Messages

706

Gold, Magic potion / Guess and win one week of Magic Potion

« on: 22/04/16, 01:37pm »

Hi there,

Just guess how many games of Lost Cities were played online yesterday (21/04)!

The closest answer will win one week of Magic Potion for unlimited food and other benefits.

Of course, only one answer per person.

707

Tips, polls, updates / Re: Your feedback on new version

« on: 22/04/16, 11:41am »

You may be right on the inn. Maybe one should always enter the inn. So the dice icon and the inn icon would merge...

I kind of feel that something may be wrong with this at the moment, but never really looked for a solution. You may have a point here.

Of course, this raises a lot of questions. But it is worth having a thought!

As for clicking on the inn and going to the map, I am afraid I don't get the point. Maybe you need to explain more.

Thanks again!

708

Tips, polls, updates / Re: Your feedback on new version

« on: 21/04/16, 08:58pm »

Thank you Stephanie, this is the kind of helpful feedback. Very much appreciated.

Regarding the world map, I am afraid I am going the opposite way, removing the transparency that showed a bit of the map. But that gave me another idea. So all is not lost on that side. Also, when houses are available, there will hopefully be a bit more reasons to go to the world. In any case, I do show the world for 2 or 3 seconds at login, for the very reason you mention. It is nice and a shame that we don't show it more. Speaking of which, any idea to make the world more useful is welcome. What could we do in the world? I may not be able to develop your ideas but it is worth trying.

As for the size of the buttons, I am afraid space is expensive at the top of the screen. Every pixel added there pushes the main content down and I am trying to minimize the need for scrolling down. The newspaper has taken a lot of valuable space.

The Meeple Times will indeed show the daily quests when they are ready.

Thanks again. I love exchanging with you all. So please keep it coming!

709

Tips, polls, updates / Re: Your feedback on new version

« on: 20/04/16, 10:06am »

Thanks very much for your feedback! What do you mean exactly by "an extra barrow"? Do you mean a specific zone for the small icons like before?

710

Tips, polls, updates / POLL: Daily Meeple or Meeple Times

« on: 20/04/16, 10:03am »

As you can see in this picture, we will soon introduce a personalized newspaper at the top of the main page.

The question is about the title of this newspaper.

Please vote above!

711

Tips, polls, updates / Your feedback on future new version

« on: 18/04/16, 11:01pm »

As you can see from the screenshots below, we are preparing a new version of the main page.

Can you give us your thoughts about the two main changes?

1) the interface in general
- do you like it?
- is is readable?
- is the list of games good enough? Any information missing?

2) most importantly, the Meeple Times zone, a constanlty changing newspaper that will inform you on what is going on, particularly what you have been doing and what your friends have been doing.
- do you like it?
- is it readable?
- the font size varies with the importance of the news and its freshness. This is done so you never miss anything new. In the 2nd screenshot, the font sizes don't change. That gives a more rigid layout, but maybe more readable. I fear though that you will not see what changed since the last time the news were generated. What do you think?

712

Happy Meeple community / Happy Meeple bloggers list

« on: 18/04/16, 12:56pm »

Hi all,

Do you play on Happy Meeple?
Do you write a blog?

Feel free to advertise your blog here! This is the place to post your link!

713

Happy Meeple community / Re: Proper behaviour

« on: 14/04/16, 11:23pm »

I fully understand your concern.

When Happy Meeple project was started, there was a matching system in place (you could not see the other players, there was no inn). In online play, you have always been matched with a bot with similar rating to yours (and it is still the case) which is what you are asking for. It was my intention to develop a few more lines of code so that the same applied to human play. However it is not as easy as it seems because of a few other parameters.

Firstly, lots of players want to play against other humans. Because we don't have a huge pool of players yet, restricting players matching by rating would make it even more difficult. And noone really wants that at this stage. When we have many more players, we can think about this option again. It would certainly raise other concerns (what if friends want to play together?) but probably nothing that cannot be solved by a programmer. And to finish on this, I may simply implement a "rating filter" when opening a table so that you can choose to play with a certain range of players. If I do, you'll have to use that filter every time you ask for a table though which may not be very practical.

Another important factor is that most of our games have an important part of luck. Which makes it no so easy for good players to "farm" beginners. You are actually the first player complaining about farming, but I can tell you that I read many times experienced players complaing about being matched with low ratings because they are afraid of losing a lot of points in one game. The rating system (ELO) is such that it is difficult to abuse the system. In other online games, I know that farming can be a big issue. But again, because most of our games have a big random element to them, a strong player will often be beaten by a beginner (that is not true for Keltis Or and Siberia Card though).

