Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Dominion Online at Shuffle iT => Topic started by: -Stef- on April 13, 2016, 08:02:51 am
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It's actually happening! Philip (SCSN) and I are building the new version of Dominion Online that will go online on the first of January 2017.
We're really excited we got the contract. It involved us building a demonstration Dominion during the first two months of this year, demonstrating it to Jay (RGG games) and Donald, and now building the actual game.
It's still early to say what exactly you can expect, except we will do our very best to make something all the Dominion fans will love.
* We intend to have different clients for different people. One will look as pretty as we can make it, one will be sober, with minimal images and mostly text. These clients will run on Windows, Mac and Linux, or any other platform that supports running Java. We will also make a client that runs in a web browser. Finally phones and tablets will probably be running a different client. If you play online you can play against any other client.
* We will be selling two different products: Dominion Online and Dominion Offline. In Dominion Offline you can buy expansions, and use them to play random boards, selfmade boards or campaigns against AI. For Dominion Online you will have to buy a monthly subscription. This does not require you to own the expansions offline. Online you can play against other players or against AI.
Exact prices are yet to be determined, but you can expect them to be around $3-$8 per expansion offline (depending on the expansion size) and $3/month online (for all expansions, $2/month for half the expansions). Existing users will be offered a choice: they either get their expansions transferred to 'Dominion Offline', or they get their expansions Online for the period of one year.
* We will never be late on releasing new expansions.
* We have some nice plans for new features. It's still very early to consider them promises, but this is certainly on my personal wish list:
- A tournament hosting feature. We want to facilitate other users to act as a tournament host. Especially creating a one day cup and sending out invitations to your friends should be easy. A proper implementation of a one day cup requires some form of a timed game.
- Gamelogs where every decision is a link. Clicking on the link allows you to continue playing from that point on.
This should facilitate questions like "What should I have done here?"
- A 'spectator mode' that allows you to observe any game running on the server, if the players permit it. For entertainment value, or just to wait until your friend is finished playing a game and can play against you.
- Multi language support
At some point we'll be looking for test users, but not yet.
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Best. News. Ever.
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This is incredibly exciting.
You only have to look at what SCSN (and others) pulled off with making more fun to know how awesome this is going to be.
Good times.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBduNcf1eQc
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This is fantastic news.
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It is great that future of online Dominion is now in strong and caring hands.
Good luck with your hard work and thank you.
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Congratulations! I can finally explain to my parents that there are people out there who do 'Dominion things' for a living.
Oh yeah, and I can play Dominion Online somewhere besides Making Fun. That's a plus.
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I think this is gonna be good.
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strong and caring hands.
Kind of makes it sound like this. Even though Penguins don't have hands. And I don't know how "strong" they are.
(http://images.rcp.realclearpolitics.com/200079_5_.jpeg)
The one on the left is SCSN. The one on the right is Stef. The little baby penguin is Dominion Online/Offline. Obviously.
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Am I the only one who is not exactly very excited to pay a monthly fee to be able to play Dominion online?
I guess people just want to see Making Fun bleed for their delays and costumer service (or lack thereof). But please, people, be careful what you wish for.
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Only 262 days left :)
I hope there will be a way to give you money within the first year if you already bought expansions.
Also, expansions is plural which also makes me happy :)
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Am I the only one who is not exactly very excited to pay a monthly fee to be able to play Dominion online?
I guess people just want to see Making Fun bleed for their delays and costumer service (or lack thereof). But please, people, be careful what you wish for.
Did you already buy expansions? If yes, you wont need to for quite some time. If not, it's definitely justified that you get expected to pay.
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Am I the only one who is not exactly very excited to pay a monthly fee to be able to play Dominion online?
I guess people just want to see Making Fun bleed for their delays and costumer service (or lack thereof). But please, people, be careful what you wish for.
Did you already buy expansions? If yes, you wont need to for quite some time. If not, it's definitely justified that you get expected to pay.
I have most, but not all expansions. With the new system, I won't need to pay until early 2018, which is still the distant future, of course (unless I desperately want those Seaside and Cornucopia cards in my possession, which I don't because those two are my least favorite expansions anyway). But after that, it's $36 each year. Back on Goko, you could buy all expansions for all eternity for about the same price.
Every new system cranks up the price a notch. And this time, buying more expansions in advance won't help.
There's also the issue of dissuading possible new users to play Dominion online. No matter how small the price is, you'll lose a lot of potential players if you charge a monthly fee. That's not directly my problem, of course, but it might be a problem for the Dominion player base one day.
Edit: Oh, and if I want to play with Empires online, I will need to pay $3/month from the start, I presume...
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Am I the only one who is not exactly very excited to pay a monthly fee to be able to play Dominion online?
I guess people just want to see Making Fun bleed for their delays and costumer service (or lack thereof). But please, people, be careful what you wish for.
For the price of what I paid to Making Fun for what will be about 15 months worth of playing with expansions, I'd get ~2.5 years of subscription if the price estimate is accurate. Personally, I have a rough heuristic of a dollar/hour for entertainment (thus if I'm thinking about buying a $60 game, I need to expect to play it for 60 hours) and I play far, far more than 2-3 hours of Dominion online in a month. I'm also very happy that we have people who understand that they need a way to generate revenue even if new Dominion products aren't coming out; if game development on Dominion ends (for real), we want the game to still exist online. In order to cover costs of maintenance programming and servers and whatnot, there needs to be some way to make money.
Official in-game tournaments would be fantastic; its all I ever wanted (well, most recent expansions as well).
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It's a little bit late for April Fools, guys.
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Great to hear that this is in good hands.
Two questions:
- Do you intend to support multiple local players in either edition?
- Do you intend to support asynchronous play at all?
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Am I the only one who is not exactly very excited to pay a monthly fee to be able to play Dominion online?
I guess people just want to see Making Fun bleed for their delays and costumer service (or lack thereof). But please, people, be careful what you wish for.
For the price of what I paid to Making Fun for what will be about 15 months worth of playing with expansions, I'd get ~2.5 years of subscription if the price estimate is accurate.
Making Fun more than doubled the price from Goko, which I also found infuriating. But the fact that Making Fun will be more expensive per month than this new system is caused by two factors: the short life of the Making Fun system, and the fact that Stef will charge people in the first place. If the store system from Making Fun were maintained, then you couldn't make calculations like this, because expansions you already bought will still be free for all eternity.
I'm also very happy that we have people who understand that they need a way to generate revenue even if new Dominion products aren't coming out; if game development on Dominion ends (for real), we want the game to still exist online. In order to cover costs of maintenance programming and servers and whatnot, there needs to be some way to make money.
If the revenue decreases once there are no more Dominion expansions, and there are still people who want to keep playing Dominion online, they could start asking for donations instead of demanding them from the beginning.
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Am I the only one who is not exactly very excited to pay a monthly fee to be able to play Dominion online?
I guess people just want to see Making Fun bleed for their delays and costumer service (or lack thereof). But please, people, be careful what you wish for.
For the price of what I paid to Making Fun for what will be about 15 months worth of playing with expansions, I'd get ~2.5 years of subscription if the price estimate is accurate.
Making Fun more than doubled the price from Goko, which I also found infuriating. But the fact that Making Fun will be more expensive per month than this new system is caused by two factors: the short life of the Making Fun system, and the fact that Stef will charge people in the first place. If the store system from Making Fun were maintained, then you couldn't make calculations like this, because expansions you already bought will still be free for all eternity.
I'm also very happy that we have people who understand that they need a way to generate revenue even if new Dominion products aren't coming out; if game development on Dominion ends (for real), we want the game to still exist online. In order to cover costs of maintenance programming and servers and whatnot, there needs to be some way to make money.
If the revenue decreases once there are no more Dominion expansions, and there are still people who want to keep playing Dominion online, they could start asking for donations instead of demanding them from the beginning.
Online gaming is a service, not a product. A product (like Dominion Offline) you buy once and it requires no further work on anyone's part, you use it until you no longer wish to use it, it is consumed, or it breaks. A service (like Dominion Online) requires the entity providing the service (Stef & SCSN (or more likely, their company)) to continue to spend resources to make the service usable. Based on this, I would expect to pay as I use this service. Sure, it would be great if I never had to pay to play Dominion Online. That isn't reality.
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A dominion editor where you'd be able to make/playtest your own fan cards would be cool too. Could be part of the service part within the monthly fee.
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A dominion editor where you'd be able to make/playtest your own fan cards would be cool too. Could be part of the service part within the monthly fee.
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The only downside I can think of is that now even more people will say that the league is rigged. ;) Good luck to both of you!
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The only downside I can think of is that now even more people will say that the league is rigged. ;) Good luck to both of you!
Maybe the League would be one of the in-game tournament types, which could vastly simplify the organization.
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Exciting news! I'm not sure how I feel about paying monthly fees, but if it's $3/month, I'm sure I can find the money (I'll just beg if I need to. ;))
The most reassuring thing, though, is that we can be certain that our concerns will be addressed by people who sincerely care about creating a format for competitive players to enjoy the game online, and that's really great news.
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This monthly subscription thing is great though. It's unfortunate that people paid for the expansions on Goko/MF thinking that they would be able to use those expansions to the end of their days, but really the only problem here is that Goko was selling expansions like that in the first place. 3€ a month for all the expansions or 2€ for half of them is an extremely reasonable price to pay, and maybe some months you can do without the expansions if you're not planning to play that much.
The fact that it's not Goko or Making Fun who I'm paying also makes me a lot more interested in paying a few bucks every month.
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Am I the only one who is not exactly very excited to pay a monthly fee to be able to play Dominion online?
I guess people just want to see Making Fun bleed for their delays and costumer service (or lack thereof). But please, people, be careful what you wish for.
For the price of what I paid to Making Fun for what will be about 15 months worth of playing with expansions, I'd get ~2.5 years of subscription if the price estimate is accurate.
Making Fun more than doubled the price from Goko, which I also found infuriating. But the fact that Making Fun will be more expensive per month than this new system is caused by two factors: the short life of the Making Fun system, and the fact that Stef will charge people in the first place. If the store system from Making Fun were maintained, then you couldn't make calculations like this, because expansions you already bought will still be free for all eternity.
I'm also very happy that we have people who understand that they need a way to generate revenue even if new Dominion products aren't coming out; if game development on Dominion ends (for real), we want the game to still exist online. In order to cover costs of maintenance programming and servers and whatnot, there needs to be some way to make money.
If the revenue decreases once there are no more Dominion expansions, and there are still people who want to keep playing Dominion online, they could start asking for donations instead of demanding them from the beginning.
Online gaming is a service, not a product. A product (like Dominion Offline) you buy once and it requires no further work on anyone's part, you use it until you no longer wish to use it, it is consumed, or it breaks. A service (like Dominion Online) requires the entity providing the service (Stef & SCSN (or more likely, their company)) to continue to spend resources to make the service usable. Based on this, I would expect to pay as I use this service. Sure, it would be great if I never had to pay to play Dominion Online. That isn't reality.
Well, I guess it's just me, so I'll stop complaining and suck the extra costs up. It's still cheap enough that I'll use the system, besides, I just love Dominion too much.
I will admit that, like the rest, I'm pretty curious how the system will look and which extra functions will be implemented.
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In more seriousness though, this news is very heartening. It's so cool to know that two of the best Dominion players in the world will have Dominion as their career.
One thing I hope is that they realize that most people don't like change and that the two interfaces are relatively stylistically similar to Goko/MF and Isotropic respectively.
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For now, consider me... wary. When this was first announced, I guess I was expecting an actual company with infrastructure and a team of programmers, rather than... two guys. I realize dougz did a lot for one guy, but let's be honest, isotropic was pretty small scale, and not really something you could reasonably mass-market. So besides the fact that this is now the third digital Dominion implementation we'll have gotten, I'm leery of official Dominion being in the hands of two forumers with a high chance of being partisan.
That aside, I also have some questions:
-Will the Online implementation also include all the features you're advertising on the Offline (campaigns, etc)?
-Will you have any support for trial users? In both previous implementations, I could get online friends to try Dominion without them having to pay anything. Once they saw how good a game it was, they were often encouraged to buy expansions on their own. However, I think a monthly subscription fee, even $2-3, would be sufficient deterrent for a lot of them to not bother. If you look at other successful digital card games (Hearthstone, Duelyst), they all have some form of free to play option.
-Will you have some sort of pass-and-play feature for Offline (or Online, even)?
In the interest of fairness, and to not sound like a paranoid judgmental asshole, I am intrigued by:
-Multi-language support - this is excellent, and I look forward to it. One of the things that I'm surprised has not be done heretofore. I guess this is more of a priority when the developers aren't native English speakers.
-Spectator mode - also something I'm surprised hasn't been done yet.
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I have a lot of confidence that the best Dominion Online implementation possible can be done being written by the best and most passionate Dominion players. It just makes sense. Eliminates the middleman.
$3 a month is an extremely reasonable price to pay for Dominion Online, especially since I won't have to pay that for a year.
If Dominion Offline doesn't have local multiplayer, it doesn't make much sense to me why I would buy that if I'm already paying for Dominion Online. And I'm someone that does like playing solitaire games or games versus AI sometimes. Local multiplayer could be a great way to rope friends into Dominion Online as well.
Also, thanks for doing this. Finally someone will probably get this right.
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So... this is the otter Online Dominion?
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Dominion players making dominion software? Very glad to hear this!
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as much as i apreciate the work you will be doing for this a monthly fee will make me quit dominion online.
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Favorite Online Dominion Bracket:
1. Isotropic
4. Goko
2. Stef & SCSN's Dominion
3. Making Fun
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Haven't logged in for a long time, but time to say it's finally the time for me to consider buying dominion online.
I assume they have a good enough demo to get the contract. So I don't worry about their implementation ability. On the other hand I am glad to see that finally the engine/interface is designed by someone who plays thousands of games.
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Back in September I had to decide whether to dive in and pay for the expansions, I was wary of exactly this kind of thing. It was something like $90 to get them all, which is not exactly cheap. But once I had them I had them, great. A good investment. And Making Fun, despite the way the majority of this community loves to crap on them every chance they get, it works. They address bugs fairly quickly. So at this point, there's a working product that I've already paid for, so I'm not going to be thrilled by any decision that changes this. Still, I came to expect this back when the decision was announced.
I'm not exactly thrilled about the new pricing model, but I get it. It's hard to expect people to work for free. If I'm understanding my choices correctly I can either
A) Get the first year of Dominion Online for free (a $36 value) and never play offline again. No campaigns or AI games.
B) Transfer my expansions to Dominion Offline (I don't know, a $55ish value), and start paying the online fee immediately.
I guess I'm stuck with Option B; I do enjoy the campaigns and do play offline sometimes.
Here's my real fear with this whole process:
I paid $90. I got 16 months of online and offline Dominion. (Actually, by the time I've purchased Adventures, and I still plan to, it will more like $100ish dollars). Once 2017 rolls around, I will keep my offline expansions and then will have to pay $36 through the year. But what happens if after a year or two, it's decided that this implementation isn't right either, and it gets switched *again* to another developer. And the new guys say "hey, here's our new pricing model, y'all got to pay for all the expansions *again*. And the cycle continues. From what I've seen Making Fun has done an excellent job of honouring player's past purchases; this may not be a financially viable position for the new developers to take, but there it is.
I really hope that the decision-makers have made the right decision this time and we don't have to make another switch. I understand that they feel their previous choice (MF) was the wrong one, and they may be right, but ultimately that decision is going to cost me a bit of money. I am optimistic the new developers know what they're doing and can deliver a good product. The previous product worked just fine, so the onus will be on them to deliver a better one.
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It's actually happening! Philip (SCSN) and I are building the new version of Dominion Online that will go online on the first of January 2017. We're really excited we got the contract.
Congratulations! And be sure to let me know when you are looking for testers later in the year. I would be happy to help!
Well, I guess it's just me, so I'll stop complaining and suck the extra costs up.
Well, no, it's not just you, as you can see in the thread. I share some of the concerns, too, but I think it's better to give Stef and SCSN space to work and develop the product. They are clearly hoping to deliver an online product that is WORTH paying up to $3/mo for. Let's give them a chance to deliver.
For now, consider me... wary. When this was first announced, I guess I was expecting an actual company with infrastructure and a team of programmers, rather than... two guys.
To be fair, Rio Grande Games is one guy, Donald X. is one guy, and Goko-Making Fun, etc. were a lot of guys, then one guy, then some guys + random code monkeys if I understand the history of the companies correctly.
Think about it as a risky start up venture. Like Goko was, except this time the start up has a more limited mission scope, proven programmers, and a love of the game they are adapting.
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Congratulations on getting the contract! I'm very excited about this. Contrary to many people, I feel like the pricing structure is well thought out. I think this will actually entice me to finally buy the expansions online.
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I came here to say that I'm still a person who plays Dominion online quite a bit and am super unhappy with this news. The monthly fee along with no way for people who don't play very often feels alienating. With Making fun people who play once a year can hop on and enjoy a game of Dominion with me right now and they can do that for free with all the expansions. I feel extremely mislead in being told that my purchases would transfer over when in fact they basically won't. I understand the need to generate income but this feels like I'm being ripped off. I bought the expansions with the intention of being able to play with my more casual (maybe a few games a year) kind of people and I won't be able to do that anymore. And I have to choose between the "offline" version whatever that means and the online version.
If the payment model stays the same, I won't be making the move.
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Yeah I'm pretty pissed at this. I have all the Dominon cards IRL, so I don't need an offline mode. I paid $90 to get a game I could play for a long time. I play often with my wife, as currently she can play without having paid the $90 so long as I had the expansions.
Now I will only get a year more before I have to pay $72 per month for me and my wife? And in the first year I'll have to shell out $36 for her? Fuck that. This is just nickel and diming your customers.
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Yeah I'm pretty pissed at this. I have all the Dominon cards IRL, so I don't need an offline mode. I paid $90 to get a game I could play for a long time. I play often with my wife, as currently she can play without having paid the $90 so long as I had the expansions.
Now I will only get a year more before I have to pay $72 per month for me and my wife? And in the first year I'll have to shell out $36 for her? Fuck that. This is just nickel and diming your customers.
I'm not reading the same thing you're reading:
$3/month online (for all expansions, $2/month for half the expansions)
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Also, would both players need to own all the expansions online, or only the person that creates the game?
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Fantastic news! Apparently I'm one of the few people who thinks that $3 a month is dirt cheap. Holy cow is that cheap. I for one can go with one less 30 oz soda or bag of cookies a month to play one of my favorite games. (Think of it this way...put a quarter away every week till this comes out...then you'll have four months of free dominion).
Question 1: Will there be a "base game only" free online version like the current MF model? I probably wouldn't have even tried Dominion Online if that wasn't free.
Question 2: Will those with half expansions still get to experience all the expansions if paired up with someone who bought the whole package? If so, that is great!
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I only just bought all the expansions with Making Fun. Which was a fairly big expenditure, and it hurts that they are going to be essentially lost at the end of this year (Offline Dominion not really being a thing.).
That said, I think a lot of what is putting people off about the pay monthly system (which I will probably be happy to pay) is the idea of paying $3/month for what Making Fun currently offer (which is our only current point of comparison). I would not want to pay monthly for what MF do, but we have to trust here that SCSN and Stef are going to produce a product that is actually WORTH that fee, unlike what MF have done. People should keep in mind when complaining about the idea of a monthly fee.
That said, I do think a trial period is absolutely a good idea, as well as some way of playing local/LAN multiplayer in the "Offline" system.
I would even go so far as to suggest a $1/month fee for people who want to play online with no expansions, just putting up with whatever games other people have (as the current MF does if you have no expansions). But I'm aware that I have no right to suggest anything with regards to your pricing structure, so take this suggestion with a pinch of salt.
Related question: Which "half" of the expansions?
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Yeah I'm pretty pissed at this. I have all the Dominon cards IRL, so I don't need an offline mode. I paid $90 to get a game I could play for a long time. I play often with my wife, as currently she can play without having paid the $90 so long as I had the expansions.
Couldn't you play with your wife IRL then? It's a genuine question. When I got Dominion Online I became a bit lazy and didn't want to set up the cards, so I asked my girlfriend if she wanted to play online and she gave me a "WTF"-look and pointed to the expansions on the shelf. I assumed most couples that don't spend horrendous amounts of time apart play IRL.
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I came here to say that I'm still a person who plays Dominion online quite a bit and am super unhappy with this news. The monthly fee along with no way for people who don't play very often feels alienating. With Making fun people who play once a year can hop on and enjoy a game of Dominion with me right now and they can do that for free with all the expansions. I feel extremely mislead in being told that my purchases would transfer over when in fact they basically won't. I understand the need to generate income but this feels like I'm being ripped off. I bought the expansions with the intention of being able to play with my more casual (maybe a few games a year) kind of people and I won't be able to do that anymore. And I have to choose between the "offline" version whatever that means and the online version.
If the payment model stays the same, I won't be making the move.
Wow! Insomniac spotting!
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This is great. I would highly recommend a free online mode for base-set only people. I think you won't be able to hook many new people in with paying $3/month.
My brother likes Dominion IRL and hates playing online, but since we live so far away we sometimes play online and when we both go visit my dad or something we will play online against each other so we don't have to lug a million cards on a flight. He would definitely not want to pay anything for an online implementation so I would hope there would still be a way for me to play against him if I have an online subscription.
I'm definitely all in as a customer though. Love how responsive SCSN was simply with the patch doing it as a hobby. This is great news.
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Would people rather have a thread for talking about pricing and leave this thread for congratulating Stef/SCSN?
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Would people rather have a thread for talking about pricing and leave this thread for congratulating Stef/SCSN?
/me looks at thread title
I don't see why. Seems like a fine place for all feedback, both positive and negative.
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Very good news! (sad to see the n-th working implementation of online Dominion being thrown in the trash, but it's great news for the long run)
Since I concentrate my Dominion plays in only a few months of the year, a subscription system works great for me, and the price seems fair. Yet, I worry that subscriptions will scare the more casual players away, unless a decent free option is left for those who only play a few games once in a while. (limiting number of games, or creating a free ghetto with fewer cards available, or who knows)
Also, I'm afraid that asking for money up front will also make it hard to get new players.
I have full faith in that you guys will deliver a very good product, I hope that you'll be able to commercialize it in a way that will make it bloom.
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There's a reason most persistent services charge monthly fees (or have ads). There are recurring costs for using that service. However I'm less sure it works for something like online dominion where there's bound to be huge disparities in usage between more or less casual players. For many people who post here $3 a month is basically nothing for how much they'll get out. But for many who play infrequently it's an annoying barrier to turn on and off the service. So I'm a little skeptical of the business model here. I would gladly pay $3 if I was playing as much as I did on ISO. I probably still will because it's such a small amount. But I think people disagreeing have a reasonable argument.
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Oh. Oh. I read this as offline mode being free.
There's no way I'll make the switch.
Sorry guys.
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Yet, I worry that subscriptions will scare the more casual players away, unless a decent free option is left for those who only play a few games once in a while. (limiting number of games, or creating a free ghetto with fewer cards available, or who knows)
Also, I'm afraid that asking for money up front will also make it hard to get new players.
I also worry about that, but I hope they already have thought along the same lines. The original post talked about cost per expansion saying nothing about Base , so presumably Base will still be free, which I think is a good idea for getting new players. I also really hope that the model where the union of cards owned by participanting players are used is followed. That is most like real cards and can also get new clients (who when their friend who taught them to play aren't there might get interesting in buying some cards of their own).
I think I would make individual cards free for limited time as well, as teasers. So one week Conspirator might be the "card of the week" being available even for those who don't own it. In the matches where it appears there will be info about it: "This card is available for free only this week. It is available in Dominion Intrigue. [Buy here]" The double purpose is to get people to want to buy that card (of course) *and* to make it even more fun being a freeloader. It has to be fun even to be a freeloader.
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Oh. Oh. I read this as offline mode being free.
There's no way I'll make the switch.
Sorry guys.
If you already own the cards now, then you can choose to get the offline version for free.
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Back in September I had to decide whether to dive in and pay for the expansions, I was wary of exactly this kind of thing. It was something like $90 to get them all, which is not exactly cheap. But once I had them I had them, great. A good investment. And Making Fun, despite the way the majority of this community loves to crap on them every chance they get, it works. They address bugs fairly quickly. So at this point, there's a working product that I've already paid for, so I'm not going to be thrilled by any decision that changes this. Still, I came to expect this back when the decision was announced.
I'm not exactly thrilled about the new pricing model, but I get it. It's hard to expect people to work for free. If I'm understanding my choices correctly I can either
A) Get the first year of Dominion Online for free (a $36 value) and never play offline again. No campaigns or AI games.
B) Transfer my expansions to Dominion Offline (I don't know, a $55ish value), and start paying the online fee immediately.
I guess I'm stuck with Option B; I do enjoy the campaigns and do play offline sometimes.
Here's my real fear with this whole process:
I paid $90. I got 16 months of online and offline Dominion. (Actually, by the time I've purchased Adventures, and I still plan to, it will more like $100ish dollars). Once 2017 rolls around, I will keep my offline expansions and then will have to pay $36 through the year. But what happens if after a year or two, it's decided that this implementation isn't right either, and it gets switched *again* to another developer. And the new guys say "hey, here's our new pricing model, y'all got to pay for all the expansions *again*. And the cycle continues. From what I've seen Making Fun has done an excellent job of honouring player's past purchases; this may not be a financially viable position for the new developers to take, but there it is.
I really hope that the decision-makers have made the right decision this time and we don't have to make another switch. I understand that they feel their previous choice (MF) was the wrong one, and they may be right, but ultimately that decision is going to cost me a bit of money. I am optimistic the new developers know what they're doing and can deliver a good product. The previous product worked just fine, so the onus will be on them to deliver a better one.
It literally states that you can play against AI with the online model
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I also really hope that the model where the union of cards owned by participanting players are used is followed. That is most like real cards and can also get new clients (who when their friend who taught them to play aren't there might get interesting in buying some cards of their own).
Most importantly, the people who pay the monthly subscription still probably want to get matched in a reasonably short time, instead of waiting for 3 hours until another player who happens to have the exact same expansions shows up.
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Stef/SCSCN
Wanted to share some thoughts. You have two player bases with Dominion. You have the hardcore gamers such as us, and, well, yourselves. And, then, you have the very casual gamer. I think there needs to be a free version both online and offline for the former category. If it is just Base Set for free, fine. But, there needs to be an option, otherwise, capturing new potential subscribers will be hard.
I think Offline should be on tablets. I believe a lot of casual people would love to play on the tablet offline and paying per expansion for this model makes sense.
And, one question, let's say I have every expansion up to Adventures on MF, but I want to play with Empires, will everyone pretty much have to pay $3/month from the get go? Will each expansion roughly equate a month of free service perhaps, so maybe 9 free months? I'm counting Cornucopia/Guilds/Alchemy as half expansions. I know you said 1-year free for the expansions you own.
With that said, I have a feeling you guys will create a kick-ass system. I'm more of visual person who likes the log at the side like the current version, so I hope we still have that.
Also, expect a lot of complaints, especially from casual gamers. $3/month will likely be a huge turnoff for people who only play once or twice a month. Hmm...You know, I have an idea, maybe allow users to play the first five games free per month, or allow players a 1-month free trial, and then they can play Base only. I don't know. Just throwing ideas out there.
More than anything, I want Dominion Online to be successful. To me, a success means both maintaining the current player base and also growing it. I hope this new model can achieve both.
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It literally states that you can play against AI with the online model
It's more the campaigns that I enjoy. Keeping the offline expansions seems the wiser move to me, your free year is gone after a year, and now you have nothing. And if there's another developer switch, will users who opted for the free year be left standing empty-handed, while I will still be able to transfer my kept expansions along? This is all hypothetical I know, but it seems wiser in the long run to me to hang onto the expansions. And hey, that way you're paying the new developers immediately, if that's your concern. But once you let the expansions go, it's an expensive proposition to pay for them a second time.
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Also, SCSN/Stef, you are probably aware, but here is the reddit link which right now already has 51 replies https://www.reddit.com/r/dominion/comments/4elhxm/info_on_the_new_online_dominion_client_for_2017/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/dominion/comments/4elhxm/info_on_the_new_online_dominion_client_for_2017/)
I do not see a discussion on BGG though.
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There's a reason most persistent services charge monthly fees (or have ads). There are recurring costs for using that service. However I'm less sure it works for something like online dominion where there's bound to be huge disparities in usage between more or less casual players. For many people who post here $3 a month is basically nothing for how much they'll get out. But for many who play infrequently it's an annoying barrier to turn on and off the service. So I'm a little skeptical of the business model here. I would gladly pay $3 if I was playing as much as I did on ISO. I probably still will because it's such a small amount. But I think people disagreeing have a reasonable argument.
Maybe a "pay for X number of games" for those who don't play often? Think prepaid or pay-as-you-go phones.
To give prospective players a trial run, maybe it could allow free games using a limited pool for random kingdoms
Base set only was the original Dominion Online plan, but it might be cool to include a few expansion cards, rotating on a weekly basis so that those players can get a taste. But I'm just throwing ideas out there. No doubt Stef and SCSN will be thinking hard about how to attract new players.
Congrats on getting the contact!
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From somebody who loves Dominion and plays IRL all the time and only occasionally online, I like the idea of an inexpensive monthly subscription. I don't play enough online to justify the current cost of online expansions, but I wouldn't mind chipping in a few dollars a month to play casually online.
I do agree with others that it might be nice to be able to play a small number of games per month for free. I think that could help pull in potential new subscribers.
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For now, consider me... wary. When this was first announced, I guess I was expecting an actual company with infrastructure and a team of programmers, rather than... two guys. I realize dougz did a lot for one guy, but let's be honest, isotropic was pretty small scale, and not really something you could reasonably mass-market. So besides the fact that this is now the third digital Dominion implementation we'll have gotten, I'm leery of official Dominion being in the hands of two forumers with a high chance of being partisan.
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I also have that concern. I sure hope you guys has contingency plans. Things can and do happen in life.
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oh cool! Congrats!
* We intend to have different clients for different people. One will look as pretty as we can make it, one will be sober, with minimal images and mostly text. These clients will run on Windows, Mac and Linux, or any other platform that supports running Java. We will also make a client that runs in a web browser. Finally phones and tablets will probably be running a different client. If you play online you can play against any other client.
Are you guys experienced programmers? What projects have you worked to completion in the past that were cross-platform to this degree?
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I think the idea of a small number of free plays with all the cards per month would be a pretty good promotional idea.
I also like the idea of having a small number of sample cards that are cycled into the free pool could work well. (a la League of Legends for anyone who is familiar).
Another related idea that I thought of would be a "kingdom of the day" that anyone can play.
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Beyond Awesome, two player bases, seriously? That is rather broad. I would rather use half-dozen (ux) personas. Take myself for example. I'm casual who mainly play versus bots to relax after work. That's still a big difference vs a kid playing 4p games in a social setting.
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Maybe a "pay for X number of games" for those who don't play often? Think prepaid or pay-as-you-go phones.
What constitutes a game, though? If your opponent immediately quits because they didn't like their opening split, is that a game?
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
On PS4, I have to pay freaking $50 bucks a year and buy all the $60 dollar games which have less content than ever before and then all the expansions that are like $25 bucks each which have nothing, but nobody complains about that, that's 'normal'. But $3 a month is somehow cruel and horrible for an actual good game.
Free isn't sustainable. How does nobody see this? I'm willing to pay $3 a month for Dominion.
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Maybe a "pay for X number of games" for those who don't play often? Think prepaid or pay-as-you-go phones.
What constitutes a game, though? If your opponent immediately quits because they didn't like their opening split, is that a game?
Yeah, I think a pay-per-turn model is what is really needed here.
"I would have won that game if only I could afford the slog!"
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Lots of companies tend to have dedicated customer support. A small concern I do have is how will Stef and SCSN handle the influx of messages they will receive while at the same time maintaining the client and programming new expansions, assuming Empires is not the last Dominion expansion.
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Maybe a "pay for X number of games" for those who don't play often? Think prepaid or pay-as-you-go phones.
What constitutes a game, though? If your opponent immediately quits because they didn't like their opening split, is that a game?
This is certainly a problem with a pay-per-game option, but I hardly think it is unsolvable. Something as simple as "if your opponent resigns in less than X turns or Y seconds, the game doesn't count" would probably keep people who chose that option happy.
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Online gaming is a service, not a product. A product (like Dominion Offline) you buy once and it requires no further work on anyone's part, you use it until you no longer wish to use it, it is consumed, or it breaks. A service (like Dominion Online) requires the entity providing the service (Stef & SCSN (or more likely, their company)) to continue to spend resources to make the service usable. Based on this, I would expect to pay as I use this service. Sure, it would be great if I never had to pay to play Dominion Online. That isn't reality.
While that is all true, it doesn't stop other companies from providing perpetual online play for a one-time fee. See Ticket to Ride or Kingdom Builder for example.
It seems that some publishers see the online versions of games as tools to help them "upsell" to the cardboard versions, and use those sales to finance the digital versions. I have no idea how well that works, financially, but they surely do. We'll see if those publishers continue to use that model or not. RGG seems reluctant to follow it, to be sure, which is a low-risk way to proceed.
I hope that the offline version allows some type of multi-player, and just means you're not using the developer's servers.
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Shit, when I first read that I thought it was going to be $3/mo/expansion, or like $30/month! Now I've read it correctly, and not nearly that bad.
I'm really glad to see that it's actual community people making it!
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Maybe a "pay for X number of games" for those who don't play often? Think prepaid or pay-as-you-go phones.
What constitutes a game, though? If your opponent immediately quits because they didn't like their opening split, is that a game?
This is certainly a problem with a pay-per-game option, but I hardly think it is unsolvable. Something as simple as "if your opponent resigns in less than X turns or Y seconds, the game doesn't count" would probably keep people who chose that option happy.
Yeah, that's true. I still prefer that format as "you get X free games per day/week/month", rather than "you may pay X$ for Y games".
But maybe other people would like to buy their games that way, idk.
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Beyond Awesome, two player bases, seriously? That is rather broad. I would rather use half-dozen (ux) personas. Take myself for example. I'm casual who mainly play versus bots to relax after work. That's still a big difference vs a kid playing 4p games in a social setting.
When I say casual gamer, I understand there are subsets of players. Some people only play bots, some play only with friends, others want tablet pass and play. But, when I think of casual vs. hardcore Dominion player, I feel most hardcore players will most likely use the new client more willingly whereas, the "casual" player might not be as easily convinced. I also feel casual players make up the majority of the player base which is why it is important to have something that makes everyone happy.
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Maybe a "pay for X number of games" for those who don't play often? Think prepaid or pay-as-you-go phones.
What constitutes a game, though? If your opponent immediately quits because they didn't like their opening split, is that a game?
This is certainly a problem with a pay-per-game option, but I hardly think it is unsolvable. Something as simple as "if your opponent resigns in less than X turns or Y seconds, the game doesn't count" would probably keep people who chose that option happy.
I think the best option would be to continue the practice of having access to the Base Set for free, without a subscription. As well, allow free players to play with subscribed players with the subscribed player's sets. This would be an incredibly good way to get new players into the game, especially since most people who play a couple games of Dominion usually end up wanting to play it more. I think the number of people choosing to subscribe will be enough (if not more) to offset the cost of supporting non-paying players, especially since non-paying players will only be able to play with expansions if they play with subscribers.
I think if you have some sort of ranked system, it should quite clearly only be available to subscribers, or at least have two ranks - one for free players, using base only (perhaps with a rotating selection of expansion cards, as has been suggested by others), and one for subscribers. Non-payers would only be able to play with subscribers in unranked games.
Tournaments were mentioned - I think an excellent prize would be a month or two of free subscription.
EDIT: Hell, if you wanted, you can put advertisements up in non-payer clients. Whatever ends up working.
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Some of us are unemployed. :(
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Tournaments were mentioned - I think an excellent prize would be a month or two of free subscription.
I spent a while trying to figure out tournaments online, how to set up a system where you could try to generate revenue primarily through tournament entry fees. The problem is prizes, and awarding free subscriptions for winning might be too close to straight up money for money, which would be a mess legally.
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Tournaments were mentioned - I think an excellent prize would be a month or two of free subscription.
I spent a while trying to figure out tournaments online, how to set up a system where you could try to generate revenue primarily through tournament entry fees. The problem is prizes, and awarding free subscriptions for winning might be too close to straight up money for money, which would be a mess legally.
Ew no fuck that. Fuck entry fees. Anyone who wants to play should be able to. We'll all already be paying for the game anyway.
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Tournaments were mentioned - I think an excellent prize would be a month or two of free subscription.
I spent a while trying to figure out tournaments online, how to set up a system where you could try to generate revenue primarily through tournament entry fees. The problem is prizes, and awarding free subscriptions for winning might be too close to straight up money for money, which would be a mess legally.
Ew no fuck that. Fuck entry fees. Anyone who wants to play should be able to. We'll all already be paying for the game anyway.
Well, this was a totally different system, wherein the game was itself largely free. I was thinking something like Magic Online model, except without packs and new cards and all that jazz. Spoiler alert: I couldn't figure out a model that made sense.
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Some of us are unemployed. :(
If I'm unemployed, I'll probably be losing a lot more than just Dominion. :( Best of luck to you, man.
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Some of us are unemployed. :(
Not to be a dick or anything...but go mow your neighbor's lawn for $9. You have three months right there. Scraping $3 together in 28 days sounds trivially easy to me. Even my broke-ass, no job, high schooler memories had a change jar that had more than $3 in it.
Tournaments were mentioned - I think an excellent prize would be a month or two of free subscription.
I spent a while trying to figure out tournaments online, how to set up a system where you could try to generate revenue primarily through tournament entry fees. The problem is prizes, and awarding free subscriptions for winning might be too close to straight up money for money, which would be a mess legally.
Ew no fuck that. Fuck entry fees. Anyone who wants to play should be able to. We'll all already be paying for the game anyway.
Yeah fuck entry fees for tournaments. That's a great way to make sure casual people never even bother with tournament formats.
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Some of us are unemployed. :(
Christmas present from parents?
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As someone who was initially hesitant (and still am), after thinking about it a bit I'm personally going to put the brakes on questions about the pricing model or really any other concerns. This announcement right now isn't about much more than "hey Stef and SCSN are doing online Dominion in 2017". Great, sounds good to me. They know what they're doing.
January 2017 is a long way away, so they have a lot of time to get this right, so it's seeming a little premature to get into lengthy discussions about how it's all going to work. This is only Step 1, and while I would have been ok with Step 0: stick with MF, but if Steps are going to be made, Step 1 at least was the correct one, so I'm optimistic. I will be looking forward to the developments as they happen.
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Steps are going to be made
No, Stef is going to be paid.
At least I hope he is.
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Excited about:
-People who are passionate about Dominion making the new client.
-Already lots of thought being put into features and general things around what people want.
-New pricing model that actually makes a lot of sense for an online game, and is really cheap.
Nervous about:
-As Wero pointed out, the size of the "company" that's making this. Now I consider this both a positive and a negative; I have enough experience with software development to know that a smaller team is often capable of getting things done better, and even sometimes faster. However, it does still bring concern about turnaround time for things like bug fixes, new features, and responses to inquiries.
Congrats and good luck!
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Maybe a "pay for X number of games" for those who don't play often? Think prepaid or pay-as-you-go phones.
What constitutes a game, though? If your opponent immediately quits because they didn't like their opening split, is that a game?
This is certainly a problem with a pay-per-game option, but I hardly think it is unsolvable. Something as simple as "if your opponent resigns in less than X turns or Y seconds, the game doesn't count" would probably keep people who chose that option happy.
Yeah, that's true. I still prefer that format as "you get X free games per day/week/month", rather than "you may pay X$ for Y games".
But maybe other people would like to buy their games that way, idk.
I would think this is the type of thing that would be offered as an alternative to a subscription. Maybe if you don't play very often, it is more cost effective to buy 50 games for $10 than pay monthly. It's really just a possible answer to the player who says, "I just don't play often enough to justify a subscription".
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The easy solution to the subscription model would be that people can register a free account and say get 1 game free a day up to 30 games. Should be plenty for casuals.
If being stricter one can even limit their right to join games, not creating games.
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Sounds interesting.
I have some questions, though:
It's actually happening! Philip (SCSN) and I are building the new version of Dominion Online that will go online on the first of January 2017.
How can you be so sure about that, more than eight months in advance? What makes you sure that you'll have a working client by January that includes the intended features?
* We will never be late on releasing new expansions.
What does that mean? Will there be no new expansions? Will your platform be used for playtesting of new expansions?
I wish you the best of luck, yet it feels a bit awkward to make these kind of promises now.
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allow free players to play with subscribed players with the subscribed player's sets
I'm not sure how well that system worked for Goko/MF, or if it could feasibly transfer over to the new plan. There is a difference in that, with previous Dominion Online implementations, there were plenty of players with only some of the expansions. With the new plan, it seems likely that pretty much everyone playing will be paying for all sets anyway (will there really be people who pay $2 for half of the sets but aren't willing to put up the extra $1 for the other half?).
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I liked it when players could buy expansions to use online, at their own pace. I'm not a fan of throwing folks into the deep end of full-random (or even half-random). I worry that will turn players off.
Not that I'm optimistic about new players joining without some free trial period, or the ability to play with other people's subscription, or something.
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Anyways, when that testing thing comes around, I volunteer as tribune.
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I liked it when players could buy expansions to use online, at their own pace. I'm not a fan of throwing folks into the deep end of full-random (or even half-random). I worry that will turn players off.
Not that I'm optimistic about new players joining without some free trial period, or the ability to play with other people's subscription, or something.
I agree here. It is hard to say if Stef not mentioning a free tier for online means it doesn't exist, or that it is assumed.
I wonder if $2 for half the expansions actually means that it will be something like ~$0.50 per/month/expansion, or get them all for $3/month. Maybe they haven't even really hashed out the specifics.
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Back on Goko, you could buy all expansions for all eternity for about the same price.
That eternity was always an illusion; Goko could not actually offer service past when their contract ran out. It was always a subscription; now it's up-front about it.
There's also the issue of dissuading possible new users to play Dominion online.
Obv. we won't know how the subscription will work out until we've tried it. Good luck, subscription model!
Edit: Oh, and if I want to play with Empires online, I will need to pay $3/month from the start, I presume...
