Live Chess is brain dead

I agree with everything TomJoad said except perhaps the tone. 

chess.com has made admirable effort in resolving all the complaints about Live Chess 2.  However, it was never clear why a complete redesign of Live Chess 1 was ever even necessary to begin with, given that the ONLY problem people complained about regarding it were the disconnects.  For me it happened on average every 20 games or so, and if you figure the disconnects were distributed randomly (which they were in my experience) it was not an ongoing concern.  But anyway, there weren't any other complaints regarding it that I recall, and Live Chess 2 has jettisoned all sorts of useful functionality from Live Chess 1 that is only making its way back in piecemeal.  Its OK now, but who could say that it is in any way an improvement over Live Chess 1.  If it were me I would still make Live Chess 1 available as an option for those who wanted it.  From my vantage point I don't know why that would be impossible.

As far as Live Chess 1, there should have been a focussed effort on just resolving the disconnect problem.  I'm speculating it had to do with platform differences on client machines, I strongly suspect firewall issues, and certainly browser issues, etc.  These sorts of things could have been resolved throught extensive testing, documentation for chess.com users (e.g. "if using CA firewall make sure option X is unselected", etc.), and fixes to Live Chess 1 (as opposed to complete redesign).

Anyway, just my opinion - not trying to start an argument or participate it one.

Yeah ive experienced this too.

I hope if you detect browser closes that refreshing the page would not resign my game.  I often have to do this when I suspect I've disconnected in order to reconnect in time.  Otherwise it can take a while to sort itself out.  Sometimes it turns out my opponent was just thinking and I hadn't disconnected at all.  So having a refresh cost me the game is far worse for me than having to wait 2 minutes max to get a win. 

The OP wouldn't last long with a real job if he dealt with people in this manner. Sounds like _somebody_ needs to go to leadership training!

2 minutes is very OK

Ah... I have stayed out of the syncophantic replies because it is boring but you sir are a complete ass. Do you suck up this much all the time?

The post was @ a software GUI problem - one which the site admin acknowledged (if in a backhanded way). Game over - nothing to look at here. If you don't develop software then you don't have a clue. All the other yadda yadda is just that.

Flame away. Bore me some more.

And for all the children out there who chimed in with your "oh so harsh tone" comments, here is my initial post about the problem:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/livechess/need-immediate-loss-on-abandoning-game

No response from the admin or anyone else to that. Go figure. Do they respond to more sternly worded posts? Yes. So now they are aware of the issue. They can choose to fix it or not.

fwiw - if you are happy if your opponent is losing and bails on the game, leaving you to sit there for two minutes while the brain dead server times out, then you deserve the F*** You that your opponent has just served up. Personally and professionally I think it is poor software design.

Cheers,

Tom

i'm still open to suggestions. :) even the close-the-browser issue is not that clear. sometimes people need to refresh their browsers because of memory leaks in firefox, or some oddity. we're still not sure about the best way to handle it. i'd rather have it be slightly inconvenient for some people who have to wait a minute or two vs. have people lose because of internet crap. i agree that if you close the browser you should lose... but i'm not sure we can seperate that out from a browser refresh. maybe we give 10 seconds to reconnect in that instance? i dunno...

If I get disconnected during a 1 0 game, does the time gone from the game count against my clock? If so it might not even make sense to come back.

Of course in this case, the opponent just has to wait about a minute, right?

Some other thoughts:

1. Sometimes a computer will run slow, all of a sudden, because of antivirus software. Or perhaps the computer has some difficulty switching between users -- this just never seemed to work smoothly on my Dell.
2. Perhaps all that is required is that the playing is kept in the loop - maybe a user experience change so that there is a clock that they can track. Also, one thing that would help, is that the player gets some free time added to their clock, as a delay, for their first move after the opponent shows up again. This way you could walk away briefly and then come back as long as it was within the timout. One could even make the timeout to be the same time -- 2 min.

 I also work in software development, and I know that if I talked to a test team in the way that the original post was worded (in this thread) they'd probably never work for us again, and if they did, it would be because they'd raised it at a higher level and something had been done about me.

As well as the fact that you suggest you are simply bug reporting and are failing to grasp the lack of professionalism in your original post, it's not actually your site. Eric can decide what he wants to do with LC, and at the end of the day, if he disagrees with what you think (based on other feedback for instance) then you have to live with it. It's not woefully poor GUI design, it's just a decision that was made, and which Eric has explained, and also admitted that it might not have been the best decision. I'm sure Eric would be more than happy to listen to constructive criticism, but I can tell you right now, if a client talked to anyone in our company like that over a bug fix, their management would know in minutes.

Eberulf, if LC1 was still available, there would be a possibility that no-one would migrate. I would assume that there were under-the-hood reasons for the rewrite, and not just the user-reported ones. I've pushed for, and been able to do, a fair number of rewrites of legacy code to fix things that the client never knows about, sometimes even just to make it simpler.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at. Hence the comment about leadership training. I couldn't agree more -- especially in this job market -- that there would be 10 equally qualified candidates lining up behind the OP ready to do his job as good without alienating entire departments at a time.

You seem to be confirming that the only apparent issue with Live Chess 1 were the disconnects, as you say that maybe there were some phantom issues that no one who actually uses Live Chess 1 was even aware of that had to be addressed.  I would say that some problem that no user is even aware of is not actually a problem. 

