Dear Replay,
The new table design is atrocious, full stop. Yeah yeah, there are a couple of improvements over the old design, but the issues with the new tables outweigh those improvements by miles.
I’ve submitted a ton of feedback since the new tables were introduced, but it seems that the developer is ignoring this feedback completely. (Does anyone else feel this way?) Of course I’m not expecting the devs to agree with everything I’ve commented on. But not even one thing? Not even one of the really serious issues, or not to correct a tiny bit of incorrectly-phrased wording?
Response to my feedback has come mainly from Sarah in customer support, but after have a few back-and-forths with her via email she steered me to use the feedback button to submit commentary. That’s a horrible little bit of business in and of itself, but that’s the least of the problems.
I don’t know who’s developing the new tables for you, but it has all the look and feel of “my first poker app”.
• The overall aesthetic of the card design is 3rd rate, at best.
• Spades and clubs are hard to distinguish (an issue when playing Omaha).
• With 4-color deck enabled, the blue of diamonds is hard to distinguish from black if the screen brightness is reduced. It should be lighter, more of a cyan.
• Every goddam thing is animated! This is not only highly distracting but in most cases completely unnecessary. This is one of the most amateurish aspects of the design, where bells-and-whistles movement is added to the most mundane things such as checkboxes. Checkboxes!
• The borders of the checkboxes and the checkmarks themselves are animated, taking sometimes as long as .5 to 1 seconds or more to render (either on or off) especially, but not exclusively, if two tables are open. Here’s a typical pre-flop situation… Let’s say I’m in the BB and I tick Check/Fold. Sometimes the lag is so great that the flop gets dealt before the checkmark ever appears!
• The value (quantity) of chips entered into the pot increments (counts up) on-the-fly. It is particularly noticeable when two or more tables are open (more on this below). But even when there isn’t a significant lag and the chip count appears more or less instantly, it begs the question of why that animation is needed at all. All that’s doing is needlessly wasting CPU cycles. And when, in any real poker game, are chips entered incrementally into a pot unless it’s a string bet? It’s a useless, CPU-consuming waste.
• Sometimes the red Check/Fold/Raise buttons appear before the 4th hole card is dealt (Omaha, obviously). That points to an order of operations issue.
• On two occasions I’ve gotten a “Please wait your turn” message appear in the chat. How can that possibly happen in an online game? That also points to an order of operations problem.
• After clicking the Sit Out button, the alerts/messages that appear in the in-table alerts and the chat window contradict one another.
• The speed & responsiveness of the tables slows to a crawl if two tables are open. Forget about having 3 tables open! This is a regression from the previous table design.
• The “check” and “showdown” sounds need to be EQ’d to reduce the unbelievably loud low end thud.
• Having a beep notification after every chat message is highly, highly annoying. OMG… On a chatty table? BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep. What’s the point? Puh-lease, offer an option to mute that sound.
I could go on but I’ll stop there. Of course I understand that Replay is moving away from Flash. But the new table design is hardly an acceptable alternative.
=Uncle Frank=