Go Club Forums: Kick out Kaya, add OGS

[Pippen]

Title says it all. I think OGS is THE upcoming Go server with a lot of nice features. It deserves to have an own section.

[Krama]

Title says it all. I think OGS is THE upcoming Go server with a lot of nice features. It deserves to have an own section.

+1

[Bonobo]

Title says it all. I think OGS is THE upcoming Go server with a lot of nice features. It deserves to have an own section.

ditto


<edit>

Although … OGS has a very fine forum itself — anything you'd want the devs and mods to know about should rather be posted there.

https://forums.online-go.com/

</edit>

[Abyssinica]

I think it's very unpolished.

[Bantari]

I think it's very unpolished.

ditto

[Bonobo]

“It’s very unpolished”

<cough> Could it be that you had a very personal experience there? </cough> Heliumbaggers are not tolerated there for sure

[goTony]

I like OGS it does not have the players that KGS has, or some of the other sites. But I can play it with a chromebook, no download needed. People are friendly, and the developers are helpful and responsive.....

[leichtloeslich]

I think the futility of adding an OGS subforum has been discussed before.

Apart from that I agree, though. Kibitz is a breeze, coordinates are highlighted on the board and more than that, you can just share entire variations in chat (!!)
The review tools are also decent, there's byoyomi countdown, hourly live tournaments (13x13 blitz, 19x19 blitz and rapid and 9x9 rapid, something for everyone essentially), seperate ratings for live, blitz and correspondence, stone sound and fischer timing, are you kidding me?

I changed my tune on OGS after my windows partitions went nuklear and I was stuck on some outdated linux live cd. KGS with OpenJDK was unplayable as it kept freezing, IGS has usable linux clients, sure, but the ease with which one can play on OGS is pretty awsome actually.

As others have continually pointed out, literally the only thing missing from OGS is strong players. Because right now it's a lot of fingerlickingly awesome features, but you still have to mainly play DDKs.
I have seen there's an l19 ladder on OGS, but it's correspondence 19x19, yuck. A single game can take months..
I would rather like some stronger players participating in the live tournaments. Maybe some l19ers could coordinate meeting at least in 1 daily 19x19 blitz tourney. It'd be fun imho, and can probably help OGS with its popularity issues.

[Abyssinica]

I think the ogs review system is very confusing - if people watching the review do something different on the board then they can't see what you're doing until they hit a back to game or something which just hangs up the entire process for new people. Hell, even trying to erase what you've drawn on the board seems a challenge.

I also disagree with 9x9 and 13x13 rated games unless they start to have their own category.

[Uberdude]

Pippen's idea has two parts, the first to kick out Kaya which I think most if not all would agree with as Kaya is dead and no one talks about it.

OGS threads are currently in the Turn Based Servers, which is now inaccurate as it also does live play. As to saying OGS feels unpolished, I might actually say it is too polished with so much attention paid to looking swish that loading a game page takes about 20 seconds. If an unpolished UI is a requirement for a dedicated subforum we should kick out KGS, which feels like you are playing in a go server made out of discarded pieces of linoleum from a 1960s kitchen.

Being able to do your own variations in a demo is a very nice idea: one of the most annoying things I find on KGS brodcast demo games (e.g. EGC, or old eurogotv) is that if you stop watching for a moment and miss a few moves and want to go back you need to do Options->View Offline (which doesn't even exist in the applet version) or clone the game. Same problem with trying some variation of your own or replaying move by move coordinates in the kibitz. So being able to go off piste and then syncing back to the reviewer is a nice idea, but maybe the UX could be improved a bit.

How frequent are OGS threads here? Not much I think, but then neither are e.g. wBaduk ones. Personal like/dislike for the server doesn't seem a good criteria. It does have its own chat and forums so maybe that's where a lot of discussion happens for it.

[Abyssinica]

, I might actually say it is too polished with so much attention paid to looking swish that loading a game page takes about 20 seconds.

Actually, this is exactly what I mean by unpolished.

[goTony]

I think the futility of adding an OGS subforum has been discussed before.

Apart from that I agree, though. Kibitz is a breeze, coordinates are highlighted on the board and more than that, you can just share entire variations in chat (!!)
The review tools are also decent, there's byoyomi countdown, hourly live tournaments (13x13 blitz, 19x19 blitz and rapid and 9x9 rapid, something for everyone essentially), seperate ratings for live, blitz and correspondence, stone sound and fischer timing, are you kidding me?

I changed my tune on OGS after my windows partitions went nuklear and I was stuck on some outdated linux live cd. KGS with OpenJDK was unplayable as it kept freezing, IGS has usable linux clients, sure, but the ease with which one can play on OGS is pretty awsome actually.

As others have continually pointed out, literally the only thing missing from OGS is strong players. Because right now it's a lot of fingerlickingly awesome features, but you still have to mainly play DDKs.
I have seen there's an l19 ladder on OGS, but it's correspondence 19x19, yuck. A single game can take months..
I would rather like some stronger players participating in the live tournaments. Maybe some l19ers could coordinate meeting at least in 1 daily 19x19 blitz tourney. It'd be fun imho, and can probably help OGS with its popularity issues.

If you get the strong players blitz tourney going let us know, it sounds fun to watch. It would be fun seeing some of the regulars here fight it out. And I definitely like the different time options also. (Thanks Bobby)

Regarding the ladder you can arrange to play live with people. (Do to my schedule correspondence is best suited for my needs)

But if there is going to be a subgroup for online servers Kaya should be closed for comments, and OGS deserves its own spot.
Now if we could just get more people playing there.

[happysocks]

Seems odd OGS doesn't have a spot there as it deserves one and clearly earned it since some time ago (still a very active turn-based server so just maintain it's place in that forum?).

...lot of fingerlickingly awesome features, but you still have to mainly play DDKs.

Surprised to see this, don't play much but do watch games there often and there are always many hi to low SDK games going on.

[Dontbtme]

But if there is going to be a subgroup for online servers Kaya should be closed for comments, and OGS deserves its own spot.
Now if we could just get more people playing there.

I totally agree with this statement: OGS is awesome. It has it all: review/analyze tools and Go problems, correspondence and live games, tournaments and ladders, a chat and a forum... Its only problem is not having enough Go players there to play live games against someone your own rank.
Not only does it seem legitimate to me that OGS should have its own subgroup here on lifein19x19 (despite OGS having its own forum), but I think that would help promoting it a great deal which in turn could provide the players missing there to make its 'live games' part a viable one.

[joellercoaster]

+1 to removing Kaya, -1 to adding an OGS forum. It already has one and it's nice. I'm actually not sure why a few of the other L19 forums exist, maybe a wider rationalization is in order?

FWIW I agree with the general opinions on OGS - it spends a lot of effort looking swish, but it's had some prominent bugs for as long as the new version has existed, and as far as I can tell they will never, ever get fixed.

These bugs clearly do not matter much to me, because I play on OGS almost exclusively and love it. As a kyu player I have all the opponents I need and the features I really use are mostly very well put together, and playing on mobile is (almost) as painless as playing on a laptop. I am starting to see more dan-graded players around but I have to admit, I don't pay so much attention to what they get up to. Maybe I should.