparison to B. That is because if you do B, you will have to put all your play-options on the page somewhere. This is demonstrably true because you can check the percentage of the viewport that goes to play-options on both sites:
- For chess.com it’s about 4%
- For lichess.org it’s about 25%
That’s a massive difference.
That’s a great mock-up too and it’s also directly in the OGS design.
I took the Components from chess.com, lichess.org and this thread and listed them in a Meta Component Anaylsis Table.
I think this will make it easier to assess what the options (Components) are we could choose from when creating a Wireframe for the start page.
Table Legend
- Component ID: Is the ID of the Component that can be used to refer to it.
- Effort: My estimated effort to implement the widget.
- S: Very easy or already existing feature
- M: Endpoints for this probably existing, little FE work
- L: New feature, larger amount of work necessary to implement/maintain
- XL: New feature, very large amount of work necessary to implement/maintain
- Component Name: Name of the Component.
- Count: How many of the surveyed Solution Architects have gone for this widget for their start page.
| Component ID | Effort | Component Name | chess.com | lichess.org | Regenwasser | jlt | Count |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | S | Day Streak Counter | x | x | 2 | ||
| 2 | S | Solved Puzzle Counter | x | x | 2 | ||
| 3 | S | Lesson Widget | x | 1 | |||
| 4 | S | Last Game Review Widget | x | x | 2 | ||
| 5 | S | Play Directly (ranked) Button | x | x | 2 | ||
| 6 | S | New Game (Jump to Play Page) Button | x | x | x | 3 | |
| 7 | S | Play Bots Button | x | x | x | x | 4 |
| 8 | M | Play a friend Button | x | x | x | 3 | |
| 9 | XL | League Widget | x | 1 | |||
| 10 | S | Live Video Widget | x | 1 | |||
| 11 | S | Player Stats Overview | x | x | x | 3 | |
| 12 | S | Server Stats Overview | x | x | 2 | ||
| 13 | M | Daily Puzzle Widget | x | x | x | 3 | |
| 14 | M | Daily Games Widget (E17) | x | x | 2 | ||
| 15 | S | Game History Widget | x | x | 2 | ||
| 16 | S | Play unranked Button | 0 | ||||
| 17 | S | Ongoing Games Widget | x | x | x | 3 | |
| 18 | S | Tournaments Widget | x | x | x | 3 | |
| 19 | L | News & Updates Widget | x | x | 2 | ||
| 21 | S | Active Users Widget | x | 1 | |||
| 22 | L | Global Chat Widget | x | x | 2 | ||
| 23 | S | Go Tip of The Day | x | 1 | |||
| 24 | M | Blog Widget | x | 1 | |||
| 25 | S | Donation Widget | x | 1 | |||
| 26 | XL | Merch Store Widget | x | 1 | |||
| 27 | S | Pro Game Widget | x | x | 2 | ||
| 28 | S | Forum Widget | x | 1 | |||
| 29 | S | Ladder Widget | x | 1 | |||
| 30 | S | Chat with friends Button | x | 1 | |||
| 31 | S | Groups Widget | x | 1 | |||
| 32 | M | Action Queue Widget | 0 |