We are happy to announce that BGS and Digidiced have entered into an agreement!

In early June, we announced that the gaiaform.io website would become public after a period of invitation only mode. After the initial reactions of the publisher Feuerland and Digidiced, who acquired the contract to create the digital version of GP, a dialogue was established between Feuerland, Digidiced and BGS to clarify their respective positions. This dialogue led to an agreement where Digidiced agrees that this online version of GP remains active and continues to serve as a reference for the GP player community. BGS is committed to making room on the site to Digidiced, which will thus keep the community informed of the progress of the official version.

We want to publicly thank Frank of Feuerland and Patrick of Digidiced for the demonstrated helpfulness and attention to the community!

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Guys,

After two years in “invitation only mode”, we've decided to make this site publicly available. Starting today, anyone can join directly or by using their personal Discord, Google or Facebook accounts.

We love Gaia Project, and our goal has always been to give the GP community a place to play GP online.

We really value the hard work of the designers of every board game, and we know it takes time and a lot of passion to create great board games. At the same time, no game would be successful without publishers willing to invest in bringing it to market.

So, in an effort to balance business needs and community needs, we have implemented a “fair use” policy in this online implementation of GP. We have added an option in your profile to confirm that you own a physical copy of the game. If you confirm ownership, you will be able to open a new table. Anyone can join any table, whether they own the game or not.

You’ve probably noticed that we switched the domain from a “geeky” gaiaform.io to a “boardgamegeeky” boardgamers.space. The reason for this is that we want to add more games to the platform, and let you enjoy more time with us, in a growing community of online players. The first game we are adding to the platform as of today is Take6. It’s a popular game and a great filler while you are waiting to gaiaform a planet!

We want to thank you for your support during this period, for your feedback and for being part of this new community.
Thank you!
The BGS team.

Ok, we are now showing the Booster object with the properties, instead of a generic button "Booster 3". So you don't need to scroll back and forth to check!

We were thinking to implement a standard ELO system.

The ELO system is based on this formula K x (W - p(D)) where:

• W is the result of the game: 1 for a victory, 0 for a defeat, 0.5 for a tie;
• D is the difference of ELO between you and your opponent;
• p(D) is the probability of victory considering the D difference
• K is the 'elasticity factor'. It has a value that depends on the number of games you have played. Other platforms are using 60 for your first 10 games, 40 between your 10th and 20th games, and then 20.

The ELO system is for two player games while most board games are multiplayer game. This is dealt with by considering each N player match as consisting of (N/2)*(N-1) separate two player matches between each pair of players.

We aren't planning to do a live ELO system using also on the factions, like in terra.snellman.net. The reason is that we think that the impact of faction can be mitigated by the auction system that we introduced yesterday.

Regarding how to manage dropping players.
We've introduced the karma system, which should help to motivate people to finish what they decided to start ;)
We already have the ability to select a "sleeping period", which is stoping the timer. This should help players to commit on games that are "compatible" with their zones.
But still, if someone is dropping, we have two options:

1. we don't update the ELO for anyone in the game;
2. we do something like the 3way tie against the dropping person.

We are open to your feedback and suggestions!

@Robert-Shepherd : the system is very intuitive and easy to implement, but it cannot be used to compare different games, because you can rotate sectors, so 7A0 can be a different planet in a different game.
So if we want to have a consistent reference system, we should decide which is 7A0. But do we need it?

@ariallito : Do you think that the time settings are not enough to understand your commitment to the game?

Thank you so much for your feedback!

We've learned a lot in just a couple of hours ;)

• We will introduce the ability to switch between the old version and the new version.
• We will improve the new version with your feedback, and, of course, anyone that can help is welcome!
• In the meantime we will revert to the old version.

@Semioteric . Thank you for your feedback. We have evaluated different ways to implement the elo system. Every different implementation has pros and cons and, and to your point, also in chess "each organization has taken a different route to deal with the uncertainty inherent in the ratings, particularly the ratings of newcomers, and to deal with the problem of ratings inflation/deflation. New players are assigned provisional ratings, which are adjusted more drastically than established ratings." (cit. Wikipedia.

The current system is a 0 sum system after the 20th game, when the K factor is set to 20.
Before that, it is encouraging newcomers with a K factor equal to 60.

You ask why not start at 100. The reason is that we want to prevent abuse. So if someone wants to abuse the system with a sparring elo partner, the partner will have a elo close to 1. In this case the delta elo for each win will be few elo points.

In any case, we will monitor the system and we will make sure that people is not abusing it ;)

Hey,
We have a first draft of the revised UI ready for test.

You can see it and play with it in the dev site .

To enable the new UI you need to select the Use alternate UI option in the panel

This alternate UI is also using the 3D buildings, and you can switch to the flat buildings
checking the Use flat buildings option in the panel.

Let us know your feedback!

@El-Temblo
The GP app has been ready for almost two years, since summer 2018. We strongly believe an online implementation is beneficial for the community, and even for sales of the physical boardgame. Nevertheless, we stayed private all this time based on the understanding that an official app would be released Q4 2019.
The development of the official app hasn't even started, when digital rights were bought more than two years ago. The release would be in 2021 at the earliest. We understand there probably are circumstances, but as players we decided to move ahead and release now, instead of waiting - and letting the community wait - longer.

@Joe-Lionheart we have just added the cost in the tooltip. You can check it in the "alternate UI".

@Joe-Lionheart Thanks for testing it. We are glad you like it!
I'll add you feature request to the pipeline.