Backgammon Online

13-Aug-2010
03:52 PST

@Saurus and Skulls:

I agree with both of you. Perfecting what we have if good. But on the other hand I have impression that major improvements go wrong direction. If the next one is supposed to be the variations of backgammon then I alse vote against. I made a lot of e-friends here. I enjoy playing with them and would like to have tools to do it. Like it is in gameknot.com. So when the cosmetic changes end (I dont like all of them) it would be great if zooescape ask the user where to go with next major improvements. I would vote for clubs, teams and minitournaments with my favourite opponents.

15-Aug-2010
07:41 PST

ZooEscape has not responded to this thread in weeks, and they are the ones who started iit   We are all waiting............and waiting.............and waiting

19-Aug-2010
02:27 PST

Is there a way to figure out who has been #1 on the ladder for the longest time?

21-Aug-2010
00:18 PST

Logged on this morning and noticed the main page has had the decorators in overnight.

However, the information telling you the amount of games you have in progress has vanished. Can we have that back please?

22-Aug-2010
01:00 PST

Greetings ZE and my compliments for the look of the site, open minded attitude and all efforts made to listen to us users to make it even better.
The new image of the front page is refreshing and better looking; although I came across couple of ideas which I hope would be worth considering and not being of big hassle for you in terms of implementation.

***“Top Rated Players”*** link.
Very nice stuff to have around where you may compare yourself against peers. “Monthly” rating – very useful, “Overall” one…not so. Don’t get me wrong here. Overall rating is definitely the one we need to have but not in the way it was presented here. If you take a look, that one is pretty much the same as Monthly with only difference of including some players who used to be active more than a month ago and have not completed game since?!? For me, this is unnecessary duplicating things. You may simply merge them together and besides someone who hasn’t completed a game within a month state something like “not active” under “?” column.
“Overall” rating now may become “High Scores” or “Hall of Fame” or anything similar where we can actually find stats of players and their highest rating achieved ever. Of course the date would have been shown accordingly.
At the moment I can see only mamont is showing some efforts to reach 2000 as the first player ever but I’m sure there were others there so close at some stage too. Pay a tribute to those players please and mark their results. That is something we have now under each one’s highest rating but would be very nice to have in a form of table mentioned.

***Tournaments***
Place where we all like to play and quite often find ourself playing different people we normally woudn’t because of rating strings. The only problem, they tend to last forever and I’m certainly not the first one saying that. Now I understand people have life to run and things to do but my only comment would refer to cases where from some reason ZE does not start next round where everything from the previous one is clear.
For instance, take a look at tournament #10. We all (40-50) qualifiers are waiting for some games to be finished in vain. Is it so difficult for software to recognise that nothing will change once those games are completed by Christmas time?!? Please, change that if you can and allow things rolling on.

Mine two minutes, thank you for reading everybody and ZE keep up the good work!!!

22-Aug-2010
12:03 PST

I see posts like this every once in a while, and cannot help but laugh. Are these players breaking any rules in their use of time? Are they dragging out losing games? Are they rude in any way? We are talking about people, regardless of ratings playing by the rules and someone complaining about it. It is those whiners who need to get a life, quit whining about players FOLLOWING THE RULES, regardless of ratings.

22-Aug-2010
17:16 PST

Yes, we all like to laugh from time to time…different reasons tho. Anyhow, to put the idea in a simple way and I’m sure ZE would make an effort to understand my point. Let’s please try and make tournaments more dynamic by respecting everybody, those who are advancing and are keen to have more fun and others who are certainly not breaking any rules by dragging games. I’m sure at the end of the day we will all get there at the same time. Giving the honour to the winner and celebrating achievements of previous rounds participants. There you go, tournament is completed, each one of the players is happy and we can all move on to the next one. None is breaching any conducts nor terms and conditions. Again, this is not any whining about existing situation; but just a rational idea how to improve the site which we are discussing here under this topic. Just a thought of mine and all comments are welcome as long as we are not mixing apples and pears. Peace

22-Aug-2010
22:32 PST

As a not native speaker I learn a lot on this site as far as my english is concerned. Following your discussion I learned the meaning of the verb WHINE, I have not even supposed it existed. So even if your discussion is not improving this site - it is certainly improving my english - thank you!

25-Aug-2010
22:21 PST

actually saurus and isnogood have excellent suggestions but one I like particularly well is the "Hall of Fame" idea for the highest rating ever reached for say the top 25 or 30 players. Your highest rating reached would be the mark posted if it was one of those top 30 or so. The minimum rating would continue to rise over time. It would be a treat to try and make the "All-Time" list for those interested and an honor to be on that permanent list.

27-Aug-2010
04:29 PST

Could you (ZE) improve the tools to compete with friends?
Could you implement some of the possibilities know from GameKnot like Clubs, Teams, Mini-tournaments. It would be great if I could compete and compare my results with my favourite opponents. It would be great if I could make a team with my backgammon friends and compete with some other team.
And one more idea: as many players are identified with the country, maybe there is a possibility to make a tournament of country teams. Something like on line backgammon world cup.