As an active OGS user who travels between North American and Asia during school breaks, I already notice a pretty big improvement in speed over the past 2 years in Asia. 2 years ago I would time out in 10s blitz before my opponent’s move show up on the board, and I have to coordinate with opponent via other messaging app due to frequent disconnection. (in Shanghai+Hongkong) Last year it still takes quite a bit of time for many pages to load but i was able to play most part of the game with lag within 2-3s, but I would experience some major lag/ disconnection issue every half an hour on average which caused some timeouts. 6 month ago I think pages load a bit faster then before.
But still, the user experience in Asia (or China at least) is still quite far from the user experience in North America. Back in Asia I have to reserve at least 4s for byo yomi (which is a lot in blitz games since there’s also some lag in your opponent’s move showing up on your end). And I need to reserve some byo yomi periods to counter the occasional major lag/timer freezing issue.
I certainly agree that speeding up is an important issue and would help OGS attract more users. I don’t mind seeing more ads anywhere other than game page(eg. chat page, forum,profile…) But I think putting ad in game page is pretty distracting and would just offset the benefits. I would rather deal with the issues above than seeing an ad in game. I wouldn’t mind that much in seeing a static ad during review phase though.
I think you should make it easier to donate instead. I tried and there was an error, so fixing this would go a long way (maybe you need to accept more cards). You could also enable donation by cryptocurrencies.
Just a quick question about this for clarification: will the ad still show up in the game page even if when Zen Mode is enabled? If the answer is no, then I’d be ok with it although I already think the service is good and there’s no real need for it at this time.
I’m a supporter and I want to see ads (because I’m not supporting OGS for not seeing them anyway).
Please, also consider increasing the upper limit for donations
And why not decreasing the lower limit ( I’ve forgotten about its value).
I think no, it would not. Though I might need to check on some ToS stuff with our ad provider to see if we can actually toggle it off and on like that as people enter and exit zen mode.
The switch I was thinking would be an option on the settings page, so you’d go to the settings page, turn it off, next time you go to a game page you wouldn’t see any ads. The problem with zen mode is you never leave the same game page, so if someone toggles on and off zen mode we had an ad, it got removed, then we have another ad on the same page without any navigation, that might be a problem, I’ll have to look into it.
I think this is wonderful, even though I already live in the United States, and get this better speed, this would be awesome for OGS. It would bring more people into the community, thus making it easier to find a match, and improving speeds for everyone, not just people outside the U.S. Also, since OGS has really non-intrusive ads, everyone should be willing to sacrifice 5 seconds to have faster speeds and more people in this community overall.
-MrC
I honestly strongly disagree. Maybe I am alone in this, but maybe not. If I first came to OGS got a game and saw (even slightly) disturbing ad on the actuall game board, I would switch servers. Immediately. I understand running servers is not free, I really do, but this has to be done with caution. First impressions are very important and to me this would just look extremely bothersome and cheap. Without having any connection with the community my old account etc, I would just have no motivation to put up with something annoying when there are alternatives.
I feel very strongly about this and urge to consider very cautiosly. Put them anywhere and everywhere, just not the actuall game.
It is not a big deal for current members, we already know we like it here and want to support OGS (hence the poll might actually not be the best way to decide), but for a newcomer it can be a dealbreaker.
Interesting point. I guess since I don’t care I just (subconsciously) immediately assumed that most people wouldn’t. However, that was stupid of me and I see your point. Maybe It should be only be in a certain part of the game, like in the Analyze mode button, to deter people from using it?(That was a joke) So maybe it should not be in the game at all, but definitely in the other tabs. Although considering the other Go servers have horrible UI(which is much worse then ads, in my opinion) I think OGS could get away with it, but that might seem cheap, and more for the fact that they can do it then to work for the community.
-MrC
I agree with Adam with this. If we want to attract more player, we have to consider our strength and weaknesses relative to the competitors. For the Asia market, OGS basically competing with Tygem, Fox, Yike (Chinese app for correspondence game, with daily go news, game relay+commentary, tsumego, completely free and no Ad). None of those servers have distracting Ad banners on game page.
Compare to other servers OGS lacks: strong players, go news, pro game relay+commentary, social environment/support for non-English speakers,and an intuitive ranking system (not saying the ranking system is bad, just having the same default rank for everyone is confusing new comers)
The main advantages of OGS are its accessibility and nice interface, and it’s social environment(for English speakers). Now if we add more Ads, we’re basically taking away one main advantage and in exchange for speed(which is something other servers already have) and I don’t think what’s left is enough for people to consider OGS as an alternative server.
Now, this is just speculation on my part, but it could also be from the ISP’s in those regions restricting bandwidth due to geopolitics, so just being devil’s advocate
This seems like a noble cause, but I don’t want you to stretch yourself too thin and have to shut down the site. Make sure that you can at least come back to what we have now without going broke.
I LOVE the community element of the supporter-based business model. Have you tried experimenting with other business models? Would you be open to exploring other business models, even if temporarily? If yes, who would be the person to chat about that with? if no, why not?
One of the keys for OGS is going to be attracting strong asian players so that it can rival Tygem and Fox in terms of community. You should invest there first.