We will let people upgrade from whatever they bought to everything by paying the difference.
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The only downside I can think of is that now even more people will say that the league is rigged. ;) Good luck to both of you!
You are just being hilarious, but obv. if there's an official league then staff will not be allowed to participate.
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Some of us are unemployed. :(
Not to be a dick or anything...but go mow your neighbor's lawn for $9. You have three months right there. Scraping $3 together in 28 days sounds trivially easy to me. Even my broke-ass, no job, high schooler memories had a change jar that had more than $3 in it.
Tournaments were mentioned - I think an excellent prize would be a month or two of free subscription.
I spent a while trying to figure out tournaments online, how to set up a system where you could try to generate revenue primarily through tournament entry fees. The problem is prizes, and awarding free subscriptions for winning might be too close to straight up money for money, which would be a mess legally.
Ew no fuck that. Fuck entry fees. Anyone who wants to play should be able to. We'll all already be paying for the game anyway.
Yeah fuck entry fees for tournaments. That's a great way to make sure casual people never even bother with tournament formats.
Photo of me (not really):
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For now, consider me... wary. When this was first announced, I guess I was expecting an actual company with infrastructure and a team of programmers, rather than... two guys.
When Stef asked for the job, I said no, we wanted a real company. He decided his best shot was writing a program and showing what he could accomplish in two months. That sounded good to us so we waited to see what they managed.
As you can see we were sufficiently impressed.
-Will the Online implementation also include all the features you're advertising on the Offline (campaigns, etc)?
You say "etc." but it looks like it says "random boards, selfmade boards or campaigns against AI." Of course you should be able to play random boards and selfmade boards online. Campaigns, I don't know, maybe. We're not trying to sell the offline product on the strength of campaigns; really it's just there because some people may prefer it.
-Will you have any support for trial users? In both previous implementations, I could get online friends to try Dominion without them having to pay anything. Once they saw how good a game it was, they were often encouraged to buy expansions on their own. However, I think a monthly subscription fee, even $2-3, would be sufficient deterrent for a lot of them to not bother. If you look at other successful digital card games (Hearthstone, Duelyst), they all have some form of free to play option.
For sure we understand that there has to be a way to try the system for free. For offline play there will be levels you can try, like a campaign. I'm not sure what we do for online play but obv. we have to have some way to try it for free.
-Will you have some sort of pass-and-play feature for Offline (or Online, even)?
If there's demand for it then I hope so. I have no picture of what the demand is there.
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But what happens if after a year or two, it's decided that this implementation isn't right either, and it gets switched *again* to another developer. And the new guys say "hey, here's our new pricing model, y'all got to pay for all the expansions *again*. And the cycle continues.
From my perspective we are in a much better position in that hypothetical situation than we are now.
- People who subscribe won't be able to buy a subscription for a time when they won't have the contract. So if we decide we hate the new guys, we won't owe anyone any subscriptions; everyone got just what they paid for.
- People who buy the offline version will still have it and be able to play it, for as long as their hardware and OS support it. It's just some program they bought; it doesn't require further interaction with the company.
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-Will you have some sort of pass-and-play feature for Offline (or Online, even)?
If there's demand for it then I hope so. I have no picture of what the demand is there.
I just don't see pass-and-play as being remotely feasible as a dominion option. Reaction cards are going to be logistically almost unmanageable.
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I feel extremely mislead in being told that my purchases would transfer over when in fact they basically won't. I understand the need to generate income but this feels like I'm being ripped off. I bought the expansions with the intention of being able to play with my more casual (maybe a few games a year) kind of people and I won't be able to do that anymore. And I have to choose between the "offline" version whatever that means and the online version.
I was also misled! I can't say "to the best of my knowledge" on every post but that is how it went.
Jay and I were prepared to give up the money we made from online Dominion, even convert the profit to an equivalent loss, to keep people customers happy who already bought in. It wasn't much money; no great loss. But, unknown to us somehow, our income from online Dominion was a tiny fraction of the revenue actually taken in. We don't have the money people spent. I can't give you these numbers but that is what happened. We were confident we would just give everyone the new system and then found out where we really stood.
If there is demand for a method of subscribing that accounts for only playing a few times a year, then uh I hope we look into it? I don't want to burn you with promises I can't keep; I just make the expansions. If there are people who only play occasionally then I would be happy to support that, where supporting that means, someone else is actually doing all of that work because I have a different job.
What exactly the offline version "means" will be clearer before people have to make that call. To the best of my knowledge!
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Also, would both players need to own all the expansions online, or only the person that creates the game?
I suspect "both," as it makes the game cheaper for the actual customers.
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Is it (financially) unreasonable to have previous purchases from Goko/MF carryover to both the offline version and a year of subscription, instead of requiring the choice?
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Question 1: Will there be a "base game only" free online version like the current MF model? I probably wouldn't have even tried Dominion Online if that wasn't free.
I don't know yet what the free way to try the online version will look like.
Question 2: Will those with half expansions still get to experience all the expansions if paired up with someone who bought the whole package? If so, that is great!
I am guessing no.
"Half the expansions" is just a guess also. We could sell subscriptions by individual expansion; probably so few people want that that it makes more sense to just have a few tiers. No-one has picked out tiers.
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Also, would both players need to own all the expansions online, or only the person that creates the game?
I suspect "both," as it makes the game cheaper for the actual customers.
Sorry, why is that?
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Since people are sharing; I don't have too big of an issue with this. I only really like to play 'offline' anyway, so I'm happy enough to have it carryover. I'm not sure I'd pay for online, even though it's cheap. Just because, I feel like it's rare that I'd ever use it.
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I think I would make individual cards free for limited time as well, as teasers. So one week Conspirator might be the "card of the week" being available even for those who don't own it. In the matches where it appears there will be info about it: "This card is available for free only this week. It is available in Dominion Intrigue. [Buy here]" The double purpose is to get people to want to buy that card (of course) *and* to make it even more fun being a freeloader. It has to be fun even to be a freeloader.
It sounds reasonable to me to have things like card-of-the-week; I don't know if anything like that will happen.
Anyone who wasn't going to buy some entertainment thing anyway, who gets it for free, is probably a net benefit to the people who make the entertainment thing. That's what I think. If you weren't going to buy that album but listen to it on youtube, that may push you slightly towards buying someday, towards seeing a concert, towards recommending the band to a friend who buys the album. You know.
But any deals here had to be acceptable to everyone involved and at the start anyway I don't imagine there will be a lot of freeloading.
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And, one question, let's say I have every expansion up to Adventures on MF, but I want to play with Empires, will everyone pretty much have to pay $3/month from the get go?
To get everything including Empires you would just have to pay the difference between the cost-per-month for what you have and the cost-per-month for everything.
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And, one question, let's say I have every expansion up to Adventures on MF, but I want to play with Empires, will everyone pretty much have to pay $3/month from the get go?
To get everything including Empires you would just have to pay the difference between the cost-per-month for what you have and the cost-per-month for everything.
So I'm only paying cents on the dollar for Empires first year, because I owned everything else?
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Also, would both players need to own all the expansions online, or only the person that creates the game?
I suspect "both," as it makes the game cheaper for the actual customers.
This would be the "you can only play with the intersection of cards owned by the two players" approach.
That would be worse than the "you can play with the union of cards owned by the two players" approach or the "you can play with either players' cards at at time, your choice of whose" approach. The intersection approach means that I can't play with the expansions with a friend who only plays a few games a year, and it means that those who have purchased the expansions won't want to play with those who don't have all the cards.
To me, union for any cards randomly added in kingdoms (the entire kingdom for full random) + the ability to chose specific Kingdom cards only from one person's cards is the way to go.
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For sure we understand that there has to be a way to try the system for free. For offline play there will be levels you can try, like a campaign. I'm not sure what we do for online play but obv. we have to have some way to try it for free.
Nice, that's great news!
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Also, would both players need to own all the expansions online, or only the person that creates the game?
I suspect "both," as it makes the game cheaper for the actual customers.
It also makes the matching time unreasonably long for the actual customers unless the new version suddenly has way more actual customers than the current version does.
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It's actually happening! Philip (SCSN) and I are building the new version of Dominion Online that will go online on the first of January 2017.
How can you be so sure about that, more than eight months in advance? What makes you sure that you'll have a working client by January that includes the intended features?
For example, they could both die in a car crash tomorrow.
So, at best he's just making a guess based on the available information.
* We will never be late on releasing new expansions.
What does that mean? Will there be no new expansions? Will your platform be used for playtesting of new expansions?
Well if it does anything for you, I'd played with Inheritance on Stef's program before I played with it on MF's.
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I just don't see pass-and-play as being remotely feasible as a dominion option. Reaction cards are going to be logistically almost unmanageable.
You could have a reduced card list used for it, that didn't include problematic reactions.
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Is it (financially) unreasonable to have previous purchases from Goko/MF carryover to both the offline version and a year of subscription, instead of requiring the choice?
Well at this point it would require an addendum to the contract. We did not consider it at the time.
The idea wasn't to make people choose; it was to best handle what actual customers wanted. Currently no-one has offline play; it is not a feature of the MF version. So by default the move was to give people however much time we could of online play in the new version. But we recognize that some people may simply not want to play against people online, and the offline option will be better for them; they actually get their expansions in the new program without paying for them.
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Also, would both players need to own all the expansions online, or only the person that creates the game?
I suspect "both," as it makes the game cheaper for the actual customers.
Sorry, why is that?
Suppose only one person on the planet would pay if only they couldn't share the expansions. We can charge less per person to the tune of the amount they pay divided by the number of people, and make the same amount of money.
So, let's try this again. To make whatever level of income, some prices are chosen. Those prices can be lower to get to the same level of income if we don't have the sharing. If we do have the sharing, the prices have to be higher to get the same level of income.
This is not true for the case where the people sharing would never possibly buy anything.
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So I'm only paying cents on the dollar for Empires first year, because I owned everything else?
Yes. We haven't announced specific pricing but obv. each expansion can't add up to much.
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Well if it does anything for you, I'd played with Inheritance on Stef's program before I played with it on MF's.
Does Stef's Inheritance actually work properly with Reserves?
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who wants to edit the dominion wikipedia page? wero? there is a part where it talks about the online implementation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(card_game)#Online_play) and the current situation would be a good excercise of prose.
it is perhaps worthwhile to remind ourselves why such a section has a smaller word count than the average page about an unsuccessful sports guy or mineral that doesn't do anything: online dominion is not really a commercial thing. i think it is a thing that somebody said that board games are expensive because they are a niche product, and the past online implementations of dominion have just been bad because there isn't an intrinsic motivation to make a good one. it seems like, from salvager data, that there would be ~4000 people (and this is of course a thing that i am not sure of) that would pay the $3/mo, which amounts to $144,000 yearly, and then minus some significant amount because of the other things that have to happen (see previous parenthetical), and then you get a sum of money that seems about appropriate for two guys working part time(ish) for a year without having this revenue and then maintaining the everything for another while.
the worst thing that happens is you don't get to have dominion online; being worried is just a thing that belongs on a different project.
but what do i know.
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who wants to edit the dominion wikipedia page? wero? there is a part where it talks about the online implementation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(card_game)#Online_play) and the current situation would be a good excercise of prose.
Why don't you do it?
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who wants to edit the dominion wikipedia page? wero? there is a part where it talks about the online implementation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(card_game)#Online_play) and the current situation would be a good excercise of prose.
Why don't you do it?
Because Wero runs wiki on his own obviously
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So, let's try this again. To make whatever level of income, some prices are chosen. Those prices can be lower to get to the same level of income if we don't have the sharing. If we do have the sharing, the prices have to be higher to get the same level of income.
It seems like this reasoning assumes that the number of "real buyers" is fixed, and then the issue is to get as many of the others (who would just use other people's cards if it's possible) to also buy. But the number of "real buyers" isn't fixed. They look at what it costs and what they get. Getting cards that you can use in matches against your friends and cards you can use in matches against lots of unknown people (so you can get quick and good matchups) is worth a lot more than cards you can only use against other customers.
My view is:
Paying customers should get good matchups (matching their criteria whatever they are) quickly, and then of course they should get to use all their cards in those matchups.
Sometimes it will be possible to match them with other paying customers. Then do. Sometimes it won't. Then even the players who never will pay a cent is a resource. They are like prop players you don't have to pay! When they aren't needed those can be matched against each other and play all Base Set games.
The main reason is to make what is good for paying customers. If there were a freeloader being one of the top players that player would probably often get to play with all cards anyway. That is not because we want to reward the player for being good, it is just because there probably are paying customers who would like to be matched against that player.
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It seems like this reasoning assumes that the number of "real buyers" is fixed, and then the issue is to get as many of the others (who would just use other people's cards if it's possible) to also buy. But the number of "real buyers" isn't fixed. They look at what it costs and what they get. Getting cards that you can use in matches against your friends and cards you can use in matches against lots of unknown people (so you can get quick and good matchups) is worth a lot more than cards you can only use against other customers.
Feel free to argue about this stuff with your pals on f.ds, or people whose job it is. It's not my job to argue about this stuff and man it's not something I want to do as a hobby.
My view is:
Paying customers should get good matchups (matching their criteria whatever they are) quickly, and then of course they should get to use all their cards in those matchups.
No argument there.
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Well if it does anything for you, I'd played with Inheritance on Stef's program before I played with it on MF's.
Does Stef's Inheritance actually work properly with Reserves?
I don't remember, and am not checking, but note that he had the advantage of starting the project knowing about the existence of all of the trickiest Dominion cards.
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Just wanted to chime in to say how exciting this is. Can't wait to see how it progresses. Congrats on landing the deal, Stef and SCSN.
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* We will never be late on releasing new expansions.
What does that mean? Will there be no new expansions? Will your platform be used for playtesting of new expansions?
Well if it does anything for you, I'd played with Inheritance on Stef's program before I played with it on MF's.
I'm so glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read that.
Anyway, that clinches it for me. I didn't have many doubts anyway, but right now it seems the worst case scenario is we have something that works and already includes Adventures. And they still have 7.5 months to go.
As long as they don't both die, I'm entirely unworried. So, you know, don't go driving around in the same car guys.
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I'm so glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read that.
Anyway, that clinches it for me. I didn't have many doubts anyway, but right now it seems the worst case scenario is we have something that works and already includes Adventures. And they still have 7.5 months to go.
As long as they don't both die, I'm entirely unworried. So, you know, don't go driving around in the same car guys.
And don't stare at the sun, either. You can't code if you can't see.
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@ -Stef- and SCSN:
Congratulations! And thank you. I am so glad that two people who really care about Dominion have stepped up and taken responsibility for giving this great game the online implemtation it deserves. Here's to a brighter Dominion future.
Side note: I am saddened by the tone of a lot of the comments in this thread. I honestly thought we were a bit better than this. IMO we should be offering support and encouragement instead of quibbling over pricing structures before they are even properly up and running. This is two of our own with long track records of positive contributions to the community.
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@ -Stef- and SCSN:
Congratulations! And thank you. I am so glad that two people who really care about Dominion have stepped up and taken responsibility for giving this great game the online implemtation it deserves. Here's to a brighter Dominion future.
Thanks to you and to everyone posting comments of a similar spirit.
Side note: I am saddened by the tone of a lot of the comments in this thread. I honestly thought we were a bit better than this. IMO we should be offering support and encouragement instead of quibbling over pricing structures before they are even properly up and running. This is two of our own with long track records of positive contributions to the community.
It's not a problem, I expected the discussion to be mostly about pricing. It's understandable that people are going to get mad when they discover they got the Goko implementation of eternity rather than the real thing. The upside is that these people don't have to pay anything for a year, and we're confident that by the time they would have to start paying again, the positive change they've seen far outweighs the fact that someone else promised them eternity and didn't deliver. And if not that means we've done a poor job and simply don't deserve their further payment.
Well if it does anything for you, I'd played with Inheritance on Stef's program before I played with it on MF's.
Does Stef's Inheritance actually work properly with Reserves?
It does.
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Interesting news. I'm trusting you to give us what we need, not what we want.
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Side note: I am saddened by the tone of a lot of the comments in this thread. I honestly thought we were a bit better than this. IMO we should be offering support and encouragement instead of quibbling over pricing structures before they are even properly up and running. This is two of our own with long track records of positive contributions to the community.
I thought the comments about pricing were mostly constructive.
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A new online Dominion client? Does that mean isotropic is shutting down?
In all seriousness, congratulations on landing the contract. I'm sure that it won't be a walk in the park, but I know that both of you have been quite vocal over several of the missing features of Dominion Online that must be pretty high up your priority list. Not to mention, you don't have the albatross of maintaining the legacy client around your necks like Making Fun did, which hopefully means you can build something clean from scratch.
I don't know how I feel about the subscription model - even though I don't play a lot online these days, I like knowing that I can just log in and have all the expansions available when I want - but at the same time I do think it's a smarter approach for a game like this. There are many other aspects that will need to be worked through, and hopefully there will be plenty of community engagement - not just with f.ds, but with the broader community of people who play Dominion online and IRL and who want to play online in the future.
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I just want to say congratulations too you. It must be a crazy time for you to found an own company.
We all expect you to rock this so that might be your biggest challenge :). I'd been one of those lucky guys to have seen your early build and it looked good to me.
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I have a feature suggestion: achievements.
Both casual and serious players gonna l-l-love them.
You can add some basic ones, like
"Not so useless" (Reveal four victory cards with a single Scout)
or something more serious like
"Ninja turtle" (Buy out the Province supply pile in one turn)
or something more fun like
"Party pooper" (Discard five Wine Merchants from your Tavern mat simultaneously)
or even something completely idiotic like
"Winning the split" (Set both Princess and Duchess aside using Princes while Duke also being in the kingdom)
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Good to hear that Dominion clients will now be developed by people who know the game well and are active in the community.
That said, I am a little nervous about the ambition of the plans: clients on Windows, Mac, Linux, web, phones, tablets (that's a minimum of 6 different clients, 8 if you support both iOS and Android); two different products (online and offline); "never late" (something that just isn't true of software in my experience). The choice of Java as a client platform also concerns me a bit, just because every Java client I've seen has been pretty awful--it might be possible to write a good Java client, I just haven't seen one. It's a great step to have created a compelling prototype in 2 months, but I hope everyone involved understands the jump in difficulty when going from a prototype to a full-fledged cross-platform product.
The $3/month pricing is appealing to me as a player, but I do wonder if there are enough players to support continued development at that price. If the client is good enough to bring in a lot of new players, it could work, but not at the number of people who currently play Dominion online (about 4000 judging by the isotropish leaderboard; back in the days of isotropic, it was about 6000).
But anyway, I wish you success. From my perspective, there's only potential upside, since maybe there'll be a Dominion client that's fun to play on. If not, well, no change from the current situation.
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Since everyone's sharing their thoughts, I guess I should as well.
Obviously it's fantastic that the people designing Dominion Online this time are long-time, high-skill players. So congrats on that.
The pricing system... I guess I'm okay with it. I'd kind of like for there to be a "bundle" or something, where you get the offline version cheaper if you also get the subscription online or vice versa. And there definitely should be some way to play for free - the Goko model of Base-only-unless-you-land-a-game-with-someone-who-has-all-sets seems like a good starting point. Maybe free players (guest accounts?) could also be blocked off from certain game modes like tournament mode.
In terms of features, I have a couple requests. You don't have to take them, but I think they're worth considering.
- There's going to be a leaderboard, right? If there is, can you maybe implement the option of being able to hide your place on the leaderboard (and your level/rating) from other players, as long as you don't see their level/rating either? It would be sort of like the system Making Fun has now where you know you're automatched with someone on a similar level but you don't know what it actually is. I feel like I might not be the only one who's turned off by any sort of ranking system because it adds instant judgement.
- On that note, please say that unrated games will still be possible - it's the best way to test out contrived boards and unfamiliar combos/cards among other things. It could even be cool if that was table style so we don't get what's going on on MF right now with "Hey, does anyone want to play a game with X cards?"
- It's good that you're doing both a text-based and a graphics-based mode. I've said it before, but what I think Goko and MF got very right was the feeling that you're actually playing a card game - the look of the real cards, the fanned-out hand in front of you, the play area in the middle, the cards moving to and from their various locations. I really don't want that to go away. By all means rearrange it so the information is more convenient (*cough opponent's deck size is always visible cough*), but please try to keep the realism.
- Social features, ya? I got so tired of asking MF for this that I just stopped, but now we're back. I kind of assume you're doing this, because you hinted at something like it with the observing feature (which I can't wait for), but it's worth mentioning anyway. So, friend list, blacklist, seeing who's online, private messaging, that sorta thing.
- Your interactive game log idea looks really great. Can it also include a way to see what your screen (or any player's screen for that matter) would have looked like on each move, without having to play the game from that point on? Or video replay for each turn? Or both? I'm asking this because of the trouble I have with reading logs and I hope I'm not the only one.
- This might be a given since SCSN is involved but it's worth asking anyway. There will be autoplay options, right? Like auto-reveal Moat and stuff?
- And speaking of things to make games go faster, can there be some way to notify people when they're slowrolling? If a player is taking a while on their turn, they should get a message like "You have been inactive for X minutes. Keep playing?" Their opponent also would know that they got the message so they don't have to ask themselves. Maybe if someone is a repeat offender they should start getting captchas or something at some point, and/or their time before they get booted gets gradually shorter.
- You don't have to do this one but it's something I just thought of. What if there was a section outside of games where people can get details on each card? Like if someone was unclear about what a particular card does, they could click on it and get an explanation like "1. Draw one card. 2. Take one action. 3. You may discard one card. 4. If you did, take one action. 5. You may discard one card. 6. If you did, take one buy." There could even be graphics or animations or something but that might take too much time. But each card page should also list the rules clarifications for the card, such as the lose-track rule or the you-can't-Prince-durations thing. So basically this would be like the DS Wiki pages for each card but without the strategy guides. I've seen enough people who make unintended mistakes with cards they don't know because they thought the rules were different that this could be a big help - using it in games with real people should not be possible of course but outside games definitely and against bots might also be nice. Just an idea.
So yeah. Excited for this to happen!
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Great news, I am looking forward to 2017 then!
Though I am really curious how far you can get within one year, being only two people.
You have adventures already implemented? How much is your fee to let me become an early alpha tester? :P
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I have a feature suggestion: achievements.
Both casual and serious players gonna l-l-love them.
You can add some basic ones, like
"Not so useless" (Reveal four victory cards with a single Scout)
or something more serious like
"Ninja turtle" (Buy out the Province supply pile in one turn)
or something more fun like
"Party pooper" (Discard five Wine Merchants from your Tavern mat simultaneously)
or even something completely idiotic like
"Winning the split" (Set both Princess and Duchess aside using Princes while Duke also being in the kingdom)
Personally, I will be pretty pissed if people start playing games to get achievements rather than to win, so I'm not very fond of this idea.
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I have a feature suggestion: achievements.
Both casual and serious players gonna l-l-love them.
I put together endless lists of achievements in early 2012 (the first list was actually from December 2011). Huh it's 2016 now somehow. Anyway they have been waiting for their moment; they haven't been forgotten.
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Personally, I will be pretty pissed if people start playing games to get achievements rather than to win, so I'm not very fond of this idea.
Well, you don't get the achievement unless you also win the game. Hope that helps you.
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Would people rather have a thread for talking about pricing and leave this thread for congratulating Stef/SCSN?
Feel free to use this thread for anything. At some point either us or someone else will want a more serious/constructive/dedicated discussion about some specific topic and then I'd advice to create a separate thread for that.
The only downside I can think of is that now even more people will say that the league is rigged. ;) Good luck to both of you!
You are just being hilarious, but obv. if there's an official league then staff will not be allowed to participate.
When I asked theory to create this board, I also asked him to remove me as a league mod. I already wasn't assigned to any groups this season. So there you go... it already happened. At some point I will also disappear as a player, just not yet.
Does Stef's Inheritance actually work properly with Reserves?
Inheritance has a lot of tricky interactions, but Reserves isn't one of them.
...the feeling that you're actually playing a card game ...
I consider that very important as well. I have good hopes we will be able to go the extra mile there.
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Congratulations Stef and SCSN. Excellent news that people so into the game have got the contract.
I don't have a problem with the subscription pricing model. For Software as a Service it is the only sensible way. I was surprised that Goko's model of unlimited use for a one off cost. I could not see that working long term as at some point the costs would exceed revenue. My worry though is people (particularly with Making Fun's decision to carry forward Goko purchases) who do not understand the business model will feel that they are being asked to pay again for something they have already paid for and this could cause some ill-feeling.
Really looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
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Personally, I will be pretty pissed if people start playing games to get achievements rather than to win, so I'm not very fond of this idea.
Well, you don't get the achievement unless you also win the game. Hope that helps you.
It's better, but depending on the achievement it could still lead to situations where a player with a dominating lead drags out the game much longer than necessary in order to get their achievement.
EDIT: Though you can just resign in that case. So problem solved; go ahead and do your achievements. They should only be awarded for full random ranked games though.
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...the feeling that you're actually playing a card game ...
I consider that very important as well. I have good hopes we will be able to go the extra mile there.
So we finally get manual shuffling by moving the cursor? :)
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It's better, but depending on the achievement it could still lead to situations where a player with a dominating lead drags out the game much longer than necessary in order to get their achievement.
EDIT: Though you can just resign in that case. So problem solved; go ahead and do your achievements. They should only be awarded for full random ranked games though.
Phew. Yes I don't think you should be able to pick the card mix to go for them.
They are not on any schedule currently but I still think it would be great to do them and well there are these lists ready for if we need them.
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There are two gamplay features previous implementations didn't have that I'd love to see:
1) Being able to play a subset of one's basic treasures, without alerting the opponent this weren't all of your basic treasures. (On MF, you either "play all treasures", or play them one by one, I'd like to be able to select some treasures, then play them at the same time, so that it looks exactly the same as if I'd hit "play all treasures" to my opponent)
2) Deciding what card goes on top of your discard pile at the end of turn.
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There are two gamplay features previous implementations didn't have that I'd love to see:
1) Being able to play a subset of one's basic treasures, without alerting the opponent this weren't all of your basic treasures. (On MF, you either "play all treasures", or play them one by one, I'd like to be able to select some treasures, then play them at the same time, so that it looks exactly the same as if I'd hit "play all treasures" to my opponent)
2) Deciding what card goes on top of your discard pile at the end of turn.
Actually, while a generally undo button might be hard, when it comes to playing treasure, an option to retract Basic treasures would be nice. I can't think of an instance where playing a basic treasure has an immediate effect (in the Buy phase, at least, Storyteller being a thing), but accidentally playing that copper with a GM on the board is super-bleh.
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There are two gamplay features previous implementations didn't have that I'd love to see:
1) Being able to play a subset of one's basic treasures, without alerting the opponent this weren't all of your basic treasures. (On MF, you either "play all treasures", or play them one by one, I'd like to be able to select some treasures, then play them at the same time, so that it looks exactly the same as if I'd hit "play all treasures" to my opponent)
2) Deciding what card goes on top of your discard pile at the end of turn.
I would love to be able to, say, right-click on a bunch of treasures to select them and then hit 'Play Selected Treasures' and then have them all fly down like they would if they were played with the 'Play All' button. It matters rarely, and even then probably way less than we think it matters, but it annoys me, and that's probably where the real effect comes in.
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That's basically how I imagine it working as well.
Also, Stef and SCSN, are you working on this full-time? Do you plan to keep it as a full-time job after release?
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- You don't have to do this one but it's something I just thought of. What if there was a section outside of games where people can get details on each card? Like if someone was unclear about what a particular card does, they could click on it and get an explanation like "1. Draw one card. 2. Take one action. 3. You may discard one card. 4. If you did, take one action. 5. You may discard one card. 6. If you did, take one buy." There could even be graphics or animations or something but that might take too much time. But each card page should also list the rules clarifications for the card, such as the lose-track rule or the you-can't-Prince-durations thing. So basically this would be like the DS Wiki pages for each card but without the strategy guides. I've seen enough people who make unintended mistakes with cards they don't know because they thought the rules were different that this could be a big help - using it in games with real people should not be possible of course but outside games definitely and against bots might also be nice. Just an idea.
I like this idea, and would be interested in helping out with it if you decided to do it.
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That's basically how I imagine it working as well.
Also, Stef and SCSN, are you working on this full-time? Do you plan to keep it as a full-time job after release?
We're working full-time for the company we started (called Shuffle iT). From now until at least early next year it will be on Dominion only.
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That's basically how I imagine it working as well.
Also, Stef and SCSN, are you working on this full-time? Do you plan to keep it as a full-time job after release?
We're working full-time for the company we started (called Shuffle iT). From now until at least early next year it will be on Dominion only.
Did you engage some hip consulting firm to come up with your company name?
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Did you engage some hip consulting firm to come up with your company name?
We started out with Shuffle Luck. Everybody that wasn't into Dominion turned out to associate that name with casinos. And then my sister came up with Shuffle iT.
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Did you engage some hip consulting firm to come up with your company name?
We started out with Shuffle Luck. Everybody that wasn't into Dominion turned out to associate that name with casinos. And then my sister came up with Shuffle iT.
Your sister should start a hip consulting firm.
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@ -Stef- and SCSN:
Congratulations! And thank you. I am so glad that two people who really care about Dominion have stepped up and taken responsibility for giving this great game the online implemtation it deserves. Here's to a brighter Dominion future.
Side note: I am saddened by the tone of a lot of the comments in this thread. I honestly thought we were a bit better than this. IMO we should be offering support and encouragement instead of quibbling over pricing structures before they are even properly up and running. This is two of our own with long track records of positive contributions to the community.
Who would have thought the guy named Cactus is a softie.
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Side note: I am saddened by the tone of a lot of the comments in this thread. I honestly thought we were a bit better than this. IMO we should be offering support and encouragement instead of quibbling over pricing structures before they are even properly up and running. This is two of our own with long track records of positive contributions to the community.
I thought the comments about pricing were mostly constructive.
I think most are, but some are a bit toxic.
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...the feeling that you're actually playing a card game ...
I consider that very important as well. I have good hopes we will be able to go the extra mile there.
So we finally get manual shuffling by moving the cursor? :)
With sparkles!
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Interesting news. I'm trusting you to give us what we need, not what we want.
Stefman: The Card Knight.
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Interesting news. I'm trusting you to give us what we need, not what we want.
Stefman: The Card Knight.
The Joker: um, the Joker.
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Somehow I totally missed this, but this is great news.
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At some point I will also disappear as a player, just not yet.
That's the saddest thing I've ever heard...
...wait, do you mean just in the league? Because that isn't nearly as sad.
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Did you engage some hip consulting firm to come up with your company name?
We started out with Shuffle Luck. Everybody that wasn't into Dominion turned out to associate that name with casinos. And then my sister came up with Shuffle iT.
Also, everyone into Dominion would have assumed we'd all have to build our own program.
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I think most are, but some are a bit toxic.
To be sung on the Tavern mat:
The Great King Theory to us hath decreed
That we work together, no enemies
Instead, A Decline in Civility
Hath rock'd this place with wars of infamy
Old King Theory was weary of fighting
The blood of enemies upon his crown
He picked up a quill and began writing
And laid his legend'ry Banhammer down
He wrote of the law, of tales and stories
He sent off the transcripts to his Envoy
The regulations of written glories
For his mighty Empire to enjoy
The Great King Theory to us hath decreed
That we work together, no enemies
Instead, A Decline in Civility
Hath rock'd this place with wars of infamy
There were many people who grumbled and such
About unfair taxation upon them
Three dollars a month was just way too much
King Theory and his words they now comdemn'd
King Theory sent mages forth to dispel
The wrath of his people, but then alas
Stef and SCSN were attack'd and fell
At the hands of the people, middle-class
The Great King Theory to us hath decreed
That we work together, no enemies
Instead, A Decline in Civility
Hath rock'd this place with wars of infamy
The Great King Theory was very saddened
Wracked with sorrow, he prayed to the God X
He was told that he must take up his weap'n
The Banhammer to take what was annex'd
The people saw their king, The Great Hamm'r stung
All the hedonist youths, who curs'd and ran
Ban! Ban! With The Great Hammer, Theory swung
And punish'd them all with ban upon ban
The Great King Theory to us hath decreed
That we work together, no enemies
Instead, A Decline in Civility
Hath rock'd this place with wars of infamy
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At some point I will also disappear as a player, just not yet.
That's the saddest thing I've ever heard...
...wait, do you mean just in the league? Because that isn't nearly as sad.
Yah. I really hope you don't stop playing Dominion just because you own and created the new client. I can understand not playing in tournaments though since some might see that as a conflict of interest.
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The only downside I can think of is that now even more people will say that the league is rigged. ;) Good luck to both of you!
You are just being hilarious, but obv. if there's an official league then staff will not be allowed to participate.
Yeah, this was of course a joke, I tend to expect that people will play fair as a default.
At some point I will also disappear as a player, just not yet.
That's the saddest thing I've ever heard...
...wait, do you mean just in the league? Because that isn't nearly as sad.
Yah. I really hope you don't stop playing Dominion just because you own and created the new client. I can understand not playing in tournaments though since some might see that as a conflict of interest.
I also hope you guys don't stop making videos just because you're not in the league. Maybe you can have some videos showcasing new or upcoming features in the client or something.
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I hope Stef doesn't completely quit playing Dominion at all. I want him to be happy in whatever he does though, so if he is sick of Dominion because of all the headaches, I fully support that. The point of games is to have fun. If you're not having fun, why play? I remember this thing written by Jsh about not having fun with Dominion, and taking a break, which really opened my eyes and actually helped me become a better player and person. I was so worried about winning, that I lost sight of the fun involved, and I made careless errors instead of relaxing and enjoying the game.
That being said, I think he just meant the League.
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I thought of something, Stef/SCSCN, can you please, please, please have an option to allow the Base Art cards version of basic treasures and victory cards. I prefer them much more when I play irl. I think they look a lot better than a bunch of giant numbers.
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I thought of something, Stef/SCSCN, can you please, please, please have an option to allow the Base Art cards version of basic treasures and victory cards. I prefer them much more when I play irl. I think they look a lot better than a bunch of giant numbers.
*cough*I'd even pay for this *cough*
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I thought of something, Stef/SCSCN, can you please, please, please have an option to allow the Base Art cards version of basic treasures and victory cards. I prefer them much more when I play irl. I think they look a lot better than a bunch of giant numbers.
Really? I personally would hate that. I like the simplicity.
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I thought of something, Stef/SCSCN, can you please, please, please have an option to allow the Base Art cards version of basic treasures and victory cards. I prefer them much more when I play irl. I think they look a lot better than a bunch of giant numbers.
Really? I personally would hate that. I like the simplicity.
The beauty of computers is that you could be playing a game together, each with your preferred art style on the basic cards.
Personally I prefer the art versions.
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I remember when Goko/Funsockets was announced, and how ridiculous it seemed back then that an entire software company was being built to take the place of something one guy had built in his spare time. They even had a VP of Monetization! Fast forward several years and now some people are concerned that there's NOT a bloated software company running the show.
While I can understand people being skeptical, and even a little skittish when faced with the prospect of Yet Another Online Dominion iteration, there are more than enough success stories out there of small teams (or individuals) creating great software that I'm not worried.
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I thought of something, Stef/SCSCN, can you please, please, please have an option to allow the Base Art cards version of basic treasures and victory cards. I prefer them much more when I play irl. I think they look a lot better than a bunch of giant numbers.
Really? I personally would hate that. I like the simplicity.
The beauty of computers is that you could be playing a game together, each with your preferred art style on the basic cards.
Personally I prefer the art versions.
Aye, I've said it one year ago in the "payment models" thread, and I'll pester everybody once more now, but I think having personalized, buyable/winnable fashionable alternate art versions of some cards would be awesome. Like, while Coppers are in my deck, they feature kittens. Or Adventurers feature hobbits. The possibilities are endless. It could be confusing and annoying if overdone, but think about the envy of your opponents! (since it doesn't affect other people's decks, it wouldn't be too bad - you'd always be playing with the art you're familiar with)
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but think about the envy of your opponents! (since it doesn't affect other people's decks, it wouldn't be too bad - you'd always be playing with the art you're familiar with)
How would your opponents know? Like, when you play a Copper from your deck, it shows up a Kitten in the playspace in the GUI?
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but think about the envy of your opponents! (since it doesn't affect other people's decks, it wouldn't be too bad - you'd always be playing with the art you're familiar with)
How would your opponents know? Like, when you play a Copper from your deck, it shows up a Kitten in the playspace in the GUI?
Yep, that's pretty much it. Revealing cards too. And when they pass the card to you with Masq, you see the alt art slowly fading in front of your eyes.
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but think about the envy of your opponents! (since it doesn't affect other people's decks, it wouldn't be too bad - you'd always be playing with the art you're familiar with)
How would your opponents know? Like, when you play a Copper from your deck, it shows up a Kitten in the playspace in the GUI?
Yep, that's pretty much it. Revealing cards too. And when they pass the card to you with Masq, you see the alt art slowly fading in front of your eyes.
Troll them and put Colony art on your Curses.
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I thought of something, Stef/SCSCN, can you please, please, please have an option to allow the Base Art cards version of basic treasures and victory cards. I prefer them much more when I play irl. I think they look a lot better than a bunch of giant numbers.
Really? I personally would hate that. I like the simplicity.
Well, isn't this cool then:
* We intend to have different clients for different people. One will look as pretty as we can make it, one will be sober, with minimal images and mostly text.
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On the topic of changing card art, maybe now we can get the official art (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=15179.msg588703#msg588703) for stash.
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I was browsing around the wiki and stumbled upon an interview-ish thing ednever did with Jay of RGG back in 2012, and found this, regarding a feature planned for Goko:
If you are playing against someone and they drop off for whatever reason, the AI will take over.
Any plans to implement this feature?
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I was browsing around the wiki and stumbled upon an interview-ish thing ednever did with Jay of RGG back in 2012, and found this, regarding a feature planned for Goko:
If you are playing against someone and they drop off for whatever reason, the AI will take over.
Any plans to implement this feature?
I like it better when I don't have to play a bot who might have a small chance of beating me somehow when the opponent quits.
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I was browsing around the wiki and stumbled upon an interview-ish thing ednever did with Jay of RGG back in 2012, and found this, regarding a feature planned for Goko:
If you are playing against someone and they drop off for whatever reason, the AI will take over.
Any plans to implement this feature?
I like it better when I don't have to play a bot who might have a small chance of beating me somehow when the opponent quits.
Actually, come to think of it, the magic "click to continue from here" logs ought to take care of it. But it would be neat if it were kinda seamless, like a popup asking you if you wish to continue versus AI.
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I was browsing around the wiki and stumbled upon an interview-ish thing ednever did with Jay of RGG back in 2012, and found this, regarding a feature planned for Goko:
If you are playing against someone and they drop off for whatever reason, the AI will take over.
Any plans to implement this feature?
I like it better when I don't have to play a bot who might have a small chance of beating me somehow when the opponent quits.
Actually, come to think of it, the magic "click to continue from here" logs ought to take care of it. But it would be neat if it were kinda seamless, like a popup asking you if you wish to continue versus AI.
I think this matters more in 3P+
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And, in continuing with the AI, it should still count as a win or a non-game, as it would if you just chose not to play.
I would like this, as people often resign just as you're getting some fun engine working (they are clearly unimpressed that you are playing six goons with watchtower in hand), but it would be fun to finish it up.
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I was browsing around the wiki and stumbled upon an interview-ish thing ednever did with Jay of RGG back in 2012, and found this, regarding a feature planned for Goko:
If you are playing against someone and they drop off for whatever reason, the AI will take over.
Any plans to implement this feature?
I like it better when I don't have to play a bot who might have a small chance of beating me somehow when the opponent quits.
They could give you the win, then ask if you want to continue against the AI for an unrated game.
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I was browsing around the wiki and stumbled upon an interview-ish thing ednever did with Jay of RGG back in 2012, and found this, regarding a feature planned for Goko:
If you are playing against someone and they drop off for whatever reason, the AI will take over.
Any plans to implement this feature?
I like it better when I don't have to play a bot who might have a small chance of beating me somehow when the opponent quits.
They could give you the win, then ask if you want to continue against the AI for an unrated game.
Hey, that could combo well with achievements. If you have no chance of winning but your opponent is obviously drawing the game out to be able to piledrive Colonies, you can resign and move on while they finish up and get their achievement.
Speaking of achievements (if they're actually a thing), you could get around the people-making-stupid-moves-then-leaving problem by having purely luck-based ones. Like having $6 or more in treasures on turn 1.
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I was browsing around the wiki and stumbled upon an interview-ish thing ednever did with Jay of RGG back in 2012, and found this, regarding a feature planned for Goko:
If you are playing against someone and they drop off for whatever reason, the AI will take over.
Any plans to implement this feature?
I like it better when I don't have to play a bot who might have a small chance of beating me somehow when the opponent quits.
Ideally for me:
If there is only one human left in the game the human wins but gets the opportunity to continue the game against a robot they choose if they want to see how it would turn out.
If there are several humans left in the game the lost player is replaced by a bot that is supposed to not be better than the lost player. Probably just put DumbBot there, but it could be possible to put SmartBot there if the lost playing has a rating over some threshold.
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Great news, I am super pumped and will gladly throw $3 (or however much) a month at a subscription online Dominion service that's actually reliable and run by people who understand security and are good at their work.
Really pleased to hear this!
On another note, do we know anything about whether this will be on mobile platforms yet? Playing some Dominion on my droid over lunch would be wicked.
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I was browsing around the wiki and stumbled upon an interview-ish thing ednever did with Jay of RGG back in 2012, and found this, regarding a feature planned for Goko:
If you are playing against someone and they drop off for whatever reason, the AI will take over.
Any plans to implement this feature?
I like it better when I don't have to play a bot who might have a small chance of beating me somehow when the opponent quits.
Ideally for me:
If there is only one human left in the game the human wins but gets the opportunity to continue the game against a robot they choose if they want to see how it would turn out.
If there are several humans left in the game the lost player is replaced by a bot that is supposed to not be better than the lost player. Probably just put DumbBot there, but it could be possible to put SmartBot there if the lost playing has a rating over some threshold.
I don't know, I'd rather play with a competent bot and have a good time and losing, rather than having to play through the rest of the game with a dummy player.
