Hi everyone!

Welcome to the Official Scrabble Facebook Feedback Thread! Please feel free to post your suggestions and input for the game. If you have any suggestions that you think can improve the game this is the best place to post them!

Please be sure to stay on topic. This thread is specifically for feedback regarding the Scrabble Facebook game and we will be using your input to help guide future updates of the game! If you have already posted in the discussion board we have taken note of your suggestions, but feel free to post them again if you wish.

Thank you for your feedback!

Also - We wanted to let you know that we have been listening to your comments and will be introducing some changes based on your feedback. The main thing you will notice will be a streamlined application with simpler animations and faster tempo. We will also add full keyboard playability for those who prefer interacting with the game this way. The update will also include several other small fixes. We expect to roll this out early August.

Thanks!

Eric Bourget

As a programmer myself, I sympathize with you. It can't be easy dealing will all the negative feedback. Lots of people here are sour over Hasbro's lawsuit, and I hope people will set aside their ill feelings and provide some genuinely constructive suggestions for improving this app.

I'm not sure if it's been posted elsewhere, but I'd like to see more options for viewing opponents' stats. It would be useful to click on a player's picture and see his or her rating, W/L/T record and recent games played instead of just being linked to his or her Facebook profile.

I see you've been reading all the comments, which is good! I think you should remember the amount of animation most players want to see (NONE!) The worst of all is the "shuffle" animation, wasting valuable time when a simple change would do the job better and quicker. Notice how quickly we can shuffle on Scrabulous? We have a computer jump the tedious tile manipulation and the goal is achieved instantaneously!

Anytime I have to wait for an animation is like waiting through a commercial or dialing a rotary phone. No animation is good enough or fast enough to see more than than once or twice. Ever. Ever.

I do think it makes sense to give the developers a bit of a break, since this is, after all, merely a beta. However, I think it's also worth saying that so many of us who love to play Scrab(-ble-ulous) are really disappointed with this effort so far.

"Official" Scrabble on Facebook was very highly anticipated and yet we, the fans, can't help but see this as slow and needlessly flashy, and lacking the simplicity, elegance, and playability of Scrabulous. I think whoever planned this project either misread the needs and wants of the fan base, or merely wished to put forward a product (however inferior) to give Hasbro/EA standing to pursue a lawsuit. I sensed this a while back and posted about it, and recent news seems to make that hunch possibly correct.

I'm curious -- what was the deal with the version of Scrabble that used to be on the games.atari.com website? Was that official or no? I thought that worked pretty well. Indeed, it was in my mind more or less a nice compromise between what the current project attempts to do and what Scrabulous succeeds in doing. Can anyone shed light on that?

Re: Sean Jackson -- hear, hear! Or at least, turn off the animations by default and let the masochists re-enable them if they really want to.

I'll add my vote to the top two issues people are clamoring for: snappier performance and keyboard entry. There is no reason this game shouldn't be playable on relatively old hardware - my CPU is currently spending too much time on pointless animations.

Looking forward to the August release!

Thanks for the thread. I am personally pretty easy to please... but I think that a bit less animation would be better. It looks nice, but with all the variations between operating systems, video cards and whatever else, there is too much potential for problems.

Sorry Eric, but I think this was an uphill battle from the start. Everyone has grown accustomed to the simplicity of Scrabulous and I have to agree with them (despite the fact I prefer to support Hasbro and not the programmers who have infringed on Hasbro's copyright.) I really dislike the glitz/glam/animation of this version. Also, I find the colours on the board difficult to look at. As much as I hate to side with the Scrabulous guys, their product is much more cohesive and visually appealing. I hope the lawsuit sides in favour of Hasbro... but not before this version is cleaned up.

I have not read all the posts so if my comments are duplicates I apologize. The board is too small and/or too cluttered. I can hardly see the tiles I have played amidst the competing "stuff."

Also, so far this does not seem user friendly. Maybe it is just me but I have not been able to find anyone to play with! Boo hoo! An age old refrain but true!

Thanks!

- Takes way too long to load.
-Animations are not needed and are annoying.

