Life In 19x19

The new OGS looks pretty nice, and presumably all the players from OGS have been migrated over so it should be pretty full...but when I click 'Browse open Challenges' I see somewhere between zero and two games. I've tried several times over the past few days.

Is the server pretty empty, or am I doing something wrong? Do people not use the Challenge system?

Koroviev wrote:The new OGS looks pretty nice, and presumably all the players from OGS have been migrated over so it should be pretty full...but when I click 'Browse open Challenges' I see somewhere between zero and two games. I've tried several times over the past few days.

Is the server pretty empty, or am I doing something wrong? Do people not use the Challenge system?

If I recall correctly the old OGS was the same way: there's a small number of open games at any time, because they fill up quickly. Put a challenge out there and it'll usually be taken in < 24 hours, or play on the ladder.

I currently have about ten games running.

It is quite easy to get live games too, at least in European evening time, if you are willing to take/give handi and put out a challenge (haven't tried other times enough to say). Kind of like in a club: exactly even matches aren't always available, but something is.

hyperpape wrote:

Koroviev wrote:The new OGS looks pretty nice, and presumably all the players from OGS have been migrated over so it should be pretty full...but when I click 'Browse open Challenges' I see somewhere between zero and two games. I've tried several times over the past few days.

Is the server pretty empty, or am I doing something wrong? Do people not use the Challenge system?

If I recall correctly the old OGS was the same way: there's a small number of open games at any time, because they fill up quickly. Put a challenge out there and it'll usually be taken in < 24 hours, or play on the ladder.

I currently have about ten games running.

OGS was this way for me too. You didn't see many open challenges because indeed, they get snapped up quickly unless someone sets a rank range that excluded the vast majority of players (e.g. 4d+ only or whatever).

Koroviev wrote:The new OGS looks pretty nice, and presumably all the players from OGS have been migrated over so it should be pretty full...but when I click 'Browse open Challenges' I see somewhere between zero and two games. I've tried several times over the past few days.

Is the server pretty empty, or am I doing something wrong? Do people not use the Challenge system?

Keep in mind that the old OGS was purely a turn-based server. 90% of the old OGS user base play only turn-based, often getting their games via joining tournaments or ladders. If you want turn-based games, you can do the same. If you want live games, then you have a few options:

1. Find and existing open challenge and accept it (this is what you've had no luck with so far)
2. Create an open challenge with your desired time settings and wait for someone to accept.
3. Join the chat, see if someone wants to play, and challenge them directly.

Also, while there are hundreds and hundreds of correspondence games going on at any given moment, I've never seen more than 7 or so live games at a time, so it's pretty clear that the user base's preference carried over when OGS and nova were merged.

skydyr wrote:Also, while there are hundreds and hundreds of correspondence games going on at any given moment, I've never seen more than 7 or so live games at a time, so it's pretty clear that the user base's preference carried over when OGS and nova were merged.

Kinda. Because correspondence games last much much longer, they are more visible. There are probably more live games than correspondence games in a given time period (a week, 30 days, etc.).

OP needs to create a game him/herself. I'd be shocked if you didn't have a taker within 30 minutes assuming you're not choosing some really unusual time period.

I think it's the turn-based thing as well. I think I currently have 17 in progress, and most of those have had a move in the last 24 hours. The ladders are a great source of games, and generally there are a range of strengths within challenge distance for an even game.

Not empty, just progressing at a more stately pace.

(I have started KGS and IGS accounts with a view to playing live games there at some point, but haven't yet tried playing live on OSG - maybe horses for courses?)

Warning: I really tried to answer only the OP's question, but some sadness/frustration on my part concerning the server surfaced. As I think it's constructive criticism, I've decided to keep it.

To answer the OP's question: No, I don't think that the new OGS is empty. But there are two factors that I'd say are making any positive progress difficult (acutally, I think thre are quite a few more, but these seem most important to me):
First, its the server's origin of a turn-based server. Most of the people registered on OGS have been looking for turn-based games and not for live games. So the new possibility might seem like like a nice bonus but not as something essentially interesting to them.
Second (and for me more grave) is the server's current built up which unfortunately suggests that it is actually empty. For example, there is no list that shows which players are online at this point of time (you can only see that with your friends), so I think many people are discouraged from opening life challenges because they don't know if someone close to their own strength is there (or even, like it is visible on IGS, actually looking out for a game) and there are also none / very few game challenges open.
For my part I can say that I already opened a few challenges for life games and if I count one time out where no one showed up shortly after the merge and the one time someone showed up but didn't play even one move, I always got a game going pretty quickly. Still, not knowing who's online now and not seeing any open challenges might have a negative effect psychology-wise. It is discouraging. It doesn't suggest that your in an active, lively community (if it wasn't for the forums I wouldn't even have the slightest feeling of community). It might even scare (new) people away. Personally, I think that's the key problem right now.

This might be especially true for new users coming to OGS. In the last 2 days I observed the count of registered users and it climbed by about 100. 100! This is a pretty huge number for a Go server I think (I leave those Asian servers out). I don't know if this was a coincidence or not but still, it's something you can think about. If we assume that there might be about 250 new accounts per week, then this raises the question of why the situation hasn't improved much since the merge. Personally, I blame the build-up and the lack of any noticeable progress in the debugging of the site in the last few weeks. After the merge there were many new functions, some of which worked and some of which didn't. After a few weeks now, I have not only the impression that more features are not working which have worked before (switching the little images from your games to game lists for example), but that the debugging is not happening at all anymore. For example after weeks (!) it is still not possible for some users to post something legible in the forums, whenever they post something the text is missing.

