Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion Online at Shuffle iT => Dominion General Discussion => Goko Dominion Online => Topic started by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 11:50:35 am

Title: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 11:50:35 am
As a long-time Isotropic player (and not one who wins lots of games, has a high rating, etc)... Goko sucks. I can say with certainty not only will I not be paying for it, I won't even be using its free features.

* Sinfully ugly. Animations everywhere. Flashing. Stupid design decisions for placement of things. Even if you tell it "very fast" animations. And if you speed up the animations so you can play your turn better, you have an even harder time following what your opponents are doing.
* All but impossible to keep track of what your opponents are doing unless you really want to click the read log button every turn.
* Sounds are terrible. Too many of them (really, a "shuffle deck" sound). And the few useful ones ("It's your turn!") are annoying. Background music? (Yes, I know there are options for it -- but sound is currently binary all on or off.)
* The UI itself is atrocious. I really have to click "done" before it lets me play treasures? Why are there no hover context menus to show cards instead of me having to click on it? (I know clicking's there for so-called 'mobile' compatibility -- but no reason to not include mouseovers).
* Load times are unbearably long.
* Everything's slow too. When I click to "play treasures" for example, it takes multiple seconds to process.
* No one-player "try things out" option? (Ie, single-seat tables).
* Multiplayer "play now" just joins you to the first table, rather than you having a preference of how big a table you want.
* Multiplayer really pushes 6 seat games. Dominion is terrible with that many players; it should default to the real value: 4.
* Multiplayer lobby is pretty damned fat and ugly. No sorting, filtering...
* This might be because I'm a guest -- is there no option to have the cards NOT show up until the game starts? Blind games are necessary.
* Apparently no restricting of generated kingdoms (why the hell did Goko rename them to "decks" instead of kingdoms?) by sets.
* Or any randomizing by any OTHER criteria ("must include at least 1 reaction" etc).

It's really an embarrassment to Don X's name that such an elegant game gets such a shoddy official digital release.

Constructive criticism? I can't really say that it does anything well...
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 12:03:10 pm
It's beta so a lot of things your complaining about are being worked on.

There is no push to 6 player at all.
There is a single player mode
Make the rating system pro to have the kingdom not show up
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 12:04:36 pm
Where is this single player mode? I've not found it. "Make the rating system pro to have the kingdom not show up" is stupid. Look at the games in the lobby, how many of them are 6-seats. That it's in the create a game UI as an equal option to 2/3/4 players is pushing it.

Nothing says its beta when I go to the site... Looks live to me.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 12:11:42 pm
Where is this single player mode? I've not found it. "Make the rating system pro to have the kingdom not show up" is stupid. Look at the games in the lobby, how many of them are 6-seats. That it's in the create a game UI as an equal option to 2/3/4 players is pushing it.

Nothing says its beta when I go to the site... Looks live to me.

It says beta on the goko banner and a few other places.
When u make the table there is 6 black squares at te bottom. The number of them surrounded in red is the number of players click the top left box for one player. The pro mode is fine jus select it when making your game. And the lobby being mostly 6 players if either because others want 6 player games or are too lazy to limit the number of slots in their game
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 12:21:07 pm
Maybe you haven't played lately: "beta" exists under banner. No ability to click that square for a single-seat game exists. Game should default to 4 and not 6.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 12:24:02 pm
Maybe you haven't played lately: "beta" exists under banner. No ability to click that square for a single-seat game exists. Game should default to 4 and not 6.

Where are you playing? goko.com has beta right beside the banner.

Yes it defaults to 6 but have you tried making a 6 table you can start with as few as 2 people at the table.

That said it looks like they have at some point removed the single player play that was available in the private beta.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 12:27:05 pm
I'd been linked directly to dominion.goko.com. In that way, there's no indication of it being beta. At any rate, all of the above criticisms still hold true.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: ftl on October 25, 2012, 12:29:25 pm
Making something the default option should count as pushing it. The default should be something reasonable. (6 for unranked, 4 for casual, 2 for pro?)
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 12:34:31 pm
Making something the default option should count as pushing it. The default should be something reasonable. (6 for unranked, 4 for casual, 2 for pro?)

On this front I disagree, if you had to wait for 6 players to start then that would totally be pushing 6 but at a 6 man table you can hit play once another player sits down.

