Dominion Strategy Forum

Archive => 2016 DominionStrategy Championships => Archive => 2015 => Topic started by: Beyond Awesome on October 07, 2015, 06:14:36 pm

Title: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 07, 2015, 06:14:36 pm
Okay, so MF has stated that once Apple approves the Tablet version, they are shutting down Goko, and this may very likely happen this month.

There are two main problems with this.

The first problem is that all games are ranked and there is no way to determine player order. So, this means, to get the right 1st person pairing, people would have to concede ranked games.

The second main issue is that there is a memory leak problem with the current MF implementation, and they aren't sure what is causing it. For me, this causes my computer to crash after 3 games. On MF's forums other players are reporting their computers overheating.

So, my question is with these two main issues, what is the plan if Goko shuts down?
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on October 07, 2015, 06:26:50 pm
The first one is no issue, just alternate resigning and get over it if someone comes out with a few free rating points. One game is not doing anything to anyone's rating that isn't effectively washed out after 10 more games.

Can't do anything about the other but hope they fix it.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: -Stef- on October 07, 2015, 06:47:37 pm
This makes me really depressed :(

I'm seriously going to consider to quit playing competitive dominion when this happens.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: SCSN on October 07, 2015, 07:04:58 pm
Did anyone expect two years ago that one day we would meet Goko's demise with the same depression and despair as with which we met the end of iso?
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Roadrunner7671 on October 07, 2015, 07:26:04 pm
I may have to drop out of the tournament if I cannot use the mobile app. I think Goko shutting down will pose a problem for most of us.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Kirian on October 07, 2015, 10:04:32 pm
Did anyone expect two years ago that one day we would meet Goko's demise with the same depression and despair as with which we met the end of iso?

Making Fun:  We Might Be Better Than Goko, But We're Not Going to Take the Time to Prove It.TM
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: AdamH on October 07, 2015, 10:22:27 pm
Okay, so MF has stated that once Apple approves the Tablet version, they are shutting down Goko, and this may very likely happen this month.

Source, please? I haven't been able to find this.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 08, 2015, 08:48:25 am
Okay, so MF has stated that once Apple approves the Tablet version, they are shutting down Goko, and this may very likely happen this month.

Source, please? I haven't been able to find this.

That's weird. I know I read somewhere that once the tablet version was ready they would shut the site down. I remember this because someone asked them a question, and they said they were shutting down Goko so they could spend all of their time and resources on MF Dominion. 

Anyway, I posed the question in there forums again for clarification.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: popsofctown on October 08, 2015, 10:29:30 am
This makes me really depressed :(

I'm seriously going to consider to quit playing competitive dominion when this happens.
Did anyone expect two years ago that one day we would meet Goko's demise with the same depression and despair as with which we met the end of iso?

I hate to say I wish online dominion was more like Puzzle Strike's online (I dunno if it's still out there or defunct now, I haven't checked).  Clean implementation, automatch even early on, payment model leaves vast majority of stuff free from the start and doesn't mimick the way you bought the board games from the LGS so you feel slapped in the face.  No bitchy catfights about whether an online decktracking tool kills the True Spirit of Christmas since the game client itself does decktracking.  Rematches, with or without the counterpick system, early on.  Community run tournaments were easy, and live same-day tournaments could easily use one all-together chatroom in the client.

Yes, I am still on the quest I started in April of trying to get banned from the forums.


Just wish Sirlin was as good at designing deckbuilders as DXV, and that he didn't have such a strong fetish for fighting games that he constantly imports mechanics that aren't beneficial to a board game.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Psyduck on October 08, 2015, 10:38:37 am
That's weird. I know I read somewhere that once the tablet version was ready they would shut the site down. I remember this because someone asked them a question, and they said they were shutting down Goko so they could spend all of their time and resources on MF Dominion. 

Anyway, I posed the question in there forums again for clarification.

Do you mean this post (http://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?7785-Release-Notes-v-2-0-41&p=39759&viewfull=1#post39759)? In fact, he's not saying they're gonna shut down Goko once the tablet version is ready to use.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 08, 2015, 07:54:37 pm
That's weird. I know I read somewhere that once the tablet version was ready they would shut the site down. I remember this because someone asked them a question, and they said they were shutting down Goko so they could spend all of their time and resources on MF Dominion. 

Anyway, I posed the question in there forums again for clarification.