It wouldn't surprise me if what happened was that a bunch of developers/consultants came in and recommended to Erik that he pay them for a complete overhaul of something that was 95% good and better than anything else available on the internet (i.e, Live Chess 1).

Here is some features dropped that were in Live Chess 1.

-Watching other player's games
Why was this removed?  what problems was it causing? To be able to improve your game by watching two players rated 400 points higher than you slug it out - this was an extremely useful feature that was removed for no apparent reason.  Now they have to agree to let you be their "friend" before you can watch their games.

-Playing multiple games: Some player decides to take a nap in the middle of a game for no apparent reason,  there's nothing you can do about it now.

Plus the various logical glitches still being addressed in Live Chess 2, regarding disconnects and so on.

AS far as the disconnects, now they seem to be occurring 2-3 times at least in every single game.  Of course now you're notified of it like its the end of the world, and then Live Chess 2 congratulates itself for reconnecting you.

In Live Chess 1, I personally got disconnected no more than 1 every 15 games or so.  And there wasn't a lot of chatter from Live Chess 1, informing me of what it was doing behind the scenes (as there is with Live Chess 2 in regards to disconnects.)

"... complete overhaul of something that was 95% good and better than anything else available on the interent (i.e, Live Chess 1)."

Now I know you are joking, everywhere I have tried has a faster, slicker and more stable live chess facility than LiveChess1 on Chess.com.

LiveChess2 may have lost some bells and whistles, but the interface is now much better for most of us. LC2 is a definite step in the right direction... LC1 was a tired old horse (lame in every leg), fit only for the knackers yard.

Just dispense with the metaphors and enumerate the problems with live chess 1 since you assert it was "lame in every leg".

I notice you didn't actually list any sites that were superior to Live Chess 1.  I personally have looked at at least 10 different sites.  The only one even remotely comparable is Chess Cube and I don't go there any more.

"Just dispense with the metaphors and enumerate the problems with live chess 1 since you assert it was "lame in every leg"."

1. Constant disconnections.

2. Disappearing pieces.

3. Strange impossible things going on i.e. Pawns going backwards to the first rank and promoting to Queens.

4. No reconnections.

5. Absolutely terrible lag, making some time limits all but impossible.

Five legs (oops) ... what do you call a five legged donkey? A wonkey!

Edit: FICS, Gameknot and that Coffee Cup one (don't know the name) all much better than LiveChess1 on Chess.com (the only other three I tried). No disconnections ever for me on any of them.

Everyone who was largely satisfied with Live Chess 1 had nothing to say.  The only issue there was to complain about were the disconnects, but if there is something to complain about, then people will complain.  If they were really dissatisfied they would just leave the site,  but instead they stick around and several thousand people complain about the only issue there is to complain about (the disconnects in Live Chess 1.)  But people also like change for change's sake.  And now that they've got it, they're happy with it merely because it is a change, and because they perceive themselves as having caused it.

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Prawn, the above comment wasn't directed at you - hadn't seen your list yet.

Prawn, Live Chess 1 worked MUCH  better with Firefox. This was not because firefox is a better browser which it definitely isn't, but because Firefox is the only browser the designers of Live Chess 1 targeted in their development evidently, and Firefox and IE are different.  Disappearing pieces  and other anomolies were intermittent and occured only with IE based browsers.  The documentation on chess.com tells you it worked much better with Firefox.

What they should have done is just get the bugs worked out on IE-based browsers- not throw Live Chess 1 in the trash. 

I always have used the latest FF for LiveChess on this site (I can read and take advice). All the above "strange happenings" occured whilst using FF, so let's please cut out the IE argument. I also have sole use of a hard-wired 20Meg connection on a fast machine, so don't blame my equipment either. I regularly do housekeeping on my machine and have nothing running in background when I used LC1 so don't blame that.  Other sites don't care what browser you use, they just work properly and consistently.

I just scratched the surface with my earlier list, would you care for me to go on about clocks that go backwards? games that do not end when checkmate is delivered? "Jittery" pieces (like they are set in treacle) that the cursor doesn't pick up properly the first time and then drops on the wrong square with subsequent tries? etc.etc.

None of the other sites I tried had any of these problems, just a slick, functional interface (who cares about the "extras"? get the basics right first).

LC2 is far superior, zero DC's for me so far and no strange happenings.

Keep up the good work Erik and team.

Prawn, if you're using Firefox then I haven't a clue as to what you're talking about.  On FireFox the ONLY problem I had with Live Chess 1 was a disconnect every 15 games or so.  But then my opponents got disconnected ocasionally too, so I didn't care too much. 

If all these other sites are so much better why aren't you on them now.

AS I said, my initial post received no response. Bumping up the "tone" resulted in a response and discussion. A shame that it works that way sometimes but there you go.

AS to my employability, not to worry, I have much more work coming in than I can handle.

But that is all beside the point. The key thing was and remains that if an opponent is losing and abandons the game rather than gracefully resigning, the player with the advantage should not be put in a defacto "penalty box" while the game times out. Abandoned games are thankfully not the norm in my LC experience but neither are they infrequent.

Eric pointed out that there are some technical issues involved that may be hard to solve. Ok, that happens and perhaps a less than ideal solution must be accepted for the time being. Hopefully it is now on the list of user experience issues that need to be addressed at some point.

Cheers,

Tom