Things I like:

- display of how many tiles are left
- easier to move tiles around on your rack than in Scrabulous
- automatically updates after opponent moves and doesn't time out and require exiting the game like Scrabulous

Things I'd like to see changed:

- Make the board itself bigger and less cartoony
- Add an button to force a refresh. When you're playing an opponent real-time, the auto-refresh isn't fast enough.
- Remove animations or add an option to disable them
- Remove the need to name games manually. Use auto-numbered games like Scrabulous.
- Improve performance and load time

Takes way too long to load.
Animations are annoying.
Not interested at all in using this version.

Maybe I just got here at the wrong time, but I can't start a game because the type your friends name interface isn't finding my friend. It's possible I had a typo the first time or something, but this is kinda silly.

Why can't we select our friends who are already playing the game from the normal facebook pick friends interface (filtered for those who have already added of course)?

Also, it would be nice if you used a more liquid layout - I haven't even seen the board, but I can already see that the area is larger vertically than my window normally is. While this is fine for webpages, it sucks for games. And it shows a real bias for windows users - other OS users don't maximize their widows.

As I cannot find anyone to play I can't comment of play issues.

As most posters have said: Lose the animation, lose the gaudy colors (is it telling that while I wait - and wait - for even the title screen to load I am waiting for "webmayhem").

It is as if you are trying to convince users that Scrabble is fun... we already know that. Why not simply copy the design of Scrabulous? If they stole the rights, then isn't Hasbro entirely with theirs to copy?

If this is the effort to "have something up" with an eye to pending litigation I think it is fair to say the two apps are barely similar.

No SOWPODS
No Challenge, although "advertised"

You didn't even keep the board colors the same as the boxed board game?

If I were you, I'd wear a bag over my head, stop claiming to be programmers, and beg spare change on the corner.

With 35 years' experience in computers, I have to tell you -- you ain't gonna manage to polish this turd.

Id like to see the ability to delete a game like on scrabulous within the first couple of moves.. i also agree that this application is too slow and way too flashy..i liked the simplicity of scrabulous.

Hi Eric,

Thanks for this...I run a slightly older G5 Mac and Scrabble runs like Molasses. I have played Call of Duty 2 on this computer on a low graphic setting with no difficulty so there is obviously too much going here.

By the way, I say go Hasbro! If I ever invent a board game I do not want two guys to copy it and then profit from it.

Just copy Scrabulous. Keep is simple, tone down the color, remove the sound, scrap the silly graphics, make it keyboard friendly. And do it soon.

Launching this Application has resulted in my being unable to play with my friends in the US and Canada... I understand you are taking legal action over Scrabulous but unless you can supply your Application so that anyone can access it you ought to leave it for someone who can.

looks like with anything new it will take some getting used to.. animations are unnecessary

I don't really care about bells and whistles. Simple is fine for me, but I can live with the animations and such. What I really miss from Scrabulous is playing against my friends anywhere in the world. Why is Scrabble Worldwide not available for US users? Why not just make it truly worldwide? I've just noticed that Scrabulous is disabled for users in the US and Canada, so all the games I was playing with friends in England and Holland are now inaccessible. Big disappointment.

I can't figure out how to add it to my Facebook page so as to link to it easily. Also, although it is cute, I agree that less animation would be preferable. Would you also allow us to take away the TWL, DL... notations? It interferes with my arranging my letters. For those of us who play often, we know what the colors are.
I would rather not name my games if that is possible.
Good luck with this.

Cut the animations and speed the game up!

Here's a thought - instead of suing Rajat and Jayant, have them help develop your game - bring them on board because this version stinks.

so many things wrong... i don't even know where to begin... how about how i was playing scrabulous with 17 different people from all over the world, having conversations with all of them... and now have no way to continue getting to know them?

i understand hasbro wanting to shut scrabulous down... but if all they're going to do is offer a watered down version with an enormous amount of problems, instead of actually taking a step back and learning from the makers of scrabulous, and asking themselves why it was so popular, why it worked so well...??? ...to say the least, it's all very disappointing.

Who are you people kidding -- Scrabble doesn't hold a candle to Scrabulous!!!!!!!!

That thing with the star reminds me of when you hit a whammy on Press Your Luck. A cartoon that magically alters your score is sort of fun once. But when the board takes ten minutes to load, once is more than enough.

I concur

Hasbro sucks. Apparently EA can't program themselves out of a paper bag. Scrabulous should sue them for copying all of their features they have planned to steal from them.