Ha, I don’t have all the answers.
You quote some pretty awkward formulations that do indeed need some editing.
Who is the “product owner” of OGS ladders, the one who can answer David’s questions?
Meaning is there a mod who specialises in ladders?
I can’t answer all questions either so I’ll just react to
If the same people keep playing each other, since the number of incoming challenges is limited, other people in the ladder won’t have a chance to challenge them.
If you go on vacation, you can turn on “vacation mode” to avoid timing out so that you don’t lose your position in the ladder.
Let say you are at the position 200
You can challenge all the players up to 200-200x40/100=120.
It will change in grey at 119 and up (can’t be challenged. )
1 Like
you can challenge anyone above you up to 10 positions above you
Clear to me, but that will matter if you get near the top so until then you can forget this one.
Correspondance games are already explained, it’s heavy to repeat again.
1 Like
That assumes that people prefer repeat challenges to new challenges. If, say there is only one or at most two repeat challenges, a person would be free to accept a challenge from someone new.
This information is missing from the official instructions, so we can’t be sure it is correct.
If you wish to factor instructions, that’s fine. The way factoring works is that you create instructions for Correspondence games (if they need creating), then link to them from the Wiki entry for Ladders.
Yes we could put “Correspondance game” as a hyperlink to where it is explained.
In a competitive spirit, it seems logical to me to wait to play someone again. You have to prove your strength against different players, and you have to give a break to the one you just played.
If you are the strongest player on the ladder, you can challenge everyone above you up to ladder position 6 (1+5), if you are the second strongest 7 (2+5), …
- Blitz (very fast game with about 10s per move)
- Normal (leisure paced game, but still done in one sitting - about 30s per move)
- Correspondence (Game played over several days, where players are not present most of the time. About 1 day per move) - You can press the correspondence button several times to create several challenges
In
1 Like
Ladder challenge slots are a precious resource: each player only has 3 of them. There are thousands of people in the ladder (and at least hundreds of active ones). If you challenge again, you are selfishly using up 1 of those 3 slots which prevents all the other people in the ladder from challenging that player who you have just failed to beat (because in ladders it only makes sense to challenge people higher than you, so you wouldn’t want to challenge again if you beat them because then you would be higher than them already). You are of course free to send them a non-ladder challenge in a regular game, which they are allowed to refuse (they cannot refuse a ladder challenge).
(It does slightly amuse me all this WARNING LADDER IS CORRESPONDENCE AND THIS IS WHAT CORRESPONDENCE MEANS tone seeing as OGS has had correspondence ladders for years before it had live games, but of course there are lots of live-only players nowadays).
7 Likes
Yes, that is fine. And someone else will have very different desires. I myself like the idea of a series of games against an interesting players, especially one who comments on plays. OGS has always attempted to meet everyone’s needs. I think it has been quite successful.
I actually think this 7 day limit is potentially too low. When I was active around the top of the 19x19 ladder (and it only had a few hundred players) I recall getting somewhat annoyed that I would play player X for 3-6 months, beat them, then if no one noticed I had a free slot, 7 days latter they challenged me again, beat them again, repeat many times. I would rather have played a greater variety of opponents (and I imagine they would have liked the opportunity to play me, particularly if stronger than X), but those other people probably weren’t carefully monitoring the ladder for when I had a free slot, whereas the person who I just beat knows it’s 7 days from when the last game finished. May not be such an issue nowadays with more people in the ladders. Curious what @mark5000 or others active near top of ladders and in forums think now.
1 Like
From OGS Ladders · online-go/online-go.com Wiki · GitHub
“It is good to realise that the ladder itself is only a bookkeeping tool. The games are separate from the ladder list and located where all the other games are: in Game space, with its own addresses.”
This sentence reads oddly to me and has undue prominence in the introduction: I think it addresses david’s misconceptions which are unlikely to be widely shared in language (“game space”) that clarifies things to him but could confuse others. What is the alternative to being “a bookkeeping tool”. How would the games not be separate to the ladder list? Would they appear in a little box on the ladder standings page itself? A game on OGS without a game id and a games page? Or there is no game of go, you instead challenge them to rock paper scissors? If ladders are a bookkeeping tool, so are tournaments, but I’ve never heard anyone else call them that.
4 Likes
Uberdude, I will try to answer from my perspective of joining the 9x9 Ladder for the first time. I found it very confusing. There were no instructions (no link to the wiki). After I found the Ladder list, it was not obvious how to join the ladder. After I joined the Ladder and challenged someone, nothing happened. There was no notice that I had a game started and no link to the game. I had to ask a series of questions in the forum to begin to understand what to do. There was an especially confusing question: “Are you ready to start now?” which I still do not understand.
You seem very smug in your ridicule of my confusion and my proposals to improve the instructions for Ladders and the Ladders themselves, but I hope that this simplified presentation of what it is like helps you to see my motivation for trying to help.
1 Like
Yes, but I think you found it extra confusing because you are hitherto primarily (solely?) a live game player, so you had a double whammy of live → correspondence culture shock, plus learning how a ladder works. Also you seem to be the kind of person who likes understand how things work before you use them, rather than a more ‘try it and see’ kind of approach.
I think adding such a link (or even some brief help on the ladder home page itself plus a link), and improving the wiki is an excellent idea.
This I don’t follow: there’s a big Join button on the main page with all 3 ladders, or at the top pinned when you scroll on the full ladder list. Are you using mobile or some 3rd part client? I presume you aren’t blind and using a screen reader so hitting accessibility issues.
That does sound poor design, I’ll have a go myself to see.
So what happens is the move notification counter at the top right increments by one, but that’s all. If you are only a live player maybe you haven’t noticed this feature of the site? It’s a core feature I expect every correspondence player uses often. I agree a pop-up with a link to the game, or simply redirecting you to the game would probably be better. The downside of a redirect is if you want to challenge several people you would need to go back, but playing a move in a ladder challenge you just made is probably the most likely desired user action.
Immediately after challenging someone there’s a message “Are you ready to start your game with {{opponent name}}?” with Yes and No buttons, this one? It seems like a fairly standard “Are you sure?” confirmation prompt before you do things on computers, though the wording is a bit odd but not so much I got confused. I clicked no (I’m a “try it and see” person) and the dialog closed and nothing had happened, so that’s just a Cancel button. Then I clicked yes, see above. I’d probably word it “Are you sure you want to challenge {{opponent name}}?” potentially with a 2nd line “If you do you will have {{x}} challenge(s) remaining” where x is 2 or 1 or 0.
Some of your requests for the ladder help page like explaining what a correspondence game is and how the conditional move feature works do not belong there, hence my comment about the bookkeeping sentence was because I want the help page on ladders to be better for all readers (and more text is not always better, if it puts people off reading to the more useful bits below about challenge rules), which means adding some of the things you didn’t understand, but not all of them; otherwise it becomes a “What are all the things about ladders and other features of OGS that aren’t particular to ladders that david265 learnt about when he joined a ladder” document, not a help page about ladders.
2 Likes
Note, you may get assigned White in which case the circle wouldn’t increment.
4 Likes
Good point, so even more reason to have a dialog/redirect.
Though actually, if you are white then is there much point showing you an empty board where your can’t do anything other than marvel at the emptiness or see opponent’s name card. I suppose you could set up some conditional moves if you wanted to freak out your opponent. The move indicator does its job well.
1 Like