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DonEsteban
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Client questions (and first impressions)
« on: Jan 4th, 2011, 5:11am » |
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I have a few questions regarding the client (JavaScript and Flash) in general and time controls in particular.
Is there a documentation on the client somewhere? I didn't find it anywhere I would expect it. It's not in the learn menu, and clicking the H button in the client yields nothing. Nor is it in the Wiki. Most of it is pretty intuitive, but there are a few non-obvious things. How to set up your pieces is one of them, but eventually I found out how to do this.
When starting a game, what does "interactive" mean? Am I supposed to change the time control in the client? If so, where? Clicking on the time limit (as the tooltip suggests) yields nothing.
What is "expert mode"? I see no difference.
I think I heard something mentioned about an option to give your opponent more time during the game. Maybe I misremember, but if not how can this be done?
I also missed a short introduction on the game room in general (aka "first steps"). The welcome section covers some, but not all of it. It talks much about bots and playing against them, but not about playing against humans. Is this site not intended as a site for people playing with people? I think such a thing would make it much easier for newcomers to feel themselves at home. Darn, I should have started a different topic for this. But I'm too lazy now.
Thanks for your patience.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #1 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 9:55am » |
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 5:11am, DonEsteban wrote:I have a few questions regarding the client (JavaScript and Flash) in general and time controls in particular.
Is there a documentation on the client somewhere? I didn't find it anywhere I would expect it. It's not in the learn menu, and clicking the H button in the client yields nothing. Nor is it in the Wiki. Most of it is pretty intuitive, but there are a few non-obvious things. How to set up your pieces is one of them, but eventually I found out how to do this. |
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There is no documentation. Ideally the necessary documentation would be within the client, because even if you have instructions, people never read them. An astonishing number of newcomers don't even read the rules to Arimaa before starting a game and trying to play. If people can't even be bothered to read the game rules, they surely won't click on a "how to use the client" link. Omar has done a decent job of making the client intuitive, but I think a pop-up tip on piece setup would help.
Quote:| When starting a game, what does "interactive" mean? Am I supposed to change the time control in the client? If so, where? Clicking on the time limit (as the tooltip suggests) yields nothing. |
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"Interactive" is the opposite of "Postal". Some other game sites use the terms "live" and "turn-based" instead. You are supposed to select a time control when inviting another human player to a game, but when you play a bot you have no choice about the time control: it is fixed for each engine.
Quote:| What is "expert mode"? I see no difference. |
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Expert mode allows you to play forward moves for both sides without sending your move. It is a way to analyze without opening another window. An obsolete but still-available alternative to expert mode is to open a "plan window" on which you can play out variations.
Quote:| I think I heard something mentioned about an option to give your opponent more time during the game. Maybe I misremember, but if not how can this be done? |
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There is no "moretime" option.
Quote:| I also missed a short introduction on the game room in general (aka "first steps"). The welcome section covers some, but not all of it. It talks much about bots and playing against them, but not about playing against humans. Is this site not intended as a site for people playing with people? I think such a thing would make it much easier for newcomers to feel themselves at home. Darn, I should have started a different topic for this. But I'm too lazy now. |
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We all would love to have more human vs. human games, and many people have suggested ways to encourage it. Apparently it is a very difficult thing to bring about. Contrary to your intuition, most people feel more comfortable playing their first few games against a bot rather than against another person. When the bot ladder was first introduced, the retention rate of arimaa.com spiked. If the goal is to get more people hooked on Arimaa, then having always-available computer opponents is essential.
The best way that you personally can increase the number of human vs. human games is to leave your "invite flag" always on. The flag defaults to on for all newcomers, but almost everyone soon finds out that they can turn it off, and they all do so, indicating a desire not to play other humans. It seems to me the phenomenon of having primarily human vs. bot games is mostly cultural rather than a consequence of interface or presentation.
That said, there has historically been human turnout for special events like one-day tournaments when some player takes the lead in organizing a tournament, announcing it, recruiting people to play, and running the tournament when it happens. Not long ago Nombril was bemoaning the dearth of HvH games, and I encouraged him to organize his own events. He ran two quickies and both were successful at generating HvH games that wouldn't have otherwise happened.
