This is a row from my current live games:

How hard would it be to add markers under each player's block to indicate which players are currently online, like this?

Doesn't have to be green, since green is used elsewhere to signify friends. Could be any color.

What's oncology

I Don't Know's on vacation

:-)

Didn't there used to be something similar? A little pop-up chat in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen? Not quite the same, but clearly then the capability exists.

there's still a link at the bottom of the page "Who's Online" although it doesn't work anymore. i think the switch from Flash killed some things and the chat was one of them. this may be a continuance of that

I guess I just consider wargear an asynchronous experience, but I almost never care if someone else happens to be online when I am.

Ozyman wrote:I guess I just consider wargear an asynchronous experience, but I almost never care if someone else happens to be online when I am.

I can see the benefit of knowing, particularly in the way that lx260 suggested.

There are times when I'm playing a 1/3/7-day game with another player (or players) and we happen to be online together, so I get the notification immediately when my opponent ends their turn. Then I make mine right away.

If I know they're still online, I might hang around a bit to see if they make their turn (followed by me), rendering the game more real-time :-)

Definitely fun when that happens

You can't see it from before you join the game, but you all do recognize that you can tell from inside the game, right??

This column being shows highlighted for players who are online. So Blue, Light Blue, and White are all online right now.

BorisTheFrugal wrote:You can't see it from before you join the game, but you all do recognize that you can tell from inside the game, right??

Of course we all know this.

What I'm suggesting is a way to see who's online in all of your games (or at least 15 at a time) at a glance without having to click through to view each game one at a time.

BorisTheFrugal wrote:You can't see it from before you join the game, but you all do recognize that you can tell from inside the game, right??

I should sincerely hope so. And yeah, that's a real pain to have to check. In addition, it would be nice to see who is online in games you're thinking about joining.

@ lx 260 it would be convenient info for your purposes, no doubt. But if you really wanted to know if certain players were on..... scan the "Active Players" listing below the Forums list on the Forums tab.

Just a thought.

hootz72 wrote:@ lx 260 it would be convenient info for your purposes, no doubt. But if you really wanted to know if certain players were on..... scan the "Active Players" listing below the Forums list on the Forums tab.

I'm aware of that method, but that list is not totally current (I've seen players listed there that have been offline for some time, and I've also not seen even myself listed when I'm most definitely online), and it's not as convenient as what I suggested. :)

Abraham the Mage wrote:BorisTheFrugal wrote:You can't see it from before you join the game, but you all do recognize that you can tell from inside the game, right??

I should sincerely hope so. And yeah, that's a real pain to have to check. In addition, it would be nice to see who is online in games you're thinking about joining.

Funnily enough, I don't think I knew that before :-)

Of course, I never look at the details on that page -- I go from My Games to games where it is my turn, that page pops up and I immediately click Launch Player. It's pretty much like that page doesn't exist for me 😀

Good to know, though! Thanks!

Yeesh

I *really* have not been paying attention... I didn't notice that the status (the online/offline dot) was in the player listing on the game page itself as well.

I mocked up the below.

Gold bar above = online

Grey bar above = offline

I am concerned that it makes the player bar rather confusing. Perhaps showing / hiding it could be a user setting (defaulting to off)?

I should be able to improve the online / offline accuracy, I haven't looked at it for a while so I'm sure it can be improved!

tom wrote:I mocked up the below.

Gold bar above = online

Grey bar above = offline

I am concerned that it makes the player bar rather confusing. Perhaps showing / hiding it could be a user setting (defaulting to off)?

I should be able to improve the online / offline accuracy, I haven't looked at it for a while so I'm sure it can be improved!

Awesome Tom!

I think default on would be better with the option to turn off.

I don't think it looks that cluttered.

Good thing it's just a mockup. It's your turn but you're not online.

I agree that it's not too cluttered. The top will always be filled, and with only two colors so things should be clear.

The mockup looks good to me. And I'm fine either way with the default setting.

Thanks, tom.

Tom, if you are going to be looking into improving the online/offline accuracy, I have a few observations that might be helpful for you:

• From what I have seen, the "Last Visit" in the profile page is the most accurate indicator about who is online. If a person is online, their last visit is at max 1 or 2 minutes ago. By my best guess, this measures last activity of any kind (including opening a game or a thread, possibly even clicking through history)
• The online dot stays on for about 5-6 minutes after the last activity before going off.

tom wrote:I mocked up the below.

Awesome! I'm happily surprised you decided to try to implement my suggestion! :)

If you set it to default off please announce it or I'll never know that setting is there.

Pratik wrote:The mockup looks good to me. And I'm fine either way with the default setting.

• From what I have seen, the "Last Visit" in the profile page is the most accurate indicator about who is online. If a person is online, their last visit is at max 1 or 2 minutes ago. By my best guess, this measures last activity of any kind (including opening a game or a thread, possibly even clicking through history)
• The online dot stays on for about 5-6 minutes after the last activity before going off.

Yes this is correct - the last visit time is accurate to within 30 seconds. The online dot shows if a player is online if they have taken a game action or clicked on a page within the site in the last 300 seconds (i.e. 5 minutes). It's easy to tweak that setting to 2 minutes instead.

I'll go ahead and add the new feature - should be ready in the next few days. I'll default it to enabled for now.