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*** Ultimate Poker General Discussion Thread *** See first post for FAQ link! *** Ultimate Poker General Discussion Thread *** See first post for FAQ link!

08-25-2013 , 05:55 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dax @UltimatePoker
Our Big-ass Software Update

Y'all have been waiting a while for it, and here it is. Here's what's in it.

Table & Lobby Enhancements

The biggest visual impact to our product will be the table enhancements. Many of you know this as "Table 2.0", and it includes resizable tables, resized avatars, player pedestals, a new timer, relocated rake to the center of the table, improved table backgrounds, larger cards, preset bet buttons, more visible action buttons, a "spotlight" for the current player, a complete overhaul of sounds, better advance action buttons, anti-ratholing features, a better buyin dialog box, no more “focus stealing”, new lobby graphics, a revamp of the fonts used throughout the table, and a host of graphics bugfixes. We won't autopost your blinds anymore.

Tournament Enhancements

We’ve added late registration, rebuy tournaments and "additional currencies". Additional currencies are tournament tickets (entry into specific tournaments) and "U-Dollars", written as U$. U$ can be won via satellites and used to register for MTTs or SNGs (but not cash games). You may view the satellites to a target in the tournament lobby, as well as see the target tournament of a satellite lobby. There are also icons to show satellite and 6max tournaments and a redesigned wallet to show all of your tickets and currencies.

VIP Program Phase 1 & Merchandise Store

Boom, here it is. XP and U-Points. XP are a measure of how much you've played (and can't be spent). U-Points are spendable promotional points (spendable in the store only, of course - you can't gamble with them).

Playing any raked tournaments or cash games rewards you at the rate of 10 XP per $1. The base level earns you one U-Point per XP. If you earn a certain amount of XP in a month, the U-Points you earn are multiplied based on your tier. If you earn a significant amount of points in a rolling 14 month (“one year”) period, you can earn "Gold Plaque" or "Diamond Plaque" status, massively multiplying the points earned even more. There’s a new VIP dialog in the My Account pages that shows all of the progress to you. There's also a host of items in the store that you'll be able to purchase to supplement the points you get. There's also a bunch of stuff planned for promotions in the next few weeks & months. As I mentioned before, we're not going to "punish" players for having gotten in our initial release and playing - ScottyY can speak more about it, and we'll have more details on our website shortly.

Other stuff

This software update is required. If you try to log in with the old version, it'll force you to update. You can get a jump on this by uninstalling and reinstalling the software located at www.ultimatepoker.com.

This version *doesn't* have a lot of things, and I'll be here all day to dodge rocks.. er.. answer questions about what is still missing. Just remember that because it's not here doesn't mean we're not working every single day to getting the features built, tested and deployed as quickly as possible. Just because you see one thing in this version doesn't mean that it's "more important" than something else you dont see - Often some features are pretty lightweight and so we choose to implement those: sometimes it's a matter of balancing how big a bite is with how tasty it is at the buffet.

As always, you can find us on twitter at:

http://twitter.com/UltimatePoker
http://twitter.com/cdanek (Me - Chris Danek: Product / Software questions)
http://twitter.com/tchanpoker (Terrence Chan: Support)
http://twitter.com/VIPScottY (Scott Yeates: Game Operations)
http://twitter.com/JoeV149 (Joe Versaci: CMO)

.. And a bunch more (see the follow list of @UltimatePoker).
When will we see late reg and rebuys
08-25-2013 , 06:06 PM
7 Man Sit And Gos are the NUTS.

Hand Histories written to text files is trivial, not hard.

7 Man Sit And Gos are the NUTS.

08-25-2013 , 06:09 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by *TT*
For the record, reading through this thread shows that your viewpoint is the minority, not the majority. There is nothing wrong with taking the contrarian point of view or being angry at UP for not delivering what you hoped you would get from the network, but you should not assume that your view is shared by all players at UP. I'm happy with the progression, I'd rather have a decent but not yet great poker client and a management team that sees the flaws and is working to address each problem with their developers them than no online poker at all in Nevada. Count your blessings... and remember that development takes a lot of time and energy, what you consider a small fix could actually take months to implement.
There's over 400 pages itt and most complaints.
08-25-2013 , 06:23 PM
I miss those drinks with the umbrellas.