One (misguided) way to encourage more HvH play would be to shut off the bots. If the sluggishness/timeout problems continue to get worse, and we find no better way to deal with the problem, turning off the bots will become the default solution. Indeed, Omar has already set the bots to be unavailable during event games, so that we don't have HvH games timing out due to resource-hogging bots. Given the 16 scheduled World Championship games this weekend, bots will be unavailable most of the time. But I am not sure to what extent this will encourage more HvH games as opposed to inducing people to leave and come back to play later. Arimaa has had such a hard time getting up to the mass of players that it now has, I am opposed to doing anything that drives players away in the name of trying to transform the site into something different.
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Nombril
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #2 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 11:21am » |
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 9:55am, Fritzlein wrote:| It seems to me the phenomenon of having primarily human vs. bot games is mostly cultural rather than a consequence of interface or presentation. |
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Actually, when I started playing, I was discouraged from playing HvH games by the gameroom Welcome message: "Beginners, please start by playing the bots on the Bot Ladder and see how high you can climb." For months I had the (wrong) impression that I should finish (or plateau on) the ladder before playing other people.
I do think it is worth beating at least a few bots to get the hang of the rules and interface. After that it certainly is a good learning challenge, but it shouldn't be to the exclusion of playing HvH games.
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DonEsteban
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #3 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 11:32am » |
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Thanks for your answers.
on Jan 4th, 2011, 9:55am, Fritzlein wrote:Ideally the necessary documentation would be within the client, because even if you have instructions, people never read them.
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I wasn't going to suggest a full-fledged documentation. I myself haven't ever read any software documentation since the late 80s, even for complicated things like eclipse. I guess what I meant was more something like tool tips, a "What's this" function or a FAQ section. But I think a very short introduction to what each button does and how to start a game would be helpful to many users. It's hard to tell what people need, because usually you hear only of the people who eventually get along. I guess some (very few?) might leave silently after a "I don't understand what this is all about" shock.
Quote:"Interactive" is the opposite of "Postal".
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Ah, now I understand, it's a heading. It's surprising that you can select "Interactive" as time control and still start a new game without selecting an actual value, but okay.
Quote:Expert mode allows you to play forward moves for both sides without sending your move.
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So maybe the tooltip should say just this instead of "Turns expert mode on".
Quote:Contrary to your intuition, most people feel more comfortable playing their first few games against a bot rather than against another person.
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Actually this is not contrary to my intuition at all. I feel like this myself. Many people just don't want to make a fool of yourself when they play the game for the first time, that's only natural. I also think the bot ladder is a great idea. I'd just like to suggest that /additionally/ there would be short note saying "Hey and if you get fed up with playing against bots all the time do this and that."
Quote:| ...leave your "invite flag" always on. The flag defaults to on for all newcomers, but almost everyone soon finds out that they can turn it off... |
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Actually, I don't think this is true any more. Mine is off and I can't remember turning it off myself. Took me some time to realize that clicking this tiny symbol next to your user name would achieve this. One more example of a useful but not so obvious feature.
Quote:| It seems to me the phenomenon of having primarily human vs. bot games is mostly cultural rather than a consequence of interface or presentation. |
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Yes, I wonder if only sociopaths like me arrive at this page  But it doesn't mean that you should take any effort (or at least some effort) to encourage HvH. As you already do.
I agree that turning off bots would be the totally wrong way. A solution for the problem would be client side implementation of the bots, but I suppose this won't be easy the way the site is set up. But on the other hand I don't see any other way should the site ever become really popular. Unless you find a really benevolent sponsor who pays for all the high-performance servers!
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 11:21am, Nombril wrote:For months I had the (wrong) impression that I should finish (or plateau on) the ladder before playing other people.
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I remember now that I had the exact same impression at first!
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| « Last Edit: Jan 4th, 2011, 11:38am by DonEsteban » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #4 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 11:58am » |
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 11:21am, Nombril wrote:
Actually, when I started playing, I was discouraged from playing HvH games by the gameroom Welcome message: "Beginners, please start by playing the bots on the Bot Ladder and see how high you can climb." For months I had the (wrong) impression that I should finish (or plateau on) the ladder before playing other people. |
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OK, I can see how that comment alone would discourage beginners from playing other humans. I would support changing it. Suddenly I have a vague memory that we decided some time ago that we wanted to force newcomers to play a few bot games before playing humans. Why did we do this? I think we may have been reacting to some reported negative experiences.
