Good job guys!

[shapenaji]

Yes, thats an advantage the typical game offerer has on a negotiation system.
Of course, it is a dis-service to the challengers, that have to wait for him to make a decision.
The negative waiting is multiplied by the number of challengers that wait for a decision.

But here's the thing, you want to incentivize people to create games for other people to join. Right now you incentivize the responders. That means that people are being rewarded for not taking the leap and putting a game up.

You can get exactly what you describe here if you just look at the game list. You can pick exactly who you play at your very liking that way at the moment of your choosing.

Yeah, that's true, if there are games up.... And why would they put them up?

Its a benefit-balance: the game offerer doesnt get to pick the challenger exactly, but gets to pick the time settings or rules. The game challenger gets to pick the game offerer but doesnt get to pick the exact time settings he wants.

I don't think this trade operates on the same currency, these are vastly different quantities, and both players should have a degree of control over them.

The negotiation system clearly gives the game offerer a higher advantage: maybe it would induce more players to play games, but maybe not. The certainty is that it slows and complicates the process for both offerers and challengers.

If there are not currently enough games on Kaya per capita user, then I would say that you are not rewarding offerers well enough. And it's really not inconveniencing the challenger much. The challenger steps up to the plate, nothing happens for 20 seconds or so, and so he/she moves on to another challenge.

But you're right, Challengers and Offerers should be equal, And if offerers have to wait for people to accept their offer, challengers can wait 20 damn seconds for the offerer to decide if they want to play.

Long time ago I worked on doing the negotiation step, I've spent a lot of time building it and getting it functional, and as soon as i tried it, I felt immediately that negotiable games would be set aside. The game challenger has a lot less friction on non-negotiable games and those with the extra step would get easily neglected.
Knowing you click and play makes you avoid negotiable games that require you to wait for a possibly negative response.

I think you're only really empathizing with the challenger here. As a game offerer, knowing I click and sit and end up in a random game not on my terms (quite possibly after waiting 10 minutes, stepping away and missing the start), is extraordinarily negative.

Hence i looked for an alternative.

I think your concern over getting the exact game you want will dissipate as the player base grows and you have a wealth of challengers of your own rank. Negotiation will be reconsidered if after having a larger player base, the need for it is still felt.

Um, if it's a problem without a large player base, you probably won't get a large player base.

Kaya should scale.

That said, there are definite features in the works to make playing more fun and engaging.

Playing is already fun, but you have to find ways to get more games on there. Watching is fun too, and I'll hazard a guess that that's the entirety of what most people do when they log on to KGS.

[Charlie]

I have been watching the BETA since the first account release and have observed that games are nearly always negotiated in the chat channel and then set up according to the results of that negotiation.

I have also observed that clicking the "Play" button on an open challenge often drops you into a game where your opponent is AFK. (Far more often than not.)

I have also observed several chat negotiations along the lines of, "Please recreate your challenge with time-system X and I'll join."

On Automatch: "automatch" differs from what Kaya has in one significant way: automatch is pretty close to a one-click operation if you assume that the parameters are defaulted. You don't have to check the list of open games to see if you need to create a game or accept an existing challenge, you just click and you're automatically matched to an opponent. The Kaya system is far more laborious: first, you have to scan the list of open games and decide whether one of those is what you're looking for. Then, you have to create your own challenge. Finally, you might get a game. At the moment, the list of open games is very short so this is not a problem but what if there were even 50 entries in that list?

On Resigning Immediately: This is a work-around but it requires the creator of the challenge to recreate their challenge. Presumably, if player Y tries to accept player X's challenge and X is afk, when player Y gets tired of waiting and aborts, X's challenge remains up so, when X returns with her coffee, another player might be interested. Or, if X is not afk and Y joins but X doesn't want to play against Y, the game is resigned and X must create a new challenge... and possibly repeat indefinitely should Y be determined.

[dfunkt]

There is so much talk in this thread about having the ability to reject challengers as they do on KGS. I find this practice offensive. I you post a game offer, just play the game that is accepted by your challenger. On KGS there is far too many people who check rank graphs to find opponents on losing streaks or who meet some other strange criteria. Some would say that automatch solved this problem, but there are problems with KGS' automatch system as well.

I like the way Kaya is currently set up. I was not in favour of having rank graphs at all, but they are desirable for many and I can understand the need for their implementation. Still, I would not want them to be used to discriminate against players by allowing the game offerer to decline challenges.

[averell]

There is so much talk in this thread about having the ability to reject challengers as they do on KGS. I find this practice offensive. I you post a game offer, just play the game that is accepted by your challenger. On KGS there is far too many people who check rank graphs to find opponents on losing streaks or who meet some other strange criteria. Some would say that automatch solved this problem, but there are problems with KGS' automatch system as well.