(That said the delay for play all treasures is bad, it was less bad in the private beta. ) Additionally Iso is still up and doesn't have any notice about going down so theres that.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Captain_Frisk on October 25, 2012, 12:35:09 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 12:36:40 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)

7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

+1

6. Cool 3d avatars

-1.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Lashof on October 25, 2012, 12:37:22 pm
6. Cool 3d avatars

I think you can fairly state that Goko has 3d avatars.  Anything beyond that is pushing it.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 12:48:28 pm
One more thing: Zaps. I cannot condone a company (goko) that sells cheats. Sure, they're only usable in adventure mode. It's entirely the wrong type of business model, and one I surely do not want to associate with.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 12:50:33 pm
One more thing: Zaps. I cannot condone a company (goko) that sells cheats. Sure, they're only usable in adventure mode. It's entirely the wrong type of business model, and one I surely do not want to associate with.

Do you never play games that have mulitple difficulties (Easy, Medium, Hard)? Is any difficulty but the hardest cheating?
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: GendoIkari on October 25, 2012, 12:53:38 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

Iso has single player. I also can't quite tell if you're being sarcastic. I mean, some of what you listed are good things, but some of them are bad things...
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 12:54:59 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.
1: Nominal at best.
2: A downside, as I listed above.
3: A big downside, as I listed above.
4/5: (same thing) Okay, I guess I can give you this one.
6: Doesn't do anything for me.
7: Eh, maybe, sure. "two levels of leader boards". I don't care about leader boards at all, but I can see where one could.
8: A downside. Don't have a Google account; don't care to. Google is evil.
9: Alright, adventure mode. Guests can't try it so I can't comment on it. This might be able to be counted as a positive.
10: I never encountered chat spam in Iso at all. A larger lobby's better, so you might occasionally see any chat at all. Thus, a downside.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 12:56:04 pm
Do you never play games that have mulitple difficulties (Easy, Medium, Hard)? Is any difficulty but the hardest cheating?

Reread what I said, please. I cannot condone a company *selling cheats*. Difficulty levels, fine. But selling (consumed when you use it!) cheats? No. Stay away. FAR, FAR away.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Captain_Frisk on October 25, 2012, 01:01:43 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.
1: Nominal at best.
2: A downside, as I listed above.
3: A big downside, as I listed above.
4/5: (same thing) Okay, I guess I can give you this one.
6: Doesn't do anything for me.
7: Eh, maybe, sure. "two levels of leader boards". I don't care about leader boards at all, but I can see where one could.
8: A downside. Don't have a Google account; don't care to. Google is evil.
9: Alright, adventure mode. Guests can't try it so I can't comment on it. This might be able to be counted as a positive.
10: I never encountered chat spam in Iso at all. A larger lobby's better, so you might occasionally see any chat at all. Thus, a downside.

I in no way implied that these things were better.  Just different.  8 and 10 were obvious snarks.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: ftl on October 25, 2012, 01:04:44 pm
Do you never play games that have mulitple difficulties (Easy, Medium, Hard)? Is any difficulty but the hardest cheating?

Reread what I said, please. I cannot condone a company *selling cheats*. Difficulty levels, fine. But selling (consumed when you use it!) cheats? No. Stay away. FAR, FAR away.

Zaps are the difficulty level for the adventure mode. You can't use them when playing regular Dominion, not adventure mode.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: werothegreat on October 25, 2012, 01:05:03 pm
Trrrrooolllllllllllllllllllll

Seriously, guys, why are we feeding the troll?
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Grujah on October 25, 2012, 01:06:59 pm
Google is evil.

Hey, Google is all BUT evil. It says right so in their motto and everything.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 01:12:10 pm
I understand difficulty levels, but the company sells the zaps for money. It's "pay to win". I don't care if it's adventure mode (which is single player or not). It's NOT kosher to sell, for money, cheats.

$2 for 20 "goko points", which buys 280 coins, which buys 56 zaps.

As for Google not being evil... Their motto is to try to convince you otherwise; they're pretty much textbook. (Just like Cracker Barrel -- the restaurant so bigoted that they hang signs by their door that says they're not.