Of course, if the bot wins the game is forfeit, or at least it shouldn't award the quitter any points.
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I thought of something, Stef/SCSCN, can you please, please, please have an option to allow the Base Art cards version of basic treasures and victory cards. I prefer them much more when I play irl. I think they look a lot better than a bunch of giant numbers.
Really? I personally would hate that. I like the simplicity.
The beauty of computers is that you could be playing a game together, each with your preferred art style on the basic cards.
Personally I prefer the art versions.
I agree, I agree. :) As long as we both can get what we want at, assuming low efforts for the programmers, that would be cool.
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Great news, I am super pumped and will gladly throw $3 (or however much) a month at a subscription online Dominion service that's actually reliable and run by people who understand security and are good at their work.
Actually it doesn't matter that much if it costs $3 or $4; the big gap is to $5, which most players can't reach in the beginning.
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Great news, I am super pumped and will gladly throw $3 (or however much) a month at a subscription online Dominion service that's actually reliable and run by people who understand security and are good at their work.
Actually it doesn't matter that much if it costs $3 or $4; the big gap is to $5, which most players can't reach in the beginning.
When we start paying Stef and SCSN in little blue bottles of dubious content, we'll know for sure that we as a community have a serious problem.
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I was going to finish that nuclear reactor, but Stef demanded Platinum as payment.
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I was going to finish that nuclear reactor, but Stef demanded Platinum as payment.
He needs it to make sure his giant mecha is bending-proof.
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Congrats, looking forward to 2017!
But Stef and SCSN both leaving the league, that's a bummer
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So some basic questions that might be known to people other than me already:
- So do you guys know each other outside of this forum? Do you live in the same city?
- I saw the mentioned about a company name... are you quitting your regular jobs to go into this new business full time?
- If so, do you plan on doing more with this company aside from Dominion Online?
- Assuming that these other jobs exist, are you both software programmers professionally?
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Great news, I am super pumped and will gladly throw $3 (or however much) a month at a subscription online Dominion service that's actually reliable and run by people who understand security and are good at their work.
Actually it doesn't matter that much if it costs $3 or $4; the big gap is to $5, which most players can't reach in the beginning.
How do you know if there isn't much difference between $3 and $4. $4 is another $12 a year that everyone would be paying for the service. That adds up.
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Great news, I am super pumped and will gladly throw $3 (or however much) a month at a subscription online Dominion service that's actually reliable and run by people who understand security and are good at their work.
Actually it doesn't matter that much if it costs $3 or $4; the big gap is to $5, which most players can't reach in the beginning.
How do you know if there isn't much difference between $3 and $4. $4 is another $12 a year that everyone would be paying for the service. That adds up.
$3 Dominion implementations tend to be just as good as $4 Dominion implementations, so people will often spend $4 or a $3 implementation anyway.
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Great news, I am super pumped and will gladly throw $3 (or however much) a month at a subscription online Dominion service that's actually reliable and run by people who understand security and are good at their work.
Actually it doesn't matter that much if it costs $3 or $4; the big gap is to $5, which most players can't reach in the beginning.
How do you know if there isn't much difference between $3 and $4. $4 is another $12 a year that everyone would be paying for the service. That adds up.
$3 Dominion implementations tend to be just as good as $4 Dominion implementations, so people will often spend $4 or a $3 implementation anyway.
That's generally true, but I'm not sure about it in this case. I just don't know if Dominion implementation is strong enough to justify $4. Maybe someone can run some simulations and see.
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This is fantastic news for Dominion to be back in fan hands after so long in the wilderness. Congratulations and good luck to you both!
To echo a couple of requests that others made:
- Social features, even rudimentary ones, are missing from MF and I think it really cripples the game. I hope for friend lists, block lists, a way to chat with friends that aren't my opponent, and a way to share blocklists.
- A way to report players for intentional slowplay, rudeness/viciousness, or a Decline of Civility would be great.
- I think alternate art cards would be a fantastic addition, whether they come as tournament prizes, promos, along with achievements, or whatever. Collecting them would be fun! As jsh showed us, some of the early cards especially would benefit from alternate art. You could also make steps toward the "hey, why are there so few women in the illustrations" issue.
- Another possible tournament award is titles. In USCF chess, when you participate in a tournament and play at least as well as a player of <whatever> rating, you earn a "norm" to the title associated with that ranking. Five such norms and you earn the title. (Bridge works similarly, but rather than Elo-style ratings, some number of your points have to come from tournaments of sufficient size/competition level to attract strong enough opposition, depending on the title you're working toward)
- A third possible tournament award is badges or medals displayed on your user page or whatever. Bigger tournament = bigger medal, higher ranking = shinier medal.
The idea I brainstormed was: An 8-person casual tournament has a first prize of, say, 100 points, 50 for second, 25 for third, and 10 participation points for everyone. A typical alt art promo costs 100 points. You can also earn points for nontournament playing, possibly 10/day or so, so even if you log on and have an awful day--hey, you're making progress towards that sweet alt art Scout.
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I see a problem with that idea. I like the concept of alt artwork but art cost money to acquire and then there might not be enough demand to have those versions of cards printed IRL.
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I'm pretty sure the original suggestion in regards to alternate art was to have the option to use the art from the separate Base Cards set instead of the big numbers, which I would be quite happy about. I'm not sure when the idea of different art for kingdom cards came up; that sounds a little weird.
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It might not be a implementable idea, but I bet a number of the folks around here would pay a buck or two to have Isotropic art.
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Can you expose a RESTful API so that the community can lighten the load on client development?
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I haven't read all of the other replies but I have to admit that I also find this entire ordeal really annoying. I payed the equivalent of $90, so I can occasionally play Dominion at my free leisure. Recently I had troubles in my life and didn't really have time for anything and I still don't and now you're telling me that my purchase will basically be just a waste? Making my purchase the equivalent of a service of about $36 is not a good reimbursement, come on. I'd rather prefer MF to still hold the contract at this time even though it is far from perfect and made me use SCSNs mod to make it more bearable.
I'd rather pay a steep price once than pay a little each month and feel like I wasted money if I don't play at least once this month. I am disillusioned at how poor structered the new pay model is and how everyone is so ecstatic about these news.
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I haven't read all of the other replies but I have to admit that I also find this entire ordeal really annoying. I payed the equivalent of $90, so I can occasionally play Dominion at my free leisure. Recently I had troubles in my life and didn't really have time for anything and I still don't and now you're telling me that my purchase will basically be just a waste? Making my purchase the equivalent of a service of about $36 is not a good reimbursement, come on. I'd rather prefer MF to still hold the contract at this time even though it is far from perfect and made me use SCSNs mod to make it more bearable.
I'd rather pay a steep price once than pay a little each month and feel like I wasted money if I don't play at least once this month. I am disillusioned at how poor structered the new pay model is and how everyone is so ecstatic about these news.
I think that most people understand that ongoing services have a cost. Some places use donation models to keep things going (BGA, Yucata, Kingdom of Loathing). Some use pay-to-win or pay-for-hats to keep things going (Prismata, Hearthstone, and *shudder* mobile freemium). And others use subscriptions.
Making Fun had an unsustainable business model. They were going to get less and less revenue each month at some point, and server costs were going to eat them.
The thing about subscriptions is, you don't have to pay every month! Shit hit the fan IRL? Cancel for the next few months, bam, done. You could request/suggest that the free year be allowed to be taken as 12 months, I suppose.
And yes, you could argue that a donation model might work. But how many people will donate to server costs? Would they need a yearly donation drive like BGG or Wikipedia? How quickly would that start to hurt? I personally would rather have a sustainable service, and $3 a month is an incredible price point.
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I haven't read all of the other replies but I have to admit that I also find this entire ordeal really annoying. I payed the equivalent of $90, so I can occasionally play Dominion at my free leisure. Recently I had troubles in my life and didn't really have time for anything and I still don't and now you're telling me that my purchase will basically be just a waste? Making my purchase the equivalent of a service of about $36 is not a good reimbursement, come on. I'd rather prefer MF to still hold the contract at this time even though it is far from perfect and made me use SCSNs mod to make it more bearable.
I'd rather pay a steep price once than pay a little each month and feel like I wasted money if I don't play at least once this month. I am disillusioned at how poor structered the new pay model is and how everyone is so ecstatic about these news.
I think that most people understand that ongoing services have a cost. Some places use donation models to keep things going (BGA, Yucata, Kingdom of Loathing). Some use pay-to-win or pay-for-hats to keep things going (Prismata, Hearthstone, and *shudder* mobile freemium). And others use subscriptions.
Making Fun had an unsustainable business model. They were going to get less and less revenue each month at some point, and server costs were going to eat them.
The thing about subscriptions is, you don't have to pay every month! Shit hit the fan IRL? Cancel for the next few months, bam, done. You could request/suggest that the free year be allowed to be taken as 12 months, I suppose.
And yes, you could argue that a donation model might work. But how many people will donate to server costs? Would they need a yearly donation drive like BGG or Wikipedia? How quickly would that start to hurt? I personally would rather have a sustainable service, and $3 a month is an incredible price point.
Well said. Really, this feeling that people have of getting multiply charged is Goko/Making Fun's fault of setting up their model the way they did in the first place. I believe if this were the very first implementation of Online Dominion, people wouldn't be so affronted by the subscription model, even if they didn't agree that it was optimal.
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I haven't read all of the other replies but I have to admit that I also find this entire ordeal really annoying. I payed the equivalent of $90, so I can occasionally play Dominion at my free leisure. Recently I had troubles in my life and didn't really have time for anything and I still don't and now you're telling me that my purchase will basically be just a waste? Making my purchase the equivalent of a service of about $36 is not a good reimbursement, come on. I'd rather prefer MF to still hold the contract at this time even though it is far from perfect and made me use SCSNs mod to make it more bearable.
I'd rather pay a steep price once than pay a little each month and feel like I wasted money if I don't play at least once this month. I am disillusioned at how poor structered the new pay model is and how everyone is so ecstatic about these news.
I think that most people understand that ongoing services have a cost. Some places use donation models to keep things going (BGA, Yucata, Kingdom of Loathing). Some use pay-to-win or pay-for-hats to keep things going (Prismata, Hearthstone, and *shudder* mobile freemium). And others use subscriptions.
Making Fun had an unsustainable business model. They were going to get less and less revenue each month at some point, and server costs were going to eat them.
The thing about subscriptions is, you don't have to pay every month! Shit hit the fan IRL? Cancel for the next few months, bam, done. You could request/suggest that the free year be allowed to be taken as 12 months, I suppose.
And yes, you could argue that a donation model might work. But how many people will donate to server costs? Would they need a yearly donation drive like BGG or Wikipedia? How quickly would that start to hurt? I personally would rather have a sustainable service, and $3 a month is an incredible price point.
Well said. Really, this feeling that people have of getting multiply charged is Goko/Making Fun's fault of setting up their model the way they did in the first place. I believe if this were the very first implementation of Online Dominion, people wouldn't be so affronted by the subscription model, even if they didn't agree that it was optimal.
Yeah, the payment model is not that terrible. Paying yet another time for Dominion is. I bought the sets irl, bought some on MF and have to pay again, if I want to have the option to play the occasional game. If I were playing more Dominion I wouldn´t mind this at all, but I don´t see myself playing enough games. For me it would probably come down that I am paying about $1 for each game I am playing online.
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I understand people being upset over pricing. But, we will get the new service for free for a year. After playing for a year, we can decide if it is worth the subscription cost or not.
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I feel the need to add something.
I did not understand the thing about the offline client at first.
I thought the MF client could do that, got unsure and tested it and it can not do that.
With this revelation I feel pretty okay with my stuff getting transfered to the offline client, might be nice to have the option to play that on the bus, even when I obviously have never bothered with this.
I do think that the new model is better than the current/old. It´s just that the whole situation makes me feel a bit sour about Dominion in general.
I realise that this is unfair towards the new team. If I had started to play Dominion today and not already invested any money in the game I would be really happy about this news.
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I haven't read all of the other replies but I have to admit that I also find this entire ordeal really annoying. I payed the equivalent of $90, so I can occasionally play Dominion at my free leisure. Recently I had troubles in my life and didn't really have time for anything and I still don't and now you're telling me that my purchase will basically be just a waste? Making my purchase the equivalent of a service of about $36 is not a good reimbursement, come on. I'd rather prefer MF to still hold the contract at this time even though it is far from perfect and made me use SCSNs mod to make it more bearable.
From my perspective, some random strangers made an unreasonable promise to people about my game, gave me a tiny fraction of the money taken in, and now people expect me to make good on that promise those strangers made.
To support older players to the degree that we are, we will already be out more money than we've ever made from online Dominion. I would be better off there had never been official online Dominion. Not even considering the ridiculous number of hours of work I've put into these failed versions; if I got to keep the money it would still be the worst job I've had since the 80s.
You may note that the new system doesn't put us in this situation. People who buy offline sets can still play them if the publisher dies; people who buy the subscription aren't owed anything when it runs out.
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I think that most people understand that ongoing services have a cost. Some places use donation models to keep things going (BGA, Yucata, Kingdom of Loathing). Some use pay-to-win or pay-for-hats to keep things going (Prismata, Hearthstone, and *shudder* mobile freemium). And others use subscriptions.
Making Fun had an unsustainable business model. They were going to get less and less revenue each month at some point, and server costs were going to eat them.
Let us be clear, there are ongoing costs, but they aren't server costs. The server costs are small compared to the cost of having people continue to devote whatever hours are necessary to the project.
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I sympathize with the people who are like 'meh, paying again?' but the chances of the ultimate product be better is not small, in part because of the monthly payment.
My guess is: if the ultimate product is worth it, they (the consumers) will come.
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I mean, four years ago I paid $45 to a company that doesn't exist anymore for what's amounted to a few thousand hours of entertainment. I realize people who bought in a month ago aren't in the same position, but the fact that the new company (which is just trying to get its feet off the ground) is honoring that purchase in any way is frankly kind of incredible to me. People are getting something for free and complaining about it not being good enough, it's just baffling to me.
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I have a question regarding the new pay model. I know you likely don't have all the answers, but at least some info would be great. I currently own all the expansions on the current platform. I know it was stated earlier that, if you own all the previous sets, you'd get the first year free, only being charged the difference when a new expansion (Empires) comes out. Would that still be the case if I don't purchase the Making Fun version of Adventures whenever they finish it? If I have every set except for Adventures when January comes, will I still get the year free, and be charged the difference for both Adventures and Empires?
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I have a question regarding the new pay model. I know you likely don't have all the answers, but at least some info would be great. I currently own all the expansions on the current platform. I know it was stated earlier that, if you own all the previous sets, you'd get the first year free, only being charged the difference when a new expansion (Empires) comes out. Would that still be the case if I don't purchase the Making Fun version of Adventures whenever they finish it? If I have every set except for Adventures when January comes, will I still get the year free, and be charged the difference for both Adventures and Empires?
Yes, whatever random mix of expansions you have, there will be a way to pay the difference to upgrade to everything. If there are two packaged tiers or something, there might not be a way to upgrade to a tier other than the everything tier. And you don't need to upgrade to everything if you don't want to.
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Good to know. Thanks. In that case, I think I may wait to get Adventures until the new client comes out in January. The only person I play online with is my dad and we have more than enough fun with the pre-Adventures sets (though, admittedly, Adventures is my favorite expansion.)
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On the one hand I'm really happy to hear such a good news, but on the other I'm a bit sad because I'm new to Dominion and I've spent $94,98 last month in order to buy all the sets (first I bought Seaside for $14,99 and then all sets for $79,99, now I have 75 ducats of change). I hope that developers could take it into account somehow :-\
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Could it be possible to turn everyone's expansions that they already own into some kind of a virtual currency that can be spent to pay for the expansions online (in such a way that owning all the expansions would still give you exactly enough to pay for all the expansions for a year)? That way, instead of making people pay the difference between all the expansions and the expansions that they owned on MF, they could choose to play with all the expansions but for a shorter time. As far as I can understand, it wouldn't really make a huge difference from Shuffle iT's perspective, but I think that a lot of people might appreciate it.
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To support older players to the degree that we are, we will already be out more money than we've ever made from online Dominion. I would be better off there had never been official online Dominion. Not even considering the ridiculous number of hours of work I've put into these failed versions; if I got to keep the money it would still be the worst job I've had since the 80s.
You may note that the new system doesn't put us in this situation. People who buy offline sets can still play them if the publisher dies; people who buy the subscription aren't owed anything when it runs out.
Thank you for your insight on this. I am sorry to hear that you had to go through all of that chaos and had to make the choice of going for yet another shot on a software implementation of Dominion. The previous pay model was bonkers obviously which made my friends shy away from Dominion Online but if you "fell" for it, you're now in this peculiar spot where this one company is not going to give you what they promised. I didn't really mean to lash out at you, I am just frustrated because of this entire situation.
I mean, four years ago I paid $45 to a company that doesn't exist anymore for what's amounted to a few thousand hours of entertainment. I realize people who bought in a month ago aren't in the same position, but the fact that the new company (which is just trying to get its feet off the ground) is honoring that purchase in any way is frankly kind of incredible to me. People are getting something for free and complaining about it not being good enough, it's just baffling to me.
If I would've gotten thousands of hours out of the money that I paid for Dominion Online I actually wouldn't be as annoyed as I am. My main problem with the whole free stuff is that you only get a choice between the offline and online service. If it would be both I would actually be more fine with the whole new pay model. While it isn't the job at all from the new dev team to reimburse us for any of the mistakes MF did, it would at least be a nice closure to all of the failures that had happened in the past. If the new piece of software is awesome you can sure as heck expect me to pay for your online services in the following years but right now it just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and I am left questioning myself why I just didn't spend $90 on a physical Cornucopia set instead.
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It isn't the job at all from the new dev team to reimburse us for any of the mistakes MF did
You just answered your own complaints.
That's the trouble with digital content. If the company goes down, there goes all your lovely software.
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You just answered your own complaints.
That's the trouble with digital content. If the company goes down, there goes all your lovely software.
Yes, that is correct. That is why I brought it up, since I am very well aware of that problem as a software developer myself. You know, what I also did? I asked to make this entire happening more consumer friendly so people won't feel cheated out of their money if they just recently paid for the services of MF. So please, don't quote me out of context.
Maybe your intent was something else, but I got a rather passive aggressive vibe from your post. If that wasn't the intent I apologize in advance.
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There's always someone to blame for something. After MF's Dominion implementation goes under, Stef and SCSN will have their own new thing, and people are going to hate it for the sake of hating it, or because the last people messed it up and did it wrong in the first place. People are going to start grumbling like the Israelites in Caanan. If only they could be slaves again in Egypt, they could have those nice fruits and sand or whatever. I'm not holding Stef accountable for MF's decisions. He has enough on his plate already.
People always focus on the negative and point out all the bad things. I am excited for what's coming out next year, and I will do all in my power to help create a better product.
I think that Stef and SCSN will do the best decision. I actually trust them because I know them.
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I feel bad about people who've bought the full set very recently; I feel worse about the people who might buy the full set tomorrow. Or next month. Does anyone know what it looks like to someone who may decide to buy everything now? I assume the price is still the same. I guess if someone decided to look very hard they could find threads like this one, or the "2016 plan and future" thread over at MF, and read between the lines, but it seems more likely that most people might get the whole thing not knowing about the upcoming switch.
I'm pretty much at peace now with the fact that I got my money's worth (and more) getting the whole set back when I did in September 2015. But someone who gets it today? Not so much. Someone who spends $90 dollars in September 2016, only to find out that in 4 months it's going to be converted to a $36 year pass might be somewhat unhappy. It's hard to expect MF to put up a big sign that says "Don't buy this! Wait for 2017!", but at what point does it become dishonest for them to keep selling the whole set for $90 without some kind of disclaimer? I feel like we might already be there.
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I'm pretty much at peace now with the fact that I got my money's worth (and more) getting the whole set back when I did in September 2015. But someone who gets it today? Not so much. Someone who spends $90 dollars in September 2016, only to find out that in 4 months it's going to be converted to a $36 year pass might be somewhat unhappy. It's hard to expect MF to put up a big sign that says "Don't buy this! Wait for 2017!", but at what point does it become dishonest for them to keep selling the whole set for $90 without some kind of disclaimer? I feel like we might already be there.
Well I made a note in the MF thread and linked to this subforum.
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Could it be possible to turn everyone's expansions that they already own into some kind of a virtual currency that can be spent to pay for the expansions online (in such a way that owning all the expansions would still give you exactly enough to pay for all the expansions for a year)? That way, instead of making people pay the difference between all the expansions and the expansions that they owned on MF, they could choose to play with all the expansions but for a shorter time. As far as I can understand, it wouldn't really make a huge difference from Shuffle iT's perspective, but I think that a lot of people might appreciate it.
I think something like this is the best idea posted so far.
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Could it be possible to turn everyone's expansions that they already own into some kind of a virtual currency that can be spent to pay for the expansions online (in such a way that owning all the expansions would still give you exactly enough to pay for all the expansions for a year)? That way, instead of making people pay the difference between all the expansions and the expansions that they owned on MF, they could choose to play with all the expansions but for a shorter time. As far as I can understand, it wouldn't really make a huge difference from Shuffle iT's perspective, but I think that a lot of people might appreciate it.
While this is a great idea, I wish they'll simply give store credit in dollars, or at least in a currency that changes 1:1 with dollars. Heaven knows how many dumb virtual currencies we've already had to endure.
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You just answered your own complaints.
That's the trouble with digital content. If the company goes down, there goes all your lovely software.
Yes, that is correct. That is why I brought it up, since I am very well aware of that problem as a software developer myself. You know, what I also did? I asked to make this entire happening more consumer friendly so people won't feel cheated out of their money if they just recently paid for the services of MF. So please, don't quote me out of context.
Maybe your intent was something else, but I got a rather passive aggressive vibe from your post. If that wasn't the intent I apologize in advance.
Hey Tricksta,
I'm not trying to speak for others but I think if you are detecting a bit of angst in a few of the comments in this thread it is likely to be because of the long history of some of these issues stretching back over the space of years. As you are new there is no way you could be aware of these issues (happily for you!). I think it is a testament to just how good Dominion is as a game that we're all still here after years of frustration and care enough to get all fired up over these issues! :( >:( ::)
At any rate welcome to Dominion and to the forums. I think there is good reason to hope that you've missed the Dark Ages of Dominion and you're hear just in time for the glorious Renaissance!
Renaissance ... Dominion Renaissance ... Hey that could be a great name for a future as-yet-undrempt-of expansion!
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@ -Stef- and SCSN:
Congratulations! And thank you. I am so glad that two people who really care about Dominion have stepped up and taken responsibility for giving this great game the online implemtation it deserves. Here's to a brighter Dominion future.
Side note: I am saddened by the tone of a lot of the comments in this thread. I honestly thought we were a bit better than this. IMO we should be offering support and encouragement instead of quibbling over pricing structures before they are even properly up and running. This is two of our own with long track records of positive contributions to the community.
Who would have thought the guy named Cactus is a softie.
Ha! I grew up playing Cricket in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne Australia. That won't mean much to most of you (apart from possibly @Jimmmm) but sufficient to say verbal abuse is a way of life where I come from. I leave it out when I come on to the forums though ... as most of you aren't Australian you might not understand that insulting each other is how we express affection for one another. :o
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When ever I get together with my best mate for a game of Dominion I greet him with: "how ya going... you scout!"
Harsh, I know.
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When ever I get together with my best mate for a game of Dominion I greet him with: "how ya going... you scout!"
Harsh, I know.
Is your mate Roadrunner? :)
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I haven't read all of the other replies but I have to admit that I also find this entire ordeal really annoying. I payed the equivalent of $90, so I can occasionally play Dominion at my free leisure. Recently I had troubles in my life and didn't really have time for anything and I still don't and now you're telling me that my purchase will basically be just a waste? Making my purchase the equivalent of a service of about $36 is not a good reimbursement, come on. I'd rather prefer MF to still hold the contract at this time even though it is far from perfect and made me use SCSNs mod to make it more bearable.
I'd rather pay a steep price once than pay a little each month and feel like I wasted money if I don't play at least once this month. I am disillusioned at how poor structered the new pay model is and how everyone is so ecstatic about these news.
I think that most people understand that ongoing services have a cost. Some places use donation models to keep things going (BGA, Yucata, Kingdom of Loathing). Some use pay-to-win or pay-for-hats to keep things going (Prismata, Hearthstone, and *shudder* mobile freemium). And others use subscriptions.
Making Fun had an unsustainable business model. They were going to get less and less revenue each month at some point, and server costs were going to eat them.
The thing about subscriptions is, you don't have to pay every month! Shit hit the fan IRL? Cancel for the next few months, bam, done. You could request/suggest that the free year be allowed to be taken as 12 months, I suppose.
And yes, you could argue that a donation model might work. But how many people will donate to server costs? Would they need a yearly donation drive like BGG or Wikipedia? How quickly would that start to hurt? I personally would rather have a sustainable service, and $3 a month is an incredible price point.
Both groups have a point.
MakingFun's model was a bad one. But that didn't stop Rio Grand from making the deal with them. So there is some responsibility there.
The "contract" MF made with players was "buy this product and get to use it online forever". Note that the price they charged was VERY VERY high. Normal online games are nowhere close to $90 for the "full service". Also note that server costs are low and getting cheaper everyday. Most costs for an online service are one-time fixed costs. So the one time charge is less crazy than it sounds (more bad from a revenue perspective than due to cost structure)
I think people who paid $90 for a specific thing are right to be pissed off that those contracts are being thrown away and replaced with a vastly weaker product: Either less than half the functionality or only one year of service (and still less functionality).
I honestly think RG is setting themselves up for s class action lawsuit.
I think there best options at this point are:
1- Offer full refunds to original buyers
2- Offer free lifetime service to original buyers (expansions purchased)
If they were willing to take more risks they could offer the $90 as credit on the new platform (likely after getting people to sign a contract promising not to sue). But even that is a little risky.
What they are doing now counts on a court saying that all liability lies with MakingFun. It's possible but I wouldn't count on that if I was Jay.
Ed
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I haven't read all of the other replies but I have to admit that I also find this entire ordeal really annoying. I payed the equivalent of $90, so I can occasionally play Dominion at my free leisure. Recently I had troubles in my life and didn't really have time for anything and I still don't and now you're telling me that my purchase will basically be just a waste? Making my purchase the equivalent of a service of about $36 is not a good reimbursement, come on. I'd rather prefer MF to still hold the contract at this time even though it is far from perfect and made me use SCSNs mod to make it more bearable.
I'd rather pay a steep price once than pay a little each month and feel like I wasted money if I don't play at least once this month. I am disillusioned at how poor structered the new pay model is and how everyone is so ecstatic about these news.
I think that most people understand that ongoing services have a cost. Some places use donation models to keep things going (BGA, Yucata, Kingdom of Loathing). Some use pay-to-win or pay-for-hats to keep things going (Prismata, Hearthstone, and *shudder* mobile freemium). And others use subscriptions.
Making Fun had an unsustainable business model. They were going to get less and less revenue each month at some point, and server costs were going to eat them.
The thing about subscriptions is, you don't have to pay every month! Shit hit the fan IRL? Cancel for the next few months, bam, done. You could request/suggest that the free year be allowed to be taken as 12 months, I suppose.
And yes, you could argue that a donation model might work. But how many people will donate to server costs? Would they need a yearly donation drive like BGG or Wikipedia? How quickly would that start to hurt? I personally would rather have a sustainable service, and $3 a month is an incredible price point.
Both groups have a point.
MakingFun's model was a bad one. But that didn't stop Rio Grand from making the deal with them. So there is some responsibility there.
The "contract" MF made with players was "buy this product and get to use it online forever". Note that the price they charged was VERY VERY high. Normal online games are nowhere close to $90 for the "full service". Also note that server costs are low and getting cheaper everyday. Most costs for an online service are one-time fixed costs. So the one time charge is less crazy than it sounds (more bad from a revenue perspective than due to cost structure)
I think people who paid $90 for a specific thing are right to be pissed off that those contracts are being thrown away and replaced with a vastly weaker product: Either less than half the functionality or only one year of service (and still less functionality).
I honestly think RG is setting themselves up for s class action lawsuit.
I think there best options at this point are:
1- Offer full refunds to original buyers
2- Offer free lifetime service to original buyers (expansions purchased)
If they were willing to take more risks they could offer the $90 as credit on the new platform (likely after getting people to sign a contract promising not to sue). But even that is a little risky.
What they are doing now counts on a court saying that all liability lies with MakingFun. It's possible but I wouldn't count on that if I was Jay.
Ed
Here is the Mf policy:
Virtual Currencies and Goods
The Service may include a virtual, in-game currency (“Virtual Currency”) including, but not limited to coins, cash, or points that may be purchased for actual money if you are a legal adult in your country of residence. Examples of Virtual Currency include, but are not limited to, “Ducats” in Dominion, “Tickets” in Hidden Express, “Gems” in Mage and Minions, and “Gold” in BloodRealm. The Service may also include virtual, in-game digital items (“Virtual Goods”) that may be purchased from Making Fun for actual money or for Virtual Currency. Regardless of the terminology used, Virtual Currency and Virtual Goods may never be redeemed for actual money, goods or other items of monetary value from Making Fun or any other party.
Other than a limited, personal, revocable, non-transferable, non-sublicenseable and non-exclusive license to use the Virtual Goods or Virtual Currency within the Service, you have no right or title in or to any such Virtual Goods or Virtual Currency appearing or originating within the Service, or any other attributes associated with use of the Service or stored within the Service.
Making Fun has the absolute right, but not the obligation, to manage, regulate, control, modify and/or eliminate such Virtual Currency or Virtual Goods as it sees fit in its sole discretion, and Making Fun shall have no liability to you or any third party for the exercise of such rights.
Transfers of Virtual Currencies and Virtual Goods are strictly prohibited except where explicitly authorized within the Service. Outside of the game, you may not buy or sell any Virtual Currency or Virtual Goods for “real world” money or other items of value. Any attempt to do so is in violation of these Terms and may result in a lifetime ban from the Service and possible legal action.
You agree that all sales of Virtual Goods and Virtual Currencies are final. No refunds will be given, except in our sole and absolute discretion. All Virtual Goods and Virtual Currencies are forfeited if your Account is terminated or suspended for any reason, in Making Fun’s sole and absolute discretion, or if Making Fun discontinues providing the Service or the Game where the Virtual Goods or Virtual Currencies were obtained.
I am no lawyer, but this looks pretty clear to me. They never promised you anything of that sort, and you're not even entitled to the first year of online Dominion.
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Well, Goko aquired a license for Online Dominion for a limited amount of time. If Goko/MF claimed their product would eb available for ever, there's no way you can blame RGG for that.
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I am 99.9% certain the agreement lies with MF and Goko. So, if you want to sue someone, sue either of them. As it stands, I'm pretty sure things like this have happened in the past. Essentially, when we bought expansions, we did so with an agreement with MF or Goko. Now, that they have lost the license, the agreement is no longer valid.
Now, I do believe something should be done to compensate those who paid $90. There are likely people who never read any forums of any kind and will purchase blindly. If I were in their shoes, I would feel very stupid after finding out my purchase is no longer valid. As it is, I feel Stef and Co. are doing the best they can. But, I would maybe try and see how recent a purchase was, and go from there. I'm not sure what they can do. But, if I say, I buy Dominion Online in December and then come January, is it fair that my purchase is only good until the end of 2017?
I wish I had an easy solution for this tricky situation. I know a lot of people will be upset, and it's unfortunate.
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I honestly think RG is setting themselves up for s class action lawsuit.
....
What they are doing now counts on a court saying that all liability lies with MakingFun. It's possible but I wouldn't count on that if I was Jay.
Are you... serious? Like, actually serious? There aren't enough people to form a large class, there isn't a lawyer in the country who would take a class action suit with a maximum payout under a million dollars, and MF's terms, as noted by drsteelhammer, are pretty clear that nothing of the sort was promised, and any lawyer will laugh in your face if even if they were willing to take a very small class action to court.
Sure, I'm not actually a lawyer, but I bet theory will back me up on this assessment of how CA suits work...
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Seriously though, the entitlement mentality I'm seeing from (very few) people in this thread makes me completely understand why Donald and Jay were leery of ever doing this at all. Get a grip, guys.
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Fun fact: not all users agreements, even if you agree to them, are legal. :)
I believe in the concept of sunk costs. Bygones
are bygones. I look forward to thz product. :)
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There could be an achievement for having owned expansions previously if the achievement system gets implemented. It wouldn't really help, but it would be pretty cool.
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I honestly think RGG is setting themselves up for a class action lawsuit.
No, they're not! This is getting completely ludicrous.
I just can't wait to start hearing arguments in this thread about laws and fine print from people who know nothing about laws and fine print.
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There could be an achievement for having owned expansions previously if the achievement system gets implemented. It wouldn't really help, but it would be pretty cool.
Like the achievements that are on my WOW account for doing things before they were updated, that you can't actually achieve any more. Achievement Unlocked: I survived the Goko/MF era...
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There could be an achievement for having owned expansions previously if the achievement system gets implemented. It wouldn't really help, but it would be pretty cool.
Like the achievements that are on my WOW account for doing things before they were updated, that you can't actually achieve any more. Achievement Unlocked: I survived the Goko/MF era...
Achievement Unlocked: Isotropic is going down? - played 100 or more games on isotropic
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Achievement Unlocked: Participate in a class-action law suit.
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There could be an achievement for having owned expansions previously if the achievement system gets implemented. It wouldn't really help, but it would be pretty cool.
Like the achievements that are on my WOW account for doing things before they were updated, that you can't actually achieve any more. Achievement Unlocked: I survived the Goko/MF era...
Achievement Unlocked: Isotropic is going down? - played 100 or more games on isotropic
Wait, what? Isotropic is going down??!!
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I think I'll have my sets transferred to Offline when that option comes on, but of course I'll have to look at what the offline thing has on it.
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Coming to this thread late, but a hearty congratulations to Stef and SCSN! I am overjoyed by this news. I just recently started playing a good amount of online Dominion again, and it's nice to know online Dominion has a future. In fact, the future already looks brighter than it has in years.
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I am very concern about the price structure propose from 2017 (month payment). I cannot foresee nothing good about that; and as i can see i am not the only one.
I do understand that some people are willing to pay a game before even knowing the game; for others this is not true. I believe lots of Dominion players start as guests, then move to base players, make an account in the forum as they start climbing in the ranking, start playing league games, champioships,etc, then move to enhance the community=making articles, do streaming, helping maintain a small but ongoing Dominion community. Between those steps players bye expansions which keep the wheel spinning.
At this moment instead of trying to make newer players approach the game and existing ones consume products you are telling players: "if you want to play pay, otherwise leave".
I found difficult to understand the approach you had taken to make Dominion profitable for merely two persons. Its hard not to ask if selling hats (alt art, badges, screens, card borders, sounds), getting money from advertisements, money from tournaments you could organize among others was not enough to keep the business viable (dont forget the money from selling expansions). Empire would be only yours to sell ($).
I dont want to be read as someone who is crying over something that is settle, but like a potential client who was about to get every expansions and that is told that product is no longer available.
I hope i am wrong and the community grows. I love the game, but i am not willing to pay a month fee. Some months i just play tournament games....is 3$ reasonable to play only one season league? I dont know, but i rather had every card to play wherever i want.
For last i want to mention something no one has: the effect of your price structure to MF. With this claim you had buried MF possibilities of making any profit, no one is going to bye expansions late 2016..... or maybe now. Not only you have honored players purchases but you have heavily affect MF incomes. From day to night i feel pity for MF, they where inefficient but i think they dont deserve this as they have improve and they have given us something you are not willing to from 2017.
Capting new player should be the main issue of every Dominion implementations onwards; hope my post remember Stef and SCSN that.
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First things first: Everyone gets 1-YEAR OF SERVICE FOR FREE, assuming you already bought the expansions. That means if people don't like the product, they are free to not renew their subscription in January 2018. I am also confident they will make a free-to-play version as Donald X. has already stated. My guess is that the Base Game will continue to be free, or they will offer a free trial of X-games per month or something.
Second, I do feel some pity for MF. And, yes, this announcement I am sure will have a heavy impact on their sales and revenue streams. With that said, their contract was only good until the end of this year. It is better for the consumer to know now what is on the table, so that the customer can make purchases wisely. With that said, I will still buy Adventures off of MF. I think it will be around somewhere of $15. I'm willing to pay that to use it for the next few months before we get the new client. Yes, it sucks to be them. But, I'm sure they knew this announcement was coming sooner or later.
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At this moment instead of trying to make newer players approach the game and existing ones consume products you are telling players: "if you want to play pay, otherwise leave".
See here:
For sure we understand that there has to be a way to try the system for free. For offline play there will be levels you can try, like a campaign. I'm not sure what we do for online play but obv. we have to have some way to try it for free.
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My suggestions for free online would be: base set + a set of 'standard' kingdoms (the recommended one from zxpansions?) that people can play.
Because you'll get tired of them, but it will leave you wanting more.
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This might actually get me to start playing Dominion again (and I doubt I'm the only one).
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My suggestions for free online would be: base set + a set of 'standard' kingdoms (the recommended one from zxpansions?) that people can play.
Because you'll get tired of them, but it will leave you wanting more.
While I like your idea, I think I'd prefer free players to have base + about 10 other cards that change every week. That way you can still play a good amount and variety of free games without the "demo" feeling, if you don't play many games per week.
Keeping a free and satisfied player base is good, because if they ever get tired, you'll lose a potential customer. They shouldn't get tired, they should just want more. :)
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My suggestions for free online would be: base set + a set of 'standard' kingdoms (the recommended one from zxpansions?) that people can play.
Because you'll get tired of them, but it will leave you wanting more.
While I like your idea, I think I'd prefer free players to have base + about 10 other cards that change every week. That way you can still play a good amount and variety of free games without the "demo" feeling, if you don't play many games per week.
Keeping a free and satisfied player base is good, because if they ever get tired, you'll lose a potential customer. They shouldn't get tired, they should just want more. :)
10 is probably too much (a lot of players might not want to learn 10 new cards every week, and 10 cards already add enough variety that it would lead to fewer people actually buying the expansions). 1-3 would be fine.
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For last i want to mention something no one has: the effect of your price structure to MF. With this claim you had buried MF possibilities of making any profit, no one is going to bye expansions late 2016..... or maybe now. Not only you have honored players purchases but you have heavily affect MF incomes. From day to night i feel pity for MF, they where inefficient but i think they dont deserve this as they have improve and they have given us something you are not willing to from 2017.
Stef and SCSN are not running a charity for Making Fun. If you feel sorry for them, you can go ahead and start a movement that supports Making Fun by having people create alt accounts and buying all expansions again. I don't see how it's Stef's and SCSN's job to provide for Making Fun any more than it is yours.
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For last i want to mention something no one has: the effect of your price structure to MF. With this claim you had buried MF possibilities of making any profit, no one is going to bye expansions late 2016..... or maybe now. Not only you have honored players purchases but you have heavily affect MF incomes. From day to night i feel pity for MF, they where inefficient but i think they dont deserve this as they have improve and they have given us something you are not willing to from 2017.
I'm not a huge fan of S&S's pricing system, like I mentioned before, but really, don't feel sorry for Making Fun. They failed to do their job well enough, so the contract was discontinued and now they will lose money because of it. If you have a start-up but turn out not to be a great businessman, you will lose a lot of money, and if you fail at your job, you get fired. That's just the way the world works.
Also, like Beyond Awesome says, if they ever finally release Adventures they will make a bit of cash again. I'll also buy Adventures on MF when I get the chance.
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These clients will run on Windows, Mac and Linux, or any other platform that supports running Java.
Am I misinterpreting this or will the Mac client be Java-based?
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These clients will run on Windows, Mac and Linux, or any other platform that supports running Java.
Am I misinterpreting this or will the Mac client be Java-based?
Looks like it.
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These clients will run on Windows, Mac and Linux, or any other platform that supports running Java.
Am I misinterpreting this or will the Mac client be Java-based?
Looks like it.
I wasn't sure if that statement meant it would run natively on those named platforms and alternatively on anything running Java. Based on my experiences, running a Java-based app on OSX doesn't give me the warm fuzzies.
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Congrats to Stef and SCSN!
I think what people are forgetting is we are getting a NEW dominion product. When we went from goko to MF it was basically the same thing but with a band aid on it.
I can't wait to see what this new bad boy looks like and runs like. Just thinking about other games online right now, I am very excited.
I could maybe see why people would be upset about the new payment model if we were just getting same product with the same look and issues.
Anyways If my expectations are met then I will be a happy monthly costumer and will maybe finally get my friends to buy. They are much more willing to pay per month then shell out all that cash for a game that looks and plays like it was from 10 years ago.
Bear
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Coming to this thread late, but a hearty congratulations to Stef and SCSN! I am overjoyed by this news. I just recently started playing a good amount of online Dominion again, and it's nice to know online Dominion has a future. In fact, the future already looks brighter than it has in years.
You've been gone too long; this post is far to gregarious for the current F.DS atmosphere. Please put in some base insults and bring a more bitter tone.
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You've been gone too long; this post is far to gregarious for the current F.DS atmosphere. Please put in some base insults and bring a more bitter tone.
You need to read between the lines:
[...]rat[...]s to Stef and SCSN! I am [...]ver[...]y[...]s[...]a[...]d p[...]aying a good amount [...] again, [...]now online Dominion [...] looks [...]as[...]s.
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Congratulations on getting the contract for the 2017 implementation fellas!
If the new Dominion Online will run on my iPad, either through a browser or an app, you can basically have as much money as you want from me.
If it won't, then I'm afraid you can only have my sweet, sweet tears.
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Sure, it would be great if I never had to pay to play Dominion Online. That isn't reality.
Actually, it is reality. I play a ton of different online games.
I played StarCraft I for roughly 6-8 years. Same with WarCraft III. Around 6-8 years. I've also played DOTA2 ever since 2012 very much: Something like 3100 hours as of now.
Have I paid monthly subscription fees? No. Have I spent money on DOTA2? Yes, micro-transactions. Is it one of my most played games? Yes. Would I ever pay monthly subscription fees? NO. Not even one cent. I dislike the idea of a steady money stream leaking from my bank account as if it were bleeding.
That's the reason I'll never get Spotify, I'll never get Netflix and I'll never get WoW.
