A good game ruined by new features

I have played this game every day for months, but I just took it off my phone. The addition of a new feature for word validation and a leader board have rendered it useless. The game used to be a simple competition of creating words on a matrix, and with the reasonable hope that your opponent would not cheat by using apps to find words for them. If you felt that someone was cheating, you could just stop playing with them. The first problem feature was word validation. Now there is no need to think of words and try them by submitting. You can just throw up all the letters you wish to use, and suffle them around until the signal lights up saying that you made a word. This change reduced the skill needed to win the game (without cheating). I have played many enjoyable games with one player. The last one ended when in a tight game I left him a board with K and V that needed to be used. He threw K and V to the top, and the signal came on - he had made a word. The word was KV. I would venture to say that without word verification he would not have played the word KV, which in any case is not a word found in online dictionaries. The real death blow to the game is the ranking board, though. Now people see that they can WIN. Who will be on the top of the rankings? (The most dedicated cheater). This results in new random games where the first move is an 18 letter word that captures half the board. The chat feature is a good add to the game, but I dont want to spend my time sorting through a dozen cheaters to get to someone who actually enjoys playing the game.

Yakko Rex about Letterpress – Word Game, v3.1