Bad, new gametracker, bad!

[The Bofa on the Sofa]

Ugh. That is all I have to say about the new gametracker. Aside from the common problem of freezing up on the last points of a game, there are some stylistic aspects that I really don't like:

1) As was mentioned last weekend, taking away the "Game Flow" feature. That was a really handy way to look back over a game and see how the scoring went, and it was far easier than trying to pick through a play by play.

2) Although I do like the "National Scoreboard," please, please, PLEASE do something about the scores listed at the top. Just listing games won and the score of the current game is not useful at all (especially since after the match only the games are listed). I can't tell much from a match if all I know is that it went 3-0 or 3-1, and I don't want to leave the match I am on to go find out what happened (this is especially the case if there is a close game but you happen to miss the final points). The old version where it would scroll through one match at a time was much better.

3) The ad bar at the bottom is really annoying.

[Revbang]

Oh, but, the animation replay of each point is so sweet!!! (read stupid)

[Deleted]

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't they at least fix the play-by-play so the last point goes to the top? That's a major advance, if so.

[FloridaPerson]

loss of game flow is a sore point for me, because i pretty much used that exclusively to follow the points.

[Pirate VB Fan]

floridaperson said:

loss of game flow is a sore point for me, because i pretty much used that exclusively to follow the points.

Me too. It was the only view I used.

[GatorVball]

Florida still has the old gametracker. If you click the link from their site, you get the old format.

[baywatcher]

Does the florida Gametracker sell Old Spice?

[Ye Olde Dawg]

On the plus side -- and I always see a plus side -- this GameTracker seems far more reliable than the old one. I have fewer complaints about pieces of its user interface that simply don't work. That said, I miss the "game flow" view, and I wish the animation of the play could be turned off.
  (Aside: have you noticed that the kills are *always* cross-court, from the left? I actually went to the trouble of checking, and yes, when the RS makes a kill, the animation will show it from the left.)

But the thing that gets me most is the ads. Two video ads to click through before you can just look at the score, plus one with sound that pops up between games, plus display ads in the margins and the occasional flash ad that crawls across the window. You know, with the close box that moves, so that closing it without triggering the pop-up ad it links to is a test of hand-eye coordination?

Ugh.

[Gorf]

More reliable?

I haven't been able to work even once for me over the first couple weeks of matches.

I had it relatively working at one point last week but the scores were being updated much faster here than on GameTracker.

I watched most of the Gopher matches on their videocast thingy and when they finally started showing the scoreboard during timeouts and between games even those scoring updates were faster than Gametracker.

Gametracker also had the problem of not showing some of the matches being played in their list of matches to be tracked - even though you could bring up those matches if you could find a direct link somewhere.

So IMO it's rather useless at this point.

[The Bofa on the Sofa]

I will be generous and say that, at best, I have not seen any improvement in its reliability. We have had a few reports of where it doesn't update at the end of games, but I think that was also something that happened with the old version, so its not any better in that regard.

When I was watching last night, it was consistently a case of nothing happening, nothing happening, nothing happening, list the results for 10 points all really fast, nothing happening, nothing happening, nothing happening, list the next ten points, etc

If nothing else, timeouts end up flying through really quickly...

[itsamom]

The other night someone posted the Hawaii -UCLA live stats and I thought that was way better than Gametracker yet is far less sophisticated. On the other hand I called a friend who was at a match I was watching on GT the other night and asked if the other team kept hitting over the right side as that is what the GT "animation" was showing, she said yes. So maybe it is getting better.

[The Bofa on the Sofa]

I do like when the animation shows a block or a service error. That actually caught me off guard once.

[Deleted]

Does it show animation of rotation faults? If not, count me out.

[The Bofa on the Sofa]

Ok, I'm coming around a little to the new gametracker, although I still really miss the Game Flow view. As long as it doesn't freeze up, it is somewhat ok.

When you start paying attention, the animation is kind of interesting. I like how they show aces, service and hitting errors, kills, and blocks. However, one thing they could do to make it more interesting would be to not show who got the point until after the animation. It would make it a little more suspenseful, because you can't tell who will get the point from where the ball starts. If they would do that, I would like it a lot more.

That and all the points I made in the initial post.

[neufan]

I feel the pain of all GameTracker people that I've read about in the past. My daughter is now a freshman at Northeastern. They're playing UConn tonight. I'm following it on GT and it's game 4, Uconn up 2-1. NEU up 28-26 in game 4. It's been stuck on that point for half an hour. UGGLY! Frustrating! STUPID!
GGRRRRRR!