Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Online at Shuffle iT => Dominion General Discussion => Goko Dominion Online => Topic started by: LibraryAdventurer on March 19, 2014, 11:57:35 am
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I really really hate tournament so I decided not to play with it anymore, but that's kinda hard online when hardly anyone wants to play casual and you can't veto cards in pro.
Yesterday I got a pro game using automatich, saw it had tournament, so I said "Sorry I don't play with tournament" and resigned. Got matched up with the same guy again and he declined the match.
So frustrating that it's so hard to avoid playing with one certain card when playing online... <deleted some whining about being poor here>. Even if I paid to have all sets, I'd never play pro games again to avoid tournament, so it'd be hard to find an opponent because all the better players seem to just play pro.
I don't even know if you can see the kingdom beforehand when playing casual if you use automatch, can you?
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you can't. i really really hate masquerade, but i can't avoid playing with it. so i play with it, and that's that. there should be a veto mode, but there isn't. just deal with it. tournament is fun anyway.
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Honestly, you just roll with it. There is an inherent amount of luck in Dominion. Play enough games and things will even out.
Things like Swindler hitting Copper instead of Estate, getting a 4 Cultist stack to empty the ruins a turn before your opponent, Sea Hagging your opponents Sea Hag, unsupported Turn 5 Treasure Map Collision, Chapel turning up on Turn 5, Opponent getting KC/Mountebank before you, etc...
I could continue this list for the rest of the afternoon. The point is, there is luck in Dominion. Yeah, Tournament is certainly a large culprit but it is not the only culprit. As Adam Horton would say, "You make your own shuffle luck." While that phrase may sound catchy, I would say that you respond to your own shuffle luck. Regardless of what your deck draws you, you can always play a game in such a manner that you maximize your chances of winning. Some games, that percentage is really low due to uncontrollable circumstances but in a lot of games you can still play to the best of your ability and some combination of your own luck or opponents play can bring you back into a game. However you might only get that chance if you take the misfortune in stride and still play your best.
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I really hate tournament, but I still play with it. Usually the games end with me saying, "I hate tournament."
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Stick with it. Tournament is one of the best cards in Dominion. It might be high luck but it also high skill. Like possession, it changes the way a kingdom is played and brings unique strategies into play. Sure, some games can be written off with bad luck, but once you can use tournament with high skill there tend to be far less games with bad luck.
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Stick with it. Tournament is one of the best cards in Dominion. It might be high luck but it also high skill. Like possession, it changes the way a kingdom is played and brings unique strategies into play. Sure, some games can be written off with bad luck, but once you can use tournament with high skill there tend to be far less games with bad luck.
This is both true and false. Referring to my gokodom round 4 game, both my opponent and I went tournament and Tactician to get Prizes. He gets them before me. That's all there is to it. It has huge FPA, especially because they get to pick up a unique and powerful card. So yes you can play Tournament better, there is skill in it. But there is also a lot of luck, and mostly I think the problem is FPA more than anything else with Tournament.
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You know, I'd be a hypocrite if I told you to stick with it. I didn't get Black Market and set up my own games mostly because I don't ever want to play with it.
Full random isn't the only (or even best) way to choose kingdoms in Dominion, and I am not going to fault you for wanting to play particular types of games. I am surprised more people don't play casual or unrated games. Because the market for non-pro 2 player games is thin, your only option is to wait longer. Automatch in Salvager is not very helpful, either.
Last Footnote seems to have a lot of luck finding players for his unrated games (he randomly picks 2 expansions and 5 cards from each -- which I think results in higher quality kingdoms on average than full random). I also have some luck setting up casual three player games. Usually I just play those with friends so I don't have to wait around, but every once in a while I'll wait and play one with strangers.
Having said that, if you don't like Tournament because you are not good with it -- then playing more games may ease the pain.
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Why the heck is everyone projecting these motives on OP for his dislike of tournament? Maybe he is a master of the card, does not think it is high luck, but prefers games with more silver purchases. For all you know. Just because someone's card preferences is different from yours doesn't mean you have to figure out some way they are inferior to you. Goodness. I don't like to play with Feast because it makes me hungry and I end up snacking between games.
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LibraryAdventurer, if you run into me on goko, I will happily let you resign turn 0 on tournament boards and rematch you until we get a board without it.
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Why the heck is everyone projecting these motives on OP for his dislike of tournament? Maybe he is a master of the card, does not think it is high luck, but prefers games with more silver purchases. For all you know. Just because someone's card preferences is different from yours doesn't mean you have to figure out some way they are inferior to you. Goodness. I don't like to play with Feast because it makes me hungry and I end up snacking between games.
I keep confusing it with Tournamine :(
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Why the heck is everyone projecting these motives on OP for his dislike of tournament? Maybe he is a master of the card, does not think it is high luck, but prefers games with more silver purchases. For all you know. Just because someone's card preferences is different from yours doesn't mean you have to figure out some way they are inferior to you. Goodness. I don't like to play with Feast because it makes me hungry and I end up snacking between games.
I keep confusing it with Tournamine :(
It's funny because you replaced Mint with Mine.
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Why the heck is everyone projecting these motives on OP for his dislike of tournament? Maybe he is a master of the card, does not think it is high luck, but prefers games with more silver purchases. For all you know. Just because someone's card preferences is different from yours doesn't mean you have to figure out some way they are inferior to you. Goodness. I don't like to play with Feast because it makes me hungry and I end up snacking between games.
I keep confusing it with Tournamine :(
It's funny because you replaced Mint with Mine.
its funny because you explained a bad joke
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Why the heck is everyone projecting these motives on OP for his dislike of tournament? Maybe he is a master of the card, does not think it is high luck, but prefers games with more silver purchases. For all you know. Just because someone's card preferences is different from yours doesn't mean you have to figure out some way they are inferior to you. Goodness. I don't like to play with Feast because it makes me hungry and I end up snacking between games.
I keep confusing it with Tournamine :(
It's funny because you replaced Mint with Mine.
its funny because you explained a bad joke
"Joke" is a relative word.
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Like, a good joke always pertains to one of the recipient's relatives, for instance, yo mamma.
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Yo momma's so stupid she bought a Feast in order to get a Mint when Tournament was on the board. When she finally did get a Tournament, I had already lined a Province up with Mine.
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Why the heck is everyone projecting these motives on OP for his dislike of tournament? Maybe he is a master of the card, does not think it is high luck, but prefers games with more silver purchases. For all you know. Just because someone's card preferences is different from yours doesn't mean you have to figure out some way they are inferior to you. Goodness. I don't like to play with Feast because it makes me hungry and I end up snacking between games.
I keep confusing it with Tournamine :(
It's funny because you replaced Mint with Mine.
its funny because you explained a bad joke
"Joke" is a relative word.
i laughed.
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Why the heck is everyone projecting these motives on OP for his dislike of tournament? Maybe he is a master of the card, does not think it is high luck, but prefers games with more silver purchases. For all you know. Just because someone's card preferences is different from yours doesn't mean you have to figure out some way they are inferior to you. Goodness. I don't like to play with Feast because it makes me hungry and I end up snacking between games.
I keep confusing it with Tournamine :(
It's funny because you replaced Mint with Mine.
its funny because you explained a bad joke
"Joke" is a relative word.
i laughed.
I cried
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Why the heck is everyone projecting these motives on OP for his dislike of tournament? Maybe he is a master of the card, does not think it is high luck, but prefers games with more silver purchases. For all you know. Just because someone's card preferences is different from yours doesn't mean you have to figure out some way they are inferior to you. Goodness. I don't like to play with Feast because it makes me hungry and I end up snacking between games.
I keep confusing it with Tournamine :(
It's funny because you replaced Mint with Mine.
its funny because you explained a bad joke
"Joke" is a relative word.
i laughed.
I cried
I hurled.
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Why the heck is everyone projecting these motives on OP for his dislike of tournament? Maybe he is a master of the card, does not think it is high luck, but prefers games with more silver purchases. For all you know. Just because someone's card preferences is different from yours doesn't mean you have to figure out some way they are inferior to you. Goodness. I don't like to play with Feast because it makes me hungry and I end up snacking between games.
I keep confusing it with Tournamine :(
It's funny because you replaced Mint with Mine.
its funny because you explained a bad joke
"Joke" is a relative word.
i laughed.
I cried
I hurled.
i noticed that this is the only combination of capitalizing/not capitalizing the i and having/not having the period at the end of the sentence that hasn't been used in this combo yet
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Why the heck is everyone projecting these motives on OP for his dislike of tournament? Maybe he is a master of the card, does not think it is high luck, but prefers games with more silver purchases. For all you know. Just because someone's card preferences is different from yours doesn't mean you have to figure out some way they are inferior to you. Goodness. I don't like to play with Feast because it makes me hungry and I end up snacking between games.
I keep confusing it with Tournamine :(
It's funny because you replaced Mint with Mine.
its funny because you explained a bad joke
"Joke" is a relative word.
i laughed.
I cried
I hurled.
i noticed that this is the only combination of capitalizing/not capitalizing the i and having/not having the period at the end of the sentence that hasn't been used in this combo yet
i dIsagree.
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It is true, that you make your own shuffle luck (+1 to shark bait for the shout out :D )
One of my favorite things about Dominion is that all opportunities are available to each player. It's not like Magic or something where one guy could have spent a bunch of money on a card that gives him a huge advantage. Cards like Tournament, Black Market, and Knights are cards I don't play with for this reason.
On Goko, I never bought Black Market because I don't like playing with it. When a kingdom comes up with Tournament or Knights in it, if I'm playing with someone I know IRL we'll just agree not to buy the card. Otherwise I'll just suck it up and play the game. Yeah I feel a little dirty and it's not really fun for me but it's a Pro game.
Pro games are very well-defined in that they are full-random where people can't see the kingdom before the game starts, etc. People expect a very particular thing when they play pro games and if you don't want exactly that, then don't play pro games. It would be nice if they would allow what you asked for in casual/unrated games (without the extension).
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I would be fine with playing casual games if it told you when you looked at the game how someone picked the cards (i.e. it would display all the requirements they used for kingdom generation). You could see if someone had hand-picked a kingdom, selected a combo, or just done full random minus three cards they don't like). It's not really that I think full random is the only way to play dominion, but like AdamH said, the symmetry is one of my favorite things about the game, so I don't really want to play a kingdom someone cherrypicked so they could exploit a specific combo.
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I would be fine with playing casual games if it told you when you looked at the game how someone picked the cards (i.e. it would display all the requirements they used for kingdom generation). You could see if someone had hand-picked a kingdom, selected a combo, or just done full random minus three cards they don't like). It's not really that I think full random is the only way to play dominion, but like AdamH said, the symmetry is one of my favorite things about the game, so I don't really want to play a kingdom someone cherrypicked so they could exploit a specific combo.
So, about this. I used to have a little web-app that generated strings like "5 Seaside, 5 Intrigue". But sometimes I would get a cool setup and my opponent would just time out at the start of the game. I wanted to play that board! But I can't get it back. So I changed the app and now it actually picks all 10 cards. So by your criteria it looks like a cherry picked Kingdom when really it's randomized.
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I would be fine with playing casual games if it told you when you looked at the game how someone picked the cards (i.e. it would display all the requirements they used for kingdom generation). You could see if someone had hand-picked a kingdom, selected a combo, or just done full random minus three cards they don't like). It's not really that I think full random is the only way to play dominion, but like AdamH said, the symmetry is one of my favorite things about the game, so I don't really want to play a kingdom someone cherrypicked so they could exploit a specific combo.
So, about this. I used to have a little web-app that generated strings like "5 Seaside, 5 Intrigue". But sometimes I would get a cool setup and my opponent would just time out at the start of the game. I wanted to play that board! But I can't get it back. So I changed the app and now it actually picks all 10 cards. So by your criteria it looks like a cherry picked Kingdom when really it's randomized.
See in my ideal world, goko would actually have a built in kingdom generator and that's where this info would be coming from
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See in my ideal world, goko would actually have a built in kingdom generator and that's where this info would be coming from
Sure, but even that's not foolproof. A person could just randomize Prosperity/Intrigue kingdoms until they got Masq/KC/Goons, for example. The real solution here is the blacklist.
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How would people feel about a short banned cards list for Pro games? Let's say you can pick three cards, and those won't be picked in Pro games you play, whether you generate the game or someone else does.
I think it's important that people not feel punished for say buying Cornucopia. In casual games of course you should be able to ban cards you picked from being used in games you generate, rather than having to generate a new list until you get a good one. And obv. you should be able to say "5 from Seaside" and so on.
