It’s not necessarily a dichotomy like that. It could instead be a personalized setting, where people could perhaps choose what appears on their home page.
Maybe by default, it could be dynamic, showing ongoing correspondence games, if those exist, or the start game buttons if the user has no ongoing correspondence games.
If there is a concern that narrow ranges make it too hard to find a game, perhaps one should be able to set an upper and lower limit for main time. That way individuals could strike their own balance between getting a game fast and getting their preferred settings.
The limits could be represented by two sliders on a (roughly) log-scaled bar. Perhaps there could be a second bar for the length of an extra time period, though of course the meaning would be considerably affected by the type of extra time. Your limits should be remembered for next time. Clicking one of the proposed buttons could set the limits to appropriate values, and need a second click to start looking for a game.
It feels a bit like a user signs up, and the Home page is already implicitly saying “Yeah, this site is for correspondence players, take it or leave it.”, or looking like bad site design until the player happens to have a game that appears there.
So the option to customize the home page to some degree (but have the default set to entice newcomers), or the option @yebellz proposed, are both an improvement to the current situation imho.
In the case of yebellz’s proposal, I’d add to it to have an option to hide the active games from the home page.
Maybe it could just act like an expandable window. (Why? Because paused games also appear there, not only correspondence games, so you might not be interested in seeing them every time – and also players who have a lot of active games might want a smoother experience by not having the site load the games every time they go to the home)
On one side it feels weirdly convoluted, meaning if we had the resources to make the system perfect I imagine we’d prefer to have a solid solution connected directly to the backend, rather than using a system aimed at third parties within the site itself, but at the same time it’s good lateral and pragmatical thinking.
It would mean to take note of the limitations we have and find a good practical solution to generate an immediate improvement, even though it’s not necessarily the ultimate-perfect-solution3000 we dream of.
and also something similar to this:
I think encouraging users to select the same or compatible settings to each other might be important for the viability of the automatch, but other than that, I like PJ’s proposal.
(Keeping in mind that a lot of users don’t really care about the settings, so while PJ’s proposal might sound like everybody will just have different settings, in practice I suspect it might be essentially equivalent to the current one, just with a more practical GUI)
I’d add to that proposal that users should be able to set upper bound, lower bound, and preferred setting, so that if two players have the same specific preference but leave very large bounds, they can still be matched together with their preferred setting – and perhaps, when two players are matched together, the created game could have settings “in the average” of their two preferences.
The byoyomi/fischer dichotomy is bothersome.
I believe Go beginners are bound to appreciate Fischer more, but people coming from other Go experiences might be very annoyed if the automatch system doesn’t at least allow byoyomi as a possibility.
Putting all of this together, I’ve just come up with another proposal (although it might be more difficult to implement):
Allow a fair bit of customization in automatch settings, but encourage users to express somewhat flexible preferences
(for example if a users expresses very strict compatibility settings, a warning message appears above the settings saying something like “strict settings may require more time for the system to find a match”).
When a fitting game is found, show users a splash screen with the settings of the game they’re about to play, so that they have a chance to pull back before starting in case they really don’t enjoy the settings.
(ideally, this would also remove the need to give black 5 minutes at the start of each game, forcing white to be more on edge)
I think it’s a mistake to try to separate correspondence players from live players when most of our features work for both. Which type of player is interested in the stream links, or in watching a relay of a pro game? Which type of player does puzzles or makes demo boards?
Build something modular and flexible with a bunch of features and see which ones people are excited about emphasizing. Maybe “my ongoing games” can fit in naturally, there can be a setting, or that one feature can move to some other page, but it’s not productive to commit ahead of time to excluding correspondence players from this design.
I don’t think he meant to exclude correspondence players – I think he rather meant to include live players, since the current design doesn’t do that; and in the process, if it had to come down to a choice of which group to appease with the design, it’s better to appease the people who have more of a chance to “breathe life” into the OGS community – live players.
But yeah, of course if it’s possible to not exclude anyone, let’s do that. (A few ways have already been proposed)
I’m all for being more welcoming and making a better experience all around, but I do want to clarify that we most certainly will always target correspondence players, we need to accommodate both. Live is certainly not “the [only] future”, but yes growing that “segment” is desirable, but retaining and growing our correspondence players, and supporting the lots of players that do both, is just as important. A half way decent correspondence system is a primary differentiator from other servers after all.
What if it stays the same as it is for corr players, and only if a player has no active games, the server shows the new UI with links to find games or other social content (streams, chat, forums, etc.)
That way corr players don’t lose the landing page they like and live players don’t have a totally empty landing page.
Win win right?
Or why not just a toggle where that my “games thing” is. You toggle it one way it hides all the queueing for games stuff and shows you your games. You toggle it the other way it shows you the automatch stuff and hides your games.
Remember the users last preference, and default it to showing the automatch stuff.
As mostly corr player, i wouldn’t actually mind losing the current main home page if the profile page would be expanded into showing 6 thumbnails per row. Now the profile only has 2 thumbnails per row, so its not very convenient for checking up with ones games, currently thats pretty much the only reason for using home page instead my own profile
I join the “a la carte” front page, satisfying everyone but i highly doubt that anyone would work on a so ambitious design.
I’m wondering if one day people will stop proposing the same thing over and over in this thread 
Yes, it’s been proposed to make the home page customizable to make both corr and live players happy. Yes, it should be doable. No, you’re not the first one to think of it.
I wish one day the new landing page will be finally implemented, and we will stop seeing snarky commentaries from people, who don’t understand the importance of good UI and UX in the modern world.
Clossius, this is one of the best landing pages I have ever seen, and I don’t care how similar it is to Lichess. It it works and maximizes the number of people playing the game, it’s good for me. Landing page + forced handicap I think is a great hypothesis to at least test and not endlessly discuss unnecessary specifics. Thank you for going forward and doing something instead of just talking.
Where did you find something snarky? Clossius opened a thread to share and talk and his project evoluate quite a bit from the start.
No need to dazzle the various contributors by your enthusiasm.
So I added a toggle to show My Games or the Play screen. This state will be saved to the user so it will be the same each time you load the page. I think the play should be the default for new players.
I added the average length of time to play the game setting. I think the reason a lot of people do not play is due to not having enough time. If they have a general idea of how long they have to play, they can quickly get into a match that they won’t have to leave mid way. I think 1h+ long live games should be custom and reserved for say league or tournament games. This is because not everyone can dedicate the time investment multiple times a day or week. But the custom option is still there for those who can.
Hopefully this design hits both the live players and the correspondence players.
Edit: I just took the pictures without the nav. The navigation up top still exist.
I am actually enjoying the evolution of this design, it’s quite nice.
Miss direct links to more things like chat, puzzle, forum, resources…
I don’t think this has been asked yet, what’s the intention with the challenges that appear on the left of the central panel vs. the ones listed below? Are they from different pools, same pool, duplicates?
(In general I feel the whole thing is a bit crowded, but maybe it can get better by refining the style)
(EDIT: one thing to reduce crowdedness, I think there’s no need to remove the nav bar, so the “Watch” and “Create Demo” buttons can just go back to the top imho)
I had been thinking about this too, very happy to see it 
Couldn’t the automatch buttons be fitted into the top row of boards (it seems the don’t need so much vertical space) and the rest of the screen be ongoing games? I.e. combine the two layouts…
Just an idea.
I was actually thinking about mobile view. The first “board” of your ongoing games could be automatch buttons with ongoing games below that.
For PC, I think we should vote. I, for one, prefer having the option to remove the active games completely.
Thinking about mobile, extremely good point 
(though I don’t use it)