Do you mean this post (http://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?7785-Release-Notes-v-2-0-41&p=39759&viewfull=1#post39759)? In fact, he's not saying they're gonna shut down Goko once the tablet version is ready to use.

I have no idea anymore. I think I'm going crazy and losing my mind
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: SCSN on October 08, 2015, 08:01:43 pm
That's one of the known side-effects of trying out the new client.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 14, 2015, 05:01:52 am
Looks like I was right. Tomorrow is the last day.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: drsteelhammer on October 14, 2015, 06:02:25 am
According to MF, the new version should now be playable for the league standards, right?
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: AdamH on October 14, 2015, 07:58:14 am
Looks like I was right. Tomorrow is the last day.

What I really want to post is one of those absurdly large, over-dramatic, crying "stickers" from facebook, but this will have to do: :'(

They aren't even waiting for the Apple version to be approved. This is sad.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Roadrunner7671 on October 14, 2015, 07:59:53 am
Looks like I was right. Tomorrow is the last day.


They aren't even waiting for the Apple version to be approved.
Looks like my short career of competitive Dominion League play is over.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Davio on October 14, 2015, 08:02:09 am
Okay, this time for real, I'm finally switching to Innovation. :)
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: pubby on October 14, 2015, 08:32:53 am
Boo-urns!
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Awaclus on October 14, 2015, 08:50:03 am
Well, it's a shame that there won't be a way to play on all the intended devices for a short while, but to me, the PC client with SCSN's patch is definitely playable (I just wish there was a way to not get into #vpoff games). Since MF is removing the animations too, it might not even need a patch to be playable. I think it's good news that they can focus on developing the new client more with Goko gone.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 14, 2015, 03:28:49 pm
Well, it's a shame that there won't be a way to play on all the intended devices for a short while, but to me, the PC client with SCSN's patch is definitely playable (I just wish there was a way to not get into #vpoff games). Since MF is removing the animations too, it might not even need a patch to be playable. I think it's good news that they can focus on developing the new client more with Goko gone.

What I want to know is how keeping Goko running interfered with them working on the MF version? I mean, was it really a lot of work to reboot the thing twice a week?
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Voltaire on October 14, 2015, 04:06:53 pm
What I want to know is how keeping Goko running interfered with them working on the MF version? I mean, was it really a lot of work to reboot the thing twice a week?

While I at this point have very little faith left in MF, you can construct a very plausible scenario where Goko was so terrible it truly did drain all their resources keeping it kinda-sorta working horribly.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: SCSN on October 14, 2015, 04:33:27 pm
They said that keeping it running costs them thousands of dollars per month. I guess those endless transmissions of high-res Silver images add up.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: qmech on October 14, 2015, 04:33:42 pm
Well, it's a shame that there won't be a way to play on all the intended devices for a short while, but to me, the PC client with SCSN's patch is definitely playable (I just wish there was a way to not get into #vpoff games). Since MF is removing the animations too, it might not even need a patch to be playable. I think it's good news that they can focus on developing the new client more with Goko gone.

What I want to know is how keeping Goko running interfered with them working on the MF version? I mean, was it really a lot of work to reboot the thing twice a week?

It costs thousands of dollars a month to keep those servers running, and even really good clowns don't make much busking.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 14, 2015, 04:40:18 pm
They said that keeping it running costs them thousands of dollars per month. I guess those endless transmissions of high-res Silver images add up.

Damn. There was no way then they were pulling in any sort of profit
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: GendoIkari on October 21, 2015, 01:59:14 pm
They said that keeping it running costs them thousands of dollars per month. I guess those endless transmissions of high-res Silver images add up.

Damn. There was no way then they were pulling in any sort of profit

Their business model doesn't really make it possible to pull in any sort of profit. All the money had already come in, and been given to Goko. I assume that in some way or another MF got some of that money from Goko, but still, there's no reason to think that they would ever get enough money each month to pay for the server costs. Same goes for the new version too, though I'd imagine the server costs are much less?
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Titandrake on October 21, 2015, 04:43:03 pm
I'm actually not sure how MF is going to turn a profit. It depends on how much the server + staff costs are, but surely there aren't that many potential Dominion players willing to buy cards.

I expect them to transition to a subscription model at some point, since that will at least give a consistent cash flow.