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How would people feel about a short banned cards list for Pro games? Let's say you can pick three cards, and those won't be picked in Pro games you play, whether you generate the game or someone else does.
I think it's important that people not feel punished for say buying Cornucopia. In casual games of course you should be able to ban cards you picked from being used in games you generate, rather than having to generate a new list until you get a good one. And obv. you should be able to say "5 from Seaside" and so on.
This idea to ban cards from consideration in generating the Kingdom seems like a great implementation of an optional "veto mode."
For example, the host of a pro game might choose whether the Kingdom will be generated according to "veto mode" (and this is a visible characteristic of the game). If so, each player's list of (up to) three cards won't be included in the Kingdom (and when the game starts it should list which cards each player vetoed). Then a tournament's rules might require no veto mode, for example.
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How would people feel about a short banned cards list for Pro games? Let's say you can pick three cards, and those won't be picked in Pro games you play, whether you generate the game or someone else does.
I think it's important that people not feel punished for say buying Cornucopia. In casual games of course you should be able to ban cards you picked from being used in games you generate, rather than having to generate a new list until you get a good one. And obv. you should be able to say "5 from Seaside" and so on.
Rather than 3, how about 1 per set you own? I think it's fine to want to ban upwards of 1 in 20 cards, but potentially problematic to ban, say, Village, Festival, and Throne Room in Base-only games. Or Militia, Witch, Thief. Etc.
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This idea to ban cards from consideration in generating the Kingdom seems like a great implementation of an optional "veto mode."
For example, the host of a pro game might choose whether the Kingdom will be generated according to "veto mode" (and this is a visible characteristic of the game). If so, each player's list of (up to) three cards won't be included in the Kingdom. Then a tournament's rules might require no veto mode, for example.
I'm not sure it would even to need to be an option, or that it causes issues with tournaments. For sure if it doesn't cause issues it should be allowed in tournaments.
The most extreme way to game the system is probably to not buy any expansions, and ban say Witch, Chapel, and Gardens. Then practice that mix a lot. I dunno, I'm not scared of that guy.
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Rather than 3, how about 1 per set you own? I think it's fine to want to ban upwards of 1 in 20 cards, but potentially problematic to ban, say, Village, Festival, and Throne Room in Base-only games. Or Militia, Witch, Thief. Etc.
Well it sounds reasonable, but where do the commonly hated cards fall? I can see some people really wanting to nuke more than one Intrigue or Dark Ages card.
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Rather than 3, how about 1 per set you own? I think it's fine to want to ban upwards of 1 in 20 cards, but potentially problematic to ban, say, Village, Festival, and Throne Room in Base-only games. Or Militia, Witch, Thief. Etc.
But wait, there's more.
Let's say you got to ban one card per 20 cards you owned, but could ban them from any mix of sets. That addresses "but I hate two Dark Ages cards" and also "don't let some jerk be the base set expert." But does it bother you that people who own more cards get to ban more cards?
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What if you could make a list of cards you want to ban in order from most to least important, and the number of cards you ban depends on the number of sets the host owns?
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Rather than 3, how about 1 per set you own? I think it's fine to want to ban upwards of 1 in 20 cards, but potentially problematic to ban, say, Village, Festival, and Throne Room in Base-only games. Or Militia, Witch, Thief. Etc.
Both players should be able to ban one or more cards for a pro game veto mode, but it is only clear how this description applies to the person creating the game (e.g., if the person joining the game hasn't bought any cards, they should still get an equal opportunity to veto).
I could imagine a more complicated veto mode along the lines of what you're describing here as follows: the host of a game can activate Veto Mode (X cards), where X can't be greater than, for example, the number of sets they own. Then each player has a list of potentially banned cards and it takes the first X from that list as the banned cards.
I'm not sure it would even to need to be an option, or that it causes issues with tournaments. For sure if it doesn't cause issues it should be allowed in tournaments.
Someone who really likes a commonly banned card (let's follow this thread and suppose it is Tournament) might not want to play veto mode because that card will never show up.
Well it sounds reasonable, but where do the commonly hated cards fall? I can see some people really wanting to nuke more than one Intrigue or Dark Ages card.
I think LastFootnote meant that you can ban 1 card for each set that you own, but you can distribute those banned cards however you want across those sets (if you own base and Dark Ages you can ban Cultist and Rebuild, for example).
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I think you should be able to veto cards for several zaps per card, with an exponential amount going up
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I'm not a fan of veto mode. But, allowing pre-banned cards sounds okay. But, to be honest, I would rather there be an outright ban list that the majority agree on and not banned just because people hate playing the card but ban the card because the card actually causes to many unbalanced games like Tournament, for instance.
However, more than a banned list, what I think would benefit pro games the most is the ability to start with identical hands. I think a large problem with a lot of cards is that one player gets 5/2 and the other gets 3/4. This is very problematic with Cultist games where one person is likely to win the ruins split 8-2 and also Mountebank for instance and Rebuild. These cards would not be as powerful if each player got the same starting hands. Tournament though would still remain pretty random as would Black Market.
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How would people feel about a short banned cards list for Pro games? Let's say you can pick three cards, and those won't be picked in Pro games you play, whether you generate the game or someone else does.
I think it's important that people not feel punished for say buying Cornucopia. In casual games of course you should be able to ban cards you picked from being used in games you generate, rather than having to generate a new list until you get a good one. And obv. you should be able to say "5 from Seaside" and so on.
This is the conundrum.
I actually applaud the idea of pro games being something very specific and the same for everyone (the "full" Dominion experience). But, because you can simply not buy cards/set, that ideal is not realized. If this is not impacting sales, I would advocate no change.
I would prefer a very limited card black list to a veto mode if I had to choose between the two adjustments to pro games. I am anti-veto mode for pro games, for sure.
Rather than changing pro, I would prefer adjustments elsewhere to encourage more unrated or casual games and thus justify the difference. For instance,
- allow users to deselect cards for unrated/casual games via My Cards
- allow users to hide the kingdom if it is uniformly randomly generated in casual/unrated with "few" card restrictions ("pro" without the impact to the pro ranking)
- allow variants such as veto mode, same starting hands, and point counter for casual/unrated games
If you allow too much variability in the type of games that can be played as "pro" then the rating doesn't mean that much.
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Rather than 3, how about 1 per set you own?
That would be 9. Allowing, for example, to ban nearly half of the villages if I'm about to play a tournament match against a better player, making BM boards way more likely.
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I could imagine a more complicated veto mode along the lines of what you're describing here as follows: the host of a game can activate Veto Mode (X cards), where X can't be greater than, for example, the number of sets they own. Then each player has a list of potentially banned cards and it takes the first X from that list as the banned cards.
Well for sure "less complicated" is better.
Someone who really likes a commonly banned card (let's follow this thread and suppose it is Tournament) might not want to play veto mode because that card will never show up.
I don't imagine anything will reach saturation point, but you can just force a card in casual (let's say if you try to join that game and have banned that card, it alerts you).
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Is Rebuild actually good to get on 5/2? It seems like no silvers would hurt your ability to buy more rebuilds... I mean, you want rebuild early... but THAT early?
I guess it depends on what your other options are, but I think regardless, I would not be excited about opening Rebuild/nothing to my opponent's silver/silver.
I'm not a fan of veto mode. But, allowing pre-banned cards sounds okay. But, to be honest, I would rather there be an outright ban list that the majority agree on and not banned just because people hate playing the card but ban the card because the card actually causes to many unbalanced games like Tournament, for instance.
However, more than a banned list, what I think would benefit pro games the most is the ability to start with identical hands. I think a large problem with a lot of cards is that one player gets 5/2 and the other gets 3/4. This is very problematic with Cultist games where one person is likely to win the ruins split 8-2 and also Mountebank for instance and Rebuild. These cards would not be as powerful if each player got the same starting hands. Tournament though would still remain pretty random as would Black Market.
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Someone who really likes a commonly banned card (let's follow this thread and suppose it is Tournament) might not want to play veto mode because that card will never show up.
I don't imagine anything will reach saturation point, but you can just force a card in casual (let's say if you try to join that game and have banned that card, it alerts you).
There are also people who just don't like the idea of a card-blacklist veto mode for pro games (Polk5440 expresses this viewpoint above). If veto mode exists they might prefer to play games without it.
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How would people feel about a short banned cards list for Pro games? Let's say you can pick three cards, and those won't be picked in Pro games you play, whether you generate the game or someone else does.
I'm wary of the proposed mode for two reasons:
- It reduces card variety. I like Possession. Lots of people don't. With this mode, lots of people will put Possession on their ban list, and I'll be playing with that card a lot less, meaning less variety for me.
- The player joining the game can prevent the host from using the cards the host paid for. I bought Black Market because I like the card. I'll be sad if I play with it significantly less because of game joiners putting it on their ban list.
That said, if the number of cards allowed on the ban list is small enough, then hopefully different players' ban lists won't overlap too much, so the bans won't make too big an impact on the distribution of cards the opponent sees. Maybe 3 is small enough.
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I'm not a fan of veto mode. But, allowing pre-banned cards sounds okay. But, to be honest, I would rather there be an outright ban list that the majority agree on and not banned just because people hate playing the card but ban the card because the card actually causes to many unbalanced games like Tournament, for instance.
There is no chance of a global banned list.
However, more than a banned list, what I think would benefit pro games the most is the ability to start with identical hands. I think a large problem with a lot of cards is that one player gets 5/2 and the other gets 3/4. This is very problematic with Cultist games where one person is likely to win the ruins split 8-2 and also Mountebank for instance and Rebuild. These cards would not be as powerful if each player got the same starting hands. Tournament though would still remain pretty random as would Black Market.
If turn-one Cultist wins the Ruins split 7-3 I think I am still in that game. That's my experience. Aside from cases where I can counter with Sea Hag or whatever. And if you haven't beaten turn one Mountebank you're missing out. It's pretty sweet.
I would not be optimistic about an "identical starting hands" feature, because I personally don't like it. I have nonidentical starting hands because that's better, which is not synonymous with "most skill-testing." When your opponent gets the favorable split in a game, whichever one it is for that game, remember, per aspera ad astra. You only get the joy of winning against the odds if you are sometimes put in the position of needing to. We already have Serf Bot for people who don't ever want a challenge. That's right.
I know many people absolutely adore Tournament and Black Market. I am just mentioning this as they get tossed around as game-ruiners. They are not stopping the top players from topping the leaderboard either; somehow, the good players do well despite the existence of these cards, despite nonidentical starting hands, despite sometimes your opening two buys are on the bottom.
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If you allow too much variability in the type of games that can be played as "pro" then the rating doesn't mean that much.
I'm not worried about that. I think the key concept for pro games is not being able to game the system (obv. you can play vs. yourself to inflate your rating and well that should be fixed too). Banning 3 cards seems sufficiently small (except in the no-purchases situation) that I don't think it's messing things up; yes, people will try to game the system with it (I am bad with Duke, ban Duke, I hate Minion but I do fine with it, leave it in), but I think it leaves ratings essentially just as meaningful. While making the game more fun for some people, which is the whole point.
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Rather than 3, how about 1 per set you own?
That would be 9. Allowing, for example, to ban nearly half of the villages if I'm about to play a tournament match against a better player, making BM boards way more likely.
Yes, that's a good example of 9-10 being too many.
How about: you can ban any 3 cards... but only from expansions. Yes some people would be sad they couldn't ban Chapel, but you know, this seems kind of direct. You don't need to worry about buying Cornucopia being bad for you, you can ban Tournament. You can't ban cards from the main set, but you didn't buy that one. If you have no sets you can't ban anything, but we aren't saying "buy something if you want to ban something." The worst case now is buying just a small set and banning 3 cards from it.
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I'm wary of the proposed mode for two reasons:
- It reduces card variety. I like Possession. Lots of people don't. With this mode, lots of people will put Possession on their ban list, and I'll be playing with that card a lot less, meaning less variety for me.
- The player joining the game can prevent the host from using the cards the host paid for. I bought Black Market because I like the card. I'll be sad if I play with it significantly less because of game joiners putting it on their ban list.
That said, if the number of cards allowed on the ban list is small enough, then hopefully different players' ban lists won't overlap too much, so the bans won't make too big an impact on the distribution of cards the opponent sees. Maybe 3 is small enough.
