The /play Switch is Horrible

I've been playing on chess.com for over a decade now and it's had it's ups and down with new site versions and whatnot, but /live being replaced is the worst update I've been around for yet. 

Here is why I think /play is a disaster as of now:

1. The UI is way more complicated than live chess. It took a while to find where the variants are located and on top of that, some of the organization is messy.
2. /play is SLOW and there is a lot of lag. I have great internet service, but yet /play is laggy. I can switch over to /live and now log at all. Sometimes the pieces make the noise they make when they move, but they don't move on the board. The clock glitching due to this lag is annoying which is something that doesn't ever happen on live chess for me unless I have really poor internet.  
3. Speaking of clock glitches. Notice how I "lost on time" here with 0.5 seconds left on the clock. This only happens when I'm using /play. This lag and the clock issues here make it impossible to play bullet chess. Sure, /play is fine for longer games, but when it comes to bullet we can't afford these issues.
4. There are so many UI glitches. Here is one for example - the computer analysis is right on top of the "New Game" button. 
   
5. We can continue with the UI glitches on bughouse games. The partner's game clock is glitched and it's sometimes impossible to read. 
6. I've noticed that the chat doesn't always scroll down when a new message comes through. I was playing a bug house game and my partner was telling me to stall and I didn't see it until I manually scrolled down because the icons also disappeared for me. 
7. Why did the clock move to the left side of the board? It's confusing since anyone who has been playing here for years is so used to it on the right of the screen (in focus mode). I would suggest defaulting it to the left and give an option of what side it should be on (is that already a setting? I can't find it.)
8. The pre-move feature has a bug too where when the other player moves it cancels an "in-progress" pre-move and you have to go back and move it again. In /live you can just make a pre-move whenever and it works assuming it is still a legal move, in /play this isn't always the case.
9. I think the designers really tried to simplify the playing experience, but I believe in doing so it made everything more confusing. I didn't think it was hard at all the way it was but with the lag, glitches, and bugs it makes things even more confusing. I didn't even mention some of the UI glitches I've noticed, but these can interrupt games, make you misclick, and ruin the experience. 

So, after these observations, my question to chess.com is why? Why replace something so familiar and something that works with something so buggy and confusing? I really don't think the fast pace to depreciate live chess is going to help get any of these issues fixed, but right now /play is nearly impossible to use for bullet, blitz, and bughouse. I will be using /live as long as I am able to because it is built out and has hardly any issues. 

For 3: https://support.chess.com/article/689-i-lost-by-timeout-but-the-game-record-shows-i-had-time-left-what-is-going-on

As to a lot of the other, Play has been around as the default interface for about a year now. The switch dialog suggests using Help > Make a Suggestion for feedback on the Play interface. Staff may see it here, but that process will get things in front of developers.

Play has been around for a long time now and the vast majority of players are using it. It's been the default interface, unless a player actively chose the Live Chess link.

I agree with the OP.  The Play switch is horrible.  I find it confusing and don't see the reason for why they are switching.  If I am going to be forced to switch, I might just switch to a whole different server because I find the new interface confusing and counter intuitive. 

hmm...i've mostly been using play ever since i joined cc, and face no problems with it. for me, i've honestly have more problems with live than with play

That seems to be the chess.com strategy... they expect the new users to use the new interface and screw all the previous users that don't like the new interface.

That and it's WAY slower than live... Only people who have been here more than a year will understand though 

The OP is correct.

Your opponents can't see the board emojis. It's mostly designed for streaming.

play is bad op is right

Bumping this thread from September. Chess.com needs to not switch to /play. Bughouse is still unplayable: lag, chatbox unusuable, impossible to drop pieces with "click-click" method (and "click-drag-release" is very slow). 

Who at chess.com decided that /play was ready to deploy? For contrast, lichess *never* has technical problems as far as I can tell, it has a much cleaner interface, and it is deployed by a single person who runs it not-for-profit as a hobby!

Good point on the click to move functionality. Near impossible to play fast without that and considering the lag on moving pieces sucks. 

I'm a software engineer, I know how these releases and switches work. There is no way this got through QA and testing to the point where it's ready to be switched in a matter of a couple of months. I enjoy the new features of this site, I love change. When I joined this site was still on V2, but there are so many things concerning usability not being considered here, and the fact that playing quality online chess is something everyone here wants to do, this switch should seriously be reconsidered. 

compared to other sites chess.com UI is horrible in general, also the big amount of trash that is pulled here by streamers makes the playing experience pretty bad , eg there should be an optional regional lock , so you dont have to play blitz and bullet vs people on the other side of the world with trash connection.

oh and the money thing....... i dont get why you have to pay for analysing when you just can export the game and analyse it on other free (and funnily better) engines, just make it free

I've been saying that about the analysis for years now. I only analyze on this site if I want to just glance through my game, I never analyze anything serious here because the game review comments/ "best moves" never even line up with the site's own engine let alone any other site's engine. lichess has a free engine you can use infinite analysis on for free as many times as you want. Live chess is honestly the only thing most people use at this point and they're getting rid of it is so stupid. 

thats why i play on lichess, comfortable, better looking , stable, free engine, easy to handle, also thinking about to throw my money at them , just because its my choice

but the moneything wont change anything here