I'm so glad at this point that I never bought any online expansions for Dominion.
I own all of the physical expansions and most of the promos and I guess I'll be sticking to that. I would've paid for the online version as a static sum, something like 50% of the cost of the physical game. That's plentiful since most of the best games I've ever played for years have been from 0€ to 15€.
I calculated how much money I've put into Dominion. It's roughly 300 euros. That's more than I've EVER paid for any game franchise. Ever. It's a very very steep price and I don't really care about the card/euro ratio. I care only about the end sum. I would've paid around 150€ for the COMPLETE online implementation and that, in my eyes, would've been a really really steep price also that wouldn't be clear at all if I'd be willing to pay that much.
Take for example "Star Realms". I bought the FULL GAME for 5€ on Steam. That price also included the same stuff available on Android.
What did I pay for the complete online experience for the rest of the products lifecycle? 5€. That's it.
A game might be good as hell and Dominion is one of the best games ever, but why would I ever pay almost the same amount as I pay for Star Realms once... every month?
I wouldn't. No matter if it was like the best game on the planet.
I really hope I didn't upset anyone and I truly wish the best of luck for RGG, DXV and the new developers of Dominion Offline/Online.
I'm sure your product will get lots of revenue based on the comments I've read here. I'm sorry I didn't give that positive feedback people would only like to read. I'm sorry my feedback wasn't all rainbows and flowers. I will continue to love Dominion and I praise Donald X. Vaccarino for one of the greatest physical card games ever, but I'll have to jump out of the sled at this point. I just can't sacrifice my principles...
I will continue to purchase future physical editions of Dominion as they're so great and it's always a one time fee.
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Welcome to the forums, Chertograd! Have you checked out the forum games? They come without monthly subscription fees!
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I dislike the idea of a steady money stream leaking from my bank account as if it were bleeding.
So you probably don't have any loan interests, rents, Internet connections or anything like that to pay for, then?
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I kind of realized I'd get that comment from someone. If I could skip them, sure, I would.
I mean I wouldn't pay monthly for them. I'd just pay a huge static amount. Quite frankly tho', that isn't possible.
And I actually got my study loans as one huge static amount since I was annoyed by the idea of a steadily growing loan on my bank account.
Ja enpä mä sitä lainaa ois ottanut ellei ois pakko ollut... mutta paskemmaks kokoajan menossa systeemi, Awaclus (sry, I just know he's Finnish too so...).
Also, I would never buy any product with part payments. Just no... Even if I'd have bad financial situation and I'd need a new phone, I'd just pay the one time price for a new phone and I'd eat noodles for the sake of it. Just as long as the tap isn't leaking water all the time if you know what I mean.
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Well, there are just some things you have to pay monthly for, or have to take a loan over. Good luck, anyways.
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I kind of realized I'd get that comment from someone. If I could skip them, sure, I would.
I mean I wouldn't pay monthly for them. I'd just pay a huge static amount. Quite frankly tho', that isn't possible.
And I actually got my study loans as one huge static amount since I was annoyed by the idea of a steadily growing loan on my bank account.
Ja enpä mä sitä lainaa ois ottanut ellei ois pakko ollut... mutta paskemmaks kokoajan menossa systeemi, Awaclus (sry, I just know he's Finnish too so...).
Also, I would never buy any product with part payments. Just no... Even if I'd have bad financial situation and I'd need a new phone, I'd just pay the one time price for a new phone and I'd eat noodles for the sake of it. Just as long as the tap isn't leaking water all the time if you know what I mean.
Good luck buying a house.
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I just knew it people couldn't differentiate necessities/essential stuff like life expenses with stuff like entertainment.
Others are nearly mandatory or mandatory and others are voluntary. It's either that people try to just find loopholes in other people's posts or they just like acting dumb and act as if they wouldn't understand the point given.
It's almost as if someone would be losing an argument and starts pointing out typos in the other person's posts or something.
You know very well what I mean so don't attempt to seem as if you don't.
But since people like to act ignorant, I'll list them down for you so there's no more loopholes to f*ck:
Electricity, warmth, rent, loans (study, house & car), phone bill, internet bill, insurances (appartment/house etc.), public transport and so forth.
Those are mandatory or nearly mandatory and very much unlike entertainment subscription services (games, music, videos (tv series, movies) and so on).
If someone finds one thing I forgot to mention: Just bravo. I'll tap you on the head for it. I hope this is enough clarification.
I didn't want to sound that harsh, but people just leave me no choice when they start agitating :) If you know what the other person is talking about, don't act otherwise. And if you know he forgot to mention a thing he surely would've anyways: you can just use your brains to figure out whether or not he left the thing out on purpose or not.
And I really don't appreciate sarcasm unless it's between me and a close friend of mine.
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You're wasting time typing something that doesn't really matter in the long run, because you won't change their minds and they won't change yours. You don't want to buy it, cool. I'm sure that's wasting some electricity bill anyways.
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I'm finding your distinction between what you will and won't pay for to be somewhat arbitrary. You don't want to pay recurring costs for a temporary product. Is that it? But you presumably pay for temporary entertainment all the time. Do you ever go to the movies or travel or go to events or eat out or whatever else. I mean, if you dont think a month of dominion is worth $3 then don't pay it. But drawing a line at 'no subscriptions' seems irrational to me.
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I can understand where he's coming from in some sense. I used to refuse to pay for anything virtual (and it was quite easy to avoid doing so). I guess I'm just more OK with capitalism cracking the whip on me these days. You might be able to get free Dominion if you bribe Stef. It's a plausible scenario.
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You might be able to get free Dominion if you bribe Stef. It's a plausible scenario.
If you're paying a bribe, is it really free?
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bribe Stef
Okay, JSH. Whatever you say.
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You might be able to get free Dominion if you bribe Stef. It's a plausible scenario.
If you're paying a bribe, is it really free?
You don't have to give him money. Favors can be free. Maybe offer to provide him solid dominion advice.
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You might be able to get free Dominion if you bribe Stef. It's a plausible scenario.
If you're paying a bribe, is it really free?
You don't have to give him money. Favors can be free.
Thanks for the image, jsh. :(
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I'm sure if you offer $1000 upfront, you might be able to get a lifetime subscription to Dominion.
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You're wasting time
Basically then all feedback is wasting time? Why should feedback only be positive? I've given more positive than negative feedback overall.
But sure, I didn't have to explain in such a long manner. I have a bad habit of writing TL;DR's anyway.
But yea, again: I am truly sorry if I sounded cynical and all. It's just that I absolutely LOVE Dominion and I'm kind of saddened about the monthly fee solution.
I don't think I can sway anyone's opinion into any direction.
So basically if there's something positive to be said: I'd be willing to pay a great deal of money if they ever decide to get an alternative payment solution on top of the subscription model.
Something similar to the old model. Example given: 1000 subscribers vs 1000 subs and some that would pay a one-time fee. I'd calculate that it's more money for the company, really. Especially if the subscription model has a very tempting pricepoint.
We once had this discussion about copyrights and piracy:
Piracy doesn't really decrease the sales figures or revenue. How so?
If a person wouldn't pay a cent for something, it doesn't really make them lose money since the person would've never paid for it anyway.
HOWEVER... if he became a fan of a product (like music for example), he could possibly start giving out some dough. I know this for a fact, actually.
That was a little bit of off-topicing, but what I'm saying is that it's all about principles for some people. It's not the amount of money that bothers some people. And as I totally WANT to be a customer, that's the only reason why I beg them to reconsider. It's almost as if a company would only allow the use of a credit card, but I'd be greatly against credit cards. They'd just lose money even if I'd be willing to pay them :) So if they ended up accepting bank cards as well, they'd get even more revenue.
Yet again a TL;DR. Anyway, no ill-intentions on my behalf :)
Anyway I'll try not to comment again since I feel like people will get pissed off or something :/
But I still wish success for the new implementation, whatever route it might take.
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Chertograd, just saying that you shouldn't take one conversation as a reason not to post elsewhere on the forum. Historically f.DS has had very strong feelings about Dominion Online because of how incredibly awful Goko was. (Not Making Fun, Goko. Making Fun has it's own share of issues and I'm no fan, but they've gotten more hate than they deserve at this point.)
Seprix's point isn't that you shouldn't provide negative feedback, it's that you shouldn't get into protracted arguments with people who don't look like they'll change their point of view. You lay out your points and get out, because it's not worth the time, and that way people who just read the topic still get to see opposing viewpoints. (Funnily enough, on this topic Seprix is one of those people.)
Honestly, I have a bit of the same view. I've never paid for Dominion Online, and I'm not sure I'd pay a $3 subscription fee. It's cheaper than food, it's cheaper than coffee, but Dominion Online is fundamentally entertainment, and there's a lot of free entertainment in the world. (Now, if you're spending more than $3/month on DoTA2 cosmetics and say that's a better use of your money than Dominion, I might raise some eyebrows...)
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Glad Dominion online is in good hands now. Looking forward to an implementation that doesn't overheat my computer (among other things).
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I think I get where Chertograd is coming from. The more ways you have money automatically exiting your bank account, the more likely it is that you forget about one of them and are spending money without knowing it. Subscriptions also have a psychological thing where it can be hard to decide when to cancel/renew them if you only play occasionally. With a lump sum you just make the decision once, while with a subscription you sort of need to make the choice every month.
The thing I wonder is: is there a successful game out there that survives on a $3/month subscription model? As far as I know, MMO subscriptions would usually cost $10/month or more because you're expected to use them a lot. Then there are games that survive on lump sums for content and/or cosmetics and the dev teams keep introducing new content and/or cosmetics to pay for.
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I think $3 v. $10 a month for a MMO makes sense here thogh. An MMO requires a lot more programming and servers to maintain. Not so much with Dominion. I'm also not sure that system that allows people to spend money on cosmetics would bring in much revenue unless the game really took off online.
By the way, I don't think we should criticize people who don't want to pay for the subscription. However, I do think though we should all give the new client a chance. I'm not saying spend money, but for those of us who bought all the expansions, we get to play with everything we own for a full-year. After that, if you're not happy or don't want to pay for the product, then don't subscribe.
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I care only about the end sum. I would've paid around 150€ for the COMPLETE online implementation
If you're willing to pay €150 upfront for a subscription lasting for the duration of our company suplying online Dominion, I guess that's something we could consider offering you. Note that we can't offer you lifetime because we don't have a lifetime contract.
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I'm sure if you offer $1000 upfront, you might be able to get a lifetime subscription to Dominion.
But only if your remaining life expectancy is less than 28 years.
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I'm sure if you offer $1000 upfront, you might be able to get a lifetime subscription to Dominion.
But only if your remaining life expectancy is less than 28 years.
More than that, you need to account for inflation too.
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What is the hardest challenge implementing Dominion?
Is it Black Market, Possession, something else?
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What is the hardest challenge implementing Dominion?
Is it Black Market, Possession, something else?
Finding a payment model that satisfies everybody. ;)
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What is the hardest challenge implementing Dominion?
Is it Black Market, Possession, something else?
Black Market and Possession are remarkably easy for the game engine.
Possessions biggest problem is a good interface, assuming you already have the when-would-gain for Trader.
By far the trickiest things are cards pretending to be other cards (Inheritance, Band of Misfits).
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I guess Possession would have been way more problematic if it was a new card: you implemented everything, and then whoops - you need to add this bad boy too somehow.
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Oh wow, uh, I wasn't expecting this. Do you have a system in mind for getting feedback during development? Like, are Donald and/or Jay going to be seeing early builds. Will there be a Beta?
Also, do you have plans to include any other people in the development process?
This monthly subscription thing is great though. It's unfortunate that people paid for the expansions on Goko/MF thinking that they would be able to use those expansions to the end of their days, but really the only problem here is that Goko was selling expansions like that in the first place. 3€ a month for all the expansions or 2€ for half of them is an extremely reasonable price to pay, and maybe some months you can do without the expansions if you're not planning to play that much.
This is what I'm thinking when it comes to the pricing model. Under this model, the $45 I paid Goko would have been worth over a year of Dominion Online service. As it turns out, it is worth a year of this new service because I can choose to have a free year of service for having the sets on Goko/MF. The $90 asked by MF would be worth double that. Realistically, I might not even have the time to play Dominion seriously every month and could skip those months.
I can understand people being put off by the subscription model though. It's intimidating a bit for some reason. I myself haven't payed for any subscription-based games before.
It's going to feel weird having both Dominion Online and Dominion Offline though. What's the story with single player campaigns, or having a series of recommended sets against computer opponents as an equivalent?
Edit: yeah apparently I missed this announcement when it came out a week ago. I seriously only found out about this now.
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I forgot to say, congratulations on getting the contract for Dominion Online 2017!
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My suggestions for free online would be: base set + a set of 'standard' kingdoms (the recommended one from zxpansions?) that people can play.
Because you'll get tired of them, but it will leave you wanting more.
While I like your idea, I think I'd prefer free players to have base + about 10 other cards that change every week. That way you can still play a good amount and variety of free games without the "demo" feeling, if you don't play many games per week.
Keeping a free and satisfied player base is good, because if they ever get tired, you'll lose a potential customer. They shouldn't get tired, they should just want more. :)
10 is probably too much (a lot of players might not want to learn 10 new cards every week, and 10 cards already add enough variety that it would lead to fewer people actually buying the expansions). 1-3 would be fine.
I'm afraid that 1-2 would be too little. If I play say 10 random games per week, it's more likely than not that I won't even see those cards.
10 was probably too generous, but I wouldn't go below 3.
Thinking about it some more, maybe it would also be worthwhile to make an "online base set" to have people play for free instead of physical Base set. Swapping out the Feasts and Spies and whatnot for something that makes better publicity to Dominion in general.
(not that they are bad cards, but you know what I mean)
It's Donald's call there, I guess.
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If I play say 10 random games per week, it's more likely than not that I won't even see those cards.
If there is 1 extra card and you play 2 random games every week, it's more likely than not that you will play at least one game with that card. If you play 10 random games, the odds that you won't even see that one card from an expansion are lower than 5%.
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If I play say 10 random games per week, it's more likely than not that I won't even see those cards.
If there is 1 extra card and you play 2 random games every week, it's more likely than not that you will play at least one game with that card. If you play 10 random games, the odds that you won't even see that one card from an expansion are lower than 5%.
My bad. Mind fart.
(I considered Kingdoms made of one card) ;D'
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My suggestions for free online would be: base set + a set of 'standard' kingdoms (the recommended one from zxpansions?) that people can play.
Because you'll get tired of them, but it will leave you wanting more.
While I like your idea, I think I'd prefer free players to have base + about 10 other cards that change every week. That way you can still play a good amount and variety of free games without the "demo" feeling, if you don't play many games per week.
Keeping a free and satisfied player base is good, because if they ever get tired, you'll lose a potential customer. They shouldn't get tired, they should just want more. :)
Good point.
However, I am going to assume that if *you* don't pay and I *do* pay, and we get matched, that we use all my cards, so you get to benefit from me. That way, you would have access to all the cards, *sometimes*. But it's dependent on others.
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My suggestions for free online would be: base set + a set of 'standard' kingdoms (the recommended one from zxpansions?) that people can play.
Because you'll get tired of them, but it will leave you wanting more.
While I like your idea, I think I'd prefer free players to have base + about 10 other cards that change every week. That way you can still play a good amount and variety of free games without the "demo" feeling, if you don't play many games per week.
Keeping a free and satisfied player base is good, because if they ever get tired, you'll lose a potential customer. They shouldn't get tired, they should just want more. :)
Good point.
However, I am going to assume that if *you* don't pay and I *do* pay, and we get matched, that we use all my cards, so you get to benefit from me. That way, you would have access to all the cards, *sometimes*. But it's dependent on others.
Except Donald already indicated that they would be moving away from that model, which would presumably mean it is not possible to get matched with someone who has access to more cards than you do.
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Except Donald already indicated that they would be moving away from that model, which would presumably mean it is not possible to get matched with someone who has access to more cards than you do.
I've been giving suggestions and discussing things with the assumption that they aren't moving away from that model, because moving away from that model would be ridiculous. I'm passionate enough about Dominion that I'm definitely willing to pay some amount of money every month so that I get to play Dominion with expansions. I'm not passionate enough about waiting in an automatching queue that I'd be willing to pay some amount of money every month just so that I get to wait in an automatching queue, and unless people with expansions can get matched against people without them, waiting in an automatching queue is the only thing that anyone should expect to come out of paying the monthly subscription.
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Except Donald already indicated that they would be moving away from that model, which would presumably mean it is not possible to get matched with someone who has access to more cards than you do.
I've been giving suggestions and discussing things with the assumption that they aren't moving away from that model, because moving away from that model would be ridiculous. I'm passionate enough about Dominion that I'm definitely willing to pay some amount of money every month so that I get to play Dominion with expansions. I'm not passionate enough about waiting in an automatching queue that I'd be willing to pay some amount of money every month just so that I get to wait in an automatching queue, and unless people with expansions can get matched against people without them, waiting in an automatching queue is the only thing that anyone should expect to come out of paying the monthly subscription.
Reasonable enough. I am also skeptical of the feasibility of matching paid players only with other paid players.
If I were designing a teaser system for free players, I think I would cycle a set of free cards that represent the "basics" that every set contains. Perhaps "feature" a particular set by enabling one village, one draw card, one trasher, one unique thematic card, ect... up to whatever number of cards is considered appropriate with regard to the covering the basics, and the size of the teaser. The set of cards should cycle often enough to keep people from leaving, but not so often that they don't get at least a little bit bored and are compelled to buy in.
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Except Donald already indicated that they would be moving away from that model, which would presumably mean it is not possible to get matched with someone who has access to more cards than you do.
I've been giving suggestions and discussing things with the assumption that they aren't moving away from that model, because moving away from that model would be ridiculous. I'm passionate enough about Dominion that I'm definitely willing to pay some amount of money every month so that I get to play Dominion with expansions. I'm not passionate enough about waiting in an automatching queue that I'd be willing to pay some amount of money every month just so that I get to wait in an automatching queue, and unless people with expansions can get matched against people without them, waiting in an automatching queue is the only thing that anyone should expect to come out of paying the monthly subscription.
I don't know how severe the wait times will be given that we're talking about a binary pay/no-pay thing here, but definitely long wait times are going to be a big problem, especially near the release of the product. Like, I'm heading that people are unimpressed by the long wait time for Prismata games. I've experienced those myself, and they just make me want to play against computers.
So, measures that alleviate the issue of long wait times are very welcoming, I feel.
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Except Donald already indicated that they would be moving away from that model, which would presumably mean it is not possible to get matched with someone who has access to more cards than you do.
I've been giving suggestions and discussing things with the assumption that they aren't moving away from that model, because moving away from that model would be ridiculous. I'm passionate enough about Dominion that I'm definitely willing to pay some amount of money every month so that I get to play Dominion with expansions. I'm not passionate enough about waiting in an automatching queue that I'd be willing to pay some amount of money every month just so that I get to wait in an automatching queue, and unless people with expansions can get matched against people without them, waiting in an automatching queue is the only thing that anyone should expect to come out of paying the monthly subscription.
Reasonable enough. I am also skeptical of the feasibility of matching paid players only with other paid players.
If I were designing a teaser system for free players, I think I would cycle a set of free cards that represent the "basics" that every set contains. Perhaps "feature" a particular set by enabling one village, one draw card, one trasher, one unique thematic card, ect... up to whatever number of cards is considered appropriate with regard to the covering the basics, and the size of the teaser. The set of cards should cycle often enough to keep people from leaving, but not so often that they don't get at least a little bit bored and are compelled to buy in.
Maybe have a different Goko "half set" available for free every week?
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Maybe have a different Goko "half set" available for free every week?
I think it would be a bad idea overall to just pick a half-set. The main point of the free cards would be to give new players a taste of the game, and most newbies will benefit from starting with simpler cards to ease them in. I think that goal calls for a consistent set of curated cards (Base-only is the most natural but some others could be included) plus a very small set of cards that rotate on a weekly(?) basis.
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Maybe have a different Goko "half set" available for free every week?
I think it would be a bad idea overall to just pick a half-set. The main point of the free cards would be to give new players a taste of the game, and most newbies will benefit from starting with simpler cards to ease them in. I think that goal calls for a consistent set of curated cards (Base-only is the most natural but some others could be included) plus a very small set of cards that rotate on a weekly(?) basis.
Hmmm. Going that route, I think the cards looked at should meet two of three qualities:
1) Simple
2) Representative of its set
3) Fun/interesting
If a card is really representative, and really fun (maybe, say, Goons?) simplicity could matter a little less.
To that end, my ideas on cards to possibly include on a rotating basis:
Intrigue: Courtyard, Masquerade, Bridge, Nobles
Seaside: Caravan, Sea Hag, Lookout
Alchemy: None, I don't think this would be a good set to have any of its cards be rotated in the free to play.
Prosperity: Goons, Bank, Worker's Village
Cornucopia: Tournament, Menagerie
Hinterlands: Oasis, Border Village, Haggler
Dark Ages: Poor House, Armory, Marauder, Altar, Feodum
Guilds: Baker, Stonemason
Adventures: Magpie, Lost City, Ratcatcher, Hireling
And then maybe pick, like, 3-5 of these each week. Enough to get a taste, but not enough to overwhelm all the Base set cards.
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Hmmm. Going that route, I think the cards looked at should meet two of three qualities:
1) Simple
2) Representative of its set
3) Fun/interesting
If a card is really representative, and really fun (maybe, say, Goons?) simplicity could matter a little less.
Emphasis mine: Goons is the least fun card (besides Rebuild) IMO. You either play Goons or lose. Booooooorrrriiiinnnnggggg.
If paying people can only be matched against other paying players...that doesn't sound great. I mean, yeah I only want to play competent people and competent players are more likely to be invested in the game (and thus buy it) but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are the only good players. And some of us who would pay aren't that great (IE: me).
Man, why do you guys think it's necessary to have a rotating set of free cards? Base only should give plenty of variety of games to get people interested enough in shelling out a few dollars to play with more. It sounds like just an incentive to never pay Shuffle iT. And if they allow free players to play against people who own sets, then that's variety right there.
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Emphasis mine: Goons is the least fun card (besides Rebuild) IMO. You either play Goons or lose. Booooooorrrriiiinnnnggggg.
Or you could look at it this way: You either play an engine or lose. Fun!
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We haven't yet decided what the exact matchmaking permissions are going to be, but more restrictions than in the current system doesn't automatically imply long wait times. E.g. one could dynamically relax the restrictions on non-paying players if a match for a paying player isn't forthcoming.
In any case, if whatever decision we end up making leads, in practice, to a poor experience for paying users, we will certainly reconsider it. The ability to adjust on the fly reduces horror scenarios to temporary diversions.
but definitely long wait times are going to be a big problem, especially near the release of the product.
With many people getting it for free the first year, this is unlikely to be an issue come the release.
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Man, why do you guys think it's necessary to have a rotating set of free cards? Base only should give plenty of variety of games to get people interested enough in shelling out a few dollars to play with more. It sounds like just an incentive to never pay Shuffle iT. And if they allow free players to play against people who own sets, then that's variety right there.
It's not necessary, but it could be a good thing depending on how everything else is set up. It's not exactly the same situation, but it works well for League of Legends.
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Emphasis mine: Goons is the least fun card (besides Rebuild) IMO. You either play Goons or lose. Booooooorrrriiiinnnnggggg.
Or you could look at it this way: You either play an engine or lose. Fun!
Or you could play Rebuild!
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Emphasis mine: Goons is the least fun card (besides Rebuild) IMO. You either play Goons or lose. Booooooorrrriiiinnnnggggg.
Or you could look at it this way: You either play an engine or lose. Fun!
Or you could play Rebuild!
Or you could play JoaT. Or Big Money.
Look at it this way: Play the best strategy available or lose.
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The reason why I think that exactly one rotating free card (or possibly 2 or 3, but probably just one would be best) is good is not that it would provide more variety, but that it would be super cool. People could look forward to see which card is going to be in the free card rotation next week, then they could have discussions with their friends like "what do you think about this week's card of the week?" and in general, it would make them more excited about the game. As it turns out, people are more likely to pay you when they feel like they have gotten a lot from you for free first, and little things like this can contribute far more greatly towards that feeling than it contributes towards the feeling that they're already getting enough even without paying.
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The reason why I think that exactly one rotating free card (or possibly 2 or 3, but probably just one would be best) is good is not that it would provide more variety, but that it would be super cool. People could look forward to see which card is going to be in the free card rotation next week, then they could have discussions with their friends like "what do you think about this week's card of the week?" and in general, it would make them more excited about the game. As it turns out, people are more likely to pay you when they feel like they have gotten a lot from you for free first, and little things like this can contribute far more greatly towards that feeling than it contributes towards the feeling that they're already getting enough even without paying.
Agreed that it would be very cool, and just a few such cards would be enough for that.
I am surprised how much you support regularly choosing a card to prompt discussion of that card. ;)
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I am surprised how much you support regularly choosing a card to prompt discussion of that card. ;)
Hopefully not here though.
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The reason why I think that exactly one rotating free card (or possibly 2 or 3, but probably just one would be best) is good is not that it would provide more variety, but that it would be super cool. People could look forward to see which card is going to be in the free card rotation next week, then they could have discussions with their friends like "what do you think about this week's card of the week?" and in general, it would make them more excited about the game. As it turns out, people are more likely to pay you when they feel like they have gotten a lot from you for free first, and little things like this can contribute far more greatly towards that feeling than it contributes towards the feeling that they're already getting enough even without paying.
I think this is fair, although I think it would also work if it were two cards at a time - maybe not always, but maybe occasionally - to inspire thinking about combos. Or nombos sometimes, too ("This week's free rotation is Prince and Scout!").
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Maybe you could offer the cheaper subscription, and the opponents (usually) would need the subscription as well. But also offer a more expensive one, with which you can play with all cards, no matter who your opponent is.
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Maybe you could offer the cheaper subscription, and the opponents (usually) would need the subscription as well. But also offer a more expensive one, with which you can play with all cards, no matter who your opponent is.
I don't know man. That just feels like I'm forced to pay for others. I don't think paying customers should be punished because others don't pay.
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Maybe you could offer the cheaper subscription, and the opponents (usually) would need the subscription as well. But also offer a more expensive one, with which you can play with all cards, no matter who your opponent is.
Not sure, this feels like "pay to get matched faster". I suspect this would piss off way more people than it would satisfy.
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Maybe you could offer the cheaper subscription, and the opponents (usually) would need the subscription as well. But also offer a more expensive one, with which you can play with all cards, no matter who your opponent is.
Not sure, this feels like "pay to get matched faster". I suspect this would piss off way more people than it would satisfy.
If you just play against random people, that's true.
But it gives you the chance to occasionally play with friends, who don't own anything / everything. If those people are allowed to play like 5 games per month against me, when I own everything, that's fine for me. Otherwise, I'd rather pay a bit more and be guaranteed to be able to play with all my cards.
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Maybe you could offer the cheaper subscription, and the opponents (usually) would need the subscription as well. But also offer a more expensive one, with which you can play with all cards, no matter who your opponent is.
I don't know man. That just feels like I'm forced to pay for others. I don't think paying customers should be punished because others don't pay.
I think it's more like "pay to guarantee access to all cards" as opposed to "don't pay to only guarantee access to the Base set, and you might sometimes play with more if you get matched up with someone who pays".
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The reason why I think that exactly one rotating free card (or possibly 2 or 3, but probably just one would be best) is good is not that it would provide more variety, but that it would be super cool. People could look forward to see which card is going to be in the free card rotation next week, then they could have discussions with their friends like "what do you think about this week's card of the week?" and in general, it would make them more excited about the game. As it turns out, people are more likely to pay you when they feel like they have gotten a lot from you for free first, and little things like this can contribute far more greatly towards that feeling than it contributes towards the feeling that they're already getting enough even without paying.
That's actually a really good reason. Put me on the "Rotating Free Cards!" train in the future ;D.
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So some basic questions that might be known to people other than me already:
- So do you guys know each other outside of this forum? Do you live in the same city?
- I saw the mentioned about a company name... are you quitting your regular jobs to go into this new business full time?
- If so, do you plan on doing more with this company aside from Dominion Online?
- Assuming that these other jobs exist, are you both software programmers professionally?
Bumping my question because I'm really curious.
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They are both Dutch. One of the only two kinds of people that I hate in this world.
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They are both Dutch. One of the only two kinds of people that I hate in this world.
You're dating yourself with that joke.
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They are both Dutch. One of the only two kinds of people that I hate in this world.
You're dating yourself with that joke.
Well, I am an incredibly handsome and witty specimen, so it seems only natural that I would fall for myself.
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They are both Dutch. One of the only two kinds of people that I hate in this world.
You're dating yourself with that joke.
I love it when someone dates themselves with a joke and I don't get it! It makes me feel so young.
What is not so good is when I then look up the quote and realise it's actually from a film I've seen and not that long ago. Then I just feel senile.
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Bumping my question because I'm really curious.
We're working together in Amsterdam. For the foreseeable future it's full-time Dominion, eventually we'll do other things as well. Exactly what that will be is still a big and well-guarded secret (so well-guarded that we ourselves are only vaguely aware of it).
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I'm very excited. Love the subscription model, it seems like a good price-point. Very excited about the two interface choices; sometimes I want pretty, sometimes I want efficient, other people only want one or the other.
Getting new players in a subscription model environment is an interesting problem, with many possible interesting solutions. I would think that new players could thrive on Base alone for a while; that's how I fell in love with the game. Once they are done with the 'learn to love the game' phase, new cards become appealing. I can't remember who suggested having feature card-of-the-week from other sets being free; I like this. Maybe every week a group of 3 cards from various sets, every game has one of the 3 cards. But then are there different game-queues? Full-set queues, Base-only queues, CotW-queues...? So like I said, interesting problem, interesting solutions.
General impression: yay, much excite!
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What language/framework are you using? Unity, Java, magnetized needle?
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What language/framework are you using? Unity, Java, magnetized needle?
They're using Java. I'm assuming they know how to obfuscate properly, for anyone worried about Java's security, especially since SCSN was able to reverse engineer MF's implementation.
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I'm very excited to see how good online Dominion can be when people who actually care about and understand the game have the chance to design it. I'm not sure if you're looking for any feedback, but here is some anyway.
I'm not big on monthly fees because I'm not likely to play daily or even weekly, but $3 is a monthly price that I would probably pay just to play some Dominion in the short term. If you have to go a lot higher, maybe you could offer a lower price for a limited number of games. You might also consider ad supported and limited games for non-subscribers as a way to encourage new users to try the game.
Statistics! I'd love to see something like the old CouncilRoom stats return now that you have a chance to rewrite the code and logs in an intelligent way. If they were really detailed and organized they might even encourage me to pay a recurring fee just to explore the stats even if I play most Dominion games offline.
Timed games. You mentioned this in the post, but I just want to say this is pretty important for me. I'd like to know before I see the Kingdom that I'm not going to be stuck playing for an hour against a slow opponent. Clever use of increments or delays (i.e. the clock freezes for ~1 second after you perform an action) can probably keep even action heavy decks viable. Another thing that might work well for Dominion is an hourglass time control (you time out if you've used X minutes more than your opponent total) so if a board heavily favors an action heavy strategy that both players feel obligated to go for the total game time scales with them.
Mostly I'm just happy to see that the people making online Dominion are finally willing and able to innovate. I'm really looking forward to seeing what new ideas you come up with. Best of luck!
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Statistics! I'd love to see something like the old CouncilRoom stats return now that you have a chance to rewrite the code and logs in an intelligent way.
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As a slowish player, I beg you not to enforce timed games on everybody (unless the time limit is pretty generous).
I understand those people that want their plays to move along fast, but playing fast extremely reduces my enjoyment of Dominion. Adding a preference for the time limit (fast vs slow) in a way similar to how vp counters work now would keep everybody happy, I guess, but at the cost of slower matchups.
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As a slowish player, I beg you not to enforce timed games on everybody (unless the time limit is pretty generous).
I understand those people that want their plays to move along fast, but playing fast extremely reduces my enjoyment of Dominion. Adding a preference for the time limit (fast vs slow) in a way similar to how vp counters work now would keep everybody happy, I guess, but at the cost of slower matchups.
As a player that likes to take his time to make a play I am interested what you consider slowish?
There are some morons that start insulting you, if you take 10 seconds to look at the board and other people that take forever for some reason.
Imho a player should time out a lot faster, if he does not perform any action whatsoever and is clearly not present. I am perfectly fine with people taking their time, but some people are clearly doing something else, besides playing the game. In fact in a particular slow game I decided to start cooking and coming back every 5 or even more minutes was not a problem at all, which really should not be possible.
As it is you can very much make the other player resign, if you so desire. I did this to a player, which starting insulting me after the mentioned 10 seconds. If you want to you can take a really really long time for each of your turns without timing out.
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As a slowish player, I beg you not to enforce timed games on everybody (unless the time limit is pretty generous).
I understand those people that want their plays to move along fast, but playing fast extremely reduces my enjoyment of Dominion. Adding a preference for the time limit (fast vs slow) in a way similar to how vp counters work now would keep everybody happy, I guess, but at the cost of slower matchups.
As a player that likes to take his time to make a play I am interested what you consider slowish?
There are some morons that start insulting you, if you take 10 seconds to look at the board and other people that take forever for some reason.
Imho a player should time out a lot faster, if he does not perform any action whatsoever and is clearly not present. I am perfectly fine with people taking their time, but some people are clearly doing something else, besides playing the game. In fact in a particular slow game I decided to start cooking and coming back every 5 or even more minutes was not a problem at all, which really should not be possible.
As it is you can very much make the other player resign, if you so desire. I did this to a player, which starting insulting me after the mentioned 10 seconds. If you want to you can take a really really long time for each of your turns without timing out.
I too have played with a few people who jerkishly make remarks about how slow I allegedly am. I never leave the pc while playing (except the occasional brb), and I never play deliberately slow to make people resign. (and I think there are no excuses for such behaviors, not even the other player insulting you.) :)
I have no idea about how slow I am, due to lack of information about how slow the rest of the world is.
OTOH, I have hardly ever thought that another player was slow, except those cases you described of people being deliberately annoying. This might mean that I'm the slowest of the bunch, or that I'm more tolerant than average, who knows.
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As a slowish player, I beg you not to enforce timed games on everybody (unless the time limit is pretty generous).
Stef mentioned timed games in the context of user-created tournaments. If you want to make, say, a 16-player single-game knock-out tournament last at most 2 hours, you have to enforce some maximum game length on the individual rounds (say, 30 minutes). What these limits are and whether there are limits at all is entirely up to the creator of the tournament, and it's then up to individual players to only join tournaments with time limits that appeal to them.
It's out of the question that we'll apply such time limits to ordinary Dominion games.
What we will do is take an active stance against abusive stallers, starting with giving their opponent the option to make them resign (like iso had) but also by introducing a report function that will flag a time-stamped game + chat log for manual inspection. If we agree there was indeed abusive stalling these users will get warned, and repeat offenders could either be subjected to a personal clock or maybe even have their ability to play against humans temporarily revoked. We want to create a fun environment and people who take two minutes for each Copper play or sprout profanities in chat are not a part of that idea.
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What language/framework are you using? Unity, Java, magnetized needle?
So far we've been using Java, Clojure, JavaScript and HTML5/CSS3.
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What language/framework are you using? Unity, Java, magnetized needle?
So far we've been using Java, Clojure, JavaScript and HTML5/CSS3.
So is it going back to browser then? Is mobile play going to be affected?
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There will be both desktop, browser and mobile clients.
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There will be both desktop, browser and mobile clients.
Will all those clients use the same back-end code and just be different front-ends?
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I didn't see any trace of this on bgg, so I wrote this thread:
https://boardgamegeek.com/article/22489541#22489541
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I didn't see any trace of this on bgg, so I wrote this thread:
https://boardgamegeek.com/article/22489541#22489541
I posted on BGG. They moved it to the video game forum which doesn't link to the main Dominion forum. I emailed the moderator that moved it, telling him that it was an important thread and needed to be in the main Dominion thread, but he never responded.
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I've just seen this thread now, and having skimmed most of the thread I think that my feelings are the same as a lot of users here - cautious optimism. With two renowned Dominion players at the helm I'm sure that features we here want will be well implemented... but I do have to wonder how well the other side will be. How well do you two know what the casual audience is actually after? How will you attract enough casual players to subscribe? There's also the logistical side of things. From what I can see you're suggesting a lot of different clients/variations - a high image one, a low image one, an offline version, a web browser one, an Android one, an iPhone one. That's quite a lot for two people to manage. I'm sure you've thought it through to some degree and know what you're doing but still, it worries me that maybe you're biting off more than you can chew. Then again, I don't know just how experienced you two are as programmers, especially for online gaming.
Anyway, as I said, cautious optimism. Everything promised sounds cool, I like the pricing model (seriously I don't have to worry about paying anything for almost 20 months from now, and after that it's less than the price of a tube of Pringles per month). I just worry about how quickly and how well it will be made by two guys.
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Anyway, as I said, cautious optimism. Everything promised sounds cool, I like the pricing model (seriously I don't have to worry about paying anything for almost 20 months from now, and after that it's less than the price of a tube of Pringles per month).
Pringles may be perhaps the least appealing "give this up once a month" suggestion I've heard.
I just worry about how quickly and how well it will be made by two guys.
Well, they already have at least one working client and a working backend, and presumably it already plays over the internet because I'm guessing they didn't fly from the Netherlands to Arizona just to show it to Jay. That took them two months. So, if they spend another two months on each other client... they'll still have quite a few done in December.
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I'm not a huge fan of the subscription, but offering people a free year to make up for the implied promise of having bought everything forever is reasonable enough so I won't beat the horse to death. I really like the idea of purchasing a lifelong (well implementation long) subscription, at the least I'd hope for the ability to have year long subscriptions ($30 a year vs $3 a month?).
I'm sure you will have all of the cards implemented and good autoplay features so I have no problems there. Dominion shouldn't be the hardest thing to program, and you did a great job on the patches, so I have no doubt that the finished product will play very smoothly.
Other areas of feedback
1. I strongly hope for a return to a forum based system. Being able to lay my own game down and only play with the type of people I wanted to play (of similar ranking, playing by the same VP settings) was tremendous. This also allows for tournaments / league play to be far more organized. At the very least I hope that if everyone draws from the same play-pool that I will have the ability to play people who are good/similarly ranked. None of this within 1000 points nonsense.
2. Please no global chat, it's terrible. I haven't seen a single useful comment on it, and I don't want to see it.
3. Events. For the standard game I don't want events to be included all of the time. I view them like colony/platinum or ruins, they shouldn't be present for every game.
4. The game logs sound excellent. I hope there will also be good isotropish like rankings and the ability to search for game logs. Not sure if this is something that would be hosted by your client, but hopefully it will at least be compatible for it.
5. I'm not a huge fan of different tiers. If it really ends up only being $3 a month, or maybe $4-5 a month when all cards are released, either you'll pay that amount or you'll be at the free tier. I can't imagine too many people paying $2 for only an expansion or two. I think free players are brought into the game by having the base set, and being able to play with all of the other cards their opponent has. If they really like the game, they'll then pay for it. This also allows paid users to have more opponents. I also need the option to play a game online with more than base set cards if I stand a chance of convincing friends to join online, additionally I consider it one of the best features of being a member that I can play with my friends online whether they want to subscribe or not. Other ways could certainly work, but I think this is one of the few areas that the other online implementations had right.
6. There are a lot of people who seem like they will take the offline version, and never play online. Would it make sense to give a free month online with the offline service so that people at least give the subscription model a shot?
7. If you don't make animations sparkle enough, it will ruin the game for casual users.
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3. Events. For the standard game I don't want events to be included all of the time. I view them like colony/platinum or ruins, they shouldn't be present for every game.
If you have all Kingdom cards, a little over half of random games will have at least one event. See the below numbers which predate Summon as a 21st event.
I assume in "full random" it will be: add events randomly along with kingdom cards until there are 10 Kingdom cards, perhaps to a maximum of 2 events.
Using negative binomial approximation (Excel has no built in negative hypergeometric distribution? Appalling!), and the above method, the chance of more than 2 events (with 235 kingdom cards and 20 events) is only 6.2%.
I should have actually used negative hyper geometric instead of a naive binomial in my last post. Real probabilities are (for all cards):
0 events: 43.5%
1 event: 35.5%
2+ events: 21.0%
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Two questions.
1. Will we be able to modify the likelihood of more events, say two or three, being pulled?
2. Will you include an option for the fancy base cards? I much prefer the artwork on the fancy base cards to the plain ones.
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7. If you don't make animations sparkle enough, it will ruin the game for casual users.
I highly doubt that.
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7. If you don't make animations sparkle enough, it will ruin the game for casual users.
I highly doubt that.
Your averall post seems solid, so I just asume you´re trying to troll us with the last statement.
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Your averall post seems solid, so I just asume you´re trying to troll us with the last statement.
[/quote]
Yes, and to point out the mistakes they won't be making. Also I apprently don't know how to quote properly, oh well.
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Fantastic news, finally Dominion Online is being run with people 100% committed to Dominion (which we haven't had since Isotropic).
One minor question: will there be a way to pay not in $? Because if I pay in $, my bank charges me like a 3% currency conversion fee.
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5. I'm not a huge fan of different tiers. If it really ends up only being $3 a month, or maybe $4-5 a month when all cards are released, either you'll pay that amount or you'll be at the free tier. I can't imagine too many people paying $2 for only an expansion or two.
I can. Especially if it's not easy to avoid playing with all the cards you own. "We" want to play with all the cards, but I think many players would like to limit themselves so there are at most a couple of "new" cards in a game. Making fun has a setting to allow cards you don't own or not. I wonder how many has that turned off.
Not owning everything is one way to keep it simpler. Preferrably there should be better ways. I think that ideally the game should keep track of what cards each player is supposed to know (maybe has played with a couple of times) and make sure to not overwhelm a player who hasn't said "give me the works!" with too much new stuff at the same time.
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5. I'm not a huge fan of different tiers. If it really ends up only being $3 a month, or maybe $4-5 a month when all cards are released, either you'll pay that amount or you'll be at the free tier. I can't imagine too many people paying $2 for only an expansion or two.
I can. Especially if it's not easy to avoid playing with all the cards you own. "We" want to play with all the cards, but I think many players would like to limit themselves so there are at most a couple of "new" cards in a game. Making fun has a setting to allow cards you don't own or not. I wonder how many has that turned off.