You are right about Possession. I wouldn't describe it so much as "less variety for me" - yes, that's what it is, but if you have 200 cards, you have plenty of variety. But you miss out on that particular experience. A few cards would be chosen especially often and so you wouldn't see those cards much (although you could force them in casual games and see if someone would play with you).
Let's say we're playing IRL. You come over to my house and I deal out cards from my personal collection and there's Black Market. And you say "oh man I don't want to play with that clearly awesome card." I think odds are I say "okay, no problem, let's be friendly." I am just trying to work through the logic of "I started the game but someone else can nix a card." I'm not going to make you suffer through a game with a card you hate, so that I can have the joy of playing with it. Of course IRL you would be bitching about it all game. But you know, it's part of the game that we play with the cards we want to, and that "we" includes everyone. The only reason to not just let you pick a particular 10 for Pro mode is again the "gaming the system" issue that Pro mode specifically exists to address.
If a card was sufficiently hated, like Mob (a Prosperity outtake), it didn't make the expansion, and you never got to play with it.
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I would like something with an organic feel to it. Something like this:
"You may pick up to 15 unfavorite cards. You may pick up to 45 favorite cards.
Whenever one of your unfavorite cards would be selected as a non-bane card for the kingdom, it is swapped out at random with one of your opponent's favorite cards."
By default, your account has 0 unfavorite cards. By default, you have 45 favorite cards you may not have even looked at, but Donald can pick them out so they are pretty average, good, happy well rounded batch of cards. Unfavoriting the max number of cards has the strategic disadvantage of letting your opponent play with his favorite cards more often. It's impossible that your unfavorites completely make kingdom selection impossible because there are more favorites than non-favorites.
To me this seems like a nifty way of simulating, "please, I don't want to play a game with Boardwalk. It's not that I'm bad with Boardwalk and want an edge. In fact, you can pick whatever it is your heart desires to replace the boardwalk"
Which sorta happens at actual kitchen tables.
Humble suggestion
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I'm not a fan of veto mode. But, allowing pre-banned cards sounds okay. But, to be honest, I would rather there be an outright ban list that the majority agree on and not banned just because people hate playing the card but ban the card because the card actually causes to many unbalanced games like Tournament, for instance.
There is no chance of a global banned list.
However, more than a banned list, what I think would benefit pro games the most is the ability to start with identical hands. I think a large problem with a lot of cards is that one player gets 5/2 and the other gets 3/4. This is very problematic with Cultist games where one person is likely to win the ruins split 8-2 and also Mountebank for instance and Rebuild. These cards would not be as powerful if each player got the same starting hands. Tournament though would still remain pretty random as would Black Market.
If turn-one Cultist wins the Ruins split 7-3 I think I am still in that game. That's my experience. Aside from cases where I can counter with Sea Hag or whatever. And if you haven't beaten turn one Mountebank you're missing out. It's pretty sweet.
I would not be optimistic about an "identical starting hands" feature, because I personally don't like it. I have nonidentical starting hands because that's better, which is not synonymous with "most skill-testing." When your opponent gets the favorable split in a game, whichever one it is for that game, remember, per aspera ad astra. You only get the joy of winning against the odds if you are sometimes put in the position of needing to. We already have Serf Bot for people who don't ever want a challenge. That's right.
I know many people absolutely adore Tournament and Black Market. I am just mentioning this as they get tossed around as game-ruiners. They are not stopping the top players from topping the leaderboard either; somehow, the good players do well despite the existence of these cards, despite nonidentical starting hands, despite sometimes your opening two buys are on the bottom.
I understand that you designed the differing starting hands for a reason. But, I don't think winning against "the odds" is skill testing. If you have two opponents of nearly identical rank. Chances are the one of the better opening split is going to win. This will be further compounded if that player also had the advantage of going first. And, I don't think comparing this situation to "serf bot" is correct. A lot of people on these forums play pro mode because they want the most unbiased gaming experience. Having identical starting hands makes the game less biased towards one player.
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I'm not a fan of veto mode. But, allowing pre-banned cards sounds okay. But, to be honest, I would rather there be an outright ban list that the majority agree on and not banned just because people hate playing the card but ban the card because the card actually causes to many unbalanced games like Tournament, for instance.
There is no chance of a global banned list.
However, more than a banned list, what I think would benefit pro games the most is the ability to start with identical hands. I think a large problem with a lot of cards is that one player gets 5/2 and the other gets 3/4. This is very problematic with Cultist games where one person is likely to win the ruins split 8-2 and also Mountebank for instance and Rebuild. These cards would not be as powerful if each player got the same starting hands. Tournament though would still remain pretty random as would Black Market.
If turn-one Cultist wins the Ruins split 7-3 I think I am still in that game. That's my experience. Aside from cases where I can counter with Sea Hag or whatever. And if you haven't beaten turn one Mountebank you're missing out. It's pretty sweet.
I would not be optimistic about an "identical starting hands" feature, because I personally don't like it. I have nonidentical starting hands because that's better, which is not synonymous with "most skill-testing." When your opponent gets the favorable split in a game, whichever one it is for that game, remember, per aspera ad astra. You only get the joy of winning against the odds if you are sometimes put in the position of needing to. We already have Serf Bot for people who don't ever want a challenge. That's right.
I know many people absolutely adore Tournament and Black Market. I am just mentioning this as they get tossed around as game-ruiners. They are not stopping the top players from topping the leaderboard either; somehow, the good players do well despite the existence of these cards, despite nonidentical starting hands, despite sometimes your opening two buys are on the bottom.
I understand that you designed the differing starting hands for a reason. But, I don't think winning against "the odds" is skill testing. If you have two opponents of nearly identical rank. Chances are the one of the better opening split is going to win. This will be further compounded if that player also had the advantage of going first. And, I don't think comparing this situation to "serf bot" is correct. A lot of people on these forums play pro mode because they want the most unbiased gaming experience. Having identical starting hands makes the game less biased towards one player.
I used to play identical starting hands, and I think that's fine is casual mode. But very often $5 card/nothing opening isn't that amazing, even on a Mountebank board (It's very good, but far from unbeatable).
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I understand that you designed the differing starting hands for a reason.
Excellent.
But, I don't think winning against "the odds" is skill testing.
I don't know why you're saying this. It definitely tests skill. I imagine you are just repeating that "luck makes who-wins less indicative of who-played-better." I addressed that, with respect to opening hands, in the post you are replying to - the nonidentical hands are *not* there to test skill. That is not their point. The most skill-testing game is not the most fun game.
If you have two opponents of nearly identical rank. Chances are the one of the better opening split is going to win. This will be further compounded if that player also had the advantage of going first.
Are you saying that playing better isn't relevant? It's relevant. If you're saying "if we subtract skill, luck remains," that isn't really saying much.
A lot of people on these forums play pro mode because they want the most unbiased gaming experience. Having identical starting hands makes the game less biased towards one player.
The point to Pro mode is to have games where people aren't gaming the system. We want you to be able to pick what cards you want to play with, but recognize that you can cheat this way; so there's Pro mode. The point isn't to reduce luck; I have no interest in a "reduced luck" mode.
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"You may pick up to 15 unfavorite cards. You may pick up to 45 favorite cards.
I think it would be okay to let people mark cards as favorite/unfavorite for casual, and pick them more/less often. I am not sure how many people would go to the trouble; I am thinking, it would be late enough on the list of potential features to never add. For Pro mode I would like something that involves much less work.
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a post with some probably relevant (pre-dark ages) data:
A comment in the "optimizing your level" thread prompted me to look at logs from the first couple days of veto mode:
6353 games with veto
422 Saboteur 96 Navigator 43 Apprentice
420 Possession 92 Stash 42 Venture
411 Sea Hag 90 Horn of Plenty 42 Remodel
384 Young Witch 85 Secret Chamber 42 Quarry
364 Witch 84 Outpost 42 Island
357 Mountebank 82 Forge 41 Library
324 Pirate Ship 76 RANDOM 40 Moneylender
302 Familiar 76 Adventurer 39 Royal Seal
301 Swindler 75 Coppersmith 38 Woodcutter
298 Torturer 73 Envoy 37 Conspirator
295 Tournament 71 Ironworks 36 Council Room
284 Ghost Ship 71 Expand 35 Salvager
277 Goons 71 Baron 35 Lighthouse
268 Treasure Map 68 Spy 35 Laboratory
264 Minion 68 Bishop 34 Pearl Diver
247 Militia 67 Moat 33 Trading Post
242 Thief 66 Hoard 33 Harem
205 Ambassador 64 Bank 33 Great Hall
190 Smugglers 63 Harvest 32 Warehouse
188 Black Market 62 Horse Traders 32 Monument
183 Alchemist 61 Explorer 29 Walled Village
168 Gardens 60 Remake 28 Merchant Ship
159 Embargo 59 Wishing Well 27 Wharf
152 Jester 59 Loan 26 Haven
148 Scrying Pool 58 City 25 Hamlet
146 Chapel 57 Lookout 25 Cellar
140 King's Court 56 Trade Route 24 Mine
137 Golem 56 Grand Market 24 Caravan
137 Duke 54 Throne Room 22 Courtyard
132 Masquerade 54 Feast 21 Steward
131 University 54 Bridge 21 Pawn
128 Cutpurse 53 Peddler 20 Upgrade
123 Bureaucrat 52 Nobles 20 Menagerie
117 Chancellor 49 Scout 20 Fishing Village
112 Fortune Teller 49 Hunting Party 19 Shanty Town
110 Rabble 48 Workshop 18 Farming Village
108 Apothecary 48 Vault 17 Worker's Village
106 Transmute 48 Tribute 17 Mining Village
105 Tactician 47 Native Village 15 Smithy
104 Philosopher's Stone 47 Mint 14 Village
103 Vineyard 47 Herbalist 14 Festival
102 Counting House 46 Talisman 11 Bazaar
100 Contraband 45 Treasury 9 Market
97 Fairgrounds 43 Watchtower
No real surprises here: people dislike attacks and like villages.Note that "RANDOM" is the option (added this morning) to have it
randomly select a card to veto for you, for people who don't care.
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Goko should always have given the option whether to play with each of your expansions or not. If you want to play intrigue+alchemy then you should be able to play just intrigue+alchemy, if you've bought the sets. To my mind this solves some of the problems mentioned in this thread and gives wider benefits as well.
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My memory of veto mode is being annoyed that people would always veto the most fun cards. In my opinion, some of the most fun cards are in the left-hand column.
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How would people feel about a short banned cards list for Pro games? Let's say you can pick three cards, and those won't be picked in Pro games you play, whether you generate the game or someone else does.
This would make me very happy.
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Goko should always have given the option whether to play with each of your expansions or not. If you want to play intrigue+alchemy then you should be able to play just intrigue+alchemy, if you've bought the sets. To my mind this solves some of the problems mentioned in this thread and gives wider benefits as well.
Well I think this is reasonable, it should totally, but at the same time I don't want it to be "don't buy Cornucopia, you will never play with it because you hate Tournament."
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I think veto mode should just be an option. If people like it, have veto mode. If people don't, don't have it.
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However, more than a banned list, what I think would benefit pro games the most is the ability to start with identical hands.
What could conceivably be done - and you-all could trial run this on Goko Salvager and see what it actually did - is, to have no changes to the games themselves, but have additional leaderboards that factor in whatever. A leaderboard for games where you went first, a leaderboard for games where you went second; a leaderboard for games where the opening split was the same.
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My memory of veto mode is being annoyed that people would always veto the most fun cards. In my opinion, some of the most fun cards are in the left-hand column.
I agree, and certainly don't want isotropic-style veto mode.
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I really, really think there should be a veto mode. it's such an obvious way to make the game more fun for the majority of people playing, and that's what should be the main goal.
How about: you can ban any 3 cards... but only from expansions. Yes some people would be sad they couldn't ban Chapel, but you know, this seems kind of direct. You don't need to worry about buying Cornucopia being bad for you, you can ban Tournament. You can't ban cards from the main set, but you didn't buy that one. If you have no sets you can't ban anything, but we aren't saying "buy something if you want to ban something." The worst case now is buying just a small set and banning 3 cards from it.
This wouldn't be my favorite way of doing it, but it's a way which makes it very hard not to prefer it over how things are now. So, you can buy the smallest expansion and then ban 3 cards. First of all: who would really do this, and secondly, even doing that doesn't really accomplish anything. I don't see anyone getting a significnatly higher rating because he does it, and even if someone got 200 points more because of it, what's the big deal. No ones life was ruined.
