Yet another Go Server

What’s wrong with soliciting community advice in the forums for this sort of thing, as has been being done? I am very wary of @Regenwasser in particular being in an official role involved in determining how OGS moves forward, because he has advocated for things in the OGF which I and many others do not want, and I don’t trust him with the responsibility of skipping the step of letting his ideas be aired in the marketplace of ideas of OGF

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Nothing is wrong with soliciting community input.

I said:

We use it all the time. Nothing much gets implemented without it.

In fact, it says on github:

  • https://forums.online-go.com should be used to discuss any proposed functional changes or any new notable features, allowing non developers to chime in with their thoughts and ideas.

What I also said is that contributing to discussions here in the forum doesn’t make you an OGS Product Designer.

That work is done in parallel with the solicitation in the forums, in an environment where actual work can be done :slight_smile:

You can see some of it in github, where Pull Requests are reviewed and commented on for their technical aspects, for example.

That is the kind of work involved in earning the “3 months supporter benefits for developers”.

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This is what I thought too. I think it would be a mistake to try to designate the server and the forum as “a place mainly for western Baduk players”.

This is good to hear, so you have thought about this. I assume by “gambling” you mean betting? This is indeed very high on my list when looking at how far eastern servers work compared to OGS.

The second paragraph seems to answer the first. So you already do know what I meant?

I created this User Story for the start of a rework of the /play page and I think that the actual new design borrowed quite a few a my proposed ideas. I also think that it should have implemented even more of my ideas but that’s a different story.

Fair enough.

Hey! :smile:

My boss told me just yesterday that I need to work on my behavior in group dynamics. This year I will have to attend a “appreciative communication” training. Maybe that will help :smiley:

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Nice.

It seems fair to say that we have so little ongoing formal Product Design that we don’t have the “ways” and “systems” in place to even recognise the difference between “brainstorming in the forum” and “working on the actual design”.

In fact, we don’t have a formal design system at all. I mean - the actual tools and artifacts that Product Designers use and produce.

It warrants a discussion like “so, if we’re going to do some product design for this feature, how should we tackle it?”

There’s a whole interesting conversation right there I suspect :slight_smile:

I suggest that this should be the first step a person offering to do some could usefully take: reach out and ask that question.

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True. Things get discussed in the Forums, developers weigh that with their own positions and what they’re willing to work on, and implement it. What’s wrong with that? Too few developers? Sure, I’m sure more people helping in that department would be appreciated by everyone, but that’s not what’s being proposed. Someone to summarize Forum consensus into an easily parsible form for developers to evaluate? Could be valuable, but that requires someone willing to steelman opposing positions and consistently present them and present them fairly. I don’t trust Regenwasser with this responsibility

Also, if it’s just summarizing, why not just let whoever is willing do it in the Forums so that there’s transparency if they’re not representing opposing positions well

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I dislike all kinds of betting, whether they involve actual money or not. That a betting system exists on Fox and Tygem doesn’t make me go away from these servers, but I’d personally consider that as a minus, not a plus.

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Are you by any chance not a Korean man in his 40s?

But yes, of course new features aimed at far eastern players should not overly deter western players. That is very clear.

I’ll come back to this. But could you maybe outline how the feature backlog is currently managed? What tools, processes and methods do you currently use?

Actually quite a lot. I really don’t want to take away from the work of the people who focus on the technical implementation of this. In the end, without the implementation you have nothing and that is why traditionally developers are the main force driving software community projects.

But this traditional approach lacks a lot of other key perspectives and skills that could be deployed for the best possible result. You wouldn’t want a group of engineers to construct a car all by themselves, right? You’d want various types of designers, safety experts, project managers, parts specialists, test drivers and so on and so on.

Eric Murphy made a great video about this topic.

I think people understood that the first time you said it. Samraku does not trust Regenwasser. It is noted. I don’t think you will need to incorporate this information into every comment now.

It should be noted that OGS also has a good implementation of a community translation of the server in a lot of different languages, which is something that new server should also consider.

This introduces another issue. How vastly in the minority are the people in the forum, compared with the actual playerbase of OGS. We might run a poll and vote that we want feature X to be implemented, but the actual playerbase might have a totally different opinion and we might be out of touch.

For your information, there is a “see previous versions of the post” button in the Forum.