Not owning everything is one way to keep it simpler. Preferrably there should be better ways. I think that ideally the game should keep track of what cards each player is supposed to know (maybe has played with a couple of times) and make sure to not overwhelm a player who hasn't said "give me the works!" with too much new stuff at the same time.
MF allows you to bias expansions, but I don't think you can just choose not to use an expansion that you own.
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5. I'm not a huge fan of different tiers. If it really ends up only being $3 a month, or maybe $4-5 a month when all cards are released, either you'll pay that amount or you'll be at the free tier. I can't imagine too many people paying $2 for only an expansion or two.
I can. Especially if it's not easy to avoid playing with all the cards you own. "We" want to play with all the cards, but I think many players would like to limit themselves so there are at most a couple of "new" cards in a game. Making fun has a setting to allow cards you don't own or not. I wonder how many has that turned off.
Not owning everything is one way to keep it simpler. Preferrably there should be better ways. I think that ideally the game should keep track of what cards each player is supposed to know (maybe has played with a couple of times) and make sure to not overwhelm a player who hasn't said "give me the works!" with too much new stuff at the same time.
MF allows you to bias expansions, but I don't think you can just choose not to use an expansion that you own.
However, you can choose to not use expansions that you don't own.
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On the events discussion, I hope that a limit of 2 events is only an optional rule, as it is just a suggestion in the rulebook. The official game rules allow for a Kingdom with 21 events, so I hope that the online implementation does as well.
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As a slowish player, I beg you not to enforce timed games on everybody (unless the time limit is pretty generous).
Stef mentioned timed games in the context of user-created tournaments. If you want to make, say, a 16-player single-game knock-out tournament last at most 2 hours, you have to enforce some maximum game length on the individual rounds (say, 30 minutes). What these limits are and whether there are limits at all is entirely up to the creator of the tournament, and it's then up to individual players to only join tournaments with time limits that appeal to them.
It's out of the question that we'll apply such time limits to ordinary Dominion games.
What we will do is take an active stance against abusive stallers, starting with giving their opponent the option to make them resign (like iso had) but also by introducing a report function that will flag a time-stamped game + chat log for manual inspection. If we agree there was indeed abusive stalling these users will get warned, and repeat offenders could either be subjected to a personal clock or maybe even have their ability to play against humans temporarily revoked. We want to create a fun environment and people who take two minutes for each Copper play or sprout profanities in chat are not a part of that idea.
What do you think of Netflix-style "Are you still here?" messages? Possibly with captchas included? I know I said that before but I want to know if it's an idea you're considering.
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What do you think of Netflix-style "Are you still here?" messages? Possibly with captchas included? I know I said that before but I want to know if it's an idea you're considering.
What are the captchas for?
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What do you think of Netflix-style "Are you still here?" messages? Possibly with captchas included? I know I said that before but I want to know if it's an idea you're considering.
What are the captchas for?
Make people put in more work to stay in the game? It's pretty unlikely that they'd get bot accounts but... Still, it would prevent people from just clicking in the same place over and over. I dunno, just a thought.
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Personally, I am in favor of timers. A well-designed timer should be fine even for players who need a lot of time to think; they earn time back if they actually play the game.
Pokemon Showdown uses a good compromise, I think. You can request to turn a battle timer on at any point, and before that there's no timer. I don't think you can turn the timer back off once you choose to turn it on, so that avoids the situation where a troll turns it on then turns it back off on their own turns. This way if you're playing someone in a tournament, you're probably a jerk if you turn the timer on (unless the rules required it), but for casual play it's completely understandable to turn it on at the very start of a game to ward off slow play.
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Have to be considerate to the ragingduckd's of the world. Not everyone plays as fast as scsn. I was trying to look up that one painfully slow game between AI and [Jog? WW? Mic Q? - I forget] in Gokodom (I think) that lasted an hour or so. Have to allow for those games.
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Personally, I am in favor of timers. A well-designed timer should be fine even for players who need a lot of time to think; they earn time back if they actually play the game.
Pokemon Showdown uses a good compromise, I think. You can request to turn a battle timer on at any point, and before that there's no timer. I don't think you can turn the timer back off once you choose to turn it on, so that avoids the situation where a troll turns it on then turns it back off on their own turns. This way if you're playing someone in a tournament, you're probably a jerk if you turn the timer on (unless the rules required it), but for casual play it's completely understandable to turn it on at the very start of a game to ward off slow play.
I was just about to post about the Showdown implementation - it's a very good solution. IIRC it starts at 120 seconds when you first turn it on, but gives you plenty of warning and resets every turn. I don't think it always resets to 120 though - if you take too long several turns in a row it goes to 60 or something. With some tweaks it would be great for Dominion.
I'm not sure if I would like the timer to have warning of some sort, but I would like the timer to give the waiting opponent the option to continue waiting or to take the win. The bad thing about a timer in casual games is that you might be just chatting with your friend about the kingdom and suddenly the game is over out of nowhere. That sucks! giving the other player the option to keep going eliminates this problem.
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I like the Prismata style. You have a number of seconds in storage, plus you get a number of seconds each turn. If you use more than the number of seconds you're given each turn, you start using up the seconds that are in storage, and if you use less, some (but not 100%) of the remaining time goes into the storage. With the slower settings, this means that you always have enough time to think when you need to think, but not enough to effectively slowroll. With the faster settings, it means that you have enough time to stop and think for a short while when you really need to if you can make the easier decisions more or less as fast as you can use keyboard shortcuts to perform those actions. You can choose the time settings that you are fine with getting automatched into, and then you can only get automatched into those games, and I believe games played with the faster settings only count as a fraction of a game for the purposes of the leaderboard.
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Any clock system is fine as long as it doesn't stress the hell out of me while I'm playing.
Awaclus' post made me think that keyboard shortcuts would be awesome.
Even just having "Play all treasures" would be great, and something to press twice (for safety) to do "end actions/turn".
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Any clock system is fine as long as it doesn't stress the hell out of me while I'm playing.
Implement a countdown clock where the remaining time is displayed in a different base chosen randomly each tick, where that base is not exposed to the user.
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Any clock system is fine as long as it doesn't stress the hell out of me while I'm playing.
Implement a countdown clock where the remaining time is displayed in a different base chosen randomly each tick, where that base is not exposed to the user.
To be less stressful, it should not remain on screen where it would create a constant pressure. Instead, it should appear only every 10 or 15 seconds (tough to choose between those, maybe have random intervals in that range). And so it isn't overlooked, it should flash in random bright colors full-screen while smooth jazz plays for a couple seconds. So relaxing.
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Any clock system is fine as long as it doesn't stress the hell out of me while I'm playing.
Implement a countdown clock where the remaining time is displayed in a different base chosen randomly each tick, where that base is not exposed to the user.
Just display base n where n is the time remaining in seconds.
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And with music.
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Any clock system is fine as long as it doesn't stress the hell out of me while I'm playing.
Implement a countdown clock where the remaining time is displayed in a different base chosen randomly each tick, where that base is not exposed to the user.
Just display base n where n is the time remaining in seconds.
Counting down!
10
10
10
10
00
0
Time's up!
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So, here's a question that's been eating at me. Who's creating the art assets for the "pretty" version? Is either of you an artist? Do you have some sort of seed money that you can use to contract a third party? In order for this version to succeed with anybody but diehard fans, I think it needs to have good production values. MakingFun's version has stability issues and lacks features we wish it had, but I have to admit it looks good. What's your plan there?
EDIT: Likewise, who's doing the sound/music?
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From what I understood, this isn't just SCSN and Stef working, but that they founded a company that has some other people working. I'm not sure where I got this but that is what I understood
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From what I understood, this isn't just SCSN and Stef working, but that they founded a company that has some other people working. I'm not sure where I got this but that is what I understood
Well uh certainly that's possible, but I've heard nothing of the sort. Founding a company doesn't mean they hired more workers. Hell I'm an incorporated company myself, from the period where I was doing freelance consulting. And hiring or contracting others would require significant capital.
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EDIT: Likewise, who's doing the sound/music?
I'd be willing to offer my services as a composer.
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I'm an incorporated company myself
Wait, so you're a corporate person rather than an actual human person? :o
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Corporations are people, too.
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So, here's a question that's been eating at me. Who's creating the art assets for the "pretty" version? Is either of you an artist? Do you have some sort of seed money that you can use to contract a third party? In order for this version to succeed with anybody but diehard fans, I think it needs to have good production values. MakingFun's version has stability issues and lacks features we wish it had, but I have to admit it looks good. What's your plan there?
EDIT: Likewise, who's doing the sound/music?
I disagree about MFs production values. Their floating heads are eerie, and the music is pretty awful.
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So, here's a question that's been eating at me. Who's creating the art assets for the "pretty" version? Is either of you an artist? Do you have some sort of seed money that you can use to contract a third party? In order for this version to succeed with anybody but diehard fans, I think it needs to have good production values. MakingFun's version has stability issues and lacks features we wish it had, but I have to admit it looks good. What's your plan there?
EDIT: Likewise, who's doing the sound/music?
I disagree about MFs production values. Their floating heads are eerie, and the music is pretty awful.
I didn't say they were perfect. Yes the floating heads and avatars are awful. I like the music fine, but there needs to be more than one track. Like, one per expansion or something.
My point is that the graphics are very nice and the sound effects are acceptable.
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So, here's a question that's been eating at me. Who's creating the art assets for the "pretty" version? Is either of you an artist? Do you have some sort of seed money that you can use to contract a third party? In order for this version to succeed with anybody but diehard fans, I think it needs to have good production values. MakingFun's version has stability issues and lacks features we wish it had, but I have to admit it looks good. What's your plan there?
EDIT: Likewise, who's doing the sound/music?
I disagree about MFs production values. Their floating heads are eerie, and the music is pretty awful.
But the interface is pretty.
The sounds and music are awfully awaclous, though.
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So, here's a question that's been eating at me. Who's creating the art assets for the "pretty" version? Is either of you an artist? Do you have some sort of seed money that you can use to contract a third party? In order for this version to succeed with anybody but diehard fans, I think it needs to have good production values. MakingFun's version has stability issues and lacks features we wish it had, but I have to admit it looks good. What's your plan there?
EDIT: Likewise, who's doing the sound/music?
I disagree about MFs production values. Their floating heads are eerie, and the music is pretty awful.
But the interface is pretty.
The sounds and music are awfully awaclous, though.
I'm actually Beyond Awesome, not Awaclus. Anyway, I think even the interface is pretty bad. How may misclicks have you made on it. Or, are you taking about the background? I guess that's okay. But, the UI, music, floating heads, avatars, etc all have terrible production values.
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Yeah, please put all buttons in exactly the same position, especially when they do fundamentally different or opposing things, because that's really fun!
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So, here's a question that's been eating at me. Who's creating the art assets for the "pretty" version? Is either of you an artist? Do you have some sort of seed money that you can use to contract a third party? In order for this version to succeed with anybody but diehard fans, I think it needs to have good production values. MakingFun's version has stability issues and lacks features we wish it had, but I have to admit it looks good. What's your plan there?
EDIT: Likewise, who's doing the sound/music?
I disagree about MFs production values. Their floating heads are eerie, and the music is pretty awful.
But the interface is pretty.
The sounds and music are awfully awaclous, though.
I'm actually Beyond Awesome, not Awaclus. Anyway, I think even the interface is pretty bad. How may misclicks have you made on it. Or, are you taking about the background? I guess that's okay. But, the UI, music, floating heads, avatars, etc all have terrible production values.
The interface is not very functional, we all agree on that. But floating heads and avatars apart, it's very pretty (you'd be amazed at how many people love sparkles). Going back to isotropic/Dominion.NET levels would be seen as a huge loss by many people, I'm afraid to say.
[Awaclus invited me to use his name to negatively connotate things. I originally accepted the challenge, but I'm giving up. It messes up conversations and it's ultimately pretty childish.]
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I disagree about the sound effects being good. They're very cheaply produced, possibly stock sound effects (not inherently a problem, mind), and there is no attention to volume mixing, particularly for people playing with the music off. The fanfares are especially bad, but the "your turn" noise is also really harsh.
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FWIW, I would also be happy to offer my services as a music producer/composer if there's a need for that. I'm able to do pretty much any genre, my latest productions have been quite well-received internationally and I have some experience in making music specifically for video games as well.
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my latest productions have been quite well-received internationally and I have some experience in making music specifically for video games as well.
Links? I mean, I'm interested for myself, not for SCSN and Stef. But they might be interested too.
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I'm not beloved internationally, but I write music too.
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Did you move to London? :-)
http://www.shuffleitsolutions.co.uk
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Anyway, as I said, cautious optimism. Everything promised sounds cool, I like the pricing model (seriously I don't have to worry about paying anything for almost 20 months from now, and after that it's less than the price of a tube of Pringles per month). I just worry about how quickly and how well it will be made by two guys.
FWIW, more isn't always better for these sorts of things. Larger studios can be quite expensive... perhaps beyond the budgets of those involved. Folks online who claim to be in the know have said working in teams larger than 2 people can get exponentially more expensive.
Larger studios move slower, and collaboration in larger settings can be cumbersome. If your software is an OS or like Open Office where we're at millions of lines of code, or some enterprise/multi-million $ projects that span hundreds of thousands of lines of code, then it's a tall order for 2 people. Otherwise, while Dominion isn't trivial, it should still be a project that can be tackled within due time. AFAIK, the 2 have at least until Jan. of 2017? That's still 7 months. Perhaps longer. And they did mention they're doing this FT for the time being.
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my latest productions have been quite well-received internationally and I have some experience in making music specifically for video games as well.
Links? I mean, I'm interested for myself, not for SCSN and Stef. But they might be interested too.
Both of the games that I've made music for are still works in progress (actually I'm not sure if either one is ever going to get finished; they're not commercial projects) so I can't link to those. The point of mentioning that wasn't so much "I've made all this amazing video game music" but mostly just that I am familiar with some of the concepts you have to take into account when making music for games. My band's latest album (which you can download for free) is linked in my signature. We're not super famous, but the few reviews we've gotten have been great (and totally unexpected), including a 9/10 (http://www.folkmetalmagazine.com/necro-cannibal-machinery-misanthropy/) from Folkmetalmagazine, a "This year's most distinctive a pioneer of experimental folk metal works" (http://www.blogbus.com/xilugulou-logs/336965046.html) (Google translated from Chinese, also you have to scroll down a bit) from 西陆孤楼, and this review (http://frecuenciasenelespacio.blogspot.fi/2016/03/necro-cannibal-machinery-misanthropy.html) from Frecuancias en el Espacio which doesn't have a rating or a convenient bottom line to quote, but it's pretty positive overall. It's also being played on Radio Pogo (http://mixlr.com/radiopogo/).
There's also my YouTube channel, which is also linked in my signature, where I make other genres of music in addition to a lot of metal as well, as a solo project.
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I have a feature request: being able to see your own hand when Possessing someone.
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I have a feature request: being able to see your own hand when Possessing someone.
But then we'll lose the thrill of receiving that information via subliminal message!
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So, here's a question that's been eating at me. Who's creating the art assets for the "pretty" version? Is either of you an artist? Do you have some sort of seed money that you can use to contract a third party? In order for this version to succeed with anybody but diehard fans, I think it needs to have good production values. MakingFun's version has stability issues and lacks features we wish it had, but I have to admit it looks good. What's your plan there?
EDIT: Likewise, who's doing the sound/music?
From what I understood, this isn't just SCSN and Stef working, but that they founded a company that has some other people working. I'm not sure where I got this but that is what I understood
Well uh certainly that's possible, but I've heard nothing of the sort. Founding a company doesn't mean they hired more workers. Hell I'm an incorporated company myself, from the period where I was doing freelance consulting. And hiring or contracting others would require significant capital.
We don't have employees but we won't be doing every single task ourselves either. And while I have some experience with an industry standard professional design suite*, it's conceivable that we'll bring in a graphical artist/designer at some point as well.
*Having to correct basic misconceptions about Java quickly teaches you the great virtues of empty words.
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I have a feature request: being able to see your own hand when Possessing someone.
Don't push it.
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I haven't read all of the other replies but I have to admit that I also find this entire ordeal really annoying. I payed the equivalent of $90, so I can occasionally play Dominion at my free leisure. Recently I had troubles in my life and didn't really have time for anything and I still don't and now you're telling me that my purchase will basically be just a waste? Making my purchase the equivalent of a service of about $36 is not a good reimbursement, come on. I'd rather prefer MF to still hold the contract at this time even though it is far from perfect and made me use SCSNs mod to make it more bearable.
I'd rather pay a steep price once than pay a little each month and feel like I wasted money if I don't play at least once this month. I am disillusioned at how poor structered the new pay model is and how everyone is so ecstatic about these news.
And what steep price would that be? Still $90? Not to rub salt in the wounds, but MF didn't last long enough for that to pay off.
I honestly think RG is setting themselves up for s class action lawsuit.
....
What they are doing now counts on a court saying that all liability lies with MakingFun. It's possible but I wouldn't count on that if I was Jay.
Are you... serious? Like, actually serious? There aren't enough people to form a large class, there isn't a lawyer in the country who would take a class action suit with a maximum payout under a million dollars, and MF's terms, as noted by drsteelhammer, are pretty clear that nothing of the sort was promised, and any lawyer will laugh in your face if even if they were willing to take a very small class action to court.
Sure, I'm not actually a lawyer, but I bet theory will back me up on this assessment of how CA suits work...
And all this to get back $60 per person.
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Just wanted to say that I'm very excited about this news. My only concern, which was voiced above, is that 2 very dedicated Dominion players may not understand the casual player, and I hope that person will be kept in mind. But I think it's great that two people who love the game are going to be working on it and can't wait for the first day of a real implementation.
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Just wanted to say that I'm very excited about this news. My only concern, which was voiced above, is that 2 very dedicated Dominion players may not understand the casual player, and I hope that person will be kept in mind. But I think it's great that two people who love the game are going to be working on it and can't wait for the first day of a real implementation.
To be fair, does anybody really understand the casual player? I'm not sure anybody here (on a site called Dominion Strategy) would classify as "casual", but if there were, I'd reckon there wouldn't be that many such folks.
AFAIK, they play a free version online or offline. If they never want to bother paying for anything, they either get bored and move on to something else, or continue playing the base game. I presume the server costs for such folks wouldn't go up by THAT much. I do wonder how many folks will end up converting to paid models, to get access to expansions. It sounds like some of these casual gamers aren't even "real board gamers", so that's another layer to get through.
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wow....
It's kind of like everything coming full circle.
This is so weird, but good weird.
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It's not april first or something is it?
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So I paid $90 for all the expansions 1 month ago. The value of 1 year of online plus all the expansions offline under the new model will be $36+around $50 = approximately $90. Then surely those of us who have bought everything could at least get both 1 year of online and permanent offline? Why would we only get one of those?
If you buy any computer game in the shop with online mode then you can't expect to be able to play it online forever, but at least you will get to play it offline forever and online for at least 2 years. I can't imagine that any title will have been online for less than 2 years and invite everyone to think of an example. I can even still play my FIFA 12 online. If a game would go offline that soon then normally you would be offered a refund.
So even if we get a year of online and permanent offline (the very minimum which is reasonable I think) then we would get less than what we could normally have expected when buying the game, but I could live with that.
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I haven't read all of the other replies but I have to admit that I also find this entire ordeal really annoying. I payed the equivalent of $90, so I can occasionally play Dominion at my free leisure. Recently I had troubles in my life and didn't really have time for anything and I still don't and now you're telling me that my purchase will basically be just a waste? Making my purchase the equivalent of a service of about $36 is not a good reimbursement, come on. I'd rather prefer MF to still hold the contract at this time even though it is far from perfect and made me use SCSNs mod to make it more bearable.
I'd rather pay a steep price once than pay a little each month and feel like I wasted money if I don't play at least once this month. I am disillusioned at how poor structered the new pay model is and how everyone is so ecstatic about these news.
I think that most people understand that ongoing services have a cost. Some places use donation models to keep things going (BGA, Yucata, Kingdom of Loathing). Some use pay-to-win or pay-for-hats to keep things going (Prismata, Hearthstone, and *shudder* mobile freemium). And others use subscriptions.
Making Fun had an unsustainable business model. They were going to get less and less revenue each month at some point, and server costs were going to eat them.
The thing about subscriptions is, you don't have to pay every month! Shit hit the fan IRL? Cancel for the next few months, bam, done. You could request/suggest that the free year be allowed to be taken as 12 months, I suppose.
And yes, you could argue that a donation model might work. But how many people will donate to server costs? Would they need a yearly donation drive like BGG or Wikipedia? How quickly would that start to hurt? I personally would rather have a sustainable service, and $3 a month is an incredible price point.
Both groups have a point.
MakingFun's model was a bad one. But that didn't stop Rio Grand from making the deal with them. So there is some responsibility there.
The "contract" MF made with players was "buy this product and get to use it online forever". Note that the price they charged was VERY VERY high. Normal online games are nowhere close to $90 for the "full service". Also note that server costs are low and getting cheaper everyday. Most costs for an online service are one-time fixed costs. So the one time charge is less crazy than it sounds (more bad from a revenue perspective than due to cost structure)
I think people who paid $90 for a specific thing are right to be pissed off that those contracts are being thrown away and replaced with a vastly weaker product: Either less than half the functionality or only one year of service (and still less functionality).
I honestly think RG is setting themselves up for s class action lawsuit.
I think there best options at this point are:
1- Offer full refunds to original buyers
2- Offer free lifetime service to original buyers (expansions purchased)
If they were willing to take more risks they could offer the $90 as credit on the new platform (likely after getting people to sign a contract promising not to sue). But even that is a little risky.
What they are doing now counts on a court saying that all liability lies with MakingFun. It's possible but I wouldn't count on that if I was Jay.
Ed
Here is the Mf policy:
Virtual Currencies and Goods
The Service may include a virtual, in-game currency (“Virtual Currency”) including, but not limited to coins, cash, or points that may be purchased for actual money if you are a legal adult in your country of residence. Examples of Virtual Currency include, but are not limited to, “Ducats” in Dominion, “Tickets” in Hidden Express, “Gems” in Mage and Minions, and “Gold” in BloodRealm. The Service may also include virtual, in-game digital items (“Virtual Goods”) that may be purchased from Making Fun for actual money or for Virtual Currency. Regardless of the terminology used, Virtual Currency and Virtual Goods may never be redeemed for actual money, goods or other items of monetary value from Making Fun or any other party.
Other than a limited, personal, revocable, non-transferable, non-sublicenseable and non-exclusive license to use the Virtual Goods or Virtual Currency within the Service, you have no right or title in or to any such Virtual Goods or Virtual Currency appearing or originating within the Service, or any other attributes associated with use of the Service or stored within the Service.
Making Fun has the absolute right, but not the obligation, to manage, regulate, control, modify and/or eliminate such Virtual Currency or Virtual Goods as it sees fit in its sole discretion, and Making Fun shall have no liability to you or any third party for the exercise of such rights.
Transfers of Virtual Currencies and Virtual Goods are strictly prohibited except where explicitly authorized within the Service. Outside of the game, you may not buy or sell any Virtual Currency or Virtual Goods for “real world” money or other items of value. Any attempt to do so is in violation of these Terms and may result in a lifetime ban from the Service and possible legal action.
You agree that all sales of Virtual Goods and Virtual Currencies are final. No refunds will be given, except in our sole and absolute discretion. All Virtual Goods and Virtual Currencies are forfeited if your Account is terminated or suspended for any reason, in Making Fun’s sole and absolute discretion, or if Making Fun discontinues providing the Service or the Game where the Virtual Goods or Virtual Currencies were obtained.
I am no lawyer, but this looks pretty clear to me. They never promised you anything of that sort, and you're not even entitled to the first year of online Dominion.
Wow I have never seen such ridiculous terms of service. "You buy virtual goods for $90, but we have the right to 'eliminate' them at our sole discretion without refund"? That's like iTunes saying "We may delete any music you have bought whenever we want". These terms are clearly invalid under unfair contract term laws.
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I haven't read all of the other replies but I have to admit that I also find this entire ordeal really annoying. I payed the equivalent of $90, so I can occasionally play Dominion at my free leisure. Recently I had troubles in my life and didn't really have time for anything and I still don't and now you're telling me that my purchase will basically be just a waste? Making my purchase the equivalent of a service of about $36 is not a good reimbursement, come on. I'd rather prefer MF to still hold the contract at this time even though it is far from perfect and made me use SCSNs mod to make it more bearable.
I'd rather pay a steep price once than pay a little each month and feel like I wasted money if I don't play at least once this month. I am disillusioned at how poor structered the new pay model is and how everyone is so ecstatic about these news.
I think that most people understand that ongoing services have a cost. Some places use donation models to keep things going (BGA, Yucata, Kingdom of Loathing). Some use pay-to-win or pay-for-hats to keep things going (Prismata, Hearthstone, and *shudder* mobile freemium). And others use subscriptions.
Making Fun had an unsustainable business model. They were going to get less and less revenue each month at some point, and server costs were going to eat them.
The thing about subscriptions is, you don't have to pay every month! Shit hit the fan IRL? Cancel for the next few months, bam, done. You could request/suggest that the free year be allowed to be taken as 12 months, I suppose.
And yes, you could argue that a donation model might work. But how many people will donate to server costs? Would they need a yearly donation drive like BGG or Wikipedia? How quickly would that start to hurt? I personally would rather have a sustainable service, and $3 a month is an incredible price point.
Both groups have a point.
MakingFun's model was a bad one. But that didn't stop Rio Grand from making the deal with them. So there is some responsibility there.
The "contract" MF made with players was "buy this product and get to use it online forever". Note that the price they charged was VERY VERY high. Normal online games are nowhere close to $90 for the "full service". Also note that server costs are low and getting cheaper everyday. Most costs for an online service are one-time fixed costs. So the one time charge is less crazy than it sounds (more bad from a revenue perspective than due to cost structure)
I think people who paid $90 for a specific thing are right to be pissed off that those contracts are being thrown away and replaced with a vastly weaker product: Either less than half the functionality or only one year of service (and still less functionality).
I honestly think RG is setting themselves up for s class action lawsuit.
I think there best options at this point are:
1- Offer full refunds to original buyers
2- Offer free lifetime service to original buyers (expansions purchased)
If they were willing to take more risks they could offer the $90 as credit on the new platform (likely after getting people to sign a contract promising not to sue). But even that is a little risky.
What they are doing now counts on a court saying that all liability lies with MakingFun. It's possible but I wouldn't count on that if I was Jay.
Ed
Here is the Mf policy:
Virtual Currencies and Goods
The Service may include a virtual, in-game currency (“Virtual Currency”) including, but not limited to coins, cash, or points that may be purchased for actual money if you are a legal adult in your country of residence. Examples of Virtual Currency include, but are not limited to, “Ducats” in Dominion, “Tickets” in Hidden Express, “Gems” in Mage and Minions, and “Gold” in BloodRealm. The Service may also include virtual, in-game digital items (“Virtual Goods”) that may be purchased from Making Fun for actual money or for Virtual Currency. Regardless of the terminology used, Virtual Currency and Virtual Goods may never be redeemed for actual money, goods or other items of monetary value from Making Fun or any other party.
Other than a limited, personal, revocable, non-transferable, non-sublicenseable and non-exclusive license to use the Virtual Goods or Virtual Currency within the Service, you have no right or title in or to any such Virtual Goods or Virtual Currency appearing or originating within the Service, or any other attributes associated with use of the Service or stored within the Service.
Making Fun has the absolute right, but not the obligation, to manage, regulate, control, modify and/or eliminate such Virtual Currency or Virtual Goods as it sees fit in its sole discretion, and Making Fun shall have no liability to you or any third party for the exercise of such rights.
Transfers of Virtual Currencies and Virtual Goods are strictly prohibited except where explicitly authorized within the Service. Outside of the game, you may not buy or sell any Virtual Currency or Virtual Goods for “real world” money or other items of value. Any attempt to do so is in violation of these Terms and may result in a lifetime ban from the Service and possible legal action.
You agree that all sales of Virtual Goods and Virtual Currencies are final. No refunds will be given, except in our sole and absolute discretion. All Virtual Goods and Virtual Currencies are forfeited if your Account is terminated or suspended for any reason, in Making Fun’s sole and absolute discretion, or if Making Fun discontinues providing the Service or the Game where the Virtual Goods or Virtual Currencies were obtained.
I am no lawyer, but this looks pretty clear to me. They never promised you anything of that sort, and you're not even entitled to the first year of online Dominion.
Wow I have never seen such ridiculous terms of service. "You buy virtual goods for $90, but we have the right to 'eliminate' them at our sole discretion without refund"? That's like iTunes saying "We may delete any music you have bought whenever we want". These terms are clearly invalid under unfair contract term laws.
I believe that's already the deal with apps... if the developer closes shop, Apple pulls their apps from the iOS AppStore. If you didn't keep a backup copy of it, then you won't ever be able to DL it again... even if you spent $$ to buy it in the first place.
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A huge quote pyramid I don't want to keep re-quoting
Wow I have never seen such ridiculous terms of service. "You buy virtual goods for $90, but we have the right to 'eliminate' them at our sole discretion without refund"? That's like iTunes saying "We may delete any music you have bought whenever we want". These terms are clearly invalid under unfair contract term laws.
By my understanding, iTunes (and other stores) essentially have this power already. Valve is allowed to delete games from your Steam library without your permission. iTunes is allowed to delete songs you've bought. They don't, because the customer backlash would be insane, but they reserve the option, and you've agreed to it.
If I'm wrong, link me the portion of the EULA that disproves me. I'm genuinely curious to hear if things have swung the other way on digital ownership.
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I don't think I've ever seen an EULA for any comparable service that doesn't grant the company the right to completely screw their paying customers in every imaginable way.
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So I paid $90 for all the expansions 1 month ago. The value of 1 year of online plus all the expansions offline under the new model will be $36+around $50 = approximately $90. Then surely those of us who have bought everything could at least get both 1 year of online and permanent offline? Why would we only get one of those?
I think the reason is that SCSN and Stef have to eat.
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So I paid $90 for all the expansions 1 month ago. The value of 1 year of online plus all the expansions offline under the new model will be $36+around $50 = approximately $90. Then surely those of us who have bought everything could at least get both 1 year of online and permanent offline? Why would we only get one of those?
If you buy any computer game in the shop with online mode then you can't expect to be able to play it online forever, but at least you will get to play it offline forever and online for at least 2 years. I can't imagine that any title will have been online for less than 2 years and invite everyone to think of an example. I can even still play my FIFA 12 online. If a game would go offline that soon then normally you would be offered a refund.
So even if we get a year of online and permanent offline (the very minimum which is reasonable I think) then we would get less than what we could normally have expected when buying the game, but I could live with that.
You're implicitly counting 9 months on the current system as worth $0. I understand the feeling but I mean as long as you're doing the math, I would include that term.
We did not anticipate that there would be much demand for having both offline and online play. Currently there is no offline play at all; thus initially there was not going to be an option to get offline sets instead of a year online (someone promised you online play; no-one promised you offline play). The option is there to try to be friendlier to the people who just want to play against bots.
We hoped to do better for existing customers; the huge disparity between money-taken-in and money-that-made-it-to-us made that plan flee-to-south-america bad. Jay and I will already be out more money than we've ever made from online Dominion, to get existing customers what they're getting. The deal with supporting existing customers is contractual; we can't just change it. For sure we will not negotiate a worse deal for ourselves to give existing customers more. That sounds so evil. Did I mention we will already be out more money than we've ever made from online Dominion? In order to provide the portion we can of a promise that someone else made to our fans.
We can't stop MF from continuing to sell the program this year; it's just something we have to live with.
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Wow I have never seen such ridiculous terms of service. "You buy virtual goods for $90, but we have the right to 'eliminate' them at our sole discretion without refund"? That's like iTunes saying "We may delete any music you have bought whenever we want". These terms are clearly invalid under unfair contract term laws.
Um... this sort of thing is common in every online game I've ever played. Botting in Hearthstone? Banned, all your stuff is gone. Selling gold in WOW (or similar currency in other MMOs)? Banned, all your stuff is gone. Being such a complete asshole in DOTA that you get reported multiple times per game? Banned, all your stuff is gone.
If you buy any computer game in the shop with online mode then you can't expect to be able to play it online forever, but at least you will get to play it offline forever and online for at least 2 years. I can't imagine that any title will have been online for less than 2 years and invite everyone to think of an example. I can even still play my FIFA 12 online. If a game would go offline that soon then normally you would be offered a refund.
As any person in the American south would say, "Well, bless your heart." This is the sort of naivete I would only expect from a teenager, or maybe a young twentysomething not yet finished with college.
And hey, maybe you fit one of those descriptions, there are a lot of people in that age range on the forums. In which case, excellent! You have learned a lesson about the real world.
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So I paid $90 for all the expansions 1 month ago. The value of 1 year of online plus all the expansions offline under the new model will be $36+around $50 = approximately $90. Then surely those of us who have bought everything could at least get both 1 year of online and permanent offline? Why would we only get one of those?
I think the reason is that SCSN and Stef have to eat.
Frankly, I was surprised that they even offered that much to begin with to the MF customers, as giving away even that much seems to be a strain on their operations (remember that we'd like this to be a sustainable one?). Any $$ users paid to MF sure as heck isn't going to SCCN and Stef. Nor Donald X, nor RGG.
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I gotta admit that I am surprised that RGG & Donald X are stuck with not only footing the bill for purchase transfers but actually end up spending more on that than whatever they got as a licensing fee. Rough deal.
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Wow I have never seen such ridiculous terms of service. "You buy virtual goods for $90, but we have the right to 'eliminate' them at our sole discretion without refund"? That's like iTunes saying "We may delete any music you have bought whenever we want". These terms are clearly invalid under unfair contract term laws.
Um... this sort of thing is common in every online game I've ever played. Botting in Hearthstone? Banned, all your stuff is gone. Selling gold in WOW (or similar currency in other MMOs)? Banned, all your stuff is gone. Being such a complete asshole in DOTA that you get reported multiple times per game? Banned, all your stuff is gone.
Not to mention the occasions where Amazon removed ebooks from people's Kindles, in one instance because they discovered that the person selling 1984 didn't actually have an appropriate licence for it, and in another when they claimed the person's account was somehow associated with an abuse of their rules so they wiped everything.
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Will it be possible to not take either transfer option and save RGG some money?
As I have had the sets for years I would be happy to pay again.
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Being such a complete asshole in DOTA that you get reported multiple times per game? Banned, all your stuff is gone.
Actually, that's not how it works. You just lose the ability to chat and only get matched up with other asshats. You can still wear your hats though.
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Will it be possible to not take either transfer option and save RGG some money?
As I have had the sets for years I would be happy to pay again.
Oh dude it's fine, we don't need the money. We are getting paid less, not paying; it amounts to the same thing but feels better.
It's just a fact to trot out when someone is all, why didn't we get more. Arguably we started negotiations in a poor position, due to not knowing the full details of what was going on at MF. If we had it to do again we might do better. But it's all for a good cause. I'm not complaining, at least not if things work out with ShuffleiT; I am just explaining how we ended up not giving existing customers more.
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Wow I have never seen such ridiculous terms of service. "You buy virtual goods for $90, but we have the right to 'eliminate' them at our sole discretion without refund"? That's like iTunes saying "We may delete any music you have bought whenever we want". These terms are clearly invalid under unfair contract term laws.
Um... this sort of thing is common in every online game I've ever played. Botting in Hearthstone? Banned, all your stuff is gone. Selling gold in WOW (or similar currency in other MMOs)? Banned, all your stuff is gone. Being such a complete asshole in DOTA that you get reported multiple times per game? Banned, all your stuff is gone.
Not to mention the occasions where Amazon removed ebooks from people's Kindles, in one instance because they discovered that the person selling 1984 didn't actually have an appropriate licence for it, and in another when they claimed the person's account was somehow associated with an abuse of their rules so they wiped everything.
Did they at least refund those purchases?
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Wow I have never seen such ridiculous terms of service. "You buy virtual goods for $90, but we have the right to 'eliminate' them at our sole discretion without refund"? That's like iTunes saying "We may delete any music you have bought whenever we want". These terms are clearly invalid under unfair contract term laws.
Um... this sort of thing is common in every online game I've ever played. Botting in Hearthstone? Banned, all your stuff is gone. Selling gold in WOW (or similar currency in other MMOs)? Banned, all your stuff is gone. Being such a complete asshole in DOTA that you get reported multiple times per game? Banned, all your stuff is gone.
Yeah, that's different because that only happens if you cheat, if you don't do that then it will never happen.
I play Hearthstone and actually after knowing this would happen with Dominion, I checked their ToS before buying something, and they have nothing that allows them to delete your items "at their sole discretion".
The 1984 books on Kindle were refunded. I can't think of any case where you virtual goods are just deleted without a refund when you have not done something against the rules.
It's interesting how most people here just assume that whatever is in the Terms and Conditions is valid. Terms need to be reasonable to be legally valid. Do you really think if some Terms from a physical store said "we can come take this item back from you anytime and you will not get a refund", they would be valid?
The same principles apply for the digital economy, this is essential for there to be any faith in the digital economy at all.
The problem I have is not with RG or Stef/SCSN but with Making Fun selling their product less than a year before it expires. They might not have known that they would not regain the contract but they should at least have mentioned that you only buy access until the end of 2016 "and possibly beyond". (Actually, I think they're still selling it now, while they know it's going to expire, which would be pretty bad).
Making Fun have not purported to sell me a service but a lasting product. I deal I bought was called "complete my collection", not "get access". Note that "my" means that I get to own it. If you own something then others are not allowed to just take it away from you.
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I can't think of any case where you virtual goods are just deleted without a refund when you have not done something against the rules.
When the company closes down and can no longer offer you the service? When Hearthstone/LOL/DOTA/etc close down, you will no longer have access to the stuff you bought.
Also, why are you complaining to S&S about MF being bad? They are here because MF is bad, and it's not fair to expect to penalise them for MF's problems.
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Will it be possible to not take either transfer option and save RGG some money?
As I have had the sets for years I would be happy to pay again.
Oh dude it's fine, we don't need the money. We are getting paid less, not paying; it amounts to the same thing but feels better.
It's just a fact to trot out when someone is all, why didn't we get more. Arguably we started negotiations in a poor position, due to not knowing the full details of what was going on at MF. If we had it to do again we might do better. But it's all for a good cause. I'm not complaining, at least not if things work out with ShuffleiT; I am just explaining how we ended up not giving existing customers more.
Ah, cool. Thanks for the clarification.
In that case I can take the offline sets. (That I wouldn't have paid for).
Then starting paying Shuffle IT from Jan 2017.
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I play Hearthstone and actually after knowing this would happen with Dominion, I checked their ToS before buying something, and they have nothing that allows them to delete your items "at their sole discretion".
Section 9. B. of Blizzard's battle.net EULA, which covers Hearthstone:
"Alterations to Battle.net and the Games.
Blizzard may change, modify, suspend, or discontinue any aspect of Battle.net, Battle.net Client, Accounts or the Games at any time, including removing items, or revising the effectiveness of items in an effort to balance a Game. Blizzard may also impose limits on certain features or restrict your access to parts or all of Battle.net, Battle.net Client, Accounts or the Games without notice or liability."
Blizzard can decide to turn off the Hearthstone servers tomorrow, and none of their customers are entitled to any compensation for that.
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Please, stop with these legal arguments. There's no point, because the clause means nothing until it's used, and only then can it be said to be fair or unfair.
The rights are reserved for the case of losing money from a product or service and no longer wanting to offer it, or being no longer legally capable. If a company used it to turn off a profitable service, their customers would have a reasonable case against the company, since the clause means nothing once it's applied unfairly. These clauses exist so that the firm can pull the plug on unprofitable services.
The legal case that would surround an unprofitable company turning off a product is zero - unless they've made false presentation when selling a product. Namely, they knew they were going to cease the product and didn't inform customers a reasonable time after they knew. (Say they knew in January their product would cease in June, but didn't tell people until May).
The legal case against a company which is making money from a product that ceases a product would vary on the why. If they're receiving expensive legal action against them for copyright, that'd be acceptable. If their contract is up, it becomes about false presentation. If they've shut it down for no reason, they'd have to demonstrate that it's reasonable to have shut it down over keep the servers running and mothballing the staffing of the product (maybe by removing moderated features, and having a disclaimer that the product was no longer being maintained) - and, again they have to demonstrate they let customers know a reasonable time after they did.
Contract law has rules of fair play. I am 90% certain the above holds for English law, it's been a while since I've touched this kind of law, though. What someone does has to be reasonable, and on a whim ending of services isn't reasonable.
If you want an example of how a real world terminating of services might look, basically look at what happened when gamespy shut down.
And the only thing that MF has possibly done is in their selling of the product, but even then I don't feel that they've made false presentation about it.
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Tl;dr: What MF did was overcharge for a service that might only last a year. Not illegal.
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Will the $2 or $3 / month actually be that, or will it be $24 or $36 / year? I could see myself paying for the occasional month but there are too many other great games to be committed to a contract.
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It's actually 36k/millennium, which is a terrific deal if you take inflation into account. But those reluctant to take advantage of this great opportunity can just pay for whatever month they want to pay.
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It's actually 36k/millennium, which is a terrific deal if you take inflation into account. But those reluctant to take advantage of this great opportunity can just pay for whatever month they want to pay.
Your current model is obviously biased towards faster playing users, as they can play more games within a given month. There should be an alternative pay-per-game model to accommodate slower-playing users.
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#SlowPlayDominionGate
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It's actually 36k/millennium, which is a terrific deal if you take inflation into account. But those reluctant to take advantage of this great opportunity can just pay for whatever month they want to pay.
Your current model is obviously biased towards faster playing users, as they can play more games within a given month. There should be an alternative pay-per-game model to accommodate slower-playing users.
The solution to that of course would be to play longer and fewer games that'll derive you more enjoyment.
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It's actually 36k/millennium, which is a terrific deal if you take inflation into account. But those reluctant to take advantage of this great opportunity can just pay for whatever month they want to pay.
Your current model is obviously biased towards faster playing users, as they can play more games within a given month. There should be an alternative pay-per-game model to accommodate slower-playing users.