You can't ban chapel; well you couldn't ban chapel without a veto mode either. You don't get to play with certain cards; well just make the bans count only for games that you created. If it's important to you to have all cards included, create games yourself. If it's important to you to veto cards, create games yourself. If you don't care, do whatever you want. I just don't understand the decision not to implement somehting like this, in some way or another.
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I agree, and certainly don't want isotropic-style veto mode.
I think the real problem, at least in Pro, is that choosing what to veto (iso-style) becomes part of the game. And since it is not part of "Dominion", choosing strategically can even be considered gaming the system. Maybe vetoing before knowing who will be first and second player reduces that, but still.
I liked veto mode in iso, but for letting people avoiding particular cards, I think many other ideas, including many already mentioned, are way better.
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I adore Black Market, love Goons and Ambassador, like Tournament and Possession and don't mind Rebuild.
People forcing me to not play with cards I like in a pro game I host with sets I bought is completely unacceptable.
Edit: I'd be happy with a system where you can specify a number of cards you'd rather play without (as many as you want), and those cards won't appear in a game if and only if both you and your opponent have them on their ban list.
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I adore Black Market, love Goons and Ambassador, like Tournament and Possession and don't mind Rebuild.
People forcing me to not play with cards I like in a pro game I host with sets I bought is completely unacceptable.
Edit: I'd be happy with a system where you can specify a number of cards you'd rather play without (as many as you want), and those cards won't appear in a game if and only if both you and your opponent have them on their ban list.
What about if you can pick 3 cards to be banned in veto mode, and veto mode is optional, and it turns out that most people use it?
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What about if you can pick 3 cards to be banned in veto mode, and veto mode is optional, and it turns out that most people use it?
Presumably the host of each game would decide whether the game will use veto mode, so even if veto mode is typically used people who don't want to use veto mode can just host their own games.
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What about if you can pick 3 cards to be banned in veto mode, and veto mode is optional, and it turns out that most people use it?
Presumably the host of each game would decide whether the game will use veto mode, so even if veto mode is typically used people who don't want to use veto mode can just host their own games.
Yes, that's what you would do, but the people who "use it" who didn't start the game, aren't joining your game. They are getting matched against someone who allows veto mode.
I'm not saying this is awful; I'm asking how awful it is.
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I adore Black Market, love Goons and Ambassador, like Tournament and Possession and don't mind Rebuild.
People forcing me to not play with cards I like in a pro game I host with sets I bought is completely unacceptable.
Edit: I'd be happy with a system where you can specify a number of cards you'd rather play without (as many as you want), and those cards won't appear in a game if and only if both you and your opponent have them on their ban list.
What about if you can pick 3 cards to be banned in veto mode, and veto mode is optional, and it turns out that most people use it?
That would be alot better than forced veto mode, though I'd still prefer a system in which it's possible (without some complicated preparations) for two people who both prefer not to play with IGG to do so without their unshared preferences being enforced as well. What about two modes: one that takes the intersection of the ban-lists, and another that takes their union?
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What about two modes
Yes! Let's call one "pro" and one "casual"!
While it's nice to hear Goko/Making Fun may be interested in improving the client, I'll be honest; tweaking how pro works or adding additional randomizer options (like veto or by expansion) for casual mode can't be even in the top 10 of things they should be working on.
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That would be alot better than forced veto mode, though I'd still prefer a system in which it's possible (without some complicated preparations) for two people who both prefer not to play with IGG to do so without their unshared preferences being enforced as well. What about two modes: one that takes the intersection of the ban-lists, and another that takes their union?
That sounds good, I mean if neither (or all N) of them wants to play with the card, we shouldn't try to force them. It's still just two possibilities and you can always not pick your 3 cards.
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Yes! Let's call one "pro" and one "casual"!
While it's nice to hear Goko/Making Fun may be interested in improving the client, I'll be honest; tweaking how pro works or adding additional randomizer options (like veto or by expansion) for casual mode can't be even in the top 10 of things they should be working on.
Well Making Fun haven't said anything on this topic to me; I'm just talking in a thread someone made as a cry for help.
Sure there are higher priority things. That doesn't really change the discussion. When they are working on matchmaking, this will be an issue, and the latest suggestion sounds like a good approach. Just don't pick 3 cards, pick the "only if we both hate it" option, and then the only change for you will be people not playing you who don't like that.
Again to me pro/casual is all about "it would be great to just let you pick cards any which way, but people would game that system, so here's a mode that hasn't been gamed." [Except for people playing against themselves which is a separate issue and anyway only relevant for the leaderboard.]
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Pro mode is one of the things Goko made better than Iso. I really like that. No stupid veto modes please! I hate any system which forces me not to play with some cards.
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Pro mode is one of the things Goko made better than Iso. I really like that. No stupid veto modes please! I hate any system which forces me not to play with some cards.
Nobody would force you to use the veto mode.
Also, I would definitely like a system that would let me play without Lighthouse and Moat.
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Pro mode is one of the things Goko made better than Iso. I really like that. No stupid veto modes please! I hate any system which forces me not to play with some cards.
Nobody would force you to use the veto mode.
Yes but only if I avoid playing against veto-only people.
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Pro mode is one of the things Goko made better than Iso. I really like that. No stupid veto modes please! I hate any system which forces me not to play with some cards.
Nobody would force you to use the veto mode.
Yes but only if I avoid playing against veto-only people.
Well, the same is true for the VP tracker and it's still a nice thing to have around.
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Well Making Fun haven't said anything on this topic to me; I'm just talking in a thread someone made as a cry for help.
So do you know (and can you share) anything about MF's plans for the client?
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Yes! Let's call one "pro" and one "casual"!
While it's nice to hear Goko/Making Fun may be interested in improving the client, I'll be honest; tweaking how pro works or adding additional randomizer options (like veto or by expansion) for casual mode can't be even in the top 10 of things they should be working on.
Well Making Fun haven't said anything on this topic to me; I'm just talking in a thread someone made as a cry for help.
Ah; gotcha.
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Nobody would force you to use the veto mode.
Yes but only if I avoid playing against veto-only people.
Obv. it would have to be built into the matchmaking. So yes, you wouldn't be playing against veto-only people, but, provided the non-veto-only people existed, you wouldn't be doing any work to do so.
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So do you know (and can you share) anything about MF's plans for the client?
I think they are basically going to do everything that everyone would say they ought to, which obv. should include everything goko salvager does (unless it does some weird thing I don't know about). The short term goal is not to have problems, such as the lag thing which they are sure is a bug rather than anything to do with the amount of communication; the long term goal is to have a product capable of attracting enough players to actually make money (and, to attract those players).
I have been promised the fixed campaigns as I pitched them in the relatively short term. Again, I recommend not grinding for promos if you haven't yet. I certainly expect matchmaking and things you might find at a competent site, like a friends list and blocked list. I okay'd a VP counter for when that time comes. I expect achievements eventually.
I have no timetable, and they wouldn't want to share that anyway, in case problems came up. I have no idea what will happen with the other games Goko had done and the many other games Goko was planning to do.
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Re: There's no skill in games where early luck deals very different start hands:
There's definitely LOTS of skill here. I think a big part of why top players are top players is that they play much better from behind (and weaker players don't slam the door as well as they should). This (http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140308/log.516d321ae4b082c74d7b345d.1394280148763.txt) is just one of many examples of games I win where I had no business in being competitive. On the other hand, there's no denying that this kind of thing can even out percentages, effectively increasing the percentage of the game which is luck vs skill. Which, though Donald may not have a problem with, some people really do. Ultimately, though, to me, the problem I have with identical starting hands is that it is so inelegant - the opening split doesn't have so disproportionately more impact than first shuffle split or whatever, and you have this very artificial-feeling constraint. Because you can't have the same kind of mechanics you do without having some kind of luck at some point. It is a structural part of the game. So this is part of why I really support resignation rights - if you really feel that far behind, just resign. And if that happens so often for you, play a different game.
As for all the other stuff, one thing I don't want is a very splintered ruleset. Some people playing veto, some playing full random, some playing with partial ban cards - all of this is worse to me than any one of those options individually. I feel similarly actually about the ban mode - we are all playing slightly different variations. Of course, the thing isn't set up how I'd like now anyway, what with different set ownership being a bigger determination right now, as well as counting 2 player, 3 player, 4 player, etc. all on the same rating pool :o But in any case, the big thing is, what is this supposed to be? And the problem is that people don't agree. And who should decide what it is is equally unclear. Donald is talking a lot about "well, but you shouldn't be able to game the system that's the only point of pro mode" (I use quotes here, but I'm actually paraphrasing - hopefully this is clear; and I will definitely change that if Donald feels it's a misrepresentation of his position). But the thing is, not everyone agrees that this is what pro mode is about. And moreover, there's REALLY no agreement on what's considered 'gaming' of the system. I basically see no qualitative difference between the suggestions are getting floated about, veto mode, and selective set buying/promo earning, at least in terms of system-gaming. And as authoritative as his tone is, I don't see why Donald's opinion would be the one that gets all the clout here. It matters, for sure. But I don't see why it should more than Stef's or Theory's or the OP here, or really anyone else. And I don't see why theirs counts more than his or each other's either.
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I wouldn't be a fan of a small list of cards a player can ban, but wouldn't oppose such a thing either.
Regarding "same opening splits", I really don't see the point of adding it for laddr play where luck will ultimately even out. I'd be ok with using it in tournament series of limited length.
Would there be a problem to disallowing players that don't own all sets from hosting pro games? That would prevent gaming the system in this way.
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Would there be a problem to disallowing players that don't own all sets from hosting pro games?
Yes, there most certainly would. I have bought two sets and they would be useless for me if I was suddenly disallowed from hosting pro games.
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You could still host casual games and I don't think anything that is significantly different from a randomly generated kingdom from all cards should count towards the pro leaderboard (because playing good in another environment is a different skillset)
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As for all the other stuff, one thing I don't want is a very splintered ruleset. Some people playing veto, some playing full random, some playing with partial ban cards - all of this is worse to me than any one of those options individually. I feel similarly actually about the ban mode - we are all playing slightly different variations.
I agree that there shouldn't be too many options - I don't want it to be, I required these five things and can't find someone who matches. I don't want it to be, let's try this game, ugh lots of options. I have no issue with the game being slightly different due to different banned cards - man, the ten kingdom cards are different each time. The game should provide options that people really want; then those people will be happier. Unless they want stuff that won't actually make them happy, see I am trying to think of all the angles.
Of course, the thing isn't set up how I'd like now anyway, what with different set ownership being a bigger determination right now, as well as counting 2 player, 3 player, 4 player, etc. all on the same rating pool :o
It makes sense to have separate leaderboards by number of players, since obv. it's harder to win with more players and hey you play differently too. There's nothing I can do about some people not owning all the cards, we will have to live with whatever that means.
But the thing is, not everyone agrees that this is what pro mode is about.
Well, if you care what pro mode means, speak up, say what it should mean. In the end it will be whatever it is, whether people agreed on the way there or not. Be the change you want to see in pro mode.
And moreover, there's REALLY no agreement on what's considered 'gaming' of the system. I basically see no qualitative difference between the suggestions are getting floated about, veto mode, and selective set buying/promo earning, at least in terms of system-gaming.
Gaming the system is getting an advantage outside of playing better, that other people don't like. If not buying Black Market gives you an advantage, that's fine because so far no-one cares. If playing endless games of King's Court / Masquerade gives you an advantage, that's an issue because people care.
And as authoritative as his tone is, I don't see why Donald's opinion would be the one that gets all the clout here. It matters, for sure. But I don't see why it should more than Stef's or Theory's or the OP here, or really anyone else. And I don't see why theirs counts more than his or each other's either.
Well my opinion counts in that I can say "Making Fun guys, this is what to do, really," and have a decent chance of seeing that happen. You try it, see how it works for you. So I mean, if you can't convince me that "thing Donald X. doesn't like" is the way to go, I won't be pushing for it; I am human.
But I am here trying to hear what people want, talking to get stuff talked about. The system doesn't need to be maximally fun for me personally. Of course the most competitive players aren't the be-all end-all either.
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Would there be a problem to disallowing players that don't own all sets from hosting pro games? That would prevent gaming the system in this way.
While we would like to encourage people to buy all of the sets, we also don't want to discourage them from buying the first set they buy. So this has no chance. And gaming the system that way isn't an issue as far as I can see, so hooray, living with that is not so bad.
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But the thing is, not everyone agrees that this is what pro mode is about.
