Hi, I’m Tue, a 5d Go teacher. I usually use OGS to teach.
When I guide my new students to play on OGS, the default game setting is making them confuse.
I need to use lot of words to guide them adjust everything. This information makes them even more overwhelmed (beside the Go rules itself).
Let’s me be specific
The Game Speed, default setting is Correspondence. I don’t get it. Not a single beginner aware of this kind of game. I need to explain to them what Corr is and why we should change to Live. If they accidentally play in the Corr mode by themself, the Submit move and Game switching behavior is annoying.
Time Control, default setting is Fischer. The majority of Go player play Byo-yomi, it has to be the default no matter what. (I myself prefer Fischer tbh). I ask my student to change this setting. Also, I don’t really remember much. But live game should be something 30min and 3x30s as default.
I wish not every setting in the Game panel is adjusted by dropdown menu. It feels lot of mental loads needed. I propose some setting can just use the (+) and (-) button the change the setting. For Game speed, it could be Select between buttons (like the Play main window). And maybe, instead of ticking the tiny box, we can use a modern Toggle button.
A long main time is unwise, because if an opponent escapes and leaves the tab open, then one must wait longer until timeout. Better is a short main time and more byo-yomi periods (e.g., 5 min + 5x30s).
Yes. This is a specificity of OGS because OGS was first designed for correspondence. Since few years OGS is enlarging it’s users to live and blitz settings. As of today there are still much more correspondence games on OGS as any other settings.
There is a trend in western countries to opt for Fischer timing. You may observe it in tournaments (in person), it’s more and more common and the standard timing.
I feel like it would make more sense to have the live settings as the default, but only for the first game. The settings should be saved on users cookies, so the “default” is “whatever you used last time” which is quite nice ^^
Maybe there are more Correspondence games are being played. Just because the game took so long and people play lot of them simultaneously. I believe the number of players playing Live and Blitz is more than that of Corr. (Anybody know how to find this statistic?)
Anyway, I think it would be more beginner friendly to put Live game to be the default one. For veteran players, they can change it by they own.
Like I said, I love Fischer, and I know some tournaments are applying that (even a pro tournament one like Supreme Player Cup). But I think that Byo-yomi is still the go-to format for Go player (Fox and Tygem still using it, where the vast majority of Go player are). It makes more sense to practice in Byo-yomi.
Maybe, yeah, especially since we already have Rapid and Blitz for shorter games.
idk, this sounds nice, but the log-scale makes it easy to select from a wider range of numbers. Imagine if you had to + all the way from 1s to 30 minutes (and we’d need to figure out another way to incorporate units)
I wonder if this indicates a need for, not a change of defaults, but a feature where one can share settings. After all, your preferences may be different from some other teacher’s. I agree it would be nice if you don’t have to put this mental load on your students.
I generally disagree with you. Nevertheless I found some of you feedback very valuable.
Technically every UI should have the “default” (preselected) option. It is possible that no choice is preselected. In this case “empty” value is “default”. So the question is how to choose the best “default” value? How to compare which one is better for all?
On other hand I think the UI is really complicated for new users. Too many choices.
I don’t mind against an extra buttons (+) and (-) . But I’m strongly against of removing dropdown. It give quick access to all choices.
I recommend you as a teacher to explain you students about customizations in game settings.
By the way OGS remember last choice and save it as default. I can even say more. It has a feature to save different presets and quickly to switch them in future.
It is a brilliant idea I think! Do you mean something like button “Create a custom game from selection” that will fill setting in form from current automatch settings? I think it could help new players.
I want to make another suggestion of feature. To share saved presets. For example you a teacher have saved presets. I think it will be helpful if users can share their presets by a link.
@GreenAsJade may I ask you to think about presets sharing? I guess it is a pure frontend feature.
Lys said “The big orange dot represents all games that ended within 24 hours.”
The big orange dot’s surface area is far bigger than the rest. So the vast majority of games ended within 24 hours.
It’s certainly possible that some of these games are correspondence games, but almost all correspondence games end after more than 24 hours. That’s why I concluded that the vast majority of games are live games.
I got what is the orange one. Searching where are the other one (for the corr. games) My only hypothesis is that it’s the stones in the bowl or that I miss a part of the picture
You can’t separate correspondence players and live players since many people play both types of games.
I tried to look manually at random accounts, by selecting random numbers between 1 and 1000000. I found
no game, 2 live, no game, 6 live, 6 live, 4 live, no game, 11 live, no game, 2 live, no game, 27 live and 1 corr resigned early, 2 live, 16 live, no game, no game, 2 live, no game, 1 live, 2 live, no game, 3 live, 1 live, no game, 1 live.
A game was considered as live if it was played in a few minutes, even if the time setting was correspondence. As you can see, most accounts have very few games, and when people play, they prefer live games.