Maybe $1 for Unlimited play for 24 hours.
Also, maybe new users get 1-month free access to all expansions so they can experience them first. Most subscription services offer a 30-day free-trial. Regardless, though, I think Base Set should remain free no matter what.
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I want Hinterlands to be the free no matter what set. If only for the hipster factor.
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I want Hinterlands to be the free no matter what set. If only for the hipster factor.
??
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I want Hinterlands to be the free no matter what set. If only for the hipster factor.
What makes Hinterlands more of a hipster set than any other Dominion set? Base set is the OG, so that's got the retro thing going on. Intrigue is the interesting pick that can be played besides the Base set to be edgy and different, so there's that too. But why Hinterlands?
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I want Hinterlands to be the free no matter what set. If only for the hipster factor.
What makes Hinterlands more of a hipster set than any other Dominion set? Base set is the OG, so that's got the retro thing going on. Intrigue is the interesting pick that can be played besides the Base set to be edgy and different, so there's that too. But why Hinterlands?
If you get Hinterlands for free when you sign up, that would give Hinterlands an on-gain bonus. Is that it?
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I want Hinterlands to be the free no matter what set. If only for the hipster factor.
Got to be the number of beards/mustaches in the set.
By my count: Develop, Scheme, JoaT, Nomad Camp, Silk Road, Spice Merchant, Cartographer, Embassy, Haggler, Margrave, Stables (11).
Other sets:
Base: Woodcutter, Bureaucrat, Feast, Militia, Smithy, Market, Mine (7).
Intrigue: Pawn, Swindler, Baron, Conspirator, Mining Village, Duke, Minion, Saboteur, Tribute (9).
Seaside: Ambassador, Smugglers, Bazaar, Tactician (4).
Prosperity: Loan, Counting House, Mint, Mountebank, Rabble, Venture, Goons, Bank, King's Court (9).
Dark Ages: Beggar, Hermit, Sage, Ironmonger, Marauder, Procession, Wandering Minstrel, Band of Misfits, Bandit Camp, Graverobber, Junk Dealer, Pillage, Rogue, Madman, Mercenary, Sir Martin (16).
Well Dark Ages blew that theory out of the water. Not even going to look at the other sets...
On another note, I foresee a "Best Beard Art Bracket" being a thing in the future.
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It's a very good beginner/starter set and intro to the game, yet is less popular for that purpose than Intrigue and Base, and even less popular for that purpose than Seaside and Prosperity, oddly. That's what I meant by hipster.
It was originally designed to be a standalone which is why it works well of course.
There are an awful lot of beards though.
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When I teach Dominion, the on-gain cards tend to be confusing to beginners. We're used to them, but it's a lot of extra decisions for someone new to take in.
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Explaining the difference between "on-gain" and "on-buy" is also less than ideal for first time players.
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A gain is simply getting a card into your deck in whatever way it happens, whether Ironworks, buying a card, or even gaining a Curse from an opponent's Witch. Maybe explaining it that way would help.
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A gain is simply getting a card into your deck in whatever way it happens*, whether Ironworks, buying a card, or even gaining a Curse from an opponent's Witch. Maybe explaining it that way would help.
*Except for having it passed to you by Masquerade, or exchanging a Traveller, or when you trash a Fortress and it gets returned to your hand.
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A gain is simply getting a card into your deck in whatever way it happens*, whether Ironworks, buying a card, or even gaining a Curse from an opponent's Witch. Maybe explaining it that way would help.
*Except for having it passed to you by Masquerade, or exchanging a Traveller, or when you trash a Fortress and it gets returned to your hand.
Okay, getting a new card into your deck then. Travellers are simply the same card evolving in a real sense, and Masquerade is passing old cards. Fortress is already in your deck.
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A gain is simply getting a card into your deck in whatever way it happens*, whether Ironworks, buying a card, or even gaining a Curse from an opponent's Witch. Maybe explaining it that way would help.
*Except for having it passed to you by Masquerade, or exchanging a Traveller, or when you trash a Fortress and it gets returned to your hand.
Okay, getting a new card into your deck then. Travellers are simply the same card evolving in a real sense, and Masquerade is passing old cards. Fortress is already in your deck.
Each Traveller upgrade is a new card, even if the thematic idea is that it's the same one. When Masquerade passes you a card, it is new to your deck. When Fortress is trashed, it is briefly no longer in your deck. If you don't consider Fortress a new card from the trash, then what about when you gain from the trash via Graverobber or Rogue? Those cards aren't "new" either then.
We take these terms for granted, but they can certainly be confusing for new players. FWIW, I'd explain it like this:
- Buying is when you use a Buy in the Buy phase. After you buy a card in the Supply, you gain it.
- Gaining also happens when a card is played that tells you to gain a card. It actually says "gain" right on it. When you do this, you gain the card without buying it.
And then I'd address any issues for a particular kingdom, like Trader or Black Market. I wouldn't go into details unless they are relevant for the game. Events are another wrinkle (they are things you buy but you don't gain; for in-game terminology they aren't even "cards").
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A gain is simply getting a card into your deck in whatever way it happens*, whether Ironworks, buying a card, or even gaining a Curse from an opponent's Witch. Maybe explaining it that way would help.
*Except for having it passed to you by Masquerade, or exchanging a Traveller, or when you trash a Fortress and it gets returned to your hand.
Okay, getting a new card into your deck then. Travellers are simply the same card evolving in a real sense, and Masquerade is passing old cards. Fortress is already in your deck.
When Fortress is trashed, it is briefly no longer in your deck. If you don't consider Fortress a new card from the trash, then what about when you gain from the trash via Graverobber or Rogue? Those cards aren't "new" either then.
Ditto with Thief. Many people miss that targeted Treasures go into the Trash, whereas then the player who played the Thief then gets to decide if he wants to gain those cards or not. I'll mention it once that this is how it works, but be more up front about it when it does directly matter, like the targeted players now getting to resolve a Market Square.
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Ditto with Thief. Many people miss that targeted Treasures go into the Trash, whereas then the player who played the Thief then gets to decide if he wants to gain those cards or not. I'll mention it once that this is how it works, but be more up front about it when it does directly matter, like the targeted players now getting to resolve a Market Square.
SCSN will not miss that detail, because missing that means gaining Coppers, and we all know how much SCSN hates treasures.
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Ditto with Thief. Many people miss that targeted Treasures go into the Trash, whereas then the player who played the Thief then gets to decide if he wants to gain those cards or not. I'll mention it once that this is how it works, but be more up front about it when it does directly matter, like the targeted players now getting to resolve a Market Square.
SCSN will not miss that detail, because missing that means gaining Coppers, and we all know how much SCSN hates treasures.
Many digital implementations I've seen have been good about that. I even forget from time to time, wondering why there's a "blip" in the Trash pile, only to remember that yeah, that is how that works.
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I'm skipping about half the topic, but put me down as excited for Offline, assuming I can transfer purchases. 98% of my Dominion is playing against bots, so that'd be perfect for me. Unfortunately, I'll lose the 2% of occasionally playing with my friends, but that's a sacrifice I can live with making, especially if we both have to own the expansions. My old buddy slowly phased out after Iso went down, and my wife is just not that into it, and I can't see either shelling out monthly.
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This is the best news imaginable for the future of online dominion! Good luck U2!
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This is the best news imaginable for the future of online dominion! Good luck U2!
Are they providing the background music?
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This is the best news imaginable for the future of online dominion! Good luck U2!
Are they providing the background music?
*engine going, draws most of deck, all payload cards still in deck*
*Dominion client starts playing "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."*
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*finally draw KC-KC-Bridge-Bridge-Bridge*
*client starts playing "Beautiful Day."*
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Have a hand of Estate, Estate, Estate, Curse, Moneylender.
Opponent has Haunted Woods in play.
Music: "Now you're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it."
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Have a hand of Estate, Estate, Estate, Curse, Moneylender.
Opponent has Haunted Woods in play.
Music: "Now you're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it."
Just don't buy a card?
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Have a hand of Estate, Estate, Estate, Curse, Moneylender.
Opponent has Haunted Woods in play.
Music: "Now you're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it."
Just don't buy a card?
oops :-[
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Have a hand of Estate, Estate, Estate, Curse, Moneylender.
Opponent has Haunted Woods in play.
Music: "Now you're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it."
Just don't buy a card?
oops :-[
"The Troubles"
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KC KC Butcher Butcher Butcher - Butchering nine Peddlers
Death "Scream Bloody Gore"
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KC KC Butcher Butcher Butcher - Buthering nine Peddlers
Death "Scream Bloody Gore"
I'd say that's more "Sunday Bloody Sunday".
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I'm sure if you offer $1000 upfront, you might be able to get a lifetime subscription to Dominion.
I'd knock off about a decade of online gaming and also get the boxed game itself 8)
Note that we can't offer you lifetime because we don't have a lifetime contract.
Well, legally, you'd probably be in the clear anyways, as you didn't specify that it was HIS lifetime... but more so the lifetime of the game itself ;)
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Uh. People are living things. Games are not living things. It's not like if you leave it ambiguous either interpretation is equally correct, one interpretation is definitely more correct because lifetime refers to things that are alive. Unless SCSN and Stef implement online Dominion using a custom created carbon based lifeform, in which case I don't really care about a subscription so much as wanting to invest in stock in all of their brilliant ventures.
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Uh. People are living things. Games are not living things. It's not like if you leave it ambiguous either interpretation is equally correct, one interpretation is definitely more correct because lifetime refers to things that are alive. Unless SCSN and Stef implement online Dominion using a custom created carbon based lifeform, in which case I don't really care about a subscription so much as wanting to invest in stock in all of their brilliant ventures.
Lifetime is a word commonly used to refer to non-living things. Look it up in a dictionary if you're a prescriptivist - the duration of a thing's existence or usefulness. In this case, it would mean as long as SCSN and Stef support online Dominion.
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Uh. People are living things. Games are not living things. It's not like if you leave it ambiguous either interpretation is equally correct, one interpretation is definitely more correct because lifetime refers to things that are alive. Unless SCSN and Stef implement online Dominion using a custom created carbon based lifeform, in which case I don't really care about a subscription so much as wanting to invest in stock in all of their brilliant ventures.
Lifetime is a word commonly used to refer to non-living things. Look it up in a dictionary if you're a prescriptivist - the duration of a thing's existence or usefulness. In this case, it would mean as long as SCSN and Stef support online Dominion.
The LED light bulbs I just bought have an expected lifetime right on the package, as an example.
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I'm not saying lifetime is never associated with nonliving things. I am saying is has an association with living things, and it has an association with nonliving things, and the former of those two is way stronger.
Have you guys played codenames?
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I'm not saying lifetime is never associated with nonliving things. I am saying is has an association with living things, and it has an association with nonliving things, and the former of those two is way stronger.
Have you guys played codenames?
It also has an association with dramas wherein women marry seemingly sweet guys only to find out that they're abusive a few years down the road. But maybe nobody was confused that we were talking about that.
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you will be able to play Dominion online until the heat death of the universe.
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you will be able to play Dominion online until the heat death of the universe.
My best guess is you're just trying to be hilarious, rather than trying to make a point.
Like anyone, I make non-literal statements sometimes. It should be clear here that what I am saying cannot possibly be literally true; it must mean something else. In a context where literal statements were of absolute importance, I would not have suggested that I knew if online Dominion would even last as long as 5 minutes from now. Man. Who knows.
And more importantly, I am just some guy, as fallible as anyone. You can also find me saying that everyone would keep their stuff on the next version of Dominion, back when I thought we had gotten a substantial share of the money taken in and so could just give that up to keep people happy.
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you will be able to play Dominion online until the heat death of the universe.
Rejoice, Donald X. has bestowed the gift of immortality upon us!
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So far his statement has not been proven false, as long as you're allowing noticeable outages and bugs to invalidate your definition of "play".
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Hey, does this mean that when I'm playing that infinite stalemate game in a 24h restaurant, it'll be over when the heat death of the universe comes? What will be the outcome of that game then?
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Hey, does this mean that when I'm playing that infinite stalemate game in a 24h restaurant, it'll be over when the heat death of the universe comes? What will be the outcome of that game then?
The heat death of the universe. You already answered it.
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Hey, does this mean that when I'm playing that infinite stalemate game in a 24h restaurant, it'll be over when the heat death of the universe comes? What will be the outcome of that game then?
The heat death of the universe. You already answered it.
That's not the outcome of that game, that's just the ending condition. Who wins the game or is it a tie?
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Hey, does this mean that when I'm playing that infinite stalemate game in a 24h restaurant, it'll be over when the heat death of the universe comes? What will be the outcome of that game then?
The heat death of the universe. You already answered it.
That's not the outcome of that game, that's just the ending condition. Who wins the game or is it a tie?
No one wins... The game did not end. Only the universe did.
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Hey, does this mean that when I'm playing that infinite stalemate game in a 24h restaurant, it'll be over when the heat death of the universe comes? What will be the outcome of that game then?
The heat death of the universe. You already answered it.
That's not the outcome of that game, that's just the ending condition. Who wins the game or is it a tie?
Entropy.
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Hey, does this mean that when I'm playing that infinite stalemate game in a 24h restaurant, it'll be over when the heat death of the universe comes? What will be the outcome of that game then?
You're apparently eating at Milliways, who cares who wins the game? Watch the show, meet the dish of the day.
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This would be the "you can only play with the intersection of cards owned by the two players" approach.
That would be worse than the "you can play with the union of cards owned by the two players" approach or the "you can play with either players' cards at at time, your choice of whose" approach. The intersection approach means that I can't play with the expansions with a friend who only plays a few games a year, and it means that those who have purchased the expansions won't want to play with those who don't have all the cards.
To me, union for any cards randomly added in kingdoms (the entire kingdom for full random) + the ability to chose specific Kingdom cards only from one person's cards is the way to go.
To avoid extensive free-riding but still allow people to have fun experiences with friends across the country who only play casually, or in a league against people without sets, I'd update this suggestion a bit:
You use the union for any cards randomly added in kingdoms (the entire kingdom for full random) and can chose specific Kingdom cards only from one person's cards. However, the auto-match features will prioritize matching people who have purchased cards with other people who have purchased the cards. If I subscribe to all cards and you don't, we'll only play against each other if we arrange the game specifically (or we may get auto-matched if very few players who subscribe to all cards are online). Of course, there should also be friend lists so it's easy to set up games with your friends.
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- Multi language support
What language? Do you plan Polish language? Only menu or also cards?
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To avoid extensive free-riding but still allow people to have fun experiences with friends across the country who only play casually, or in a league against people without sets, I'd update this suggestion a bit:
You use the union for any cards randomly added in kingdoms (the entire kingdom for full random) and can chose specific Kingdom cards only from one person's cards. However, the auto-match features will prioritize matching people who have purchased cards with other people who have purchased the cards. If I subscribe to all cards and you don't, we'll only play against each other if we arrange the game specifically (or we may get auto-matched if very few players who subscribe to all cards are online). Of course, there should also be friend lists so it's easy to set up games with your friends.
I think this is a good idea.
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That automatch functionality suggestion seems like a good idea. As someone who didn't buy all the cards on Goko, it was kind of annoying when I queued into another base-only player, got a really good base only board and had a really good evenly matched game, then hit the rematch button and they are gone like the wind to try to find a free ride in the queue.
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I'm sure that this was already asked, but I'll ask anyway: how do you plan on implementing the promos? Will they cost the same as a full expansion? Also, as new promos are released, would they be lumped into the rest, or would one have to pay a little extra to get that promo for that month, then lump it in next month? Of course, this all assumes that you don't have them each as separate 25 cent packs, because that would just be stupid.
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Also, once again not sure if this was brought up before, but making each individual expansion a separate subscriltion really bugs me. I bought the expansions once, IRL, to have the cards. Then I bought them again, online, to play with a larger player base. Now they only work against bots, and now I have to RENT A THIRD COPY to play with that same player base??? If I wanted all the expansions, I would currently be paying $83 PER MONTH, and that doesn't take into account promos, and would only increase as donald releases more expansions.
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Also, once again not sure if this was brought up before, but making each individual expansion a separate subscriltion really bugs me. I bought the expansions once, IRL, to have the cards. Then I bought them again, online, to play with a larger player base. Now they only work against bots, and now I have to RENT A THIRD COPY to play with that same player base??? If I wanted all the expansions, I would currently be paying $83 PER MONTH, and that doesn't take into account promos, and would only increase as donald releases more expansions.
Each expansion is not a separate subscription. The proposed price is $3 per month for all Dominion cards that currently exist, including Empires. If another expansion is released after that, you can either:
1. Not get it, and continue paying $3 per month for online play with the cards you had before; or
2. Get it, and pay something like $3.25 per month from now on.
I am just making that latter price up; I don't know for sure how much further expansions may cost and 25¢ is just my guess.
Also, keep in mind that your subscription does not just pay for the cards themselves; it pays for the already-done development on the client, future development on the client, server costs, future expansion creation, etc., all of which you have benefited from and/or may benefit from in the future.
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I'm sure that this was already asked, but I'll ask anyway: how do you plan on implementing the promos? Will they cost the same as a full expansion? Also, as new promos are released, would they be lumped into the rest, or would one have to pay a little extra to get that promo for that month, then lump it in next month? Of course, this all assumes that you don't have them each as separate 25 cent packs, because that would just be stupid.
I do not know how promos will be handled. The basic idea is to use them promotionally, however best benefits the individual publishers. We talked about them a little but I don't think it was really decided.
Me personally, I would not sell them; I would probably give them out a few different ways, e.g. you get one for beating a campaign or winning a tournament.
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I'm sure that this was already asked, but I'll ask anyway: how do you plan on implementing the promos? Will they cost the same as a full expansion? Also, as new promos are released, would they be lumped into the rest, or would one have to pay a little extra to get that promo for that month, then lump it in next month? Of course, this all assumes that you don't have them each as separate 25 cent packs, because that would just be stupid.
I do not know how promos will be handled. The basic idea is to use them promotionally, however best benefits the individual publishers. We talked about them a little but I don't think it was really decided.
Me personally, I would not sell them; I would probably give them out a few different ways, e.g. you get one for beating a campaign or winning a tournament.
But if people aren't able to play using the union of their card sets, wouldn't you only be able to play with the promos vs people who also won the tournament?
(Side note, I still think fracturing the player base by not allowing people to use the union of their sets is a terrible idea.)
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But if people aren't able to play using the union of their card sets, wouldn't you only be able to play with the promos vs people who also won the tournament?
Probably we would solve that problem by solving it.
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Am I the only one who is not exactly very excited to pay a monthly fee to be able to play Dominion online?
You're not the only one. I am furious that DXV and co are stealing the money I paid them and giving me a crappy one year sub as a tossed-off recompense.
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Am I the only one who is not exactly very excited to pay a monthly fee to be able to play Dominion online?
You're not the only one. I am furious that DXV and co are stealing the money I paid them and giving me a crappy one year sub as a tossed-off recompense.
...
I...
Have you read the remainder of the thread?
Donald, Stef, and SCSN aren't stealing any of your money. They're not getting any of the money from Making Fun. That money is already spent, it's gone.
Making Fun never promised you you would have the sets to use forever. In fact, somewhere in their Terms of Service there is almost certainly a clause like "We reserve the right to terminate your access at any time for any reason." Well, in this case they're terminating everyone's access and the reason is that their license has expired.
Donald, Stef, and SCSN are instead giving you a full years' subscription even though you've given them nothing yet. Man, if that isn't customer service, I don't know what is.
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Making Fun never promised you you would have the sets to use forever. In fact, somewhere in their Terms of Service there is almost certainly a clause like "We reserve the right to terminate your access at any time for any reason." Well, in this case they're terminating everyone's access and the reason is that their license has expired.
And I'm going to quote myself to emphasize something:
This is why a subscription based model would always have been better anyway.
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Okay, how about you go buy a house from someone, pay off your mortgage ... and then the seller announces that you have to pay rent.
We have already paid. We have already paid a LOT of money. And now we have to pay more? Screw that.
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Am I the only one who is not exactly very excited to pay a monthly fee to be able to play Dominion online?
You're not the only one. I am furious that DXV and co are stealing the money I paid them and giving me a crappy one year sub as a tossed-off recompense.
Donald, Stef, and SCSN aren't stealing any of your money. They're not getting any of the money from Making Fun. That money is already spent, it's gone.
DXV and RGG already got money from the Goko and MF purchases. Are they going to refund me that money? No. They are going to keep it and demand more.
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Okay, how about you go buy a house from someone, pay off your mortgage ... and then the seller announces that you have to pay rent.
We have already paid. We have already paid a LOT of money. And now we have to pay more? Screw that.
You realize this is not the analogy, right?
It's more like, you bought rights to live in a house from someone who was maintaining that house's existence, that someone stopped maintaining its existence, then someone else created a new house across the street (or maybe even in the same lot works better in the analogy).
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It's understandable that people are going to get mad when they discover they got the Goko implementation of eternity rather than the real thing.
It's not Goko's fault that Dominion's owners and designers refuse to honour the agreement they allowed Goko to make with their customers.
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Okay, how about you go buy a house from someone, pay off your mortgage ... and then the seller announces that you have to pay rent.
We have already paid. We have already paid a LOT of money. And now we have to pay more? Screw that.
You realize this is not the analogy, right?
It's more like, you bought rights to live in a house from someone who was maintaining that house's existence, that someone stopped maintaining its existence, then someone else created a new house across the street (or maybe even in the same lot works better in the analogy).
No. DXV-RGG owned a plot of land. They let Goko-MF build a house there and encouraged them to sell me the house. Then they summarily revoked their deal with Goko-MF and told me I'd have to pay rent to their new stooges SS in order to carry on living in the house they encouraged me to buy. They also refuse to allow anyone else (such as Isotropic) to build a house, anywhere, so that if I want to live in a house I am forced to suck it up and pay the rent. This is some of the most disgusting behaviour I have seen from a games company, and games companies are not exactly known for being moral paragons.
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Okay, how about you go buy a house from someone, pay off your mortgage ... and then the seller announces that you have to pay rent.
We have already paid. We have already paid a LOT of money. And now we have to pay more? Screw that.
You realize this is not the analogy, right?
It's more like, you bought rights to live in a house from someone who was maintaining that house's existence, that someone stopped maintaining its existence, then someone else created a new house across the street (or maybe even in the same lot works better in the analogy).
No. DXV-RGG owned a plot of land. They let Goko-MF build a house there and encouraged them to sell me the house. Then they summarily revoked their deal with Goko-MF and told me I'd have to pay rent to their new stooges SS in order to carry on living in the house they encouraged me to buy. They also refuse to allow anyone else (such as Isotropic) to build a house, anywhere, so that if I want to live in a house I am forced to suck it up and pay the rent. This is some of the most disgusting behaviour I have seen from a games company, and games companies are not exactly known for being moral paragons.
They are not the same house. And, really, rented, not sold. And, the deal was time-capped in the first place.
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Okay, how about you go buy a house from someone, pay off your mortgage ... and then the seller announces that you have to pay rent.
We have already paid. We have already paid a LOT of money. And now we have to pay more? Screw that.
You realize this is not the analogy, right?
It's more like, you bought rights to live in a house from someone who was maintaining that house's existence, that someone stopped maintaining its existence, then someone else created a new house across the street (or maybe even in the same lot works better in the analogy).
No. DXV-RGG owned a plot of land. They let Goko-MF build a house there and encouraged them to sell me the house. Then they summarily revoked their deal with Goko-MF and told me I'd have to pay rent to their new stooges SS in order to carry on living in the house they encouraged me to buy. They also refuse to allow anyone else (such as Isotropic) to build a house, anywhere, so that if I want to live in a house I am forced to suck it up and pay the rent. This is some of the most disgusting behaviour I have seen from a games company, and games companies are not exactly known for being moral paragons.
Bolded text is where you are wrong. When you buy a house you are actually buying ownership of the property. When you bought Dominion Online, what you bought was the privilege of using the service for as long as Goko offered it. Not only was it made perfectly clear in the terms of service, it is the standard procedure for online services. Furthermore it shouldn't take too much thinking to figure out that there is no way a company is going to offer what you imagined they were offering, namely the eternal existence of their service and your eternal ability to access it.
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They are not the same house.
The house is "playing Dominion". It is the same house. And most importantly they're on the same land, and DXV-RGG refuse to allow anyone else to build houses, so if you want to be an ultra-pedant and read it as "the only house permitted to be in existence" then go ahead.
And, really, rented, not sold. And, the deal was time-capped in the first place.
It was not time-capped. If DXV-RGG had extended MF then I wouldn't have suddenly had to re-buy everything. If DXV-RGG had kept MF as the providers for another twenty years, I would have still been able to play with all my sets for those twenty years. It is not MF's fault that they were stiffed by the greed of DXV-RGG. So no: to say that it was time-capped is a lie.
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Bolded text is where you are wrong. When you buy a house you are actually buying ownership of the property. When you bought Dominion Online, what you bought was the privilege of using the service for as long as Goko offered it. Not only was it made perfectly clear in the terms of service, it is the standard procedure for online services. Furthermore it shouldn't take too much thinking to figure out that there is no way a company is going to offer what you imagined they were offering, namely the eternal existence of their service and your eternal ability to access it.
If MF had been extended by DXV-RGG, I would not have had to suddenly re-buy the expansions. It is not unreasonable to expect that the purchase should last for as long as there is an official Dominion service, especially given that they refuse to let other services exist. If there stopped being an official Dominion service then it would be fine for the purchase to expire. But that is not what the situation is.
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They are not the same house.
The house is "playing Dominion". It is the same house. And most importantly they're on the same land, and DXV-RGG refuse to allow anyone else to build houses, so if you want to be an ultra-pedant and read it as "the only house permitted to be in existence" then go ahead.
That's... not a house. "playing Dominion" would be like.. "living" in your analogy.
And, really, rented, not sold. And, the deal was time-capped in the first place.
It was not time-capped. If DXV-RGG had extended MF then I wouldn't have suddenly had to re-buy everything. If DXV-RGG had kept MF as the providers for another twenty years, I would have still been able to play with all my sets for those twenty years. It is not MF's fault that they were stiffed by the greed of DXV-RGG. So no: to say that it was time-capped is a lie.
[/quote]
The rights were licensed for a specific duration of time. That's just, like, a fact. Yes they could have not been, but I'm not sure that would be a good, or in any way reasonable, idea.
Again I'm at one of these points where I can't tell if this is trolling or a serious conversation.
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the greed of DXV-RGG.
No, they wanted to change providers because Making Fun had created a terrible product. That's not greed, that's customer service.
I'm not sure if you're a troll or just a raging asshole.
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Again I'm at one of these points where I can't tell if this is trolling or a serious conversation.
I'm not sure if you're a troll or just a raging asshole.
Oh of course, anyone who disagrees with you is "trolling". Because your opinions are so perfect, pre-ordained by the gods, that the only conceivable reason anyone could have for disagreeing with them is malice.
MF's product is not terrible, it's fine. It functions perfectly adequately and they have a responsive customer support team.
The rights that I bought were not time-capped. You don't seem to understand what "time-capped" means. It means there was a CAP on the TIME. When was the cap? Please tell me exactly where I agreed to anything where I was told the date on which the cap would fall? Let me tell you, I am so excited to hear all about this mystical thing that never happened.
No, what happened is that DXV-RGG were greedy. They already took our money once (or twice if you count the physical copies), but that wasn't enough, and so now they want to take our money again.
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The rights that I bought were not time-capped. You don't seem to understand what "time-capped" means. It means there was a CAP on the TIME. When was the cap? Please tell me exactly where I agreed to anything where I was told the date on which the cap would fall?
You weren't told the date, but you agreed that Making Fun can close your account at any time for any reason or no reason at all.
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You weren't told the date, but you agreed that Making Fun can close your account at any time for any reason or no reason at all.
So we're agreed, there was no cap and it was a lie to say that there was.
If on the 26th of August I take out a month's subscription to, say, Spotify, there is a cap: it will expire on the 25th of September. In addition, Spotify can close my account at any time yadda yadda, which is nothing to do with whether there's a cap.
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You weren't told the date, but you agreed that Making Fun can close your account at any time for any reason or no reason at all.
So we're agreed, there was no cap and it was a lie to say that there was.
If on the 26th of August I take out a month's subscription to, say, Spotify, there is a cap: it will expire on the 25th of September. In addition, Spotify can close my account at any time yadda yadda, which is nothing to do with whether there's a cap.
The deal Witherweaver is referring to is the deal you mentioned ("Then they summarily revoked their deal with Goko-MF") which was in fact time-capped.
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Again I'm at one of these points where I can't tell if this is trolling or a serious conversation.
I'm not sure if you're a troll or just a raging asshole.
Oh of course, anyone who disagrees with you is "trolling". Because your opinions are so perfect, pre-ordained by the gods, that the only conceivable reason anyone could have for disagreeing with them is malice.
MF's product is not terrible, it's fine. It functions perfectly adequately and they have a responsive customer support team.
The rights that I bought were not time-capped. You don't seem to understand what "time-capped" means. It means there was a CAP on the TIME. When was the cap? Please tell me exactly where I agreed to anything where I was told the date on which the cap would fall? Let me tell you, I am so excited to hear all about this mystical thing that never happened.
No, what happened is that DXV-RGG were greedy. They already took our money once (or twice if you count the physical copies), but that wasn't enough, and so now they want to take our money again.
No, you seem to be trolling because you're saying a bunch of absurd things that are a little difficult to imagine a real person honestly believing.
And aside from that, also trying to be instigative. You can disagree with people and be civil.
The time cap was the time for when MF had the rights to Dominion. I don't know the details but surely it was written in some legal document before anything was officially signed. MF was maybe not forthcoming with that information (possibly RGG as well, I dunno), and you can probably make an argument that they should have been.
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First off, chris entitled to be upset. I think there will be more people who feel cheated as time goes on, and we're going to hear a lot more complaints. Me, personally, I'm happy about the change. But, we shouldn't go calling someone an asshole because they aren't happy with the new system.
Chris, are you aware that you can get an offline version with every expansion you own?
Anyway, licenses are very common. Usually, the license gets extended and we don't see change. But, a lot of time licenses change hands. In this case, it wasn't feasible for the new license holder to honor MF's agreement. As it stands, we never had an agreement with DXV or RGG, just MF.
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Also something of note, goko transferred the license to MF. Neither DXV nor RGG agreed to having MF make the game.
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Greedy is not a good term, here. Everyone involved should be wanting to make money, right? I think what is meant is trying to get money from the customers through dishonest business practices. And I don't think that's what happened here. I mean, I don't know that, but I don't really have reason to believe that it is. I think it's more, like, the companies (Goko, and to a maybe arguable extent Making Fun) did not succeed in their goals.
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First off, chris entitled to be upset. I think there will be more people who feel cheated as time goes on, and we're going to hear a lot more complaints. Me, personally, I'm happy about the change. But, we shouldn't go calling someone an asshole because they aren't happy with the new system.
Thank you!
Chris, are you aware that you can get an offline version with every expansion you own?
I am, but I don't see the point of that - the point is to play against other people.
Anyway, licenses are very common. Usually, the license gets extended and we don't see change. But, a lot of time licenses change hands. In this case, it wasn't feasible for the new license holder to honor MF's agreement. As it stands, we never had an agreement with DXV or RGG, just MF.
Do you really not see how open to abuse that is? DXV-RGG have already made their money from me twice - once when I bought all the card expansions, and once when I bought all the online expansions. That's okay - the online version was a separate piece of work, though none of it was done by DXV-RGG, they were just taking money for no effort. In what possible world is it fair for them to charge me a third time?
If they opened up the system and allowed anyone to make a Dominion game so long as they paid an up-front fee, and then let the suppliers charge what they liked, it would be different. I wouldn't mind the charge if it all went to SS and I had the option of staying with MF if I preferred. But DXV-RGG are playing us for fools, and it is so frustrating that all these people are lying here and taking it.
In a few years' time, DXV-RGG will announce that the subscription model has failed and they're going back to purchasing expansions - and we will have to purchase all the expansions all over again. And these exact same fanbois will nod their heads happily and denounce anyone who criticises this fraud as "trolls".
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Well, not having rights locked could have indeed turned out better (and many people felt that well when Isotropic Dominion was shutting down, I think).
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DXV and RGG already got money from the Goko and MF purchases. Are they going to refund me that money? No. They are going to keep it and demand more.
We are giving up more money than we ever got, total, to get people that one year of the new system (or offline sets). [The actual amount depends on how popular the game is in the first year of the new system, but this seems assured.] [And we aren't paying the money, we are just receiving less. I am super accurate guy.]
When we got the new people, I felt like we could just give up all the money we'd made so far, to pay for the existing customers on the new system. Maybe we could have managed this with savvy negotiating. We did not manage it. The key problem was that the amount we were paid was a small fraction of the amount taken in. We somehow did not realize this until we'd already told MF we were done with them.
For me online Dominion has just utterly sucked from the start. It has been a ton of work, has eaten up lots of time both on doing that work and getting yelled at by unhappy customers, and has paid worse than minimum wage.
Goko and MF could never have actually given anyone Dominion past the point at which my contract with RGG expired; RGG couldn't give them rights RGG didn't have. And they didn't have an infinite contract with RGG either, as you can see from how we have new guys as of 2017.
I don't want to get sued by even an apparent non-entity like Goko, so I will not say anyone promised anything. I bet in the fine print MF just sells funny money and that's it; enjoy pretending to spend it. It sucks that people feel like they were promised an everlasting online version of my game, by these people I didn't hire and don't have a contract with. I thought I could nevertheless keep this promise these strangers made, but I could not.
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In a few years' time, DXV-RGG will announce that the subscription model has failed and they're going back to purchasing expansions - and we will have to purchase all the expansions all over again. And these exact same fanbois will nod their heads happily and denounce anyone who criticises this fraud as "trolls".
If the subscription model fails, no-one who bought into it is ever owed anything, because it's a subscription! They buy a year of Dominion, they get a year of Dominion. The company, like some kind of honest entity, won't sell anyone subscriptions past where their contract ends.
For me, this is a significant appeal of subscriptions. If the model failed, people would be sad that Dominion was going away, but no-one would feel like they were owed money.
Similarly anyone who buys the new offline version still has it later; they bought it, they have it.
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There is no doubt in my mind that dxv and rgg have acted with absolute honesty and integrity throughout this whole mess. Yes, the circumstances suck, but they have done their utmost to ensure the existence of a service to all that is of the quality that dominion deserves. Including by being willing to lose out quite a lot during a migration period that was always going to happen eventually (because mf would eventually have run out of new customers and folded, as much as anything else), just to make customers, who actually weren't contractually owed anything, as happy as was possible in the circumstances.
It's probably fair to say that MF has acted with honesty and integrity throughout as well, it's just a shame that they werent capable of producing a sufficiently good product. (That's to say nothing of the fact that they probably should have been doing subscriptions from the start)
I understand that this is frustrating - it is for all of us - but I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that dxv or rgg have at any point attempted to unfairly cheat customers out of money or done anything morally dubious at all. They've done their best with a frustrating set of circumstances.
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The key problem was that the amount we were paid was a small fraction of the amount taken in. We somehow did not realize this until we'd already told MF we were done with them.
Did no one read the contracts, not even RGG's lawyers? Honestly, it stretches the bounds of credulity to ask us to believe that you and one of the biggest designer board games companies blithely signed the contracts without reading them, never mind without getting a lawyer to look them over.
If the subscription model fails, no-one who bought into it is ever owed anything, because it's a subscription! They buy a year of Dominion, they get a year of Dominion. The company, like some kind of honest entity, won't sell anyone subscriptions past where their contract ends.
That was not my point. My point was that if the subscription model fails, and your subsequent proxy goes back to selling expansions as at present, will you and they honour the purchases that have already been made and then cast aside? If not, I don't see what's stopping you from switching back and forth between purchases and subscriptions on an annual basis. Take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money for subscriptions. Wipe subscriptions and take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money...
Here's a simple question that doesn't need you to speak for anyone but yourself. You have already taken your share of my money for purchasing the online expansions once. If a subsequent proxy reverts to expansion-purchasing, will you agree to forego your personal cut for any expansions purchased by those of us who'd already bought them from Goko-MF?
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The key problem was that the amount we were paid was a small fraction of the amount taken in. We somehow did not realize this until we'd already told MF we were done with them.
Did no one read the contracts, not even RGG's lawyers? Honestly, it stretches the bounds of credulity to ask us to believe that you and one of the biggest designer board games companies blithely signed the contracts without reading them, never mind without getting a lawyer to look them over.
If the subscription model fails, no-one who bought into it is ever owed anything, because it's a subscription! They buy a year of Dominion, they get a year of Dominion. The company, like some kind of honest entity, won't sell anyone subscriptions past where their contract ends.
That was not my point. My point was that if the subscription model fails, and your subsequent proxy goes back to selling expansions as at present, will you and they honour the purchases that have already been made and then cast aside? If not, I don't see what's stopping you from switching back and forth between purchases and subscriptions on an annual basis. Take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money for subscriptions. Wipe subscriptions and take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money...
Here's a simple question that doesn't need you to speak for anyone but yourself. You have already taken your share of my money for purchasing the online expansions once. If a subsequent proxy reverts to expansion-purchasing, will you agree to forego your personal cut for any expansions purchased by those of us who'd already bought them from Goko-MF?
Donald has already said that he doesn't really bring any money in for Dominion Online, which is why he has also said that he wished it didn't exist sometimes.
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Okay, how about you go buy a house from someone, pay off your mortgage ... and then the seller announces that you have to pay rent.
That exists already (at least in USA), it's called property taxes. You're always paying rent.
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Property taxes don't go to the seller.
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Legally speaking Goko was also a subscription right? You were subscribed to use Seaside for say, a day, then added onto that, however long Goko chose to give you with it using their right to terminate your account whenever. (I'm kinda making up a day but if you bought Seaside and only got to use it for fourteen hours and didn't get your money back I feel like a small claims court judge would give you your money back probably).
When you buy a subscription based on trust like that you should kinda decide how much you trust the company, how much you believe in it, and whether it's worth the risk, and etc. That's kind of what you have to do. When you buy Spotify you know they're a big fish so there's some trust there. Spotify could totally terminate your service on the basis of "one of your favorite artists asked for higher royalties and it's stressing us out", I bet seven nickels their ToS is written liberally enough to allow it, and then they could save some money, but you know they won't do that because reputation etc, and if they did I bet you would switch to Apple Music.
It's up to you to as a consumer to decide what level of transparency you expect from MF about the license expiration possibility, and how much compensation you think you deserve for losing the service. MF has other products, so it's totally within their power to offer you an equal amount of financial credit matching your Dominion purchase on their other products, but they have chosen not to, as far as I know. They could also give you some sort of refund. But it sounds like you want to forgive MF more than that, that's fine. But they knew the license might expire, and the revocation they are doing is analagous to the Spotify example.
There was no trust going on with Rio Grande Games when you bought the MF Dominion though. I don't really see it. There's no agreement with them. I actually have a lot of sympathy for the notion that buying the physical board game and RGG also being able to sell and restrict an online license is double dipping, and most of the forum thinks I'm crazy for that, but blaming RGG for when MF stops extending your 1 day of seaside as generously as you'd hoped, I don't get it.
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I was very sad when I could no longer play Mario Kart 7 online. Nintendo just abruptly discontinued the service. Now, did I pay for an absolute right to Mario Kart 7 online forever and ever when I bought that game? No. Even though I hoped it would last forever and ever, Nintendo had the right to discontinue it at any time.
I guess I could play Mario Kart online still. It would just require me to buy an entirely new console, a new game, and even then, Nintendo can discontinue THAT version at any time.
Same thing with Online Dominion. That is the nature of this type of product. The online service, even if you pay for it once up front, is good for as long as the provider provides it. That's it.
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Again I'm at one of these points where I can't tell if this is trolling or a serious conversation.
I'm not sure if you're a troll or just a raging asshole.
Oh of course, anyone who disagrees with you is "trolling". Because your opinions are so perfect, pre-ordained by the gods, that the only conceivable reason anyone could have for disagreeing with them is malice.
Someone creates a new account expressly for the purpose of posting an inflammatory complaint in a thread. They fail to understand the purpose of the thread, fail to understand why many people think their opinion is wrong, and then accuse Donald of greed when he has said--possibly in this thread!--that he makes so little off the online version that he sometimes wishes it didn't exist.
Then when called out for trolling or being an asshole, they respond with an even more inflammatory post? Yeah, that's trolling, dude. And now I shall disengage entirely.
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Again I'm at one of these points where I can't tell if this is trolling or a serious conversation.
I'm not sure if you're a troll or just a raging asshole.
Oh of course, anyone who disagrees with you is "trolling". Because your opinions are so perfect, pre-ordained by the gods, that the only conceivable reason anyone could have for disagreeing with them is malice.
Someone creates a new account expressly for the purpose of posting an inflammatory complaint in a thread. They fail to understand the purpose of the thread, fail to understand why many people think their opinion is wrong, and then accuse Donald of greed when he has said--possibly in this thread!--that he makes so little off the online version that he sometimes wishes it didn't exist.
Then when called out for trolling or being an asshole, they respond with an even more inflammatory post? Yeah, that's trolling, dude. And now I shall disengage entirely.
Typical forumite thinking: oh no, somebody new has joined - and they don't agree with our groupthink! SHUN THE UNBELIEVER! SHUN!
What the frak was I supposed to do - hijack someone else's account so that I wouldn't be using a new one? I just found out about this fraud and wanted to find out more. I came to the forum and found out that it was as bad as I had feared. I signed up and complained. Until there is a ban on new members, deal with it.
You literally have no understanding of what "trolling" is. Sincere disagreement =/= trolling. Blunt, uncompromising language =/= trolling. Pretending to hold an extreme position purely for the amusement of winding others up = trolling. I am sincerely, bluntly pissed off that I am being charged a third time for the privilege of playing Dominion. No pretence, no amusement: I am really angry. And so until there is a ban on people disagreeing with you - something which it sounds like you'd love to enact - deal with it.
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That was not my point. My point was that if the subscription model fails, and your subsequent proxy goes back to selling expansions as at present, will you and they honour the purchases that have already been made and then cast aside? If not, I don't see what's stopping you from switching back and forth between purchases and subscriptions on an annual basis. Take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money for subscriptions. Wipe subscriptions and take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money...