Well, if you care what pro mode means, speak up, say what it should mean. In the end it will be whatever it is, whether people agreed on the way there or not. Be the change you want to see in pro mode.
I'd like to see Pro mode implement TrueSkill faithfully, without all the tweaks that Goko added. There's no point in worrying about people gaming the system with veto-mode tricks while the underlying system remains as volatile and as easily gamed as it is right now.
PS: I already am the change I want to see (http://isotropish.com). ;)
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Of course the most competitive players aren't the be-all end-all either.
I'd actually go farther and say that competitive players are irrelevant. I mean, there are what, probably less than 100 competitive online Dominion players. I forget how much buying all sets costs, but it's something like $40. So that's about $4000 there. Let's say a developer costs $80k per year (which is actually low for the silicon valley area). So competitive players can fund like 3 weeks of one developer's time, which is almost nothing.
Competitive players can sometimes help popularize a game but it's questionable how much primarily-online Dominion players actually can do this, given that watching streamed Dominion is not really a thing that many people do.
One thing competitive players do have going for them is that they are more willing to put up with problems in implementation than more casual players. For example, I may be annoyed by lag on Goko, but I'm still going to keep playing because I like Dominion. Casual players may just give up and move on to some other game. So what competitive players complain about can sometimes be an indicator of what will drive casual players away entirely.
All of this is obvious but I felt it's worth saying anyway since this board is skewed in the competitive direction. :)
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Of course the most competitive players aren't the be-all end-all either.
I'd actually go farther and say that competitive players are irrelevant. I mean, there are what, probably less than 100 competitive online Dominion players...
The current round of GokoDom started with 128 and a few alternates. We still have over 100 people after three rounds. I dare say that "willing to sign up for and play three rounds of a major organized tournament" is probably a higher cutoff than "competitive" is, so I think you underestimate how many competitive players there are.
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But the thing is, not everyone agrees that this is what pro mode is about.
Well, if you care what pro mode means, speak up, say what it should mean. In the end it will be whatever it is, whether people agreed on the way there or not. Be the change you want to see in pro mode.
You presume I want change at all.
Ok, I do, but not so much as you think. I want there to be separate pools for different numbers of players, not because it's harder to win or whatever (I mean, that is something your rating system has to adjust for, for sure, but this also requires some determination of is 2nd better than 3rd or are you just trying to win, and all that stuff), but precisely because you play differently. You play a lot differently, really. Well, and then the king-making which exists, despite the intention of making things apolitical (and hey, it could be a LOT worse, don't get me wrong; generally you can't prevent kingmaking without the thing just being solitaire).
Okay, there's more, but it has to come after the next thing.
And moreover, there's REALLY no agreement on what's considered 'gaming' of the system. I basically see no qualitative difference between the suggestions are getting floated about, veto mode, and selective set buying/promo earning, at least in terms of system-gaming.
Gaming the system is getting an advantage outside of playing better, that other people don't like. If not buying Black Market gives you an advantage, that's fine because so far no-one cares. If playing endless games of King's Court / Masquerade gives you an advantage, that's an issue because people care.
This is just not true. People do care. I certainly care, and I'm not the only one. This came up a couple years ago, when some of the top players were having huge percentages of games with Colonies on them. It's a skew. It's definitely a skew that's available right now, too - buy only prosperity, you can get 50% of games you host to have colonies on them. That makes a big difference to the game. I mean, you can play all-base and get much different kinds of games. I definitely care.
I mean, there are a few cards I wouldn't play with, but I'm never for mandating that, or giving people the ability for that. This banned list business is the same veto-mode gaming of the system to me. It's not just about people setting up KC-Masq pins all the time - yeah, that's gaming, but people don't really do that, either. Oh yeah, there's the one guy who does it for a little while, then people learn to ignore him pretty fast. But the gaming is more about maneuvering some kind of meta-game to skew how often you play with whatever cards. I'm for full random here, more or less like it is now. Any kind of targeted banning allows for meta-game manipulation to happen, so I stick with full random - it is the most testing of the full range of skills, forces you to be well-rounded, etc. And it gives the diversity of games. And having mixed standards pollutes your ability to rank people accurately - they can only rank you on the games you play, so if Bob and Tim play under different conditions because of these banning shenanigans, it really limits our ability to know their relative strengths, because we aren't measuring their strengths at the same thing.
On the other hand, I think the main reason that people settled on this as the standard way of doing things is, well partly for reasons I get into a little here, but more for "You have to draw a line somewhere, where is good?" and the only real place that doesn't seem entirely arbitrary or tied-to-a-specific-person is this.
And as authoritative as his tone is, I don't see why Donald's opinion would be the one that gets all the clout here. It matters, for sure. But I don't see why it should more than Stef's or Theory's or the OP here, or really anyone else. And I don't see why theirs counts more than his or each other's either.
Well my opinion counts in that I can say "Making Fun guys, this is what to do, really," and have a decent chance of seeing that happen. You try it, see how it works for you. So I mean, if you can't convince me that "thing Donald X. doesn't like" is the way to go, I won't be pushing for it; I am human.
I mean this is precisely the issue I have though. Not that I expect you particularly to advocate for things you don't like (though really, you playing a lot online? Why does it matter to you? But this isn't important - if you feel like it matters to you, then it matters to you). But they listen to you (or maybe the won't, but this is working premise). Way disproportionately to anyone else. This boils down to a "You made the game" argument (not that this is what's going through your mind, but it has to be true - THE reason they're listening to you is you made the game). And I'm thoroughly unconvinced that this makes you a good person to shape the landscape of these kinds of organizational details. I mean, I dunno, maybe you're great at it. But like, the Magic Pro Tour isn't organized by Richard Garfield, and great as he is at a lot of things, I think it's probably better that it isn't. And so it dismays me that you can just say "that isn't happening for sure" to some idea like iso-veto mode, because you just shouldn't have that authority. I mean, I don't like veto mode either, so it's really not a content issue there, it's a process one. If a big majority of the community wanted exactly that, I think that should be listened to, despite you not liking it, despite me not liking it, whatever. The game is for the players. And of course they want to make money.
I fully understand they're not listening to me - they haven't really shown any signs of listening to almost anyone, really, and they haven't responded in about 4 weeks to me asking them about making videos of playing the game - yeah, I've given up on that happening. So I don't really see much point in trying - there's really no point in spending however much time on this if the response will be nothing. Not acceptance. Not denial. Not even a vague, "Oh that's interesting, we'll look at it/think about it," and who knows when or even if they actually will. Just nothing. So I'm not sure what your point with that was, other than "See, I have power and you don't," which was already pretty obvious. If you'll notice, my question wasn't about that - it was what SHOULD be happening. I'm very interested in shoulds.
But I am here trying to hear what people want, talking to get stuff talked about. The system doesn't need to be maximally fun for me personally. Of course the most competitive players aren't the be-all end-all either.
The game isn't a be-all and end-all. But if you're talking about the segment of their interface specifically marked as PRO, I don't understand why the voice you want to be heard isn't the Competitive Players' voice. I mean, you have other sections for people who aren't so competitive. Or I guess you can say you don't have any section for competitive players. If they want to do that, I guess that's their prerogative. I don't know what you expect people to do with that. "You guys aren't everything" - I mean, sure, nobody said we were. But if you're asking for our opinions, that's what you should expect.
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I'd actually go farther and say that competitive players are irrelevant.
here are some numbers from the final isotropic leaderboard. while im sure a few competitive players had alternate accounts, there are also some accounts that would have fallen off for inactivity.
games played - number of different players to hit that total
>50 - 5309
>100 - 4918
>500 - 3383
>1000 - 2331
>2000 - 1170
>5000 - 181
>8000 - 23
it's far from scientific, but id wager that someone who played over 1000 games (no matter the timespan) on an unofficial implementation is probably a "competitive" player. and for me at least, 2300 is not an irrelevant portion of the market. i am sure a good chunk of that number has moved on and doesn't play much on goko, but i would argue that a high quality product could bring back that number and then some.
i would also guess that there is the potential for them to generate some continuous income from those on the "very serious" end of the spectrum. a regular tournament format with a low cost of entry (say $3-$5) and some interesting prizes could probably earn back the development costs pretty quickly and could be a way to generate interest for potential customers.
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And I'm thoroughly unconvinced that this makes you a good person to shape the landscape of these kinds of organizational details. I mean, I dunno, maybe you're great at it. But like, the Magic Pro Tour isn't organized by Richard Garfield, and great as he is at a lot of things, I think it's probably better that it isn't. And so it dismays me that you can just say "that isn't happening for sure" to some idea like iso-veto mode, because you just shouldn't have that authority. I mean, I don't like veto mode either, so it's really not a content issue there, it's a process one. If a big majority of the community wanted exactly that, I think that should be listened to, despite you not liking it, despite me not liking it, whatever. The game is for the players. And of course they want to make money.
This... I don't want to be offensive, but I don't get the reasoning behind posting this. Just tell me, why does it matter whether or not Donald X is best suited for having authority? Why does it have even the slightest bit of relevance? Really, there is one thing we should be doing right now, and that's trying to make the best out of the things we have, and what we have is the guy who created the game, someone who actually has a chance to make stuff happen, asking us about our opinions. And I don't want to be all fanboying like: "oh that's so great and selfless," even though it kind of is, but it just doesn't matter if it's a good thing that he has authority, because he does, and whether or not he would also have it in an ideal world has zero impact on our current situation. Just what actual, real improvement are you trying to cause with this post?
And besides all that
But I am here trying to hear what people want, talking to get stuff talked about.
I mean, what the fuck man, what would you have him do? Don't bother trying to do anything because he shouldn't even be in charge? You must disagree on his approach in some way, otherwise your posts lose any bit of purpose.
Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but I really feel like you're not trying to accomplish anything, you're just trying to prove a point.
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This... I don't want to be offensive...
...I mean, what the fuck man...
Sure. ::)
but I don't get the reasoning behind posting this. Just tell me, why does it matter whether or not Donald X is best suited for having authority? Why does it have even the slightest bit of relevance? Really, there is one thing we should be doing right now, and that's trying to make the best out of the things we have, and what we have is the guy who created the game, someone who actually has a chance to make stuff happen, asking us about our opinions. And I don't want to be all fanboying like: "oh that's so great and selfless," even though it kind of is, but it just doesn't matter if it's a good thing that he has authority, because he does, and whether or not he would also have it in an ideal world has zero impact on our current situation. Just what actual, real improvement are you trying to cause with this post?
Basically my point is that he shouldn't be some kind of players' representative to MF. He has his perspective, and that's fine. But the players have their perspective, too, and it's a different one. I mean, if he were actually just relaying "all these guys think this", that's vaguely okay (though really you want someone in the group as the representative, or things aren't ever going to get through exactly straight - through no fault of the representative). But even that isn't what's going on, in a couple ways. First, I seriously don't think that you're going to get a very representative sampling of what people think in the middle of some random "I hate this card" thread, of which there have been dozens and can easily get ignored. Not to mention that you're not going to get very many people supporting the status quo super vocally, because it's the status quo, and so people don't feel they need to say anything, not to mention that people aren't going to be saying so much anyway after having so long of Goko being unresponsive. Second, and more importantly, he isn't actually asking us for what we think and relaying what is said; he's putting forward what *he* thinks is best, and asking us for input o maybe help him form some ideas. But he's ultimately the one shaping everything, and basically already his own ideas, feelings, biases. Which is all perfectly natural, I wouldn't expect him to not have those.
As for why I talk about "should", you should always try to do what you should do, tautologically, so I think should is always an important thing to be worried about. I'm certainly not talking just about some ideal world - I am talking about "shoulds" within the context of what is possible. This isn't unicorns fairies.
And besides all that
But I am here trying to hear what people want, talking to get stuff talked about.
I mean, what the fuck man, what would you have him do? Don't bother trying to do anything because he shouldn't even be in charge? You must disagree on his approach in some way, otherwise your posts lose any bit of purpose.
Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but I really feel like you're not trying to accomplish anything, you're just trying to prove a point.
I don't see how I'm making a point any more than you are, or than Donald is really. I'm trying to get people thinking and talking about this whole thing, just as he says he's trying to get people talking about the system. Yeah, I'm coming from a different perspective. But I'm definitely trying to accomplish something, whether you can see it or not. More importantly, I don't see what's wrong with making a point...
In any case, there are lots of examples of him imposing himself over different ideas and such. Not always, but lots of cases (all following boldings mine):
This idea to ban cards from consideration in generating the Kingdom seems like a great implementation of an optional "veto mode."