Was that somehow related to the Player of the Month contest? If so, it is very ironic, because the Player of the Month contest was specifically designed to encourage more HvH games. However, in order to win the contest, there was a certain contestant who would pounce on all newcomers, immediately inviting them to games and crushing them for PotM points. Perhaps we then over-reacted by encouraging people to play their first games against (friendly) bots?
on Jan 4th, 2011, 11:32am, DonEsteban wrote:| But I think a very short introduction to what each button does and how to start a game would be helpful to many users. It's hard to tell what people need, because usually you hear only of the people who eventually get along. I guess some (very few?) might leave silently after a "I don't understand what this is all about" shock. |
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True, the people who give feedback are very self-selecting and therefore probably unrepresentative. Ideally we would find a way to observe the confusions and frustrations of random first-time users.
Quote:| So maybe the tooltip should say just this instead of "Turns expert mode on". |
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Yes, "Turns expert mode on" is a relatively unenlightening tooltip. 
Quote:| Actually, I don't think this is true any more. Mine is off and I can't remember turning it off myself. |
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Oh, I wonder when that changed. Defaulting to have invitations on would indeed be another innocuous way to encourage HvH games.
Quote:| Unless you find a really benevolent sponsor who pays for all the high-performance servers! |
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Heh, Omar's past and present benevolence is the main reason Arimaa has become as popular as it has. Without his years-long donation of money and time, the strategic glories of Arimaa would likely have lurked undiscovered in perpetuity.
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DonEsteban
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #5 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 1:55pm » |
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I should have said "very benevolent and very rich"! I have no idea if this still applies to Omar.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #6 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 2:40pm » |
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I think the server may be currently set to prohibit newcomers from inviting other players to games. The newcomer must first complete two bot games or something like that. Perhaps this was implemented to make it harder for someone to create nuisance duplicate guest accounts and annoy established players?
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Sconibulus
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #7 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 9:12pm » |
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The tooltip on expert mode is more informative now, however, could I request that the popup upon expert mode click be turned off, or at least have an option to be turned off? I ask because I often use the mode to play a few positions while watching games, and when you have a move on the board and another move gets played, expert mode is turned off, and needs to be turned back on, this leads to the popup popping up quite frequently.
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omar
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #8 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 9:53pm » |
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Thanks for the suggestions guys.
I changed the tool tip for expert mode and gave a pop-up with some info on how to use expert mode. The pop-up should only appear once now.
Also gave a help message about clicking on two pieces to swap them during the setup move.
Also modified the Welcome message to add:
"To play against other humans, turn on the invite flag next to your username. Or just invite someone who has their invite flag turned on."
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| « Last Edit: Jan 4th, 2011, 10:02pm by omar » |
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omar
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #9 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 10:12pm » |
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I would like to map the 'H' button of the JavaScript game client to a page with video showing how to use the game client. People are more likely to watch a 3 minute video than read a page of text. Could someone take a crack at making such a video and post it to YouTube?
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megajester
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #10 on: Jan 5th, 2011, 1:14pm » |
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I would be happy to make such a video. I've opened a thread about it.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 5th, 2011, 1:26pm by megajester » |
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DonEsteban
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #11 on: Jan 6th, 2011, 5:58am » |
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Thanks for the quick response, omar. The popup is helpful if a bit naggy and it still comes up everytime you open a plan window. I can certainly live with it, but would changing it to a message (of the yellow sort) be feasible?
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omar
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #12 on: Jan 6th, 2011, 12:24pm » |
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on Jan 6th, 2011, 5:58am, DonEsteban wrote:Thanks for the quick response, omar. The popup is helpful if a bit naggy and it still comes up everytime you open a plan window. I can certainly live with it, but would changing it to a message (of the yellow sort) be feasible?
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It's going to be a little harder to intelligently show or not show the pop-up when the a new plan window opens. Putting it in the yellow window would cause the message to be displayed for a preset amount of time rather than letting the user close it after reading. But, I'll see what I can do.
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Nombril
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #13 on: Jan 6th, 2011, 1:23pm » |
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Regarding the pop up:
Can there be a 'don't show this message again' check box, that goes into the user's settings?
I open 5-20 plan windows (1 at a time, not all at once!) when I'm doing a postmortum on my games, trying to figure out where I've gone wrong.
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megajester
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Re: Client questions (and first impressions)
« Reply #14 on: Jan 6th, 2011, 2:55pm » |
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By the way, when I click on the link in my email for a postal game, thus opening a new tab, could it possibly not resize my window?
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