To be honest, this is a pretty huge cause of frustration for me, because if the site worked properly (that means if the functions available + the player's list were up and working), then this would for me really be the perfect server: Being able to play turn-based AND live games with one login is very attractive to me and since the merge made me play more regularly than before (which, because of my now not so bad but still-existant OGA is a feat). Still, every time I log on, every time I open a challenge and every time I'm making my move I'm really sad that this great potential lies to waste at the moment. It could all be so great.. I'm sticking up to it for now, but if there won't happen anything anytime soon... I don't know. Of course. I'm aware that all work on the site is done by people who sacrifize their free time for it (and I'm thankful for it! Merging two sites is by no means an easy task) and I AM understanding, but still.. more information would help here. I'm aware of the CHangelog page but it's been very quiet and nothing has been posted this month yet. Or in november.

Ember wrote:[..] there is no list that shows which players are online at this point of time (you can only see that with your friends) [..]

This is not totally true, because when you visit the chat page you can see the players online, or at least those in the chatrooms. There’s quite a lot going on in the nova and English chatrooms, and quite little in the others (yet).

But I agree that it might be nice to have a list of all people online on perhaps every page, or, what I’d really like, an extra window, although I’m quite happy already with as it is now.

Greetings, Tom

As a small test I posted 6 open challenges for correspondence games at approximately 1400 UTC yesterday. My OGS rank is 29k. Literally within 10 seconds three of those challenges were accepted. Within 5 minutes two more were taken. And within an hour the final match was taken. Six new games against six different people, ranging from 30 to 28k. I had set a rank ceiling of 20k but it ended up being unnecessary.

Were there any open matches when I posted mine? No. Does that matter? Obviously not!

One should also mention the ability to seamlessly move from correspondence to realtime play and back again within the same match simply depending on the players' availability. What other server can do that?

Bonobo wrote:

Ember wrote:[..] there is no list that shows which players are online at this point of time (you can only see that with your friends) [..]

This is not totally true, because when you visit the chat page you can see the players online, or at least those in the chatrooms. There’s quite a lot going on in the nova and English chatrooms, and quite little in the others (yet).

But I agree that it might be nice to have a list of all people online on perhaps every page, or, what I’d really like, an extra window, although I’m quite happy already with as it is now.

Greetings, Tom

@ Bonobo: Sure, through that workaround one can see some of the people who are in the chat rooms at the moment, but it makes me open another tab/window which in my oponion is unnecessary (usability is the keyword here) and sub-optimal (comparing it to the way other Go servers do it). Honestly, I also think that it's annoying, it clutters up my tabs (and I hate having more than one window open). That may not sound that important but imagine more pages are build like that! That's especially true for such an "incomplete product", if I may borrow that term, where only part of the users online are listed.

@ Drew: Yeah, that corresponds to my experiences. Also, when looking out for games played during the last week, many times most of the games played were between players from the 25k to 30k range. Actually, at this very moment I write this post there are 6 games rolling, all played by players of this area of strength - which I thought to be quite interesting.
Actually, that makes me think that maybe that's what's been missing up to now: A fixed base of players (let's assume like.. at least 50) who are of different strengths and who for a longer period of time constantly open challenges so the server doesn't have this (first!) impression of emptiness about it. I wonder if that helped to liven up the place a bit more.. At least it sounds like an interesting experiment.

Ember, tabs is quite a dilemma for a web based site like this. You say, and I kind of agree, that having to open a tab for challenges, for chat, for a game list, etc. is annoying, but where do you draw the line? What about games themselves? Surely you want those on individual tabs so that you have the option to be able to break them out and view them simultaneously on the same monitor? So the developers/designers have to make a very clear choice in their heads about what is a new tab and what isn't. I think they have it a bit wrong at the moment, but it's a little hard to articulate why, or rather, to say exactly how it should be.

quantumf wrote:Ember, tabs is quite a dilemma for a web based site like this.

Agreed.

quantumf wrote:You say, and I kind of agree, that having to open a tab for challenges, for chat, for a game list, etc. is annoying, [...]

Not quite. I said (or at least wanted to say) that I think it's not a good idea to seperate the list of active users from the site by putting it in an extra tab or window. Although I agree with you on everything above except for the new tab for a new challenge.

quantumf wrote: [...] but where do you draw the line? What about games themselves? Surely you want those on individual tabs so that you have the option to be able to break them out and view them simultaneously on the same monitor? So the developers/designers have to make a very clear choice in their heads about what is a new tab and what isn't. I think they have it a bit wrong at the moment, but it's a little hard to articulate why, or rather, to say exactly how it should be.

That after a challenge a new tab opens is in my opinion a good thing. Right now, I can't think it's necessary for other things, especially when the information is kind of "essential" or expected to be available on (nearly) every site (from comparision with other servers) like a list of user names. Also, one can always choose with many things to open new tabs by right-clicks (chat, player's profile, etc.). So I don't think that the developers should put so much energy in deciding on this. More likely, the way the information in a whole is structured should be of concern to them. That's why I'd rather have the tabs and new windows to be a decision that a user can make himself.