For example, the host of a pro game might choose whether the Kingdom will be generated according to "veto mode" (and this is a visible characteristic of the game). If so, each player's list of (up to) three cards won't be included in the Kingdom. Then a tournament's rules might require no veto mode, for example.
I'm not sure it would even to need to be an option, or that it causes issues with tournaments. For sure if it doesn't cause issues it should be allowed in tournaments.
The most extreme way to game the system is probably to not buy any expansions, and ban say Witch, Chapel, and Gardens. Then practice that mix a lot. I dunno, I'm not scared of that guy.
I could imagine a more complicated veto mode along the lines of what you're describing here as follows: the host of a game can activate Veto Mode (X cards), where X can't be greater than, for example, the number of sets they own. Then each player has a list of potentially banned cards and it takes the first X from that list as the banned cards.
Well for sure "less complicated" is better.
Someone who really likes a commonly banned card (let's follow this thread and suppose it is Tournament) might not want to play veto mode because that card will never show up.
I don't imagine anything will reach saturation point, but you can just force a card in casual (let's say if you try to join that game and have banned that card, it alerts you).
I'm not a fan of veto mode. But, allowing pre-banned cards sounds okay. But, to be honest, I would rather there be an outright ban list that the majority agree on and not banned just because people hate playing the card but ban the card because the card actually causes to many unbalanced games like Tournament, for instance.
There is no chance of a global banned list.
Would there be a problem to disallowing players that don't own all sets from hosting pro games? That would prevent gaming the system in this way.
While we would like to encourage people to buy all of the sets, we also don't want to discourage them from buying the first set they buy. So this has no chance. And gaming the system that way isn't an issue as far as I can see, so hooray, living with that is not so bad.
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I'd like to make clear that, while I am saying I don't think that Donald should be the guy with any influence talking to the MF people, I don't mean that as an insult to him in any way. I certainly don't think that I should be that guy either, for what it's worth.
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Agreed,it clearly should be me
I shall begin writing amlist of demands.
First up, humourous noises like whizzes and pops when you buy or play certain cards.
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First up, humourous noises like whizzes and pops when you buy or play certain cards.
Done. Humorous whizzes and pops will be implemented in the next release of Salvager. There will be an option to disable it, but only with Ozle's permission.
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But the thing is, not everyone agrees that this is what pro mode is about.
Well, if you care what pro mode means, speak up, say what it should mean. In the end it will be whatever it is, whether people agreed on the way there or not. Be the change you want to see in pro mode.
You presume I want change at all.
Ok, I do, but not so much as you think. I want there to be separate pools for different numbers of players, not because it's harder to win or whatever (I mean, that is something your rating system has to adjust for, for sure, but this also requires some determination of is 2nd better than 3rd or are you just trying to win, and all that stuff), but precisely because you play differently. You play a lot differently, really. Well, and then the king-making which exists, despite the intention of making things apolitical (and hey, it could be a LOT worse, don't get me wrong; generally you can't prevent kingmaking without the thing just being solitaire).
Okay, there's more, but it has to come after the next thing.
And moreover, there's REALLY no agreement on what's considered 'gaming' of the system. I basically see no qualitative difference between the suggestions are getting floated about, veto mode, and selective set buying/promo earning, at least in terms of system-gaming.
Gaming the system is getting an advantage outside of playing better, that other people don't like. If not buying Black Market gives you an advantage, that's fine because so far no-one cares. If playing endless games of King's Court / Masquerade gives you an advantage, that's an issue because people care.
This is just not true. People do care. I certainly care, and I'm not the only one. This came up a couple years ago, when some of the top players were having huge percentages of games with Colonies on them. It's a skew. It's definitely a skew that's available right now, too - buy only prosperity, you can get 50% of games you host to have colonies on them. That makes a big difference to the game. I mean, you can play all-base and get much different kinds of games. I definitely care.
I mean, there are a few cards I wouldn't play with, but I'm never for mandating that, or giving people the ability for that. This banned list business is the same veto-mode gaming of the system to me. It's not just about people setting up KC-Masq pins all the time - yeah, that's gaming, but people don't really do that, either. Oh yeah, there's the one guy who does it for a little while, then people learn to ignore him pretty fast. But the gaming is more about maneuvering some kind of meta-game to skew how often you play with whatever cards. I'm for full random here, more or less like it is now. Any kind of targeted banning allows for meta-game manipulation to happen, so I stick with full random - it is the most testing of the full range of skills, forces you to be well-rounded, etc. And it gives the diversity of games. And having mixed standards pollutes your ability to rank people accurately - they can only rank you on the games you play, so if Bob and Tim play under different conditions because of these banning shenanigans, it really limits our ability to know their relative strengths, because we aren't measuring their strengths at the same thing.
On the other hand, I think the main reason that people settled on this as the standard way of doing things is, well partly for reasons I get into a little here, but more for "You have to draw a line somewhere, where is good?" and the only real place that doesn't seem entirely arbitrary or tied-to-a-specific-person is this.
And as authoritative as his tone is, I don't see why Donald's opinion would be the one that gets all the clout here. It matters, for sure. But I don't see why it should more than Stef's or Theory's or the OP here, or really anyone else. And I don't see why theirs counts more than his or each other's either.
Well my opinion counts in that I can say "Making Fun guys, this is what to do, really," and have a decent chance of seeing that happen. You try it, see how it works for you. So I mean, if you can't convince me that "thing Donald X. doesn't like" is the way to go, I won't be pushing for it; I am human.
I mean this is precisely the issue I have though. Not that I expect you particularly to advocate for things you don't like (though really, you playing a lot online? Why does it matter to you? But this isn't important - if you feel like it matters to you, then it matters to you). But they listen to you (or maybe the won't, but this is working premise). Way disproportionately to anyone else. This boils down to a "You made the game" argument (not that this is what's going through your mind, but it has to be true - THE reason they're listening to you is you made the game). And I'm thoroughly unconvinced that this makes you a good person to shape the landscape of these kinds of organizational details. I mean, I dunno, maybe you're great at it. But like, the Magic Pro Tour isn't organized by Richard Garfield, and great as he is at a lot of things, I think it's probably better that it isn't. And so it dismays me that you can just say "that isn't happening for sure" to some idea like iso-veto mode, because you just shouldn't have that authority. I mean, I don't like veto mode either, so it's really not a content issue there, it's a process one. If a big majority of the community wanted exactly that, I think that should be listened to, despite you not liking it, despite me not liking it, whatever. The game is for the players. And of course they want to make money.
I fully understand they're not listening to me - they haven't really shown any signs of listening to almost anyone, really, and they haven't responded in about 4 weeks to me asking them about making videos of playing the game - yeah, I've given up on that happening. So I don't really see much point in trying - there's really no point in spending however much time on this if the response will be nothing. Not acceptance. Not denial. Not even a vague, "Oh that's interesting, we'll look at it/think about it," and who knows when or even if they actually will. Just nothing. So I'm not sure what your point with that was, other than "See, I have power and you don't," which was already pretty obvious. If you'll notice, my question wasn't about that - it was what SHOULD be happening. I'm very interested in shoulds.
But I am here trying to hear what people want, talking to get stuff talked about. The system doesn't need to be maximally fun for me personally. Of course the most competitive players aren't the be-all end-all either.
The game isn't a be-all and end-all. But if you're talking about the segment of their interface specifically marked as PRO, I don't understand why the voice you want to be heard isn't the Competitive Players' voice. I mean, you have other sections for people who aren't so competitive. Or I guess you can say you don't have any section for competitive players. If they want to do that, I guess that's their prerogative. I don't know what you expect people to do with that. "You guys aren't everything" - I mean, sure, nobody said we were. But if you're asking for our opinions, that's what you should expect.
I agree with everything you have said here.
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Well, if you care what pro mode means, speak up, say what it should mean. In the end it will be whatever it is, whether people agreed on the way there or not. Be the change you want to see in pro mode.
You presume I want change at all.
Ok, I do, but not so much as you think.
Man, I am not trying to speculate as to exactly how much change you want. I say "if you care" right there, as if I am carefully accounting for the possibility that you don't. Did you miss that? Do you just like being contrary?
Gaming the system is getting an advantage outside of playing better, that other people don't like. If not buying Black Market gives you an advantage, that's fine because so far no-one cares. If playing endless games of King's Court / Masquerade gives you an advantage, that's an issue because people care.
This is just not true. People do care. I certainly care, and I'm not the only one. This came up a couple years ago, when some of the top players were having huge percentages of games with Colonies on them. It's a skew. It's definitely a skew that's available right now, too - buy only prosperity, you can get 50% of games you host to have colonies on them. That makes a big difference to the game. I mean, you can play all-base and get much different kinds of games. I definitely care.
Well prior to this moment I have never heard of someone caring about whether or not someone else bought Black Market.
I will move on from that starting point. It is not feasible to account for whether or not people own Black Market. It's not fixable. Perhaps the worst case is buying Prosperity and getting Colony more; I see no solution. Perhaps someone will offer one up.
This banned list business is the same veto-mode gaming of the system to me.
It seems way different to me; if we veto two cards out of twelve every game, lots of cards are getting banned all the time that would rarely be banned the "pick three for all games" way.
I'm for full random here, more or less like it is now.
I was asking for opinions and hooray you got to yours.
And having mixed standards pollutes your ability to rank people accurately - they can only rank you on the games you play, so if Bob and Tim play under different conditions because of these banning shenanigans, it really limits our ability to know their relative strengths, because we aren't measuring their strengths at the same thing.
Here's a thing. Many people are surprised when they learn the tiebreaker rule. They have not been paying attention at all to the fact that some players got more turns. It's invisible to them. Are those people considering that someone got an unfair advantage on the leaderboard from banning Mountebank? They so aren't. And perception is everything here.
This boils down to a "You made the game" argument (not that this is what's going through your mind, but it has to be true - THE reason they're listening to you is you made the game). And I'm thoroughly unconvinced that this makes you a good person to shape the landscape of these kinds of organizational details.
Suck it up! Suck it up WanderingWinder, that's what I have to say to you. Slurp slurp, I have not stressed this enough.
I think it's important in situations like this to take a step back, take a break, breathe. I have done so. While carefully considering what exactly I wanted to say. It still looks like that.
Here's something interesting. If you weren't just trying to show how entitled you feel and how you didn't come here to make friends, if you were approaching this like a game, the make online Dominion better game, which you intend to win, then you would see that in fact if I wasn't in this ridiculous position of having control over this thing I made, as if, then whoever was next in line would care far less about what players want. In fact first there were people who would have given you farmville; then the people who got the job also wanted to give you farmville.
There was more to your post but who cares! I am done with you. If you have something to say, say it someone else.
Let me know if you are sick of me already guys; how dare I try to help, amirite? If you guys think I can't stomach someone saying how much I suck then I don't know what to tell you; they say it all the time at BGG and I have no problems there. But man I have better things to do with my time, who doesn't.
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I agree with everything you have said here.
Noted!
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I think I figured it out. When I go on BGG, and someone says, "I hate Dominion, Donald X. sucks," man, you can't please everyone. When I say, "I am too busy playtesting to play games that aren't mine," and someone says, "wow he sucks," man, that's ridiculous, it takes all kinds, it's not like I'm having a conversation even. I'd like to be liked but it never bothers me much.
But when someone says "help" and I say "maybe I can get that fixed" and someone else says "wow it sucks that you have that power," man, I just want them to have an itch they can never scratch, a rash that won't go away, a cough they really should see a doctor about.
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I really don't know how the discussion heated up like that, definitely unnecessary. Calm down.
Since it was asked for opinions, I just want to briefly add mine: In Pro Mode, full random should be played and nothing else.
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I was going to try to stay out of this, but, WW, just...
Seriously, Donald comes back after a year's hiatus and... this is how he gets treated? I have to echo Silverspawn, but without the claim that I'm not trying to be offensive:
What. The. Fuck. WW? Fine, you're interested in "should" rather that what is true, because, I don't know, you think you're an ethicist philosopher and want to argue the is-ought thing that I see people bring up online in various arenas, but come on, save that shit for RPS. Here's a couple of "should" ideas for you:
(1) People should generally try to treat others with respect, and
(2) What someone isn't doing that, others should call them on the carpet for it. So that's what I'm doing, and I'm going to go ahead and skip number (1) but at least own up to doing it rather than hiding behind some sort of wishy-washy "oh, I just meant that things should be this way" bullshit.