I like the way Kaya is currently set up. I was not in favour of having rank graphs at all, but they are desirable for many and I can understand the need for their implementation. Still, I would not want them to be used to discriminate against players by allowing the game offerer to decline challenges.

The way Kaya currently is set up is automatch. You put in time settings, and after a while you get a random opponent. For people putting up the game offer there is no difference. It's just called something different.

Those wanting to snipe other overranked people can just pick those offers, so this solves nothing.

"People are taking too long to click OK on their challenges in a custom game. Also they are chosing who to play at their own discretion. We thought long and hard on this problem, and the solution became obvious! Force them to accept the quickest challenger."

[speedchase]

There is so much talk in this thread about having the ability to reject challengers as they do on KGS. I find this practice offensive. I you post a game offer, just play the game that is accepted by your challenger. On KGS there is far too many people who check rank graphs to find opponents on losing streaks or who meet some other strange criteria. Some would say that automatch solved this problem, but there are problems with KGS' automatch system as well.

Have you been reading this thread. There are tons of legitimate reasons to want the ability to decline.

@Gabriel If you don't give the creators the ability to decline, that gives more power to the accepter, because they both get to decide on the time settings, but only the challenger gets to decide who he plays.

[badukJr]

After that it will be a mess when the abusers show up.

Neither Oro or Tygem have a KGS-style negotiation system. I would not describe them as a "mess"

They do have, but even when you aren't using the negotiation they have an Accept/Decline prompt.
The lack of an Accept/Decline prompt is why there will be abuse and become a mess.
On Tygem or Oro you get a challenge and an Accept/Decline prompt, with a timer. When the timer reaches zero it is autodeclined.
In Kaya, you are immediately in the game when someone challenges you. I

It is like going to a club, turning away from the table to reach over and get your tea or coffee, turning back and suddenly there is a man sitting there, who has placed a clock down, started it, and has played a move. It is really jarring.

[Charlie]

The way Kaya currently is set up is automatch. You put in time settings, and after a while you get a random opponent. For people putting up the game offer there is no difference. It's just called something different.

Not true.

On Kaya, two n-kyu players can both create a game-offer with exactly the same parameters and they'll both just sit there in the list. With automatch, two n-kyu players would simply click the button and be matched together.

This difference means you have to scan the list of open games and decide whether there is a challenge for you to accept or whether you should create a new one. This has two problems.

• You might only see an (n-4)-kyu game and decide that you don't want to play a 4-stone handicap game, so you create a new offer. Suppose that, after 20 minutes, nobody has accepted it. You cancel your offer and go to join the (n-4)-kyu game, if it is still there. You might get a game but the offer might be close, too. In the worst case, while you were waiting for a better match, the (n-4)-kyu player got impatient and disconnected - you both lose out. A proper automatch system would just match you to the (n-4)-kyu player because it knows that that's the best match you can get at the current time.
• When the list of offers becomes long, scanning the list could be laborious.

[Redundant]

As far as I'm concerned the ideal solution is to add a "negotiable" flag when setting up game offers that lets people counteroffer with their own time settings/handicap. I'd rarely use it, as I usually know what kind of game I want to play, and dealing with unwanted opponents can be better dealt with by a censor feature (If I don't want to play with a person, I almost certainly don't want to see anything else from that person).

[Kaya.gs]

As i read this forum, each person that wants negotiation wants it for something different.

I remind that talking about problems is better than talking about solutions. Its natural to think in terms of solutions, but a solution per-se is meaningless if it doesnt solve a defined problem.
And problems are easier to handle, because they have many solutions to pick from. Its easier to pick a solution for a problem you know, than a solution you know to a problem you dont.

Lets sum up:

*I want to pick the challenger i play with, so i can decide there and then who I really want to play (shapenaji ?)
- As i said before, i think that if you change your mind, you can always re open the game with different settings, or just look at the game list.
You mention that its less incentive for game offerers this way, and I agree. But im sure we can find many other ways to increase the desire to open the game, if we can know that is the reason people dont open games, which we don't know, than making the whole system worse for everyone.

*I want to avoid being re-challenged by someone I just played with , but dont want to play *right now* (but possibly in the future).
- This is a pretty specific use case. I can figure several ways to go around this, and i think a very handy manageable black list can work. I think this is mostly a UI problem and also i believe this is not a problem right now. This cant be a case bothering people right now because its too rare.