Finally, there are two solutions to your problem.
1) The best one it to practice in training mode until you feel ready to dive into online play.
2) You can also go to the inn and never open a table (=never request a game), only join existing tables. This way, you will only join players that have a rating that suits you.

I hope this answers your questions. Thanks for letting us know! It is important to us to read about your concerns. This helps us tremendously to improve the platform for our players. If you don't tell us, we many never know.

714

Tips, polls, updates / Suggest a newspaper title

« on: 14/04/16, 07:57am »

Hi all,

You will soon see a personalized "newspaper" with all the latest relevant information (general news, friends activity, daily quests, etc.). This will most likely be displayed in a short version at the top of the main menu page.

I want to give this newspaper a name and I'd like you to give suggestions.

The two most obvious names are:

- The Daily Meeple
- The Meeple Times

Any other ideas? Please suggest!

When we have a few more good suggestions, I will put them to vote.

Thanks for your help!
 

715

Tips, polls, updates / Forum updates

« on: 13/04/16, 08:32pm »

2016/04/13 - Forum updates

- forum URLs are now rewritten to be more SEO-friendly
- forum titles and descriptions are also more SEO-friendly

This does not change the way the forum is used.

Coming soon: the main menu page is being reworked so that 1) it looks better, 2) it is easier to understand what is going on for new players, 3) it is ready for future developments including the Daily Meeple or the Meeple times, a personalized "newspaper" gathering relevant news for the player (daily quests, friend news, ranking changes...)

716

Happy Meeple community / Proper behaviour

« on: 11/04/16, 09:03pm »

Hi all,

We have been informed that a few players have had bad manners in the last few weeks. Although in minority these players clearly don't stick to the Happy Meeple spirit and we do not want to tolerate this.

We endeavour to offer a place to play board games online and have fun in a nice environment.

We want to make clear that the use of swear words is absolutely forbidden on the platform. Playing moves very slowly on purpose (generally when losing) to annoy the opponent is also extremely bad manners that we do not tolerate.

The range of sanction goes from temporary ban in chat to account deletion.

I know that games can be frustrating at times. If you have a tendency to lose temper, please buy a giant meeple plush and kick it hard to relieve the stress when needed! This will be much better than throwing your anger at your opponent.

Thanks very much for your understanding!

Nicolas Guibert.

717

Keltis the card game / Keltis on the beach

« on: 07/04/16, 04:22pm »

On the beach?
Don't have any cards with you?
No board, no dice?

Try the new Keltis variant!

First player to make it to 10 stones wins the game.

718

Other board games / Re: [7 Wonders Duel]

« on: 06/04/16, 05:35pm »

Hi Keith,

Many people said that the 2P version of the original game was not very good. But I have also read a few people claiming that they liked it as it was. So in essence, it is difficult to give a definite answer to your question.

Duel has received widespread praises. So you should probably give it a go and make your own opinion. It is not an expensive game either.

719

Tips, polls, updates / Re: Platform updates

« on: 25/03/16, 11:33am »

2016/03/25 - Food offers

We used to check that players had enough storage space to store the food that we offered. As a result, sometimes, offers were not displayed when players wanted them. We removed the storage check space. So offers are now displayed as soon as you have less than 12 food in stock. However, excess food will be lost so be aware of this!
Correction of tiny bugs that displayed advertizing on the world map. The ads are now displayed below the map.
1Dludiques link was broken. We now display the right URL.

Back office:
We updated all advertizing tags following a change of system of our provider.

720

Tips, polls, updates / Re: Platform updates

« on: 24/03/16, 03:56pm »

2016/03/24- Various improvements on help pages

New Lost Cities images on login page (game box and new screenshot of the new digital version).
Modification of an offer (ad) that was causing trouble (video ad).
Slight modification of the frequency of food offers. Most frequent partners will be displayed a little bit less often, leaving more room to smaller partners (like blogs).
"Play now" links on most help pages will now create a guest account immediately for new visitors (they will start playing immediately without going to the login page). "Old" players will still be directed to the login page via these links.
Help pages now have a home link both at the top-right of the page and at the top of the menu (bottom of the page).
The flying enveloppe indicating a new chat message now flies from the top of the screen making it more visible. It will probably help some users see that there is a new message in one of their chats (if they don’t have sound on).

On the back side:
Simplication of code.
Clicks on help pages are now recorded to help understand better what visitors are looking for and find out how we can improve.