Edit: Thought about it more, and I think I prefer models where players have the chance to "go infinite". I'm envisioning something like,

- The in game currency is buyable with real money.
- There are small events/tournaments where you need to pay an entry fee, but if you place highly you can win it back. (And the game siphons a percentage from the pot to make sure this decreases net currency.)
- The cards are buyable with in game currency.

So, in theory you can bankroll yourself and pay very little real money, but only a small percentage of the community can do so. I think anything close to that is still pretty far out.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: iguanaiguana on October 21, 2015, 05:27:00 pm
I'm actually not sure how MF is going to turn a profit. It depends on how much the server + staff costs are, but surely there aren't that many potential Dominion players willing to buy cards.

I expect them to transition to a subscription model at some point, since that will at least give a consistent cash flow.

Edit: Thought about it more, and I think I prefer models where players have the chance to "go infinite". I'm envisioning something like,

- The in game currency is buyable with real money.
- There are small events/tournaments where you need to pay an entry fee, but if you place highly you can win it back. (And the game siphons a percentage from the pot to make sure this decreases net currency.)
- The cards are buyable with in game currency.

So, in theory you can bankroll yourself and pay very little real money, but only a small percentage of the community can do so. I think anything close to that is still pretty far out.

They should also make a reasonable amount of money when they release adventures, but only if public opinion of their product is good enough when they release it. Hence their working on getting 2.0 out first and Adventures later.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Awaclus on October 21, 2015, 05:36:33 pm
Edit: Thought about it more, and I think I prefer models where players have the chance to "go infinite". I'm envisioning something like,

- The in game currency is buyable with real money.
- There are small events/tournaments where you need to pay an entry fee, but if you place highly you can win it back. (And the game siphons a percentage from the pot to make sure this decreases net currency.)
- The cards are buyable with in game currency.

So, in theory you can bankroll yourself and pay very little real money, but only a small percentage of the community can do so. I think anything close to that is still pretty far out.

I think this would be fine, but in addition, there should be extra content that players can buy with the game currency, like emotes and skins like Prismata has. And there should be a lot of it, and some of it should be incredibly difficult to get. Then there would be an incentive for players to keep playing tournaments after getting all of the expansions.

There could also be ads. Not during a game because that would suck, but maybe instead of the crystal ball or something.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: sudgy on October 21, 2015, 09:13:13 pm
There could also be ads. Not during a game because that would suck, but maybe instead of the crystal ball or something.

I think one of my favorite ways of getting in-game currency for something was something like "You can pay us money, or you can just watch this video and get a bit of our currency."
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 24, 2015, 07:25:22 pm
Maybe they can actually add the base game art. That should not be hard to implement. And I guess it can be a premium product you buy with in-game currency or something
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: popsofctown on October 24, 2015, 08:18:22 pm
Speaking of alt art, if they released the Japanese version of dominion, I would actually buy online dominion cards (because it wouldn't feel like rebuying the game)
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Kirian on October 25, 2015, 02:02:16 pm
Edit: Thought about it more, and I think I prefer models where players have the chance to "go infinite". I'm envisioning something like,

- The in game currency is buyable with real money.
- There are small events/tournaments where you need to pay an entry fee, but if you place highly you can win it back. (And the game siphons a percentage from the pot to make sure this decreases net currency.)
- The cards are buyable with in game currency.

So, in theory you can bankroll yourself and pay very little real money, but only a small percentage of the community can do so. I think anything close to that is still pretty far out.

I think this would be fine, but in addition, there should be extra content that players can buy with the game currency, like emotes and skins like Prismata has. And there should be a lot of it, and some of it should be incredibly difficult to get. Then there would be an incentive for players to keep playing tournaments after getting all of the expansions.

There could also be ads. Not during a game because that would suck, but maybe instead of the crystal ball or something.

No.  Ads, in a product I've already purchased?  That's a good way to drive customers away.  Maybe, *maybe* ads for people who haven't purchased sets.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Awaclus on October 25, 2015, 02:13:51 pm
No.  Ads, in a product I've already purchased?  That's a good way to drive customers away.  Maybe, *maybe* ads for people who haven't purchased sets.

You've purchased sets, but you're not paying for the data their servers have to send and receive every time you play Dominion there. Having ads helps mitigate the costs, and people really don't mind ads as much as they think they do.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Deadlock39 on October 25, 2015, 02:15:51 pm
Edit: Thought about it more, and I think I prefer models where players have the chance to "go infinite". I'm envisioning something like,

- The in game currency is buyable with real money.
- There are small events/tournaments where you need to pay an entry fee, but if you place highly you can win it back. (And the game siphons a percentage from the pot to make sure this decreases net currency.)
- The cards are buyable with in game currency.