Are you really going to suggest, to his face, that Donald shouldn't have a power that (1) he doesn't have to use and (2) he's willing to use in ways you might want him to after being persuaded. Because maybe what you should do is try to make persuasive arguments in favor of your position instead of bashing the guy discussing your opinions. What the fuck, man?
For all the bitching I did about the decline of Iso and the ascendance of Funsockets/Goko/Making Fun over the course of the last, what, three years, and I think if I'm entitled to nothing else I'm entitled to the position of "loudest bitcher about Goko", I've never felt it necessary to suggest that Donald was in any position other than that of messenger. I tossed a lot of guff at Jay, at RGG, at FunSockets, and at a number of forum members, but I will eat my hat if you can find an instance where I blamed Donald for this stuff. He has done nothing but try to pass messages from us to Goko or us to Dougz or us to Jay and vice versa. Even when those messages were about boycotts.
Stop. Killing. The. Messenger.
Donald... Thank you for being willing to interact with us, answer questions, give your opinions, pass ideas on to Making Fun, and so on. I will completely understand if you disappear from this forum again, and just go do what you do best which is designing games. I've half a mind to leave myself.
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So people seem to be really upset, and I'm uh, not? So let me try to say this in the simplest way I can.
I'm a competitive player. This is a community of competitive players. I have a view that it would be nice if there were a scene for competitive Dominion, and I think that's shared.
Donald has his view of the way things should be. That's a fine view, I don't have a problem with him having it. It is a different view, though, than the competitive one.
He created the game, and so he's definitely THE guy you want to go to if you have questions about design or history, and one of the best for the process of development/publishing (maybe Jay would be better, but whatever, Donald is good). He's not a competitive player though. You ask designers about design issues, you ask players about play issues.
I don't have any ill will to Donald, for sure. I don't think he's the guy to represent competitive players' views, because I don't think he agrees with them, and it's not generally reasonable to expect or ask people to represent positions they disagree with.
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I was going to try to stay out of this, but, WW, just...
Seriously, Donald comes back after a year's hiatus and... this is how he gets treated? I have to echo Silverspawn, but without the claim that I'm not trying to be offensive:
What. The. Fuck. WW? Fine, you're interested in "should" rather that what is true,
There's no dichotomy between what should be and what is true. Like, I assume you mean what should be and what is - well what is the point of having any discussion but to try to have some kind of impact on changing the way things are to be closer than they should be, within the bounds of what is possible? No seriously, why do you have discussions? A should be issue is how this started, yeah? Isn't Donald asking people how the pro mode should be, in terms of meta-rules?
because, I don't know, you think you're an ethicist philosopher and want to argue the is-ought thing that I see people bring up online in various arenas, but come on, save that shit for RPS.
I'm not really sure what you mean by "the is-ought thing", but what I am talking about is what should be (again, given the constraints of what is possible) - and I entirely fail to see how this should ever be a non-permitted subject. I don't WANT to be anywhere you can't discuss that.
Here's a couple of "should" ideas for you:
(1) People should generally try to treat others with respect, and
(2) What someone isn't doing that, others should call them on the carpet for it. So that's what I'm doing, and I'm going to go ahead and skip number (1) but at least own up to doing it rather than hiding behind some sort of wishy-washy "oh, I just meant that things should be this way" bullshit.
I agree with 1. I actually disagree with 2, at least in such stark terms, but whatever, I don't have such a problem with it. I do have a problem with you claiming that 1 is important and then immediately ignoring it - it's grossly inconsistent, and makes it seem like you don't actually hold 1 to be important at all.
Are you really going to suggest, to his face, that Donald shouldn't have a power that (1) he doesn't have to use and (2) he's willing to use in ways you might want him to after being persuaded.
Yes. Isn't that what I just did? My point isn't at all about what is good for me. If person Z has power and shouldn't, I'm going to have problems with it regardless of whether (s)he is using it to my benefit. I'm not interested in what is good for me, I'm interested in what is right (which, when it comes down to it, is best for everyone, me included). I don't understand what is crazy about this.
Because maybe what you should do is try to make persuasive arguments in favor of your position
My position is that he shouldn't be representing the competitive community. I am trying to make persuasive arguments in favor of that position.
instead of bashing the guy discussing your opinions. What the fuck, man?
I don't think I am bashing Donald. I mean, you talk like I'm disrespecting him, and I guess that saying he shouldn't be guy to represent the competitive viewpoint is disrespecting him, in the sense that if I respected him to the extent that I thought he were supremely qualified to do absolutely everything, I wouldn't say this. This is a pretty weird standard, though. Is it disrespecting Mother Theresa to say I don't think she should be in control of Scientific Research in trying to refine the Standard Model of particle physics? I seriously fail to see what I've done to disrespect him other than say he shouldn't be the guy, and I fail to see why "you shouldn't be the guy" is so absurdly offensive, particularly when at the same time I am saying that I shouldn't be the guy either. It's really not intended to be a slight on him.
For all the bitching I did about the decline of Iso and the ascendance of Funsockets/Goko/Making Fun over the course of the last, what, three years, and I think if I'm entitled to nothing else I'm entitled to the position of "loudest bitcher about Goko", I've never felt it necessary to suggest that Donald was in any position other than that of messenger. I tossed a lot of guff at Jay, at RGG, at FunSockets, and at a number of forum members, but I will eat my hat if you can find an instance where I blamed Donald for this stuff. He has done nothing but try to pass messages from us to Goko or us to Dougz or us to Jay and vice versa. Even when those messages were about boycotts.
Stop. Killing. The. Messenger.
Again, I fail to see how I'm killing him. Quite frankly, I don't understand how the whole boycott business wasn't way more out there than this, but whatever. Yeah, he's the messenger - this is my entire problem. Why should he be the messenger?
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Yeah, he's the messenger - this is my entire problem. Why should he be the messenger?
Because he's the only person here who has means to contact MakingFun apart from their support forum/email?
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First up, humourous noises like whizzes and pops when you buy or play certain cards.
Done. Humorous whizzes and pops will be implemented in the next release of Salvager. There will be an option to disable it, but only with Ozle's permission.
This should be done on April 1st.
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First up, humourous noises like whizzes and pops when you buy or play certain cards.
Done. Humorous whizzes and pops will be implemented in the next release of Salvager. There will be an option to disable it, but only with Ozle's permission.
This should be done on April 1st.
Better yet, Dominion Online should be replaced with isotropic on April 1st.
Anyway, in regards to the WW/Donald X. debate, I don't think WW's intention is to debate Donald or be rude. I think he is trying to say most people who frequent this site aren't casual players and thus, when it comes to "pro" mode, we have our own biases as to what we think that means which might not correlate to how Donald X. envisions Dominion should be played. As a result, he WW is saying that Donald X. is a good representative for certain aspects of Dominion Online, but not the "pro" mode feature.
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My 2 cents. Pro mode is pretty much fine as is, except that goko (or making fun, I guess?) really needs to implement automatch and a proper lobby system. There shouldn't be any kind of ban list or anything. In my mind "pro" means all-cards, full-random, no knowledge of the kingdom before hand. Obviously people having different set ownerships messes with this somewhat, but I don't really see any practical way to fix that. I don't think it's fair to exclude people who don't have all the cards from hosting pro (especially, what if they have all the sets, but not all the promos. Would that be enough?). Anyway, I don't see a practical solution to that issue. I do think that it makes sense that "pro" mode should be aimed at the interests of the competitive players though.
I think the real problem, as mentioned in the OP is that playing casual "it'd be hard to find an opponent because all the better players seem to just play pro." I think if casual were fixed up a little bit then perhaps people would be more willing to play it too. I probably would still only host pro-mode matches, but I'd be willing to join casual games if it were possible to see what criteria someone used when picking the game (including what sets were drawn from). This would require goko implementing a server-side functioning kingdom generator. LF points out that someone could just keep generating kingdoms until they got, say KC/Goons/Masq, which I guess is an issue, but I think if you were only allowed to put in your parameters and then you didn't see the kingdom until you hit "create game," then generating kingdoms until you got the one you want would be a sufficiently large hassle that it wouldn't be that much of a problem. Some dick would probably still do it, but, oh well, this is casual mode and I don't think it would happen very often.
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Again, I fail to see how I'm killing him. Quite frankly, I don't understand how the whole boycott business wasn't way more out there than this, but whatever. Yeah, he's the messenger - this is my entire problem. Why should he be the messenger?
So this is a response to the whole discussion, but I didn't want to repost a huge quote.
The way I see this, LibraryAdventurer posted a complaint about Dominion Online. Donald showed up and basically said, hey I've got some sway with MakingFun, let's brainstorm some solutions, how about a 3-card ban list? Then you came along and, rather than contributing to the brainstorming session, essentially called out Donald and complained that he doesn't speak for us.
You talk about how the world should be, but I think you are idealizing things too far. The people at MakingFun are people. They have a lot to do and limited resources with which to do it. Of course they give more weight to Donald's suggestions than they do a specific player. Of course they do. And it is perfectly rational for them to be doing so. There is a lot of work for them to be doing right now. They are in a position to make some massive improvements with just an ounce of common sense and direct insight from Donald, rather than going through time consuming market research (player surveys and such).
Still, it sounds like you wish that MakingFun would listen to the players. That is a laudable and understandable desire. Right now, they aren't doing it. So, what is the best thing we can do to fix this issue? Well, we more or less have Donald on our side as an advocate. I bet if -- rather than complaining that Donald does not and should not speak us -- we offered constructive ideas on how MakingFun could converse with the player base, Donald would be happy to use his (so undeserved!) sway with MakingFun to pass along the suggestion. Of course, it is still likely that it isn't worth MakingFun's time at this particular moment to have that conversation.
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Again, I fail to see how I'm killing him. Quite frankly, I don't understand how the whole boycott business wasn't way more out there than this, but whatever. Yeah, he's the messenger - this is my entire problem. Why should he be the messenger?
So this is a response to the whole discussion, but I didn't want to repost a huge quote.
The way I see this, LibraryAdventurer posted a complaint about Dominion Online. Donald showed up and basically said, hey I've got some sway with MakingFun, let's brainstorm some solutions, how about a 3-card ban list? Then you came along and, rather than contributing to the brainstorming session, essentially called out Donald and complained that he doesn't speak for us.
You talk about how the world should be, but I think you are idealizing things too far. The people at MakingFun are people. They have a lot to do and limited resources with which to do it. Of course they give more weight to Donald's suggestions than they do a specific player. Of course they do. And it is perfectly rational for them to be doing so. There is a lot of work for them to be doing right now. They are in a position to make some massive improvements with just an ounce of common sense and direct insight from Donald, rather than going through time consuming market research (player surveys and such).
Still, it sounds like you wish that MakingFun would listen to the players. That is a laudable and understandable desire. Right now, they aren't doing it. So, what is the best thing we can do to fix this issue? Well, we more or less have Donald on our side as an advocate. I bet if -- rather than complaining that Donald does not and should not speak us -- we offered constructive ideas on how MakingFun could converse with the player base, Donald would be happy to use his (so undeserved!) sway with MakingFun to pass along the suggestion. Of course, it is still likely that it isn't worth MakingFun's time at this particular moment to have that conversation.
This is entirely reasonable. And I am for having the debate (though it's been had a number of times before). The issue I have is, it doesn't look like Donald is really just "pass[ing] along the suggestion". He's shaping it and then passing it along. So, I disagree with that, but you more or less get my position. The bulk/root of my problem is actually with MF not listening to anything, assuming that continues, but to be fair to them, they haven't been at it long, and they have had a LOT of more pressing things to work on. So I'm actually (cautiously) optimistic that they will listen to people, in some form, once they get a better handle on trying to fix the leaking dam.
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it doesn't look like Donald is really just "pass[ing] along the suggestion". He's shaping it and then passing it along.
Oh, for sure. He is definitely participating in the discussion. He isn't intending to pass along suggestions unless he's been personally convinced that they are good ideas. Which is kind of necessary if he wants to pass along concrete suggestions with a unified and coherent voice. Otherwise he would just being forward a batch of raw, contradictory comments, which would require a lot of processing on MakingFun's part and therefore be less likely to be considered or implemented.
To my knowledge, Donald hasn't suggested that f.ds get together and convene an online convention where we draft and ratify a unified message to MakingFun. But hey, maybe if we asked Donald he would agree to personally pass along just such a coherent and unified message, presumably with the caveat that he does not necessarily endorse it himself.