* "Abusers" might want to spam sets of games. Also without negotiation you cannot run a background check against someone.
- Lets worry about abusers when we got abusers. Also, Im almost sure your background check has to do with escapers. You dont mind(a lot about) escapers in Kaya.

* Some open games have the game offerer AFK, so when the game has started he isnt around which causes an upset(for the challenger, as he is not able to play, and for the offerer if he returns, as he has less time & or missed a chance to play a game)

It is like going to a club, turning away from the table to reach over and get your tea or coffee

(will reference this later)
- This is a real issue "today". Its not the end of the world when it happens, because the game doesnt count for rating, but i figure another way to go around this ,and thats that the game offerer gets prompted for presence now and then. This could go in hand with a suggestion to do what i recommend shapenaji "if you cant find a game, make broader game settings"

A few notes on "solutions":

*

This is another reason for a negotiating step, it gives some wiggle room between players who want to play at different time controls.

- I remind you KGS style negotiation does not permit time control changes. There is a historical reason for that. Asian style servers allow it, but in practice time controls are rarely changed. Almost everyone plays the most standard byoyomi 20 minutes setting or a 10 second blitz.

* Negotiation dialog
Take into account first the basic flow on KGS (only server i know that has a strong negotiation system):

A opens a game
B challenges (rarely, with a distinct handicap, but more often than not, as it is)
A sees B, and accepts/declines.
A=>B=>A

on Kaya

A opens game
B challenges
Game started.
A=>B

What i see as something to go around is why A would decline B, and make sure that those games dont really happen on Kaya.

Also, let me add something important on UI and usability.

It is like going to a club, turning away from the table to reach over and get your tea or coffee.
My solution is to let someone challenge multiple game offerers at the same time.

First of all, let me tell you there is a contradiction in both opinions. As "B" is waiting for several "As" to answer, he might get coffee himself, and then the afk happens to the game offerer.
This also happens on KGS.

Also it is a usability and visual problem to have multiple dialog showing at the same time, all randomly interacting, and one of them starting the game.
It is not arguable that having multiple dialogs is better for challengers than click&play.

This whole thing is about game offerers used to the KGS style system finding themselves unsheltered from who they play on Kaya, which is a legitimate feeling. The bots, that have no fear, have played thousands of games.
That feeling deservers to get a solution considered, but negotiation is just one way to do it, and not a very good one.

And getting technical, the extra dialog imposes a big problem on the browser. To maximize share-ability, board size overall clutter, we dont run the game page in the main page. Which means we open a tab when a game is being watched or opened.
In the browser you cannot programatically do anything you want whenever you want: to do that, we need the user to click. Its understandable, because you dont want pages opening up tabs at their command, spamming your browser.

Using a confirmation dialog would provoke this flow :
A opens a game offer
B sends a challenge
A accepts the challenge and the game starts
B is still not in the game: he needs to click one more time to join.
A=>B=>A=>B.

There is one way to go around that issue, and that is opening up the tab right as he challenges. So he if he challenges 3 people, he will have 4 Kaya tabs open. One of them might turn into a game. Some might dissapear. Some might be other games that started.

This is why i always insist to talk about problems, because we have more information about which solutions we can build.

Also let me remind that this is not a "problem" that has to satisfy 100% of go players. It only needs to satisfy half of it, which is enough to let everyone get a game.

(last minute addition)

As far as I'm concerned the ideal solution is to add a "negotiable" flag when setting up game offers that lets people counteroffer with their own time settings/handicap. I'd rarely use it, as I usually know what kind of game I want to play, and dealing with unwanted opponents can be better dealt with by a censor feature (If I don't want to play with a person, I almost certainly don't want to see anything else from that person).

This is the exact solution that i implemented on the development branch and that i didnt like at all.

[speedchase]

*I want to pick the challenger i play with, so i can decide there and then who I really want to play (shapenaji ?)
- As i said before, i think that if you change your mind, you can always re open the game with different settings, or just look at the game list.
You mention that its less incentive for game offerers this way, and I agree. But im sure we can find many other ways to increase the desire to open the game, if we can know that is the reason people dont open games, which we don't know, than making the whole system worse for everyone.

For many people who slowly get more frustrated as they wait longer, and get more willing to play with a larger handicap, that would be extremely annoying, especially if you wanted to do something else while waiting

PS do you understand why a=>b=>a is more fair than a=>b?

[Splatted]

@Kaya.gs.: You seem to be missing the point of what I and a few other people have said, which is not to do with whether cutting out the negotiation step is good or bad, but rather that people who want to cut it out are already provided for by the automatch feature. The only reason people who don't want to play on a smaller board or with unusual time settings would want to use the custom game feature is for the ability to negotiate the specifics of the game. Compare the two below:



Automatch on KGS:

-A sets out what kind of game they are willing to play
-B sets out what kind of game they are willing to play

If A and B's desires match up, the game automatically starts.