Get on that Dax and Scotttyyy
08-25-2013 , 06:24 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbage007
General observations after running about 2 dozen hands:

1. lots of improvements overall, kudos!

2. very fast!

3. the new bet slider works really good - it would be great to have custom options down the road to build 2 or 3 custom pre-set betting amounts, but the slider is a huge improvement

4. limited selection of avatars is disappointing - if you guys had 120 options that would be getting pretty close to acceptable - not sure why the focus on aliens and death-related avatars - personally I would prefer not to see anything death-related as I think it is in poor taste and just generally unnecessary to offer

5. the fonts aren't all that bad - but not sure that the most readable font(s) have been selected - readability should be key consideration #1, not "looks" - as you resize smaller, these fonts do get more "lost" and difficult to read - the fonts need to be 100% scaleable as you scale down the game displays

6. the annoying sound for player chat alert is still there - and now it is even MORE annoying - why have you opted to use a high pitched shrill?? you need to have some females "test" the sounds with their ears - this is highly annoying - and seriously you need to give people the option to turn chat alert OFF while keeping other sounds ON (sound menu please) - now that it is easier to run multiple tables, the last thing you want to hear is constant high shrilled chat alerts coming from multiple tables

7. the chat box itself is VERY difficult to read - this is mainly for two reasons. First, the font selected is not the easiest to read - the dollar sign looks like a large "S" instead of a dollar sign for example. But more importantly, the main reason why the chat box is difficult to read is that you have used BOLD for all normal chat. You should never use BOLD because it makes it difficult to read. Use normal print only - for normal conversational chat. BOLD should only be used to make something stand out - when you bold everything, nothing can stand out and the fatter letters, symbols, and numbers become more difficult to read. Just use normal print!

8. Related to the chat box readability, player chat itself is almost impossible to follow - because it is NOT in bold and so it is very light and kind of disappears among the darker BOLD. Easy solution here: just make player chat a different color - like blue - and again, all of the fonts in chat should be regular print, NO BOLD.

9. The greyish cards are almost impossible to see. Again, easy solution: Just give players 2 or 3 options for card colors, like you do for table options. With other systems in the past, I have alternated between red and blue just to help be sure I can see player's cards. Those grey cards may look cool - but they're very difficult to see on top of a gray "desk" or platform that the avatars are sitting on - It would also help to make the cards about 20% TALLER so that they cover the lower 1/3 or so of each avatar when a player has cards in play.

That's it for now. Congrats on the roll out and I hope you'll take some of these ideas up for consideration. Thanks.

4. We have 280 completed avatars from our artist, which we'll be adding to the software as time allows (we actually need to build a pagination feature in the avatar selection dialog, something that's been knocked down on priority but should be relatively simple). Scotty and Joe have lots of plans for people to have their own avatars.

5. Thanks for this - I'm hearing this a lot. What we likely need to do is change the font (as well as other things) when the tables are resized down to a certain size.

6. Yes, we need a more fully featured sounds preferences where everyone can select which sounds play and which don't (some people just want alerts, other people want custom sounds, etc).

7/8. We've got some edits to the fonts that are proposed that should clean this up for a lot of people (removing the "nub" from the 6 and the 9, making the 8 and the B a little more distinguishable). The dealer chat is bold, the player chat is unbolded. I think I agree that the bold chat is a little hard to read. Perhaps we'll go to an unbolded but slightly different color for dealer/player chat.
08-25-2013 , 06:27 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pokeraddict
If NRS 465.075 applies to this situation (I don't know if it does, that is what I was asking in my post) then it seems what you want is fine and HUDs would not be. If that reg does apply to online poker then NGCB could license/approve the specific third party software platforms.
It doesn't apply. 465.075 only applies to software that keeps track of cards and present probabilities or makes suggestions on actions. PT/HEM do neither of these things.
08-25-2013 , 06:33 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by imadonk
The thing is negative feedback is do to a failed project that you and your team put together, not us players. You and your team failed and should be held accountable by us and management. Your Corporation assigned you to do a job, and so far you did a ****ty job for all the world to see. imo after reading all your post it's clear to me management should put together a team that can handle this project .
Judging from your registration date and posting history, "us" seems to be the Golden Nugget..?