So, just like Go has been said to resemble a discussion and when you invade 3-3 you are saying “hey, I want the territory in this corner”, when you go back and retroactively do what you did, then you are saying “Hey, I still want people to get curious and read what I wrote, but at the same time I want no accountability/responsibility for what I wrote and be able to pretend that I didn’t write it at all”.

I would suggest you re-instate that text to its original form.

You should probably send a direct message to the DEV team and anoek for such information. I assume that this is not exactly public information and neither is this topic the appropriate place to actually go through what should be a professional level private discussion and, probably, negotiation.

That’s interesting. Just simple question, do only the players have the ability to bet on their game or do the spectators as well have the ability to do that? In the second case that’s a very dangerous feature, legally (gambling is one thing, potential money-laundering is another).

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This is a very good and important point.

I was not aware of this.

I considered that part of your post as highly passive aggressive and responded accordingly. Then I remembered that this is not Reddit and that the level of communication in this forum is usually peaceful to a high degree. I didn’t want to be responsible for disrupting this peace so I tried to remove my statement.

I instead removed that part in its entirety so that people don’t even get the idea of viewing the previous version to check what it said.

I’m actually not aware to what extent OGS is an open source community project (and to what extent it is not). But yes, fair enough.

Foxcoin is pretty much worthless, and not every game can be bet on (only the 8d above can create those rooms). And it is spectators betting against each other, not players. (if you can find others to bet for you is another matter). And officially there is no way to exchange foxcoin for real money. (Ofc, you can always try to find black-market, however, it is not the problem of foxwq, and the “transfer of foxcoin” will always leave records. Using foxwq for gambling would just leave more trails.)

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Thank you for your reply. :slight_smile: So it is not really gambling, since it doesn’t correspond in real money. It is just an “in server currency/token” and winning or losing those tokens is just a matter of bragging right, correct?

It has some marginal use. Originally foxcoins are for like in-game positional judgment (before AI era, it is not very accurate), and for tsumego problems and solutions, etc. And there are some missions you can complete to get the foxcoins. Later on, there are more and more foxcoins, and they function more or like “voting” and cheering for the players in those high-level games, and as you said bragging right (there is even a list of users with the most foxcoins)

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I think the thing about gambling with fake money is also the “kick” it brings. Instead of just supporting your favourite player using your keyboard, you further support by using your fake money. The more you earn the more you can do that. The amount of money bet on each player can also be seen in real time. It adds another layer of fun to watching the games.

Though one thing that needs to be avoided is getting too serious about it and criticising the player just because you bet money on him and he lost. I think some professional players got it last time.

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We can call the “coins” whatever we want if their purpose is just to boost morale or viewership, like karma points, or mana pools. Just people have a natural tendency to want to “accumulate” said amount if we put a “money-related” tag on them. And even if they are just for show (like as in-game coins, for buying virtual skins), people will still want to exchange them using real money.

Not what I said at all.

I’m saying, “if somebody nails the CJK market, there is little incentive to improve the western experience.” Example: Tygem and Fox English clients.

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It is an interesting question why foxwq is the one that survives for the Chinese online servers (there used to be quite a few of them). Lots of users dislike foxwq, its clunky interface, and unnecessary features. But they are the one who found the long term survival business models, and the backing of a rich sponsor (Tencent Corporation, a lot of the “gamey” features akin to mobile games came from that period when Tencent want to make foxwq more profitable). Later on, it is more about the larger player base in China to keep it consistently packing with all ranks of players. Also the easy login and register for Chinese users due to the cooperation with Tencent (basically acts like Google login but Chinese version).

The success of the East Asian servers mostly has to do with the player base in their host regions, and those required fees or memberships to play tend not to last. But how to make enough profits to keep the servers running and still allow free-to-play is always a big issue for these online servers.

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What is his motivation, I mean did he just lose his job and find himself at a loose end?

I asked on reddit, see his answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/1hx9dxr/comment/m6am2d9/

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The whole thread on Reddit gives a bit of light on the project.

Maybe Flavien should come here to discuss the project and make the reaction a bit less negative.

Myself I don’t really share the idea of multi servers gaming (like a game would be at the same time on different servers) that’s a bit idealistic (not taking in account each server will) and I’m far to be convinced that merging is something good in itself. Anyway I would not discourage him or say “copy the eastern way” or whatever, I say good luck if you think you can make money from it, I don’t believe so but ok, try it so we can enjoy something to try.

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