Custom games on Kaya:

-A has to check the open games list, and if there's not a game they want to join, set up one with settings they are willing to accept.
-B has to check the open games list, and if there's not a game they want to join, set up one with settings they are willing to accept.

If A and B's desires match up they have to find each other manually. If they don't notice each other they don't get to play. If B joins A's game it might be good for B, but from A's perspective it is just a slower automatch.

What is the advantage of a custom game as opposed to an automatch? On KGS you sacrifice speed for customisability. On Kaya you sacrifice less speed but don't seem to get anything in return.

[Tami]

I think the only thing that really matters is to be able to accept or decline your challenger.

If the real reason this is not included on Kaya is because of some technical problem, then it would be very disappointing, given the promise to build a "state of the art" go server.

If it`s because some people don`t like being rejected, well, rejection happens all the time. It`s part of life. Often people reject the things I do and offer, and likewise I am free to reject their things. It seems a violation of one`s freedom to be compelled to play the very first person who clicks on your game offer.

Naturally, if the lads at Kaya don`t want to offer accept/decline, that`s up to them. If it turns out that their judgement is correct, and it does not diminish the enjoyment or popularity of the server, then I will happy to have been mistaken, but I do hope they won`t be too stubborn should the reverse prove to be true.

[uPWarrior]

I honestly believe Kaya is overvaluing the importance of a quick game start. 20 or 30 seconds do not compromise anything, while some of the most relevant key points do impact A LOT.

Summing up:
- Being able to select who I want to play (aka shapenaji's case)
- Being able to decide when the game starts (aka coffee case)
- Being able to propose changes to the time settings

For the record, whenever I play on an Asian server I always change the default 20 minutes to 10 minutes; these changes are usually accepted. There is no way around this, other than a negotiation stage.

[Kaya.gs]

Summing up:
1- Being able to select who I want to play (aka shapenaji's case)
2- Being able to decide when the game starts (aka coffee case)
3- Being able to propose changes to the time settings

This conversation is getting long. Let me correct this sum-up:

1- You can select exactly who(as in identity, not strength) you play on the current system. Just not as an offerer.
If i understood correctly, what shapenaji really meant was "i want to be able to change my mind about the handicap settings as i see who is challenging me" which is considerably pickier than picking a rival.

2- On the KGS style negotiation, Only one of the two players can decide when the game exactly starts, either with negotiation or the current Kaya system. On Wbaduk/Tygem using automatch you dont get to pick who you play, but also you cant keep a game open for longer than a minute or so. In a sense you are forced to open up a game offer each time you dont find an opponent.
Thats kind of the reverse mentality of opening the offer, and checking if the player is not afk from time to time, but the same result-> lower afk game starts.

3- Same as above, on open offer systems changing different time settings can become annoying as you have to cautiously read what the challenger is always proposing, which may very well be undesirable most of the time.

Comparing IGS, Wbaduk/Tygem, and KGS, you must pick the entire set of pros and cons of each system.

[speedchase]

Summing up:
1- Being able to select who I want to play (aka shapenaji's case)
2- Being able to decide when the game starts (aka coffee case)
3- Being able to propose changes to the time settings

This conversation is getting long. Let me correct this sum-up:

1- You can select exactly who(as in identity, not strength) you play on the current system. Just not as an offerer.
If i understood correctly, what shapenaji really meant was "i want to be able to change my mind about the handicap settings as i see who is challenging me" which is considerably pickier than picking a rival.

2- On the KGS style negotiation, Only one of the two players can decide when the game exactly starts, either with negotiation or the current Kaya system. On Wbaduk/Tygem using automatch you dont get to pick who you play, but also you cant keep a game open for longer than a minute or so. In a sense you are forced to open up a game offer each time you dont find an opponent.
Thats kind of the reverse mentality of opening the offer, and checking if the player is not afk from time to time, but the same result-> lower afk game starts.

3- Same as above, on open offer systems changing different time settings can become annoying as you have to cautiously read what the challenger is always proposing, which may very well be undesirable most of the time.

Comparing IGS, Wbaduk/Tygem, and KGS, you must pick the entire set of pros and cons of each system.

I don't really understand what you are saying. All servers allow negotiation, except for IGS which is obscenely annoying (at least too me). Of course eventually one person has to push a button that causes the game to start, but that isn't a reason to deny both parties the opportunity to accept what is going to happen, before it happens.