If I'm wrong, I apologize, but I'm not sure what your actionable feedback is aside from "you suck". If that's your feedback, though, then I thank you for it and wish you the best of luck, should you choose to play with us. Cheers.

Last edited by Dax @UltimatePoker; 08-25-2013 at 06:42 PM.
08-25-2013 , 06:36 PM
time to move to Nevada

Are all poker sites allowed to obtain state licenses? Or only the ones U.S government says they can? I'm not familiar with the new laws.

Last edited by bahlgren342; 08-25-2013 at 06:42 PM.
08-25-2013 , 06:40 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by NhlNut
I miss those drinks with the umbrellas.

Get on that Dax and Scotttyyy
We could permanently put one on your account. Maybe just change the your whole avatar to a one.
08-25-2013 , 06:48 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Easton
My understanding is UP doesn't want HuD's, which is fine, I'm not worried about the HuD. They probably are a detriment.


What I do want is to be able to retrieve my HH's after the fact to review my play. The HH's they have right now would be fine with me, they're just not formatted for the aftermarket programs and they are too much work to get.
I haven't been following too closely. What are the current hand histories like? Are they saved locally?
08-25-2013 , 06:51 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by imadonk
There's over 400 pages itt and most complaints.
Not true. The majority is players giving constructive feedback and discussing how to improve UP, not complaints. Reading over all of your posts, all you have done is dis UP (dissing is different from complaining) without ever providing any constructive feedback that can help the network grow and improve. Most of the people posting in this thread appear to get that this is just the first step for UP, the management team has been really good about being transparent, providing honest answers, and attempting to manage expectations while admitting situations that are not yet ideal... what more could any reasonable person ask for? Changes are coming, and the management team is listening to the needs of the players - thats whats important.

PS: Its less than 70 pages for anyone who knows how to fix the forum preferences to show 100 posts/page, you should do that, much easier on the eyes!
08-25-2013 , 06:53 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scooptimus_Prime
You're kidding right? Take the time to spell and use spaces properly before just throwing random sentences out there. Take in to account that a few months ago we had NO online poker, now we have it. Now take into account that we had version one released then, and a few short months later a new and for the most part improved version two has been released. The company was starting from scratch. It wasn't partnered with any big poker companies that already had all of it's software done, I.E the wsop.com site, although that's still not running. The fact that they have passed all of the strict NGC requirements and no one else has says something.

Nothing happens overnight, and you can't change every fix that I mentioned instantly. Look at pokerstars for example, their software and features are AMAZING. Was that available from day one? Hell no. Auto rebuy, auto top off, those never existed! Everything on that website was gradual, as with anything successful for the most part. Things like this take time and you need to be reasonable with expectations from a brand new company. A lot of people on here act BEYOND entitled when they don't realize how good they have it. UP, although preparing for a shared market with other companies, has had great customer service and listening to player complaints even having a monopoly on the market currently. Try to look at both sides of the puzzle before rushing to judgement.
Ahh, put on your bigboy pants and let UP know when they fail. Rush to judgment? They put out 2 failed software products that's almost unplayable and you say keep it up boys the poker community will take anything you throw at them.
08-25-2013 , 06:56 PM
hey dax im still missing 10$ from yesterday tourny that cancelled
08-25-2013 , 07:30 PM
I think the following is a little unclear.

Are the VIP tokens here to stay or has that program been discontinued or changed in any way? I see that the info on the web site has been taken down, but there was mention that the SNGs will be running next week. This is a pretty big deal as it accounts for a large percentage of value to your customers.

Thanks in advance.
08-25-2013 , 07:32 PM
The folder C:\ProgramData\Ultimate Gaming\Ultimate Poker\objects seems to contain what should be the various image files for the client.

If UP were to put the image files in a common format, then your users could alter/mod them any way we see fit, and more easily fix the visual problems that your artists have created in the software.