Ok, if RGG does, in fact, repeatedly switch between those two models every year (or even every few years) then you would have a 100% legitimate complaint, and I think that everyone on this board would agree with you. I also think that online dominion would die pretty quickly. However, I think that Jay is a better businessman than that and would know that doing what you suggest would be terrible business.
But that is not what happened. Goko/MF have had the license for over 4 years. In that time, neither company was able to provide a product that was satisfactory. There have been complaints about Goko/MF as long as they have existed. As far as I'm concerned, Jay gave them an ample chance to provide the product that Jay, Donald, and the Dominion community would be happy with, and they couldn't manage it. I don't feel for a minute that the change was an attempt to gouge the customers, but at some point, Jay simply had to cut his losses with MF and bear the displeasure of existing customers in order to get the online product he wanted.
You have a right to be upset, and to decide whether you will support the new service, and certainly ShuffleIT has no right to expect you to buy their subscription, but I feel that you do a disservice to all involved to accuse them of being motivated by greed.
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Again I'm at one of these points where I can't tell if this is trolling or a serious conversation.
I'm not sure if you're a troll or just a raging asshole.
Oh of course, anyone who disagrees with you is "trolling". Because your opinions are so perfect, pre-ordained by the gods, that the only conceivable reason anyone could have for disagreeing with them is malice.
Someone creates a new account expressly for the purpose of posting an inflammatory complaint in a thread. They fail to understand the purpose of the thread, fail to understand why many people think their opinion is wrong, and then accuse Donald of greed when he has said--possibly in this thread!--that he makes so little off the online version that he sometimes wishes it didn't exist.
Then when called out for trolling or being an asshole, they respond with an even more inflammatory post? Yeah, that's trolling, dude. And now I shall disengage entirely.
Typical forumite thinking: oh no, somebody new has joined - and they don't agree with our groupthink! SHUN THE UNBELIEVER! SHUN!
What the frak was I supposed to do - hijack someone else's account so that I wouldn't be using a new one? I just found out about this fraud and wanted to find out more. I came to the forum and found out that it was as bad as I had feared. I signed up and complained. Until there is a ban on new members, deal with it.
You literally have no understanding of what "trolling" is. Sincere disagreement =/= trolling. Blunt, uncompromising language =/= trolling. Pretending to hold an extreme position purely for the amusement of winding others up = trolling. I am sincerely, bluntly pissed off that I am being charged a third time for the privilege of playing Dominion. No pretence, no amusement: I am really angry. And so until there is a ban on people disagreeing with you - something which it sounds like you'd love to enact - deal with it.
No service of this type can run indefinitely for a finite cost. Online servers cost money and must be maintained. To expect to pay once and be able to play forever at no further cost to yourself is, at best, incredibly naive.
That was not my point. My point was that if the subscription model fails, and your subsequent proxy goes back to selling expansions as at present, will you and they honour the purchases that have already been made and then cast aside? If not, I don't see what's stopping you from switching back and forth between purchases and subscriptions on an annual basis. Take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money for subscriptions. Wipe subscriptions and take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money...
Ok, if RGG does, in fact, repeatedly switch between those two models every year (or even every few years) then you would have a 100% legitimate complaint, and I think that everyone on this board would agree with you. I also think that online dominion would die pretty quickly. However, I think that Jay is a better businessman than that and would know that doing what you suggest would be terrible business.
But that is not what happened. Goko/MF have had the license for over 4 years. In that time, neither company was able to provide a product that was satisfactory. There have been complaints about Goko/MF as long as they have existed. As far as I'm concerned, Jay gave them an ample chance to provide the product that Jay, Donald, and the Dominion community would be happy with, and they couldn't manage it. I don't feel for a minute that the change was an attempt to gouge the customers, but at some point, Jay simply had to cut his losses with MF and bear the displeasure of existing customers in order to get the online product he wanted.
You have a right to be upset, and to decide whether you will support the new service, and certainly ShuffleIT has no right to expect you to buy their subscription, but I feel that you do a disservice to all involved to accuse them of being motivated by greed.
This. All of this.
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But that is not what happened. Goko/MF have had the license for over 4 years. In that time, neither company was able to provide a product that was satisfactory. There have been complaints about Goko/MF as long as they have existed. As far as I'm concerned, Jay gave them an ample chance to provide the product that Jay, Donald, and the Dominion community would be happy with, and they couldn't manage it. I don't feel for a minute that the change was an attempt to gouge the customers, but at some point, Jay simply had to cut his losses with MF and bear the displeasure of existing customers in order to get the online product he wanted.
Satisfactory for whom? For the thousands of people who have a good time playing it every day? Or for a handful of vocal elite players who were never going to be satisfied? The MF interface was doing just fine. No one's going to pretend it was the perfect implementation, but it was fine and we had paid for it and we were able to play to our heart's content. And now that is being taken away from us.
You have a right to be upset, and to decide whether you will support the new service, and certainly ShuffleIT has no right to expect you to buy their subscription, but I feel that you do a disservice to all involved to accuse them of being motivated by greed.
You're misrepresenting me. I said that DXV and RGG are motivated by greed. I don't know the first thing about the ShuffleIT guys. Someone up-thread said that they are forumites, which I guess helps to explain the insular, Panglossian groupthink. Personally I don't know them from Adam.
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No service of this type can run indefinitely for a finite cost. Online servers cost money and must be maintained. To expect to pay once and be able to play forever at no further cost to yourself is, at best, incredibly naive.
Then why did DXV-RGG encourage Goko-MF to use that model? Unless you believe DXV's frankly not-credible claims that neither he nor RGG ever read the contracts, then you must believe that they knew that the product they were promoting was impossible to maintain. Perhaps they were "incredibly naïve" as well?
But of course they were not naïve. Many online games run a purchase model. It was perfectly reasonable and the product being provided was fine. What is naïve is believing that DXV-RGG are "saints", as someone ludicrously described them on VGG.
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I didn't mean to imply that you were accusing ShuffleIT (the new company making Dominion online) in your accusations of greed. I just pointed out that you are free to say no to what they are selling. What I did say that I feel that your accusation of greed as the motivation for Jay's* actions is off base. I hope we can agree to disagree on that point.
Ultimately, Jay was dissatisfied with MF's product. I don't know what his reasons were, or how much opinions on this board influenced that, but it was his call and he made it based on what he felt was best for the game. You can disagree that it was the right decision, that is your right, but I doubt that you have the full information that Jay was basing the decision on any more than I do.
*As I understand it, Jay, not Danald, has the right to make decisions regarding licensing Dominion online. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
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The key problem was that the amount we were paid was a small fraction of the amount taken in. We somehow did not realize this until we'd already told MF we were done with them.
Did no one read the contracts, not even RGG's lawyers? Honestly, it stretches the bounds of credulity to ask us to believe that you and one of the biggest designer board games companies blithely signed the contracts without reading them, never mind without getting a lawyer to look them over.
Feel free to be incredulous about what I'm saying; I am not lying, neither am I in error.
I am one guy. RGG is also one guy. As Jay says, "I also do the windows." My contract with Jay gives me 50% of what he takes in from digital versions and so much for that; I read it and re-read it, man, it is clear there. I do not feel bad for not getting a lawyer; that contract (and subsequent ones) has been pretty good to me (it's based on the Knizia contract - a contract Reiner Knizia wrote up some years back, that's very pro-designer). I never saw his contract with Goko, which for sure involved zero lawyers on RGG's side. I could be more specific as to what was wrong with the contract, but that would just be to placate you; I'd prefer being just slightly friendlier to RGG and keeping it private.
When very little money came in, we figured it was just not doing well. It seems clear with hindsight that I should have looked into it, done the math; I did not. I repeatedly told people how it was making no money; no-one said, that can't be right, you should look into this.
That was not my point. My point was that if the subscription model fails, and your subsequent proxy goes back to selling expansions as at present, will you and they honour the purchases that have already been made and then cast aside? If not, I don't see what's stopping you from switching back and forth between purchases and subscriptions on an annual basis. Take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money for subscriptions. Wipe subscriptions and take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money...
Your question makes no sense. If the subscription model fails, everyone's subscription will be 100% honored, they will get exactly what they paid for. If you buy a year of subscription, you will get a year of subscription; the company selling the subscriptions will not sell subscriptions past when their contract expires, and it's as easy as that. If we sever ties with them, you will get the rest of your subscription, and when it expires you will be owed nothing. You will have gotten all the time you paid for.
Going back and forth makes no sense whatsoever. If subscriptions didn't work, why will they work next time? And we already know that if someone wants to offer "online Dominion forever," we don't want to do business with them.
There is no secret plan here that you've cleverly uncovered, to make money by switching how we sell online Dominion. For years we just had free online Dominion; RGG actually paid for BSW to be up, it was promotional. RGG finally got a company to make an official online Dominion, Goko. They stopped existing and were, I can only guess, bought out by a woman who had previously not been part of the picture. She contracted with MF to make online Dominion - we didn't pick them. We were not happy with them - separate from the money issue, which would have made us pretty unhappy, but again we did not know how bad it was when we decided we were done with them - and so dropped them the first chance we could, which is the end of this year. We have new people already working on the new version, because we don't want downtime.
Goko wanted to sell sets. It wasn't our idea but we didn't fight it (while I never had a contract with them or any technical say in this, it's fair to note that they cared a nonzero amount about my opinion). I didn't think it through to "what happens when they're gone." Man it wasn't their only bad idea; they thought they would make money selling "Zaps" to let you beat otherwise impossible campaign levels (I did fight that and was unsuccessful). They got tons of game contracts and then only made Dominion (they worked on Settlers but I don't know how playable it ever was).
MF continued the Goko system. At some point they said they could try selling subscriptions. We turned them down. [Later, scum that I am, I said hey uh, people are being mislead that they are getting Dominion forever when they buy the sets, could you fix that, and they said, compromise, let's sell subscriptions, and we said okay.]
ShuffleIT wanted a subscription system. Since MF was going down, it was clear that a subscription - which honestly sells you what you actually get - was better than what we had. And anyway it was what the new guys thought would work. So we agreed and that's how it's going.
My preference would be for people to connect directly to other people, without requiring a company providing servers. Our new guys did not think that was feasible for most people.
Here's a simple question that doesn't need you to speak for anyone but yourself. You have already taken your share of my money for purchasing the online expansions once. If a subsequent proxy reverts to expansion-purchasing, will you agree to forego your personal cut for any expansions purchased by those of us who'd already bought them from Goko-MF?
I see how you feel like you're being all reasonable and hard-hitting. You aren't though.
Let's just be clear, once again, that in negotiating for existing customers to get what they're getting, we're already giving up what will surely be more than we ever got. We did not go for "Existing customers get nothing, since that's more money for us." Somehow.
If the subscriptions fail, I bet there will be no official online Dominion product at all. That would be my vote, and RGG would be unlikely to want to try again (I'm not saying isotropic would go back up or anything - I don't know what RGG would want, and anyway I don't control Doug Z.). If RGG did want to, the contract just gives them the right to do it; I would need to renegotiate it to stop them. There's no way to forego my cut without renegotiating, and if we're renegotiating it can just be "okay there's no more of this nightmare." We can pare it down to, would I give my share to charity. That would actually be possible without a new contract.
But whatever. I would prefer everyone who felt like they were buying online Dominion for forever (again, someone else's idea that they could never truthfully promise, and who I didn't have a contract with) to have it for forever, in their conception of what forever means; if against all odds it went from subscription back to "buy sets" I would prefer everyone to just get it. But when you ask me to promise whatever thing about the future, you're asking me to lie, no matter how strongly I believe that I would do whatever. Maybe I will so desperately need money, for my dying aunt's operation, that I will be eager to rip people off. I have never been in that situation but I don't see how to rule it out.
If you want promises about crazy unlikely possible futures, find a politician.
Man. Something else for you, chrisjwmartin. If you want to accuse people of being greedy fucks, maybe look outside the board game industry? Board games tend to make no money. People make them because they love games. In terms of money per hour, my worst paycheck, for something actually published, will probably be for the Temporum expansion. I spent months on it and expect to make less than $500 (an easy estimate - 500 copies initial print run, probably never any more, less than $1 per copy). And RGG decided to publish it even though it was clear that 500 copies was generous. It is fantastic that we got lucky and have a hit and are raking in cash, that I don't have to work for a living. But you don't get there by being greedy.
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Then why did DXV-RGG encourage Goko-MF to use that model? Unless you believe DXV's frankly not-credible claims that neither he nor RGG ever read the contracts, then you must believe that they knew that the product they were promoting was impossible to maintain. Perhaps they were "incredibly naïve" as well?
We did not encourage Goko to use that model; why would you think we did? I couldn't have controlled it, other than by threatening them with cutting off my contract with RGG in a few years in order to get rid of them.
I never said I didn't read my contracts; don't say I claimed that, that's flat-out lying, besides being obviously nonsense. I never said RGG didn't read his contracts either, just that he blew it on one of them. I didn't read RGG's contract with Goko, but I didn't sign it either, it wasn't my contract.
In general you will find these conversations easier if you avoid lies. That's my advice. It's one thing to be upset that you feel like a company promised you Dominion forever and now you hate other people because of it; it's another to be that lying guy.
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Man, people don't live forever.
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I think there are some Grecian bankers in here, because I see lots of drachma.
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$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Okay, how about you go buy a house from someone, pay off your mortgage ... and then the seller announces that you have to pay rent.
We have already paid. We have already paid a LOT of money. And now we have to pay more? Screw that.
You're free to not pay. No one is forcing you. You don't have to play Dominion. Don't like it? Tough.
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Man, people don't live forever.
That's just what they want you to believe.
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We did not encourage Goko to use that model; why would you think we did? I couldn't have controlled it, other than by threatening them with cutting off my contract with RGG in a few years in order to get rid of them.
Perhaps it was comments like this: "Goko is the official implementation of Dominion. I support it." that made me think that you supported Goko. How silly of me to so carelessly misinterpret those ambiguous words.
Or perhaps it was comments like this: "Jay turned down the people who wanted to do everything in micropayments. We went for, you can just buy expansions and play them" that made me think that you and Jay ("We") explicitly chose ("went for") the "buy expansions" model. You are on record that you explicitly chose this model, Donald. It wasn't that Goko were a fait accompli and poor little you had no control over what they did. You and Jay chose them and their model.
Maybe it was when you said "If you want to pay a monthly fee, just buy one large expansion per month. That's $12 a month, and hey then it's free once you have them all." that I thought you were promoting the "buy expansions" model as better than the subscriptions model. Perhaps I somehow thought you were telling me it'd be free once I had them all. Man oh man, however did I misinterpret your statements so badly? What a dumb-dumb I must be.
Perhaps it was comments like this: "You seem to be under the impression that you are paying to play Dominion on a per-game basis. That's not what's going on. You can play the main set endlessly for free. If you buy Intrigue then you can play the main set and Intrigue endlessly after paying for Intrigue once ever." that made me think I was going to play the main set and the expansions I bought endlessly for free. "ENDLESSLY FOR FREE". Those were YOUR words, Donald, made when it was convenient for you to make us believe that that was what we were getting. Now that it is convenient for you to make us believe otherwise, you're claiming that that was never your promise, but you wrote those exact words. ENDLESSLY FOR FREE. Those were your words. All of the quotes above were your words, words that you used to cajole us into giving you money, words that now maybe were or were not true.
The fact is Donald that what you claimed when Goko was released is not what you are claiming now. The things you claimed back then and the things you claim now cannot both be true. There's a word for that, one which you seem quite happy to bandy about (see below) but which I will not use.
I never said I didn't read my contracts; don't say I claimed that, that's flat-out lying, besides being obviously nonsense. I never said RGG didn't read his contracts either, just that he blew it on one of them. I didn't read RGG's contract with Goko, but I didn't sign it either, it wasn't my contract.
In general you will find these conversations easier if you avoid lies. That's my advice. It's one thing to be upset that you feel like a company promised you Dominion forever and now you hate other people because of it; it's another to be that lying guy.
So if RGG did read the contracts then they did know why they weren't getting any money. It's not complicated: either they knew how much money they were getting or they didn't read the contracts. This was not their first rodeo.
Did they know and not tell you the truth? I don't know. Given what I've proved above about how the truth value of your public statements varies with your self-interest at the time, I'm not sure who I would feel most inclined to believe.
And as for "you feel like a company promised you Dominion forever", no, I feel like a person promised me Dominion "endlessly for free" once I had bought it. Wherever did I get that idea?
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The amount of time spend arguing over this by you could probably be betrer spend earning money to buy dominion.
Mistakes were made, it seems. What do you want, btw? An apology?
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If you're really keen on the house analogy, then my understanding is that it went something like this:
Donald owned a block of land, and he had an agreement that said that RGG was responsible for making sure the land gets used. Goko came along with an artist's rendition of a giant condominium and a stack of venture capital, and RGG and Donald were sufficiently impressed by the shininess that they gave Goko a permit (that needed to be renewed every, let's say, five years, and there were a few clauses about how much say Donald and RGG had about how the condos were managed but most of the responsibility was in Goko's hands). There were some details in the permit about how much of the rent being charged would go to Donald and RGG, but they accepted that especially at first they wouldn't be seeing a lot, and were just happy to see the land being used.
Goko built a bunch of hovels, and told people that for $40 they could live there in perpetuity. People complained to Donald and RGG, and they in turn tried to instruct Goko on how to fix the hovels to make them livable, but not a lot happened. Then, somehow, the people running Goko vanished into the shadows with a note saying that Making Fun was now responsible for fixing things. At this point, Donald and Jay were concerned that maybe Goko hadn't been giving them the right share of the rent, but since things were in new hands they were giving Making Fun the benefit of the doubt, and they even helped advertise the hovels since at the time it wasn't really in their best interests to publically complain about this stuff.
To Making Fun's credit, despite not having a lot of money to work with (because Goko had taken most of it and run off), they managed to put some scaffolding over the hovels and put a bit of work in and built a somewhat livable apartment block. Sure the electricity didn't work and the elevator was manually operated and you didn't want to look too closely at how the plumbing was set up, but it was a lot better than the hovels (although if you looked closely enough you could still see some of the planks being used to hold up the structure).
Anyway, the time came for the permit to be renewed, and Donald and RGG appreciated the work put in to fix the situation, but despite that and despite Making Fun doubling the rent, they were still not looking at something that was really up to the building code, they still weren't seeing much in the way of money coming their way, and they were still getting a lot of complaints about how things worked (it was nearly a year after the announcement of high-speed broadband internet being available in the area for Making Fun to connect it to the apartments, and the residents were subject to random disconnections for months afterwards). So Donald and RGG agreed that they would not renew the permit at the end of the year. What's more, they found a couple of the residents who demonstrated actual architectural and engineering knowledge who wanted to set up the condos in a way that would make the residents happy.
Unfortunately, since Goko and Making Fun had claimed that anyone paying for an apartment would get to live there in perpetuity, and made the bit about "as long as our permit keeps getting renewed and we don't decide to knock the building down of our own accord" hidden halfway down the fine print of the contract, many of the residents are now upset. ShuffleIT have agreed to offer a year of free rent in the new condos for anyone who was living in a Making Fun apartment, but people are still claiming that Donald and RGG have pocketed all the Goko and Making Fun money and are now trying to double-dip.
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Dear Donald,
When I bought my set of Base Dominion, you promised me that I could play Dominion forever. But now my Coppers are too worn out to use, and you expect me to pay again for new base cards?
Greedy.
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Personally I don't know them from Adam.
If you've been talking to Adam, of course you don't like Stef and SCSN 8)
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Personally I don't know them from Adam.
If you've been talking to Adam, of course you don't like Stef and SCSN 8)
Come on, dude. :-[ Let's not bring that up, whether it is true or not. I don't even think it is.
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Personally I don't know them from Adam.
If you've been talking to Adam, of course you don't like Stef and SCSN 8)
Come on, dude. :-[ Let's not bring that up, whether it is true or not. I don't even think it is.
It was a joke. I know that "knowing someone from Adam" is a turn of phrase.
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Hi chris
I have one question for you. How would you feel if Donald X. decided f it and after the contract expired, no one got to make online Dominion. Done. Finished. The end.
That was a path he could have taken but didn't. I know you're upset, but consider the alternative.
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We did not encourage Goko to use that model; why would you think we did? I couldn't have controlled it, other than by threatening them with cutting off my contract with RGG in a few years in order to get rid of them.
Perhaps it was comments like this: "Goko is the official implementation of Dominion. I support it." that made me think that you supported Goko. How silly of me to so carelessly misinterpret those ambiguous words.
Jay said, I'm going with these guys I'm talking to at this con (Funsockets, they changed their name to Goko later). It was his call. They talked big. I had zero information about them other than that they agreed to not make Farmville.
Later, I did not say "These no doubt awful people do not have my support in any way." I said, "they're the guys, I'm on their side." Would you have behaved differently? Until they had demonstrated incompetence, anyone, even someone so poor at customer relations as me, would know to say, yes, they're the guys.
Me saying "I support it" was not me saying "we encouraged them to use that model" or "this was under my control." I never had any control; at best I could threaten, which I never did, to get RGG to not renew his contract with them (or if that failed, to cut off my contract with RGG in order for their contract to mean nothing). In all cases Funsockets/Goko and MF were interested in my opinion, but that doesn't mean they always did what I wanted.
I have always preferred a system where once you buy something it's yours. As a multiplayer game you need a server or direct connections but could just have your offline version (again ShuffleIT did not think direct connections would work for most people). I imagine it as just like buying Heroes of Might and Magic II or whatever; it's a disc with some software, when you buy a new computer you can hope it still runs on that operating system.
This system wasn't that and I don't know how early I knew that. I have all my old emails with Funsockets and it's clear from the start that they'll be selling expansions (with a free base game, and we approved of that, we wanted a free base game and to sell expansions), but it wasn't clear for a while that that didn't mean, you download a program and it's in your computer and yours even if the company dies.
Or perhaps it was comments like this: "Jay turned down the people who wanted to do everything in micropayments. We went for, you can just buy expansions and play them" that made me think that you and Jay ("We") explicitly chose ("went for") the "buy expansions" model. You are on record that you explicitly chose this model, Donald. It wasn't that Goko were a fait accompli and poor little you had no control over what they did. You and Jay chose them and their model.
Poor little me! The poor little me part is having these conversations.
We ruled out micropayments. Most people wanted to make Farmville. When I say "we" I mean Jay and I didn't want that and it was Jay's call but he's friendly.
Jay and I have always preferred people to buy things and then have them. That is not what the Goko model actually is. All Jay knew day one was that they agreed to not do Farmville (then they tried to anyway with Zaps), and that they thought they could handle every platform at once, with one system that played a zillion games.
Again "buy expansions" does not automatically tell you "but they'll stop working when the company stops existing or stops having the project."
Maybe it was when you said "If you want to pay a monthly fee, just buy one large expansion per month. That's $12 a month, and hey then it's free once you have them all." that I thought you were promoting the "buy expansions" model as better than the subscriptions model. Perhaps I somehow thought you were telling me it'd be free once I had them all. Man oh man, however did I misinterpret your statements so badly? What a dumb-dumb I must be.
That's what the system was. There you have me describing the system as it existed. I was not trying to mislead people by not working out situations in which the service would go down.
I certainly had no reason to believe that Goko would die, that Dominion would be sub-licensed to a new company that we didn't pick, and that (though we hadn't been happy with Goko) we would not be happy with the new company. In that eventuality that I didn't consider, I didn't further consider that the new company would want a different payment model, that we would initially propose just paying for all existing customers not realizing we didn't have their money to hand over, and would thus be in a bad bargaining position.
However it was clear when we negotiated for "offline sets, or a year online" that some people would be unhappy. We did not see how to do better. To date my best approach is, we could have said, "sorry ShuffleIT, we started bargaining from a bad position since we thought just paying back the money we'd made would cover everyone on the new system; since it won't, I don't see how we can get everyone onto your system, so we will just find some other company, where we can start bargaining from a more informed position."
Another helpful trick is: to everything I ever say, please automatically append, "to the best of my knowledge at this time." To the best of my knowledge at the time, the system was going to keep going. If I had stopped to consider, what if we switch companies, I would have thought, people will just get the system on the new service.
Perhaps it was comments like this: "You seem to be under the impression that you are paying to play Dominion on a per-game basis. That's not what's going on. You can play the main set endlessly for free. If you buy Intrigue then you can play the main set and Intrigue endlessly after paying for Intrigue once ever." that made me think I was going to play the main set and the expansions I bought endlessly for free. "ENDLESSLY FOR FREE". Those were YOUR words, Donald, made when it was convenient for you to make us believe that that was what we were getting. Now that it is convenient for you to make us believe otherwise, you're claiming that that was never your promise, but you wrote those exact words. ENDLESSLY FOR FREE. Those were your words. All of the quotes above were your words, words that you used to cajole us into giving you money, words that now maybe were or were not true.
Again that was to the best of my knowledge at that time. I was responding to whatever thing that was someone misunderstanding whatever it was; I'm not checking. I wasn't saying "now everyone be quiet I want to sell them online Dominion with this pitch."
I do not wish to cajole anyone into anything. I don't try to sell tickets to myself. When I post a Secret History, it's not a designer diary on the front page of BGG; I figure the people who care will find it. I don't go to cons to promote my games (though I also don't like to travel). If you don't want my stuff I do not want you to buy it.
You did not find - and you would have been pretty pleased too - where I said on BGG, yes, when Making Fun loses the contract and new guys take over, of course everyone who had the old system will have the new system for free. I honestly thought that was what would happen and did not know to never be sure about the future.
The fact is Donald that what you claimed when Goko was released is not what you are claiming now. The things you claimed back then and the things you claim now cannot both be true. There's a word for that, one which you seem quite happy to bandy about (see below) but which I will not use.
I haven't lied about anything. I am ridiculously honest. I feel like I have a great track record there too. I don't say true statements that intentionally mislead people either; I consider that lying.
I don't remember all of my posts from years ago, but for sure I stood by Goko, longer than was reasonable, then stood by Making Fun (who Jay hadn't even picked), longer than was reasonable. I don't see what else to do in that situation.
So if RGG did read the contracts then they did know why they weren't getting any money. It's not complicated: either they knew how much money they were getting or they didn't read the contracts. This was not their first rodeo.
Jay (RGG is one person) misunderstood the contract. He read it; he misunderstood it.
This is probably not something worth pursuing; maybe you want to say, it's semantics, if he misunderstood it he didn't really read it. Man whatever. It's not that he signs random pieces of paper without looking at them. It was a mistake and so much for that.
The ShuffleIT contract is also just between Jay and them, but I proofread this one.
And as for "you feel like a company promised you Dominion forever", no, I feel like a person promised me Dominion "endlessly for free" once I had bought it. Wherever did I get that idea?
I have labored to be good to my fans; sorry you don't feel like I'm there for you. You're so mad at not having Dominion for forever that you won't even enjoy the year we got you.
Or, the offline version; if you prefer to play offline then you can take that instead of the year and then you've still got Dominion, just like I never let you down, assuming you like the new version and well here's hoping.
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When I bought my set of Base Dominion, you promised me that I could play Dominion forever. But now my Coppers are too worn out to use, and you expect me to pay again for new base cards?
Greedy.
Watch out; in the future maybe companies won't sell cards, just the right to use the cards for a while, with limitations. Man, no-one bought online Dominion; they bought e.g. Gokoins, and then played at buying online Dominion with them. Really it's all about the joy of spending Gokoins.
At some point I thought, man I'm sick of MF, and then instead of telling Jay we had to do something, I waited, and immediately I felt (legal phrasing) let down over and over. And then I started talking about it. And I asked my playtesters what they thought about ditching MF.
And then I asked 16 people on these forums. I picked them for posting then-recently in the online subforums, and for not having next to no posts. I went through some threads, jotted down the names. I sent them all a form letter asking what they thought about the possibility of finding someone else (of course not knowing yet that that would turn out to mean people wouldn't just have the new system for free, but noting that we couldn't guarantee it). [It was mainly viewed as positive, with no faith in MF, but some worried about potential downtime with no online Dominion.]
Why did I ask these people this? Because I'm so driven by greed! I mean that's the only logical explanation.
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Here's something else, chrisjwmartin. See what you think.
People are great believers of false things. They are experts. If you're interested in this topic, you can read up on Cognitive Biases on wikipedia. I am looking at this stuff, here's a nice one: "The tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures." Makes you think.
So I mean, I know about the cognitive biases, I know they must affect me. In fact one of the cognitive biases is to feel like, because you know about the cognitive biases, they have less of an effect on you. Isn't that sweet. Anyway I know about them, and well I do what I can, I try to recognize when maybe I'm blind about something. For example one thing this has taught me to do is to go to other people, see what they think. Am I really nuts here? I'll ask someone. They'll have different relevant biases for the situation, you see. They aren't me.
Anyway the point is, man, maybe I'm lying to myself, maybe I'm trying to avoid blame here so I don't feel like the worst scum ever and kill myself. I mean I can't rule it out. I feel like I've done my due diligence, like I've spotted the places where I could have done something different, where I personally blew it, but you know. I can't be trusted here. I'm me; of course I think well of myself.
So if you really want to know how credible I am, how much you've been lied to, how much I deserve the blame for your misfortunes, well obviously you should ask Someone Else. Anyone but me! Which is perfect for me also, so, there you go.
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Dear Donald,
When I bought my set of Base Dominion, you promised me that I could play Dominion forever. But now my Coppers are too worn out to use, and you expect me to pay again for new base cards?
Greedy.
Should have bought the card sleeves DLC.
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...
Sadly, you're wasting your time trying to reason with him. He's made up his mind already. It's not that he can't see it your way; he doesn't want to. You've explained it a million different ways and they all made sense to me at least. In the famous words of Saint xkcd:
(https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png)
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What's the lowest value you could possibly have gotten with the compromise?
Let's assume the absolute worst case scenario: you bought every expansion, all at once, a day before they unveiled the subscription model on MF's client. You hadn't heard this announcement in like February or whatever, and that's reasonable, it isn't easy to find if you aren't into Dominion a lot (though I mean, dropping $110 on a game you don't Google quickly first, strange). Let's then say, you are taking the free year online, because offline forever is boundless value and we can't quantify that.
So on, June 30th? You pay $110, and you get 18 months of Dominion Online. This is $6.11 a month. It's suspected, but not confirmed, that $3 a month is the buy everything subscription price. Man if that goes up to $5 a month won't you have some serious egg on your face, quibbling over $1.11 a month. But anyway.
A more realistic case: You payed $100 in February, right before the announcement, then didn't buy Adventures, because what's the point or something. That's $100 for 22 months, $4.50 a month. Still like 50% more than the pure value if Shuffle IT existed the day of the announcement and charged the price they wanted immediately, but whatever.
Anyhow, my point here is, you've got reason to be upset, sunk costs and all that, but dude, it isn't that much money, and if you hate them so much for doing this, you can go ahead and only play the game for another 16 months for "free" and then not continue. Wow, it's really hard to be mad at some people while playing a game they didn't have a legal obligation to give you for 16 months but chose to anyway to make it suck just a little bit less.
But really dude, is like, maybe $40 ish of value lost over the course of a year and a half really anything to write home about? Like I subscribe to two different music streaming services for $10/month because I can't decide which one I like better. Any lost value for me I'm not going to notice. I know some people have less financial stability than others, which would be a very good point if this money wasn't already spent and gone.
If January 2018 comes, and you're still upset about this, and you don't think the new client is enough of an improvement for it to be worth it, then cancel your account. What's the big deal?
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Here is another thing, I am full of things.
I like to be Super Helpful Guy. Someone asks a question, I answer it; they misunderstand something, I set them straight. It's good times.
But when they're asking about online Dominion, or misunderstanding something there, if anyone else answers/corrects, they're being helpful, but if I do, it looks like a promise. Like I personally will cause whatever it is to happen, because I'm me.
And I mean obv. that's awful. I can't control those companies; I don't even have a contract with them, in case that information, that seems so worthless or significant depending on who you are, wasn't clear. So why would I ever answer those questions or correct those misunderstandings. Funsockets/Goko and Making Fun can handle their own customer relations, answer the questions they need answered, correct the misunderstandings they care about. It's not like I'm good at customer relations either.
And yet there I am continuing to do it yesterday. Saying how ShuffleIT will give people a year of the new service, or the offline sets.
I don't know if ShuffleIT will give anyone anything ever. Maybe they'll run off to Argentina on January 1st. It has to be up to them to tell people what people can expect from them, answer the questions, correct the misunderstandings, or not. For sure I don't want anyone to think that I can somehow guarantee this stuff that these other people are doing. All I can do is hope for the best, like anyone.
So I mean, a valuable lesson I still need to try to learn.
And uh, when someone says, that greedy Donald X., well you know it does not cut me to the core. It's sufficiently laughable that I can brush it off. But this notion that maybe my incompetence is hurting Dominion fans, well I can't brush that off. Maybe I really suck that hard. And it's really unhealthy to sit around thinking, do I suck that hard? So I can't keep having this conversation. I'm just going to blindly hope I don't actually suck that hard, like some kind of human being.
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Here is another thing, I am full of things.
I like to be Super Helpful Guy. Someone asks a question, I answer it; they misunderstand something, I set them straight. It's good times.
But when they're asking about online Dominion, or misunderstanding something there, if anyone else answers/corrects, they're being helpful, but if I do, it looks like a promise. Like I personally will cause whatever it is to happen, because I'm me.
And I mean obv. that's awful. I can't control those companies; I don't even have a contract with them, in case that information, that seems so worthless or significant depending on who you are, wasn't clear. So why would I ever answer those questions or correct those misunderstandings. Funsockets/Goko and Making Fun can handle their own customer relations, answer the questions they need answered, correct the misunderstandings they care about. It's not like I'm good at customer relations either.
And yet there I am continuing to do it yesterday. Saying how ShuffleIT will give people a year of the new service, or the offline sets.
I don't know if ShuffleIT will give anyone anything ever. Maybe they'll run off to Argentina on January 1st. It has to be up to them to tell people what people can expect from them, answer the questions, correct the misunderstandings, or not. For sure I don't want anyone to think that I can somehow guarantee this stuff that these other people are doing. All I can do is hope for the best, like anyone.
So I mean, a valuable lesson I still need to try to learn.
And uh, when someone says, that greedy Donald X., well you know it does not cut me to the core. It's sufficiently laughable that I can brush it off. But this notion that maybe my incompetence is hurting Dominion fans, well I can't brush that off. Maybe I really suck that hard. And it's really unhealthy to sit around thinking, do I suck that hard? So I can't keep having this conversation. I'm just going to blindly hope I don't actually suck that hard, like some kind of human being.
I suggest creating a poll about how hard you suck. Then you won't have to keep wondering.
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I think everyone should just stop responding. As Seprix noted, he's made up his mind and nothing anyone says will change it
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I suggest creating a poll about how hard you suck. Then you won't have to keep wondering.
No, we need a bracket.
Does Donald X. Suck?
[1] No
[4] Yes
[2] Kind of
[3] A little bit
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I suggest creating a poll about how hard you suck. Then you won't have to keep wondering.
No, we need a bracket.
Does Donald X. Suck?
[1] No
[4] Yes
[2] Kind of
[3] A little bit
Let's not be hasty. We need a bracket to determine if it should be a poll or a bracket.
How Should we Determine If Donald X. Sucks?
[1] Poll
[2] Bracket
Or, wait.. should this be a poll instead?
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But maybe sucking is a continuum. We could use a slider so people could choose the suck factor over an interval.
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I suggest creating a poll about how hard you suck. Then you won't have to keep wondering.
No, we need a bracket.
Does Donald X. Suck?
[1] No
[4] Yes
[2] Kind of
[3] A little bit
Let's not be hasty. We need a bracket to determine if it should be a poll or a bracket.
How Should we Determine If Donald X. Sucks?
[1] Poll
[2] Bracket
Or, wait.. should this be a poll instead?
I think we should determine by bracket whether or not the determination of Donald X. sucking should be done by poll or bracket.
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I have no knowledge on the sucking skills of Donald, so I am withholding judgement.
I like what he does for the dominion community, though.
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Donald has gone above and beyond the call of duty to clarify the history of online Dominion, so let's extinguish the heated exchange with a splash of gratitude.
Genuine questions about the future (and past) of online Dominion are still welcome, as long as they are free from the presumption that anyone is acting in bad faith. Unless of course that anyone is me, and the accusation is that I'm only in it for the Silvers, to which I'd respond: guilty as charged!
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(http://i.imgur.com/w1In0d9.jpg)
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Donald has gone above and beyond the call of duty to clarify the history of online Dominion, so let's extinguish the heated exchange with a splash of gratitude.
Unless of course that anyone is me, and the accusation is that I'm only in it for the Silvers, to which I'd respond: guilty as charged!
*Sniff* We all knew you'd come around one day.
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feel like the worst scum ever and kill myself.
Why not feel like the best scum ever and kill town PRs?
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I'm only in it for the Silvers, to which I'd respond: guilty as charged!
If you join the Dominion Discord server, you'll be made a Mod, which are officially called Silver-Lovers. Clearly, this is something you would be interested in.
https://discord.gg/CaUbK
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Alright, here's a legitimate question that might have already been answered but I don't want to wade through several pages:
Will there be a way to make monthly payments automatically once you open the game? I tend to play in spurts, and I might not play for months then randomly feel like playing again. It would be nice if I didn't have to go through a whole paying process whenever I feel like playing after a while.
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Alright, here's a legitimate question that might have already been answered but I don't want to wade through several pages:
Will there be a way to make monthly payments automatically once you open the game? I tend to play in spurts, and I might not play for months then randomly feel like playing again. It would be nice if I didn't have to go through a whole paying process whenever I feel like playing after a while.
Certainly not by default, but we could look into offering it as an option.
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Donald has gone above and beyond the call of duty to clarify the history of online Dominion, so let's extinguish the heated exchange with a splash of gratitude.
Genuine questions about the future (and past) of online Dominion are still welcome, as long as they are free from the presumption that anyone is acting in bad faith. Unless of course that anyone is me, and the accusation is that I'm only in it for the Silvers, to which I'd respond: guilty as charged!
But still less guilty than Stef who's in it for the Golds. ;)
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I thought he was in it for the platinum.
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I think the banned user just kind of lost out in a good of the many>rights of the few situation. There's probably a handful of people along with him who like Dominion just barely enough that it's ideal for them to keep enjoying it through Goko for free. But for most people, including people who haven't even played yet, the rebirth will be worthwhile, re-buy notwithstanding. Donald surveyed people based on their involvement and interest in Dominion, not their financial investment, which is the total opposite of the greed of which Donald was accused. I would accuse Donald of lots of things but greed is not one of them. I'm pretty sure ShuffleIT is the utilitarian answer. There's probably a few schools of philosophical thought that would deem ShuffleIT wrong. But you can argue that without assigning vices to individual people in a personal way.
I don't have any sets, but I'm pretty sure if I had all the sets I'd still want the game wiped and rebuilt. I'd want my Hearthstone collection wiped and rebuilt if that was necessary for them to remove hero powers since I think the game is slightly better without them included. Generally if you are invested in something enough and like something up the financial investment is going to be secondary to other forms of investment. Especially with hobby/entertainment stuff that is a totally optional part of your life.
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I think the reason people feel miffed about a subscription is because they're used to one of three things happening:
1) Pay once for a game, and always have it (basically most things on Steam)
2) Subscribe to a game, and have access to enormous loads of content that is constantly updated (MMORPGs)
3) Play for free, and occasionally pay for "hats" (online CCGs, MOBAs)
1 works if you're doing a one-off single-player game, or if you're a large enough company that you can support multiplayer because you're constantly pumping out new games.
2 works if have something like WoW where the monthly cost is justified with having so much content, updated regularly.
3 works if you're constantly releasing new content - in fact, it's expected, like with Hearthstone and MTG.
People are probably assuming that Dominion should either be 1 (because of similar board game adaptations like Small World and Ascension doing that) or 3 (because of online card games like Hearthstone doing that). The problem comes in thusly: there's too much of a hardcore multiplayer, competitive scene to really justify 1 - there probably won't be enough new players coming in to justify server costs - and there's not enough new content to justify 3 - Donald probably isn't going to be rattling off expansions forever, and even if he did, they'd most likely be much less frequent than the 3-4 expansions a year most CCGs do. So we're stuck with 2, for what many people are probably assuming is a lot less content than something like WoW.
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The thing about number one, pay once for a game, is that a lot of online games get pulled at some point and people can never play them again, at least online against other people.
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(I figured this would be the best place to put in a new feature request. Also, sorry but I don't care to read the ~1 GB of text already in this thread, so if this has already been mentioned, then sorry.)
A painpoint of the current implementation for me is that often times I want to chat with my opponent about a game that we just finished, and also start searching for a new game/opponent. I def don't want to start a new game whilst still a different game, but would be kind of cool to start a new game whilst still in the chat of a different game. Not sure how exactly to make an interface for that. Just throwing it out there. Carry on..
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people feel miffed about a subscription
I don't feel this is true. Chris felt miffed about eventually having to pay again rather than about any particular model, which is understandable but in the end just one of those unfortunate facts of life.
In general some people have stated they dislike subscriptions, whereas others have been equally positive. Overall the range of responses has been about what I'd expect from any payment model that isn't completely outlandish (if anything I expected a bit more negativity), so it doesn't have me worried. If it turns out to be a miserable failure we can always reevaluate.
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...any payment model that isn't completely outlandish...
Pay 0.1 cents each time you buy or gain a card!
Playing is free, but the ability to mute people in chat is $20 a month!
Build and upgrade a thriving fortress to mine DominionBux that you can use to play, but be careful, other players can attack your fortress and steal your DominionBux!
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Runway
Event, 5 Stefcoins
All card shape things cost one less on your turns for the rest of the day.
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Runway
Event, 5 Stefcoins
All card shape things cost one less on your turns for the rest of the day.
Is a Shuffle iT subscription card shaped?
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...any payment model that isn't completely outlandish...
Pay 0.1 cents each time you buy or gain a card!
Playing is free, but the ability to mute people in chat is $20 a month!
Build and upgrade a thriving fortress to mine DominionBux that you can use to play, but be careful, other players can attack your fortress and steal your DominionBux!
You hit home on everything I despise about the mobile gaming "community" that wasn't immediately obvious.
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feel like the worst scum ever and kill myself.