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it doesn't look like Donald is really just "pass[ing] along the suggestion". He's shaping it and then passing it along.
Oh, for sure. He is definitely participating in the discussion. He isn't intending to pass along suggestions unless he's been personally convinced that they are good ideas. Which is kind of necessary if he wants to pass along concrete suggestions with a unified and coherent voice. Otherwise he would just being forward a batch of raw, contradictory comments, which would require a lot of processing on MakingFun's part and therefore be less likely to be considered or implemented.
To my knowledge, Donald hasn't suggested that f.ds get together and convene an online convention where we draft and ratify a unified message to MakingFun. But hey, maybe if we asked Donald he would agree to personally pass along just such a coherent and unified message, presumably with the caveat that he does not necessarily endorse it himself.
Yeah. And again, I don't expect him to pass on things he doesn't agree with. People certainly can't endorse those things they don't agree with, and there's not real reason for him to pass them along like "people want this, I'm against it" (though this would be nice). So I don't expect him to.
It's just, this changes things. It's a one-man veto. So something along the liens of drafting some unified "this is our consensus as a group" thing would be ideal, but there are practical problems, the biggest of which is, I don't think you can actually get a consensus. But it would be nice to try, at least when it looks like they (MF) have time to move on things (I don't think you're going to get a lot of action from people beforehand).
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I think that pro should stay as is, unranked become the new casual (casual players don't really care about rating I would think), and casual gets turned into whatever we're talking about here. This is just my opinion, of course.
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Oh cool, people are mad at WW instead of me this time for disagreeing or arguing with Donald X. I'm fine with that.
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Maybe Donald could suggest to MakingFun that we have a representative from the forums (and BGG, etc) who can poll the community and contact them with suggestions. This takes the onus away from Donald to do extra stuff, it hopefully gets us communication from Making Fun, and clarifies our message (whatever that message is). MakingFun might not want be drawn into working on our ideas but that would be their decision.
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I think that pro should stay as is, unranked become the new casual (casual players don't really care about rating I would think), and casual gets turned into whatever we're talking about here. This is just my opinion, of course.
This is probably the most elegant solution.
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My 2 cents. Pro mode is pretty much fine as is, except that goko (or making fun, I guess?) really needs to implement automatch and a proper lobby system. There shouldn't be any kind of ban list or anything. In my mind "pro" means all-cards, full-random, no knowledge of the kingdom before hand. Obviously people having different set ownerships messes with this somewhat, but I don't really see any practical way to fix that. I don't think it's fair to exclude people who don't have all the cards from hosting pro (especially, what if they have all the sets, but not all the promos. Would that be enough?). Anyway, I don't see a practical solution to that issue. I do think that it makes sense that "pro" mode should be aimed at the interests of the competitive players though.
Being able to see what sets the host of the game owns beforehand might be good. And/or require that the host of a pro game have bought at least one expansion*. I'm a little disappointed when I join a pro game and it turns out to be base-only. Part of the reason I join pro games is that they tend to have more expansions than casual games.
(*Which I haven't yet but that's fine because the only time I ever hosted pro games is when I played bots to raise my rating. And the only reason I wanted to raise my rating is so I join games that said 3000+. I'm sure I'll get around to buying some online expansions eventually, but then I'll be hosting more casual games.)
I think the real problem, as mentioned in the OP is that playing casual "it'd be hard to find an opponent because all the better players seem to just play pro." I think if casual were fixed up a little bit then perhaps people would be more willing to play it too. I probably would still only host pro-mode matches, but I'd be willing to join casual games if it were possible to see what criteria someone used when picking the game (including what sets were drawn from). This would require goko implementing a server-side functioning kingdom generator. LF points out that someone could just keep generating kingdoms until they got, say KC/Goons/Masq, which I guess is an issue, but I think if you were only allowed to put in your parameters and then you didn't see the kingdom until you hit "create game," then generating kingdoms until you got the one you want would be a sufficiently large hassle that it wouldn't be that much of a problem.
I like this suggestion and the one about unrated becoming casual, and casual becoming an intermediate level. The intermediate could have the kingdom generator that you suggest here.
In the meantime before MF/Goko gets around to doing this, I wonder if Salvager could be made to let people know that its kingdom generator was used to create a game in casual or unrated mode and maybe show the parameters to anyone looking at the card set. Would more people play casual if it did this?
PS: Thanks to Geolib for getting back to the topic of the thread.
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What. The. Fuck. WW?
It's difficult, but important, to remember, when someone is being amazingly antagonistically patronizing, when they say how awful you are and point out how rude they aren't being, and so on, that, well, autism is a spectrum. You may be just as alien to them as they are to you.
Stop. Killing. The. Messenger.
Make no mistake, I am not just a messenger. I can just snap my fingers and make decisions about Dominion, physical or online; I can get an expansion made, prevent one from happening, say no to the VP counter, force the VP counter to always be on. I could only be so unreasonable before they decided, oops I guess this isn't working out, but there is certainly room for me to get things I want.
I got this power somehow, maybe in a lottery or something, and that's that. Sure it's idiotic for someone to think, if I for example say "that will never happen" to something a business will never do because money, that that's me showing my strength, saying "I shoot this down, behold my power." Still that power is there and it's not going anywhere. However friendly I may have been in the past, who knows what the future holds, and there's no overturning this dictatorship. The upside is, anyone can leave whenever they want.
Donald... Thank you for being willing to interact with us, answer questions, give your opinions, pass ideas on to Making Fun, and so on. I will completely understand if you disappear from this forum again, and just go do what you do best which is designing games. I've half a mind to leave myself.
I'm there for you. I wasn't trying to threaten people, as if my presence is exciting enough to have losing it matter; I just like to know where I stand.
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I do think that it makes sense that "pro" mode should be aimed at the interests of the competitive players though.
That sounds good from the name, "pro," and well I don't have much data yet, but I bet that a bunch of competitive players would like to not play with whatever cards they hate the most.
I think if casual were fixed up a little bit then perhaps people would be more willing to play it too. I probably would still only host pro-mode matches, but I'd be willing to join casual games if it were possible to see what criteria someone used when picking the game (including what sets were drawn from). This would require goko implementing a server-side functioning kingdom generator. LF points out that someone could just keep generating kingdoms until they got, say KC/Goons/Masq, which I guess is an issue, but I think if you were only allowed to put in your parameters and then you didn't see the kingdom until you hit "create game," then generating kingdoms until you got the one you want would be a sufficiently large hassle that it wouldn't be that much of a problem.
KC/Masq is the big one, and the program could actually just call it out, warning warning this player set up a KC/Masq game.
It has to be possible to pick all 10 cards (because I say so and my word is law, obv. if I had an acceptable reason for saying this I would endlessly spell it out), but if it tells you "they picked all 10 and here they are" vs. "they picked 5 seaside 5 prosperity" then uh well sometimes people would get suckered and maybe never even know it, but it sounds acceptable. I guess the question then is, how much do people care about seeing the exact set of 10, provided that they get to see the decisions made on generating them? The point to seeing the set of 10 is, I am going to guess, to make sure you don't get a game you won't like; I say "5 seaside 5 prosperity," and who knows, you may be looking at an attack-heavy game you'd decide against playing. OTOH if you have a short banned list you at least get to dodge those.
Of course it's not great if you click on a game and it gives you a page of information about the set-up - they picked 5 seaside 5 prosperity but banned mountebank and sea hag and require at least one village and require lighthouse if there's an attack. This might be a reason to have it be that past a certain point it treats it like you picked all 10 and shows them.
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Oh, for sure. He is definitely participating in the discussion. He isn't intending to pass along suggestions unless he's been personally convinced that they are good ideas. Which is kind of necessary if he wants to pass along concrete suggestions with a unified and coherent voice. Otherwise he would just being forward a batch of raw, contradictory comments, which would require a lot of processing on MakingFun's part and therefore be less likely to be considered or implemented.
I'm not just avoiding incoherency or whatever; I'm actively pushing for things I want. If I want something because I think you-all want it, that's still me pushing for what I want. It's a dictatorship and there's no need to sugarcoat it.
You know for a time the standard way they converted movies from movie-size to TV-size was to pan & scan. Woody Allen had it in his contract that they couldn't do that to the TV versions of his flick Manhattan; it's letterboxed. It's just like that. Some guy gets to make the call and if you don't have a zoom button you're out of luck.
It's a world of dictators. I personally am just glad for each day that goes by without Lindt deciding to stop making the chocolate bar I like.
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Oh cool, people are mad at WW instead of me this time for disagreeing or arguing with Donald X. I'm fine with that.
Oh man, I remember that. Kirian agreed with me about something and you called it a circle jerk. I bet it was pretty exciting when you found out what a circle jerk actually was.
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Maybe Donald could suggest to MakingFun that we have a representative from the forums (and BGG, etc) who can poll the community and contact them with suggestions. This takes the onus away from Donald to do extra stuff, it hopefully gets us communication from Making Fun, and clarifies our message (whatever that message is). MakingFun might not want be drawn into working on our ideas but that would be their decision.
Say whatever you want to Making Fun, no-one's stopping you. I suspect Making Fun will tend to be more interested in improvements that benefit casual players, because there are more of them, and it's not like Magic where the pros spend more money. But for sure there is value to them in pleasing serious players too.
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And/or require that the host of a pro game have bought at least one expansion*. I'm a little disappointed when I join a pro game and it turns out to be base-only. Part of the reason I join pro games is that they tend to have more expansions than casual games.
It seems good to have the game indicate how many expansions are available for it. Requiring people to own an expansion to host a pro game seems like it will just annoy potential customers.
I like this suggestion and the one about unrated becoming casual, and casual becoming an intermediate level. The intermediate could have the kingdom generator that you suggest here.
When finding players is an issue, you want as few groupings as possible; so, having an extra division has to really be worth it.
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I do think that it makes sense that "pro" mode should be aimed at the interests of the competitive players though.
That sounds good from the name, "pro," and well I don't have much data yet, but I bet that a bunch of competitive players would like to not play with whatever cards they hate the most.
I think if casual were fixed up a little bit then perhaps people would be more willing to play it too. I probably would still only host pro-mode matches, but I'd be willing to join casual games if it were possible to see what criteria someone used when picking the game (including what sets were drawn from). This would require goko implementing a server-side functioning kingdom generator. LF points out that someone could just keep generating kingdoms until they got, say KC/Goons/Masq, which I guess is an issue, but I think if you were only allowed to put in your parameters and then you didn't see the kingdom until you hit "create game," then generating kingdoms until you got the one you want would be a sufficiently large hassle that it wouldn't be that much of a problem.
KC/Masq is the big one, and the program could actually just call it out, warning warning this player set up a KC/Masq game.
It has to be possible to pick all 10 cards (because I say so and my word is law, obv. if I had an acceptable reason for saying this I would endlessly spell it out), but if it tells you "they picked all 10 and here they are" vs. "they picked 5 seaside 5 prosperity" then uh well sometimes people would get suckered and maybe never even know it, but it sounds acceptable. I guess the question then is, how much do people care about seeing the exact set of 10, provided that they get to see the decisions made on generating them? The point to seeing the set of 10 is, I am going to guess, to make sure you don't get a game you won't like; I say "5 seaside 5 prosperity," and who knows, you may be looking at an attack-heavy game you'd decide against playing. OTOH if you have a short banned list you at least get to dodge those.
Of course it's not great if you click on a game and it gives you a page of information about the set-up - they picked 5 seaside 5 prosperity but banned mountebank and sea hag and require at least one village and require lighthouse if there's an attack. This might be a reason to have it be that past a certain point it treats it like you picked all 10 and shows them.
To clarify, I meant that you would see the set of ten and the parameters they used to pick it (including the possibility to pick all 10. This is a useful feature and I don't think it should go away). Maybe it pops up that this set contains tournament and you don't join the game. If it comes up with a huge wall of text on all the requirements they used, you don't have to read it all. You can just decide that you'd rather not play that game (or play it anyway).
Also, can we please discuss potential improvements to the online Dominion implementation rather than who was a jerk to whom when?
PPE:
I like this suggestion and the one about unrated becoming casual, and casual becoming an intermediate level. The intermediate could have the kingdom generator that you suggest here.
When finding players is an issue, you want as few groupings as possible; so, having an extra division has to really be worth it.
That doesn't introduce an extra division, just keeps the existing three and makes one of them more usable (in my opinion).
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Why not require all exps for pro? It says pro, not noob, after all.
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Why don't we try again with a new topic and hopefully start off on the right foot this time.