Perhaps allowing your players more freedom will also free UP from the responsibility of some of the unfortunate choices that have been made.
08-25-2013 , 07:32 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acezzzup
hey dax im still missing 10$ from yesterday tourny that cancelled
They're still working through the refunds.
08-25-2013 , 07:34 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by udyr
I think the following is a little unclear.

Are the VIP tokens here to stay or has that program been discontinued or changed in any way? I see that the info on the web site has been taken down, but there was mention that the SNGs will be running next week. This is a pretty big deal as it accounts for a large percentage of value to your customers.

Thanks in advance.
I pinged Scotty on that, but he's up to his ears (and he's a tall dude) in some operations stuff today. I'll relay what I hear back from him on this.. and I apologize for not knowing the answer myself.
08-25-2013 , 07:35 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by udyr
I think the following is a little unclear.

Are the VIP tokens here to stay or has that program been discontinued or changed in any way? I see that the info on the web site has been taken down, but there was mention that the SNGs will be running next week. This is a pretty big deal as it accounts for a large percentage of value to your customers.

Thanks in advance.
Nothing taken down its still right here and it has said thru September 21st for months so they better not pull the plug on that until September 21st.

http://www.ultimatepoker.com/vip-invite-only-sit-gos/
08-25-2013 , 07:35 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by udyr
I think the following is a little unclear.

Are the VIP tokens here to stay or has that program been discontinued or changed in any way? I see that the info on the web site has been taken down, but there was mention that the SNGs will be running next week. This is a pretty big deal as it accounts for a large percentage of value to your customers.

Thanks in advance.
Tokens are part of Summer Series - SS ends September 21st
08-25-2013 , 07:35 PM
Unistalled the old and installed the new and I am happy with what I've seen so far. Any plans to be able to search for players based on screen names?
08-25-2013 , 07:40 PM
I appreciate the extensive replies you've been making Dax. Your effort does not go unnoticed.

I know little about the engineering side of things aside from being an end-user. For this reason I could be way off base in judging your performance in this area so far. However, there is one glaring "why are they doing this?" that I'd like to ask you about.

Why do you spread tournaments that do not have a guarantee? In case you missed it, I will quote myself from earlier in this thread.

Quote:
When you have a guarantee, there is a defined value. This defined value entices people to participate because they know that the tournament will go off, and it will either be set at this defined value, or exceed this value. This core group of participants attracts others, boosting field size.

On the other hand, a tournament without a guarantee is without a defined value. People are reticent to sign up, because they do not know what sort of value the tournament will hold. Without this core group of participants, others are turned off from playing.

There is a concept all poker rooms deal with, whether they realize it or not, this concept is called "critical mass". Critical mass refers to a sufficient number of adopters of an innovation in a social system so that the rate of adoption becomes self-sustaining and creates further growth. With regards to poker rooms, this refers to having enough players to attract new ones.

Each tournament offered is a microcosm of the critical mass concept. To attract more players, you need *some* players. To attract *some* players, you need to offer a guarantee.
08-25-2013 , 07:59 PM
Does anyone know if we will get retroactive XP for our play prior to VIP system?

-UFO
08-25-2013 , 07:59 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by skeptix
I appreciate the extensive replies you've been making Dax. Your effort does not go unnoticed.

I know little about the engineering side of things aside from being an end-user. For this reason I could be way off base in judging your performance in this area so far. However, there is one glaring "why are they doing this?" that I'd like to ask you about.

Why do you spread tournaments that do not have a guarantee? In case you missed it, I will quote myself from earlier in this thread.
I don't agree is the main reason.
08-25-2013 , 08:03 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by A Train
Unistalled the old and installed the new and I am happy with what I've seen so far. Any plans to be able to search for players based on screen names?
Not at this time, no.. I don't think it offers a ton of value - it seems to mostly just be used for bumhunting. I'm not completely against it, it's just probably a bit lower on the priority list.
08-25-2013 , 08:16 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scottyy
Tokens are part of Summer Series - SS ends September 21st
Excellent.

      
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