So, in theory you can bankroll yourself and pay very little real money, but only a small percentage of the community can do so. I think anything close to that is still pretty far out.

I think this would be fine, but in addition, there should be extra content that players can buy with the game currency, like emotes and skins like Prismata has. And there should be a lot of it, and some of it should be incredibly difficult to get. Then there would be an incentive for players to keep playing tournaments after getting all of the expansions.

There could also be ads. Not during a game because that would suck, but maybe instead of the crystal ball or something.

No.  Ads, in a product I've already purchased?  That's a good way to drive customers away.  Maybe, *maybe* ads for people who haven't purchased sets.

I think it is totally reasonable for them to put ads in for free users, just like almost every other free game platform. For users that have paid for all or most of the content, it would be nice if they did not, but I can't say I'd be surprised if they still did.  I certainly hope they find a way to make money off of Dominion, because if they don't, we probably won't get very much development time.

It's clearly not used yet, and what it is intended for is anyone's guess, but here is a little peek into one of the Dominion DLLs.
(http://i.imgur.com/nhuxiOh.png)
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: yed on October 25, 2015, 02:25:05 pm
Edit: Thought about it more, and I think I prefer models where players have the chance to "go infinite". I'm envisioning something like,

- The in game currency is buyable with real money.
- There are small events/tournaments where you need to pay an entry fee, but if you place highly you can win it back. (And the game siphons a percentage from the pot to make sure this decreases net currency.)
- The cards are buyable with in game currency.

So, in theory you can bankroll yourself and pay very little real money, but only a small percentage of the community can do so. I think anything close to that is still pretty far out.

I think this would be fine, but in addition, there should be extra content that players can buy with the game currency, like emotes and skins like Prismata has. And there should be a lot of it, and some of it should be incredibly difficult to get. Then there would be an incentive for players to keep playing tournaments after getting all of the expansions.

There could also be ads. Not during a game because that would suck, but maybe instead of the crystal ball or something.

No.  Ads, in a product I've already purchased?  That's a good way to drive customers away.  Maybe, *maybe* ads for people who haven't purchased sets.

I think it is totally reasonable for them to put ads in for free users, just like almost every other free game platform. For users that have paid for all or most of the content, it would be nice if they did not, but I can't say I'd be surprised if they still did.  I certainly hope they find a way to make money off of Dominion, because if they don't, we probably won't get very much development time.

It's clearly not used yet, and what it is intended for is anyone's guess, but here is a little peek into one of the Dominion DLLs.
(http://i.imgur.com/nhuxiOh.png)

That is probably just some Unity example... see the "Demo" in file name.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Deadlock39 on October 25, 2015, 02:48:48 pm
That is probably just some Unity example... see the "Demo" in file name.

Yeah, I guess that seems likely.  There isn't any actual implementation in there. I suspected it might be for mobile.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: markusin on October 25, 2015, 05:06:02 pm
Quick question: are cross-platform Unity applications designed to run on all target devices using the same executable, but with different segments of the code running depending on the device?
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: popsofctown on October 26, 2015, 09:57:34 am
No.  Ads, in a product I've already purchased?  That's a good way to drive customers away.  Maybe, *maybe* ads for people who haven't purchased sets.

You've purchased sets, but you're not paying for the data their servers have to send and receive every time you play Dominion there. Having ads helps mitigate the costs, and people really don't mind ads as much as they think they do.

The sets should have been free, and the software should have been ads/subscribe to remove ads from the start. 
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: Awaclus on October 26, 2015, 10:08:55 am
The sets should have been free, and the software should have been ads/subscribe to remove ads from the start.

That's true.
Title: Re: Goko May Shut Down This Month! What Will We Do?
Post by: pedroluchini on October 27, 2015, 07:01:33 am
Quick question: are cross-platform Unity applications designed to run on all target devices using the same executable, but with different segments of the code running depending on the device?

You build different executables for different platforms. This is what it looks like --> http://docs.unity3d.com/uploads/Main/BuildSettings.png.

There is also platform-dependent compilation (http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PlatformDependentCompilation.html), meaning that the binaries (even the project-specific .NET DLLs) are most likely different between platforms.