Why not feel like the best scum ever and kill town PRs?
Donald X needs to play mafia!
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feel like the worst scum ever and kill myself.
Why not feel like the best scum ever and kill town PRs?
Donald X needs to play mafia!
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=3246.msg60476#msg60476
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Pretty interesting discussion, made me feel I want to chime in.
I find myself sympathizing with chrisjwmartin more. I did not read every post of his but at least the ones that Donald replied to.
Thing is, business is business, contract is contract, that I understand. However if we are also on the ideal side of things, speaking from passion with board games perspective, it starts to sound bad.
Like saying, you know, most board game makers don't really make that much money, but I do.
and sadly, even though I have cash sitting at home so that I don't need to work for a living, those money aren't from making fun or goko so I can't pay for your loss. Thanks for your interest in the game! Oh by the way, if you don't feel like it don't buy it. I won't force anyone.
I think, from a idealistic perspective, it is not really about how much the loss is involved and whether one should care about that or not.
There was a promise for the thing to last forever. If the company is no longer there to keep up with the promise, someone should take over. At least someone with passion should.
From a quantitative perspective also, I think Donald is certainly competitive enough to be hired as a software engineer. For a senior position say he can make 200K a year at that job. That is 50K for 3 months. Now he can give up all this money by doing an expansion that sells almost for nothing, but why can he not spare the same amount of money to reimburse those people that have bought into Goko or MF's product (discounted by the expected subscription price times number of months used?)
Not saying that is what I think should be done, but that would be the thing to do from a passion perspective, and the thing I would really appreciate as a fan.
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Pretty interesting discussion, made me feel I want to chime in.
I find myself sympathizing with chrisjwmartin more. I did not read every post of his but at least the ones that Donald replied to.
Thing is, business is business, contract is contract, that I understand. However if we are also on the ideal side of things, speaking from passion with board games perspective, it starts to sound bad.
Like saying, you know, most board game makers don't really make that much money, but I do.
and sadly, even though I have cash sitting at home so that I don't need to work for a living, those money aren't from making fun or goko so I can't pay for your loss. Thanks for your interest in the game! Oh by the way, if you don't feel like it don't buy it. I won't force anyone.
I think, from a idealistic perspective, it is not really about how much the loss is involved and whether one should care about that or not.
There was a promise for the thing to last forever. If the company is no longer there to keep up with the promise, someone should take over. At least someone with passion should.
From a quantitative perspective also, I think Donald is certainly competitive enough to be hired as a software engineer. For a senior position say he can make 200K a year at that job. That is 50K for 3 months. Now he can give up all this money by doing an expansion that sells almost for nothing, but why can he not spare the same amount of money to reimburse those people that have bought into Goko or MF's product (discounted by the expected subscription price times number of months used?)
Not saying that is what I think should be done, but that would be the thing to do from a passion perspective, and the thing I would really appreciate as a fan.
Essentially, Donald is already paying for a year of service for all these players. How is it reasonable to suggest even tentatively that paying for eternal service would be "the thing to do", especially when he wasn't really party to the contract with the guys who made the impossible promise?
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Pretty interesting discussion, made me feel I want to chime in.
I find myself sympathizing with chrisjwmartin more. I did not read every post of his but at least the ones that Donald replied to.
Thing is, business is business, contract is contract, that I understand. However if we are also on the ideal side of things, speaking from passion with board games perspective, it starts to sound bad.
Like saying, you know, most board game makers don't really make that much money, but I do.
and sadly, even though I have cash sitting at home so that I don't need to work for a living, those money aren't from making fun or goko so I can't pay for your loss. Thanks for your interest in the game! Oh by the way, if you don't feel like it don't buy it. I won't force anyone.
I think, from a idealistic perspective, it is not really about how much the loss is involved and whether one should care about that or not.
There was a promise for the thing to last forever. If the company is no longer there to keep up with the promise, someone should take over. At least someone with passion should.
From a quantitative perspective also, I think Donald is certainly competitive enough to be hired as a software engineer. For a senior position say he can make 200K a year at that job. That is 50K for 3 months. Now he can give up all this money by doing an expansion that sells almost for nothing, but why can he not spare the same amount of money to reimburse those people that have bought into Goko or MF's product (discounted by the expected subscription price times number of months used?)
Not saying that is what I think should be done, but that would be the thing to do from a passion perspective, and the thing I would really appreciate as a fan.
I want to clarify that I don't find his (chrisjwmartin) position unsympathetic, or his frustrations entirely unjustified, but he came in here calling names and writing inflammatory posts, and saying things that didn't seem (to me) aligned with reality.
I don't really agree that Donald ought to do any kind of reimbursing. I don't think the language he's been quoted using before really involves him making actual promises---he isn't in a position to uphold those promises either. It seems more like his take on how things are working and going to work.
Well I guess you're not saying he should do it, either, but your post is kind of saying it anyway.
I guess maybe my point of view on these things is different.. I kind of take it that when I make a purchase, I'm accepting the risk that it's a bad purchase, and I'm not really obligated towards things like refunds unless there is something inherently wrong, covered by some warranty. I assume there's a chance I may end up eating some cost.. that sucks, but I made the choice to pay the money. There's an argument here (I think) that we have a similar situation; that something was promised in exchange for the payment but not delivered, or not followed-through on. It doesn't seem like that is the case to me, though.
I suppose I'm also not invested because I'll probably just take the offline version and be happy with that.
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When I heard about the switch, I said 'caveat emptor' and went on with my life.
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When I heard about the switch, I said 'caveat emptor' and went on with my life.
I suppose Latin is one of those efficient languages.
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When I heard about the switch, I said 'caveat emptor' and went on with my life.
I suppose Latin is one of those efficient languages.
Tu sunt rectam.
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Essentially, Donald is already paying for a year of service for all these players. How is it reasonable to suggest even tentatively that paying for eternal service would be "the thing to do", especially when he wasn't really party to the contract with the guys who made the impossible promise?
That' not what I suggested. What I am saying is that he can reimburse the difference as if the buyers bought the subscription service in the first place starting from whenever the purchase is made. The total amount would probably end up similar.
The question is not whether he ought to do the reimbursement or not; from the law perspective he clearly need not and from a standard business perspective it is not his responsibility either.
It is all about passion. He clearly stated that he can afford it; he also said that he is willing to work on projects without obvious income down the road. It really sounds a bit lame, trying to explain that oops sorry, we did not foresee this and that? Or, yeah, I did endorse goko back in the days, but what else do you expect me to do?
I mean, sure it is Goko and MF in the end that leads to all the trouble, maybe Jay and Donald have lost some money due to this contract mistake as well. But hey, it is negotiated and signed by them. End customers like us really has no say, and I tend to think most of those buying into these products are because it is the official product, in other words, supported by the game developer and publisher. So it is sad to hear that when bad things happen, they did not pick up as much responsibility as people like (especially if they can.)
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When I heard about the switch, I said 'caveat emptor' and went on with my life.
I suppose Latin is one of those efficient languages.
Tu sunt rectam.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
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It appears Stef and SCSN have a 'rival' for next year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dominion/comments/4z4c7c/regarding_dominion_online_2017/
It's probably a troll, but on the off chance it is not, here you all go. Just read all of the posts by Harbub in this Reddit thread. He claims no legal action will happen to him, and if he changes the names and mechanics of everything like he says he will, I don't know that legal action could be taken.
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Essentially, Donald is already paying for a year of service for all these players. How is it reasonable to suggest even tentatively that paying for eternal service would be "the thing to do", especially when he wasn't really party to the contract with the guys who made the impossible promise?
That' not what I suggested. What I am saying is that he can reimburse the difference as if the buyers bought the subscription service in the first place starting from whenever the purchase is made. The total amount would probably end up similar.
The question is not whether he ought to do the reimbursement or not; from the law perspective he clearly need not and from a standard business perspective it is not his responsibility either.
It is all about passion. He clearly stated that he can afford it; he also said that he is willing to work on projects without obvious income down the road. It really sounds a bit lame, trying to explain that oops sorry, we did not foresee this and that? Or, yeah, I did endorse goko back in the days, but what else do you expect me to do?
I mean, sure it is Goko and MF in the end that leads to all the trouble, maybe Jay and Donald have lost some money due to this contract mistake as well. But hey, it is negotiated and signed by them. End customers like us really has no say, and I tend to think most of those buying into these products are because it is the official product, in other words, supported by the game developer and publisher. So it is sad to hear that when bad things happen, they did not pick up as much responsibility as people like (especially if they can.)
I guess for people coming it late this could be something. If you bought back when Goko started, I think you actually saved money compared to the subscription model.
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It appears Stef and SCSN have a 'rival' for next year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dominion/comments/4z4c7c/regarding_dominion_online_2017/
It's probably a troll, but on the off chance it is not, here you all go. Just read all of the posts by Harbub in this Reddit thread. He claims no legal action will happen to him, and if he changes the names and mechanics of everything like he says he will, I don't know that legal action could be taken.
"That doesn't include most card animations; those will be time-consuming."
"I plan on adding animations so that when you play a card it will look cool."
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It appears Stef and SCSN have a 'rival' for next year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dominion/comments/4z4c7c/regarding_dominion_online_2017/
It's probably a troll, but on the off chance it is not, here you all go. Just read all of the posts by Harbub in this Reddit thread. He claims no legal action will happen to him, and if he changes the names and mechanics of everything like he says he will, I don't know that legal action could be taken.
"That doesn't include most card animations; those will be time-consuming."
"I plan on adding animations so that when you play a card it will look cool."
Singletee and I are talking about this. We are concluding that the guy is seriously making a game, but he's making his own thing and doing a bait-and-switch sort of thing. I mean, it could also be an elaborate troll.
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It appears Stef and SCSN have a 'rival' for next year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dominion/comments/4z4c7c/regarding_dominion_online_2017/
It's probably a troll, but on the off chance it is not, here you all go. Just read all of the posts by Harbub in this Reddit thread. He claims no legal action will happen to him, and if he changes the names and mechanics of everything like he says he will, I don't know that legal action could be taken.
"That doesn't include most card animations; those will be time-consuming."
"I plan on adding animations so that when you play a card it will look cool."
Singletee and I are talking about this. We are concluding that the guy is seriously making a game, but he's making his own thing and doing a bait-and-switch sort of thing. I mean, it could also be an elaborate troll.
Google shows that the guy (or someone with his same username) is definitely a serious programmer. But as a programmer, I can say confidently that his estimate of a working version in 40 hours of work is ridiculous.
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It appears Stef and SCSN have a 'rival' for next year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dominion/comments/4z4c7c/regarding_dominion_online_2017/
It's probably a troll, but on the off chance it is not, here you all go. Just read all of the posts by Harbub in this Reddit thread. He claims no legal action will happen to him, and if he changes the names and mechanics of everything like he says he will, I don't know that legal action could be taken.
"That doesn't include most card animations; those will be time-consuming."
"I plan on adding animations so that when you play a card it will look cool."
Singletee and I are talking about this. We are concluding that the guy is seriously making a game, but he's making his own thing and doing a bait-and-switch sort of thing. I mean, it could also be an elaborate troll.
Google shows that the guy (or someone with his same username) is definitely a serious programmer. But as a programmer, I can say confidently that his estimate of a working version in 40 hours of work is ridiculous.
Where was this guy when Goko was trying to get a product up?!
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Where was this guy when Goko was trying to get a product up?!
Plot twist: He was Goko.
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From a quantitative perspective also, I think Donald is certainly competitive enough to be hired as a software engineer. For a senior position say he can make 200K a year at that job. That is 50K for 3 months. Now he can give up all this money by doing an expansion that sells almost for nothing, but why can he not spare the same amount of money to reimburse those people that have bought into Goko or MF's product (discounted by the expected subscription price times number of months used?)
If it would take just 50k to honor all Goko/MF purchases that's 100% what would have happened. The actual amount will end up being such that this just isn't possible.
It appears Stef and SCSN have a 'rival' for next year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dominion/comments/4z4c7c/regarding_dominion_online_2017/
It's probably a troll, but on the off chance it is not, here you all go. Just read all of the posts by Harbub in this Reddit thread. He claims no legal action will happen to him, and if he changes the names and mechanics of everything like he says he will, I don't know that legal action could be taken.
"That doesn't include most card animations; those will be time-consuming."
"I plan on adding animations so that when you play a card it will look cool."
Singletee and I are talking about this. We are concluding that the guy is seriously making a game, but he's making his own thing and doing a bait-and-switch sort of thing. I mean, it could also be an elaborate troll.
I'm aware of the thread and don't have an opinion until he actually shows something.
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From a quantitative perspective also, I think Donald is certainly competitive enough to be hired as a software engineer. For a senior position say he can make 200K a year at that job. That is 50K for 3 months. Now he can give up all this money by doing an expansion that sells almost for nothing, but why can he not spare the same amount of money to reimburse those people that have bought into Goko or MF's product (discounted by the expected subscription price times number of months used?)
If it would take just 50k to honor all Goko/MF purchases that's 100% what would have happened. The actual amount will end up being such that this just isn't possible.
Wait, really? The (aggregated) difference between had each member only paid a subscription amount for the time they bought vs. what they paid with the one-time set purchases is actually very large?
Did the prices end up increasing? I looked back and it looks like I paid $45 back in March-ish 2013.
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From a quantitative perspective also, I think Donald is certainly competitive enough to be hired as a software engineer. For a senior position say he can make 200K a year at that job. That is 50K for 3 months. Now he can give up all this money by doing an expansion that sells almost for nothing, but why can he not spare the same amount of money to reimburse those people that have bought into Goko or MF's product (discounted by the expected subscription price times number of months used?)
If it would take just 50k to honor all Goko/MF purchases that's 100% what would have happened. The actual amount will end up being such that this just isn't possible.
Wait, really? The (aggregated) difference between had each member only paid a subscription amount for the time they bought vs. what they paid with the one-time set purchases is actually very large?
Did the prices end up increasing? I looked back and it looks like I paid $45 back in March-ish 2013.
MF doubled the prices, yes.
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It appears Stef and SCSN have a 'rival' for next year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dominion/comments/4z4c7c/regarding_dominion_online_2017/
It's probably a troll, but on the off chance it is not, here you all go. Just read all of the posts by Harbub in this Reddit thread. He claims no legal action will happen to him, and if he changes the names and mechanics of everything like he says he will, I don't know that legal action could be taken.
"That doesn't include most card animations; those will be time-consuming."
"I plan on adding animations so that when you play a card it will look cool."
Singletee and I are talking about this. We are concluding that the guy is seriously making a game, but he's making his own thing and doing a bait-and-switch sort of thing. I mean, it could also be an elaborate troll.
Google shows that the guy (or someone with his same username) is definitely a serious programmer. But as a programmer, I can say confidently that his estimate of a working version in 40 hours of work is ridiculous.
I don't know. He isn't very clear. If he is referring to a polished product, then he is definitely crazy. I understood his comment to say he had a basic game engine coded with ~10 cards and a simplistic 2D UI in under 40 hours. That seems somewhat reasonable to me. I've dabbled with digitizing games for a local play environment, and put a basic Dominion engine (with very limited UI) together in 20-30 hours.
(Disclaimer: This is local-play hobbyist tinkering, and none of it will be shared outside my home. Also, I did some dumb things, and the Dominion engine is currently not capable of supporting crazy complicated cards such as 'Feast', so it isn't the greatest supporting argument, but I am confident that if I was actually experienced in this area that I could have put a basic engine together that actually worked in this amount of time.)
In any case, based on his recent post about all the new cool things his game can do that Dominion can't do, my money is on bait and switch. He appears to be promoting his Dominion clone, and pretended it was "reskinned" Dominion initially.
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From a quantitative perspective also, I think Donald is certainly competitive enough to be hired as a software engineer. For a senior position say he can make 200K a year at that job. That is 50K for 3 months. Now he can give up all this money by doing an expansion that sells almost for nothing, but why can he not spare the same amount of money to reimburse those people that have bought into Goko or MF's product (discounted by the expected subscription price times number of months used?)
If it would take just 50k to honor all Goko/MF purchases that's 100% what would have happened. The actual amount will end up being such that this just isn't possible.
Wait, really? The (aggregated) difference between had each member only paid a subscription amount for the time they bought vs. what they paid with the one-time set purchases is actually very large?
In that case I may have misunderstood the suggestion. If it was that we should retrospectively apply our new pricing model and offer something only to those who would have ended up short, I think that would result in more, not less unhappy people.
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When I heard about the switch, I said 'caveat emptor' and went on with my life.
I suppose Latin is one of those efficient languages.
Tu sunt rectam.
"You bet your ass" ??
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When I heard about the switch, I said 'caveat emptor' and went on with my life.
I suppose Latin is one of those efficient languages.
Tu sunt rectam.
"You bet your ass" ??
That is "Vos bet asinus."
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I find myself sympathizing with chrisjwmartin more. I did not read every post of his but at least the ones that Donald replied to.
The difference, of course, is that you didn't run in with a ton of inflammatory language. :)
but why can he not spare the same amount of money to reimburse those people that have bought into Goko or MF's product (discounted by the expected subscription price times number of months used?)
Man, I really don't want that to happen, I would owe Donald like $90 under that schema!
(This is one of the problems with your line of reasoning; there's no way to make it "fair" to everyone.)
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When I heard about the switch, I said 'caveat emptor' and went on with my life.
I suppose Latin is one of those efficient languages.
Tu sunt rectam.
"You bet your ass" ??
That is "Vos bet asinus."
"The people called Romanes, they go the house?!"
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I find myself sympathizing with chrisjwmartin more. I did not read every post of his but at least the ones that Donald replied to.
The difference, of course, is that you didn't run in with a ton of inflammatory language. :)
but why can he not spare the same amount of money to reimburse those people that have bought into Goko or MF's product (discounted by the expected subscription price times number of months used?)
Man, I really don't want that to happen, I would owe Donald like $90 under that schema!
(This is one of the problems with your line of reasoning; there's no way to make it "fair" to everyone.)
Would you really consider it unfair if someone that spent ~$100 the day before the announcement that Making Fun wouldn't get the contract renewed got some difference refunded (or excess free time added on) based on their possible playtime, while you didn't receive anything beyond what is already proposed? I personally wouldn't care.
(Not arguing here that this is what should be done.)
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From a quantitative perspective also, I think Donald is certainly competitive enough to be hired as a software engineer. For a senior position say he can make 200K a year at that job.
Whaa? Where does that number come from? Without moving into management type roles, or perhaps one some super-rare technologies for which there's only a handful of experts in that field, it's more like $125K tops. The other exception might be working as a consultant for hourly rates, in which case you might get close to 200K (though with no benefits or anything).
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I don't know. He isn't very clear. If he is referring to a polished product, then he is definitely crazy. I understood his comment to say he had a basic game engine coded with ~10 cards and a simplistic 2D UI in under 40 hours. That seems somewhat reasonable to me. I've dabbled with digitizing games for a local play environment, and put a basic Dominion engine (with very limited UI) together in 20-30 hours.
Well true, my Temporum site was less than 40 hours of work. But that's 100% client side. I'd imagine that dealing with being able to connect players with each other across the internet to find and play games, with sever-side commands and a database and such would put that well beyond. If he meant a basic single-player engine, then sure.
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I really want someone to make anarchical make deckbuilding games and play them with other people online platform full of fan cards and modding. Would be interesting to see what happened to the genre.
If it's a one man show I'll probably prefer Donald's one man show to redditman's
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It is all about passion. He clearly stated that he can afford it; he also said that he is willing to work on projects without obvious income down the road. It really sounds a bit lame, trying to explain that oops sorry, we did not foresee this and that? Or, yeah, I did endorse goko back in the days, but what else do you expect me to do?
I did not clearly state that that I can afford it, and cannot afford it. As SCSN notes, if it was as easy as forking over $50K, we would have. We thought it would be that easy and planned to do so. We were even willing to pay twice the amount we'd taken in, turning every dollar gained into a dollar lost. Then we found out the actual numbers.
I do not see what is lame about "my contract just lets RGG sub-license digital Dominion to other companies and gives me half of what he gets for it, and yet due to how that played out I am giving up some amount future profits to give people a year of online Dominion." But what have I done for you lately, right?
My other digital game is Kingdom Builder. Queen didn't ask me to playtest it or make campaigns or whatever, so I haven't had any involvement with it. If people were mad about the KB game and wanted money back beyond what I got, do I owe them there, for having been so foolish as to have a contract that let someone make digital versions of my game? If not, what's the difference? The amount of work I foolishly did for the online Dominion people?
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Whaa? Where does that number come from? Without moving into management type roles, or perhaps one some super-rare technologies for which there's only a handful of experts in that field, it's more like $125K tops. The other exception might be working as a consultant for hourly rates, in which case you might get close to 200K (though with no benefits or anything).
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Senior-Software-Engineer-Salaries-E9079_D_KO7,31.htm
Stats on the web aside, my friends in tech companies like google, facebook, and apple are all considering buying houses in the bay area, with a single income for the family mostly. I figure they need to earn 200K+ in order to do that.
I did not clearly state that that I can afford it, and cannot afford it. As SCSN notes, if it was as easy as forking over $50K, we would have. We thought it would be that easy and planned to do so. We were even willing to pay twice the amount we'd taken in, turning every dollar gained into a dollar lost. Then we found out the actual numbers.
I do not see what is lame about "my contract just lets RGG sub-license digital Dominion to other companies and gives me half of what he gets for it, and yet due to how that played out I am giving up some amount future profits to give people a year of online Dominion." But what have I done for you lately, right?
My other digital game is Kingdom Builder. Queen didn't ask me to playtest it or make campaigns or whatever, so I haven't had any involvement with it. If people were mad about the KB game and wanted money back beyond what I got, do I owe them there, for having been so foolish as to have a contract that let someone make digital versions of my game? If not, what's the difference? The amount of work I foolishly did for the online Dominion people?
I must have misunderstood. When you said you don't need to work for a living I thought that must mean a couple of million in the bank!
It's all about perspective. I certainly do think it is a nice gesture. But then I did not buy online dominion.
And what he was complaining is true. From a end customer point of view, I can accept that the company can go down and stop providing service; but I would expect that if it is at the request of the publisher, then the publisher should take care of the current customer. at least that should be the spirit when we started with Goko, when you endorse the product with this one time sale concept.
Seriously I think it should be entirely fine and will not get anyone pissed, using the current scheme, and have someone unsatisfied dealt with on a individual basis. Basically the complicated situation is that one might argue he thought he bought the thing for good and therefore did not get the full value out from it as if he bought it as a subscription. There should be server data we can mine and see how many games played since when and decide what amount should be refunded etc.
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And what he was complaining is true. From a end customer point of view, I can accept that the company can go down and stop providing service; but I would expect that if it is at the request of the publisher, then the publisher should take care of the current customer. at least that should be the spirit when we started with Goko, when you endorse the product with this one time sale concept.
It's not "at the request of the publisher," it's "their contract didn't last forever." I would think the entity selling you the product is the entity responsible for telling you just what they're selling you, any built-in limits. [But of course they were perfectly clear, they just sold Gokoins and customers got to spend them.]
I don't mind someone complaining about what value they are getting from what they bought from those companies. Complain to those companies please. I don't know how you will manage it with Funsockets/Goko, but MF has customer service.
I always think of the doll with nipples (I'm thinking about it right now). This is tangential but meaningful to me. Hobby Japan has the Japanese sub-license for Dominion. They made a doll with nipples. They didn't ask for permission from RGG first (I do not think they would have gotten it). How could I have stopped that doll from existing? By not getting Dominion published.
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And what he was complaining is true. From a end customer point of view, I can accept that the company can go down and stop providing service; but I would expect that if it is at the request of the publisher, then the publisher should take care of the current customer. at least that should be the spirit when we started with Goko, when you endorse the product with this one time sale concept.
It's not "at the request of the publisher," it's "their contract didn't last forever." I would think the entity selling you the product is the entity responsible for telling you just what they're selling you, any built-in limits. [But of course they were perfectly clear, they just sold Gokoins and customers got to spend them.]
I don't mind someone complaining about what value they are getting from what they bought from those companies. Complain to those companies please. I don't know how you will manage it with Funsockets/Goko, but MF has customer service.
I always think of the doll with nipples (I'm thinking about it right now). This is tangential but meaningful to me. Hobby Japan has the Japanese sub-license for Dominion. They made a doll with nipples. They didn't ask for permission from RGG first (I do not think they would have gotten it). How could I have stopped that doll from existing? By not getting Dominion published.
I will henceforth direct all nipple-related complaints to you.
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I am surprised by the extent to which the nipple doll is helpful in explaining how the blame games should be played.
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I just think we all need to learn from Donald X and incorporate the nipple doll more into our conversation here on the forum
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I for one am looking forward to paying the rock-bottom bargain price of $3 a month to play Dominion on the internet.
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It used to be zero. Im a jaded freeloader tiers worse than these new school whiners.
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It used to be zero. Im a jaded freeloader tiers worse than these new school whiners.
You think animations just grow on trees?!
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[Insert reference to isotropic dominion here]
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[Insert reference to isotropic dominion here]
[Insert upvote here]
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From a quantitative perspective also, I think Donald is certainly competitive enough to be hired as a software engineer. For a senior position say he can make 200K a year at that job.
Whaa? Where does that number come from? Without moving into management type roles, or perhaps one some super-rare technologies for which there's only a handful of experts in that field, it's more like $125K tops. The other exception might be working as a consultant for hourly rates, in which case you might get close to 200K (though with no benefits or anything).
200k/year is low, not high. I'd say total compensation for a software engineer their first year out of undergrad at Google or FB in the bay area would be around $160k/year.
I personally think it's fine for DVX to provide nothing more than a "sorry, I overpromised, but I honestly believed those things at the time." And that Stef/SCSN give away any kind of grand-fathered subscription is extremely generous. AFAICT, they don't get anything for that.
All the while, I am still pretty sympathic to chris martin.
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From a quantitative perspective also, I think Donald is certainly competitive enough to be hired as a software engineer. For a senior position say he can make 200K a year at that job.
Whaa? Where does that number come from? Without moving into management type roles, or perhaps one some super-rare technologies for which there's only a handful of experts in that field, it's more like $125K tops. The other exception might be working as a consultant for hourly rates, in which case you might get close to 200K (though with no benefits or anything).
200k/year is low, not high. I'd say total compensation for a software engineer their first year out of undergrad at Google or FB in the bay area would be around $160k/year.
I personally think it's fine for DVX to provide nothing more than a "sorry, I overpromised, but I honestly believed those things at the time." And that Stef/SCSN give away any kind of grand-fathered subscription is extremely generous. AFAICT, they don't get anything for that.
All the while, I am still pretty sympathic to chris martin.
That "at Google or FB" is an enormous qualifier. Let's not pretend that's anywhere near the norm for a software engineer at a non-Silicon Valley job.
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200k/year is low, not high. I'd say total compensation for a software engineer their first year out of undergrad at Google or FB in the bay area would be around $160k/year.
And on that salary, they can afford to rent someone's closet!
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Re: compensation (in any field)
location, location, location
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I personally think it's fine for DVX to provide nothing more than a "sorry, I overpromised, but I honestly believed those things at the time." And that Stef/SCSN give away any kind of grand-fathered subscription is extremely generous. AFAICT, they don't get anything for that.
The contract doesn't subdivide up "you get this in exchange for this," but in effect we offered something in exchange for that year, again probably more than we ever got from online Dominion. I don't think that's been unclear in my previous posts but maybe it has. I am not trying to pat myself on the back here; I am the one getting told how awful I am so I have to cling to these facts.
Also it's DXV, errnaud.
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Also it's DXV, errnaud.
Brilliant triple play on words. You use the phrase 'err', while simultaneously also changing his name up like he accidentally did to you. Bonus internet points.
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From a quantitative perspective also, I think Donald is certainly competitive enough to be hired as a software engineer. For a senior position say he can make 200K a year at that job.
Whaa? Where does that number come from? Without moving into management type roles, or perhaps one some super-rare technologies for which there's only a handful of experts in that field, it's more like $125K tops. The other exception might be working as a consultant for hourly rates, in which case you might get close to 200K (though with no benefits or anything).
200k/year is low, not high. I'd say total compensation for a software engineer their first year out of undergrad at Google or FB in the bay area would be around $160k/year.
I personally think it's fine for DVX to provide nothing more than a "sorry, I overpromised, but I honestly believed those things at the time." And that Stef/SCSN give away any kind of grand-fathered subscription is extremely generous. AFAICT, they don't get anything for that.
All the while, I am still pretty sympathic to chris martin.
Even for Google, this sounds really wrong. According to some searching...
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Google,_Inc./Salary
Software Engineers for Google.com make well under $200k. This isn't broken down by location though. But still, I've seen other calculators that ask if it is Bay Area or not, and it adds some for Bay Area, but not nearly that amount of a change.
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This is an entry level software engineer position:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-II-San-Jose-Salaries-EJI_IE9079.0,6_KO7,27_IL.28,36_IM761.htm
Glassdoor says 144k in total comp. I assure you that glassdoor is always a little low, maybe because they include multiple trailing years without accounting for growth.
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This is an entry level software engineer position:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-II-San-Jose-Salaries-EJI_IE9079.0,6_KO7,27_IL.28,36_IM761.htm
Glassdoor says 144k in total comp. I assure you that glassdoor is always a little low, maybe because they include multiple trailing years without accounting for growth.
Software Engineer II isn't entry level; not unless Google defines things in a weird and different way than other places... Software Engineer I would be entry level. II would be around 3 years experience.
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This is an entry level software engineer position:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-II-San-Jose-Salaries-EJI_IE9079.0,6_KO7,27_IL.28,36_IM761.htm
Glassdoor says 144k in total comp. I assure you that glassdoor is always a little low, maybe because they include multiple trailing years without accounting for growth.
Software Engineer II isn't entry level; not unless Google defines things in a weird and different way than other places... Software Engineer I would be entry level. II would be around 3 years experience.
Not wanting to choose sides in the battle between starting indexes at 0 or 1, Software Engineers index at 2.
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I started a fresh out of undergrad software engineer position 1 year, 3 months ago, at 20$ an hour plus like 5$ an hour in benefits.
Bam, data.
I didn't negotiate super hard and live somewhere where my rent is 400/mo but if 160k entry level is normal in any sense of the word i need to save a few paychecks and order some cyanide.
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I started out of college at $40k, 10 years ago, in the Boston area.
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I started out of dropping out of high school, in 1985. I was so excited to get a programming job that I forgot to say anything about salary (note my incredible greed). They did not miss this and so I started at $4.25 an hour.
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I started out of dropping out of high school, in 1985. I was so excited to get a programming job that I forgot to say anything about salary (note my incredible greed). They did not miss this and so I started at $4.25 an hour.
It's possible that you just suck at being greedy.
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I started out of college at $40k, 10 years ago, in the Boston area.
Same here, in Minneapolis.
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I started out of dropping out of high school, in 1985. I was so excited to get a programming job that I forgot to say anything about salary (note my incredible greed). They did not miss this and so I started at $4.25 an hour.
I think your Greed is indeed incredible, it's my second favorite of yours.
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I started out of college at $55k 9 years ago in the midwest.
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I started out of dropping out of high school, in 1985. I was so excited to get a programming job that I forgot to say anything about salary (note my incredible greed). They did not miss this and so I started at $4.25 an hour.
I think your Greed is indeed incredible, it's my second favorite of yours.
He has the best greed. Other people's greed is loser greed. His greed always wins.
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I'm starting to think there are a lot of Dominion players that are programmers.
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I started out of dropping out of high school, in 1985. I was so excited to get a programming job that I forgot to say anything about salary (note my incredible greed). They did not miss this and so I started at $4.25 an hour.
I think your Greed is indeed incredible, it's my second favorite of yours.
He has the best greed. Other people's greed is loser greed. His greed always wins.
Donald is a great man, a good friend. He has the best greed, real American greed, can't beat that greed. When I am president, he will get all the best greedy deals with other countries, very important man, very good.
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My brother just got a job right after graduating with a computer science degree and is starting at 66k.
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I'm starting to think there are a lot of Dominion players that are programmers.
I think a lot of the skills to be good at Dominion are similar skills to writing passable software. It's a certain kind of algorithmic and structured thinking that seems to predispose somebody to either or both things.
Not a professional programmer, though I'm considering some kind of early career change and going into software because writing scripts and looking at code is by far the most enjoyable part of my work so far.
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I graduated with a CS degree 2 years ago and started at 60k. I probably could have made more if I had gone into the public sector, but I pretty much kept the job I got as a student at the university.
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I'm starting to think there are a lot of Dominion players that are programmers.
I think a lot of the skills to be good at Dominion are similar skills to writing passable software. It's a certain kind of algorithmic and structured thinking that seems to predispose somebody to either or both things.
Not a professional programmer, though I'm considering some kind of early career change and going into software because writing scripts and looking at code is by far the most enjoyable part of my work so far.
I'm a physicist; we have to do a depressing amount of our own programming.
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I'm starting to think there are a lot of Dominion players that are programmers.
I think a lot of the skills to be good at Dominion are similar skills to writing passable software. It's a certain kind of algorithmic and structured thinking that seems to predispose somebody to either or both things.
Not a professional programmer, though I'm considering some kind of early career change and going into software because writing scripts and looking at code is by far the most enjoyable part of my work so far.
I'm a physicist; we have to do a depressing amount of our own programming.
I'm starting my physics degree in less than a month, and I already do a lot of programming.
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For current physicists: I admire what you do.
For perspective physicists: beware that your career path will start to get narrower and narrower once you are into graduate school. The sad thing is that you can't really learn all that much physics without at least trying for a PhD for a couple of years.
(This is from a ex-postdoc in theoretical physics.)
I don't think playing dominion is like programming all that much. Programming (messy things aside) is like, thinking about the best way for the computer to do things. Playing Dominion is like actually doing those calculations. Yeah developing a good framework to think about it (especially if the rules are heuristic) will be a good first step; but to really be good there still needs to be calculations and that's how simulators are handy if we want to be really good.
Designing a good board game, on the other hand, I think have more in common with designing a good program. And lots of extra.
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Getting a math degree instead if a full-blown cs degree probably costs me about 5k
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I definitely should have gone into industry rather than (ancillary) academia; all of these salaries except Donald's are higher than any salary I've ever had.
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Yes but then who would be here to make me feel better about shaving the edge off of my earning potential when I flipflopped my Math/CS major/minor? Donald made a smash hit board game, he's no help.
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Getting a math degree instead if a full-blown cs degree probably costs me about 5k
But getting a math degree is worth every penny of that!
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Yes but then who would be here to make me feel better about shaving the edge off of my earning potential when I flipflopped my Math/CS major/minor? Donald made a smash hit board game, he's no help.
me? I work at Dairy Queen.
I have a BA, but I made the stupid choice of majoring in music, which is made all the more stupid in my case because I'm not even a musician. I minored in English. An english major doesn't provide high paying career paths as easily as others mentioned here, but it would've been better than music.
I have dabbled in a little in hacky programming when I made my own variant of a roguelike computer game, but I'm far from being a good enough programmer to get paid for it.
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You don't actually have to be a programmer at all to get paid for being a programmer, I'm learning. There's lots of coattail surfing routes and the like. They probably don't result in huge pensions. But it's pretty ironic at times.
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The sad thing is that given equal programming skill, you are much more likely to be hired as a programmer if you majored in science, or if you got a diploma from ivy league.
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You don't actually have to be a programmer at all to get paid for being a programmer, I'm learning. There's lots of coattail surfing routes and the like. They probably don't result in huge pensions. But it's pretty ironic at times.
Memorize "Cracking the Coding Interview", apply to a large enough software firm where you can find a role where you don't do any actual programming, enjoy your six figure salary and bullshit job!
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I like how good we are as a forum at keeping threads on topic. Wouldn't want crazy talk about the online implementation of Dominion to derail this discussion about wages in IT jobs!
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I like how good we are as a forum at keeping threads on topic. Wouldn't want crazy talk about the online implementation of Dominion to derail this discussion about wages in IT jobs!
This post is not directly about software developer salary expectations and I have reported you to theory.
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I definitely should have gone into industry rather than (ancillary) academia; all of these salaries except Donald's are higher than any salary I've ever had.
But you can't put a price tag on enriching the minds of others and yourself through the pursuit and transfer of knowledge. ;)
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Masquerade feels pretty undercosted at 3$ and Messenger feels about right where it is so I'd say 4$. Hope you didn't drop a full Abraham Lincoln on a document with less earning potential than a trucker's license, Kirian.
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I definitely should have gone into industry rather than (ancillary) academia; all of these salaries except Donald's are higher than any salary I've ever had.
But you can't put a price tag on enriching the minds of others and yourself through the pursuit and transfer of knowledge. ;)
Even a Sage has standards, though. He won't bother with anything less than $3.
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I definitely should have gone into industry rather than (ancillary) academia; all of these salaries except Donald's are higher than any salary I've ever had.
But you can't put a price tag on enriching the minds of others and yourself through the pursuit and transfer of knowledge. ;)
I know, right? Sadly, you can put a price tag on food and shelter. Guess which of those is at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy and which is at the top!
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I know, right? Sadly, you can put a price tag on food and shelter.
At least you can put a price tag on Shelter. It costs $1. Not so sure about food though.
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I know, right? Sadly, you can put a price tag on food and shelter.
At least you can put a price tag on Shelter. It costs $1. Not so sure about food though.
I personally would rather live without shelter.
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I know, right? Sadly, you can put a price tag on food and shelter.
At least you can put a price tag on Shelter. It costs $1. Not so sure about food though.
Well, a Feast costs $4. That should give you an idea.
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I know, right? Sadly, you can put a price tag on food and shelter.
At least you can put a price tag on Shelter. It costs $1. Not so sure about food though.
Well, a Feast costs $4. That should give you an idea.
Food
Action $3
Trash this gain a card costing up to 3.
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I know, right? Sadly, you can put a price tag on food and shelter.
At least you can put a price tag on Shelter. It costs $1. Not so sure about food though.
Rats cost 4 ;)
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Banquet only costs 3.
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Peasants are only $2 each.
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Trusty steed only costs (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/a/ae/Coin0star.png/16px-Coin0star.png).
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The baker will make it for you for $5. Butcher too.
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Trusty steed only costs (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/a/ae/Coin0star.png/16px-Coin0star.png).
And they say you can't put a price on loyalty.
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Trusty steed only costs (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/a/ae/Coin0star.png/16px-Coin0star.png).
That is a good point. So I guess you can't put a price tag on food after all.
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Trusty steed only costs (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/a/ae/Coin0star.png/16px-Coin0star.png).
That is a good point. So I guess you can't put a price tag on food after all.
But you can put a Prize tag on it
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Trusty steed only costs (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/a/ae/Coin0star.png/16px-Coin0star.png).
That is a good point. So I guess you can't put a price tag on food after all.
Sure you can--a Feast costs (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/2a/Coin4.png/16px-Coin4.png), but condiments are of variable value; Sage is (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/32/Coin3.png/16px-Coin3.png), Mint is (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png), and Salt (the Earth) is (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/2a/Coin4.png/16px-Coin4.png).
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The baker will make it for you for $5. Butcher too.
If you buy a man some bread, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to bake buy him a Baker, you feed him for a lifetime.
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The baker will make it for you for $5. Butcher too.
If you buy a man some bread, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to bake buy him a Baker, you feed him for a lifetime.
Or, as Terry Pratchett wrote: give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a night. But set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Also, I'm back from holidays holiday-shaped things!
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Every time I open this thread I'm hoping to learn something new about the Dominion 2017 client but instead I just re-learn that software engineers have a more enjoyable job than me and that the job generally pays better than mine.
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The enjoy-ability of software engineering is definitely a subjective case. My wife for one would almost certainly not enjoy the profession. I am fortunate enough to enjoy a good chunk of the things I do in my job, but I also have the privilege of doing a fair number of stupid or boring tasks as well. I wouldn't expect job satisfaction in the field to be generally better than it is in other technical jobs. (Queue someone finding a source that shows I am wrong here.)
(On topic, the new Dominion client is going to be amazing, and can assemble into Voltron if you play a 5 player game.)
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Every time I open this thread I'm hoping to learn something new about the Dominion 2017 client but instead I just re-learn that software engineers have a more enjoyable job than me and that the job generally pays better than mine.
I'm not a software engineer, and I almost certainly have a worse paying job than you. Now you can feel better!
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(On topic, the new Dominion client is going to be amazing, and can assemble into Voltron if you play a 5 player game.)
Now there's a reason to try playing 5-player.
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It's actually happening! Philip (SCSN) and I are building the new version of Dominion Online that will go online on the first of January 2017.
This is fantastic news - congrats and I'm looking forward to this.
I haven't been logged in for two and a half years at this board and have skipped Goko/MF entirely. I just had some very occassional real life play in the meantime and even didn't buy expansions starting with "Dark Ages". I started to explore Star Realms and Legendary encounter real life in the meantime (when it comes to deck building), because it's much easier to keep track and turns are not complex in handling (I still absolutely love Alien Legendary encounter, but developed a love/hate relationship with Star Realms btw).
I'm just not a real life dominion player I guess. For me dominion was always connected to a good online implementation - handling the complex chains smoothly (which isotropic was). I was quite a regular player as "califax" on isotropic.
Events and Adventures plus Empires already renewed my interest in dominion. But reading this I expect to be addicted again ;-)
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It's actually happening! Philip (SCSN) and I are building the new version of Dominion Online that will go online on the first of January 2017.
This is fantastic news - congrats and I'm looking forward to this.
I haven't been logged in for two and a half years at this board and have skipped Goko/MF entirely. I just had some very occassional real life play in the meantime and even didn't buy expansions starting with "Dark Ages". I started to explore Star Realms and Legendary encounter real life in the meantime (when it comes to deck building), because it's much easier to keep track and turns are not complex in handling (I still absolutely love Alien Legendary encounter, but developed a love/hate relationship with Star Realms btw).
I'm just not a real life dominion player I guess. For me dominion was always connected to a good online implementation - handling the complex chains smoothly (which isotropic was). I was quite a regular player as "califax" on isotropic.
Events and Adventures plus Empires already renewed my interest in dominion. But reading this I expect to be addicted again ;-)
Welcome back! Have you checked out the forum games (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?board=26.0) yet?
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Welcome back! Have you checked out the forum games (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?board=26.0) yet?
Thx - I will have a look.