As for trolling, no, not at all. I'm someone who has many legitimate complaints. People aren't used to real criticism anymore.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Schneau on October 25, 2012, 01:12:13 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

I'm pretty sure Captain_Frisk's tongue is somewhere in his cheek. Though some of these things might enhance gameplay if done right, almost all of the above still have major issues to be worked out or just aren't good ideas in the first place. The AI is bad, Adventure Mode currently sucks, and the leaderboards don't work well. The only thing mentioned here that might be a plus is the official art.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 01:13:11 pm
I understand difficulty levels, but the company sells the zaps for money. It's "pay to win". I don't care if it's adventure mode (which is single player or not). It's NOT kosher to sell, for money, cheats.

$2 for 20 "goko points", which buys 280 coins, which buys 56 zaps.

As for Google not being evil... Their motto is to try to convince you otherwise; they're pretty much textbook. (Just like Cracker Barrel -- the restaurant so bigoted that they hang signs by their door that says they're not.

As for trolling, no, not at all. I'm someone who has many legitimate complaints. People aren't used to real criticism anymore.

You get the coins for free by playing dominion...
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 01:19:10 pm
You get the coins for free by playing dominion...

That's a good thing too. You might almost recoup enough that you lose because of how often the games fail to load andor lose connection.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 01:21:10 pm
You get the coins for free by playing dominion...

That's a good thing too. You might almost recoup enough that you lose because of how often the games fail to load andor lose connection.

Thats my biggest problem is that they aren't using sessions.

However you don't ever lose zaps/coins, it just isn't possible. You lose a match well the zaps you added to that level don't go away they're still there for your retry. I'm wondering if you've actually tried adventure mode/zaps at all.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Captain_Frisk on October 25, 2012, 01:25:43 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

I'm pretty sure Captain_Frisk's tongue is somewhere in his cheek. Though some of these things might enhance gameplay if done right, almost all of the above still have major issues to be worked out or just aren't good ideas in the first place. The AI is bad, Adventure Mode currently sucks, and the leaderboards don't work well. The only thing mentioned here that might be a plus is the official art.

it's about 50/50.  The AI isn't bad.  I've lost to it, and its good for killing time.  Official art is nice.  Adventure mode is strictly better than not having it etc. etc.

For a normal person, goko is reasonable.  With 5960 officially ranked (and probably another 3k from BSW etc.) games, I'm far from a normal user. 

Oh - and the "it's still in beta" excuse is hogwash.  They tried to launch a much worse version as the real deal months ago.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Donald X. on October 25, 2012, 01:28:24 pm
* Sinfully ugly. Animations everywhere. Flashing. Stupid design decisions for placement of things. Even if you tell it "very fast" animations. And if you speed up the animations so you can play your turn better, you have an even harder time following what your opponents are doing.
* All but impossible to keep track of what your opponents are doing unless you really want to click the read log button every turn.
At normal speed I think there's plenty of time to see everything your opponents do. Fast is too fast to see what's going on. On very fast however the status line tells you what cards they gained, which is often all you care about, and when you specifically want to know something else there's the log.

* Sounds are terrible.
Well I wouldn't really know. As with all computer games I play, I turn the sounds off and listen to music. As we speak I am listening to That Time by Regina Spektor.

* The UI itself is atrocious.
I think the UI is fine. It has certain specific things that need to be improved, like Wishing Well, and other stuff that could be better, but overall it's fine. At one point it had serious issues but I don't think it does currently. I don't feel like I'm fighting the interface.

* Load times are unbearably long.
* Everything's slow too. When I click to "play treasures" for example, it takes multiple seconds to process.
This could be some combination of, your OS isn't supported yet, your browser isn't supported yet, your internet connection is slow, or you have been on at times when they had server issues. When it's working, with my browser/OS/connection, it plays at a reasonable speed, except for the case of "click on multiple cards" things like Chapel, where it should buffer the set of choices and send them at once.

* No one-player "try things out" option? (Ie, single-seat tables).
I thought there was. I'm not checking.

* Multiplayer "play now" just joins you to the first table, rather than you having a preference of how big a table you want.
* Multiplayer really pushes 6 seat games. Dominion is terrible with that many players; it should default to the real value: 4.
I wouldn't say "really pushes" so much as "allows." There are not many 6-player games being played, so if you insist that it pushes them, man, it is ineffectual at it. It's fair to say that the default shouldn't be 6; if we went by, what will most people be playing, it should be 2.

* Multiplayer lobby is pretty damned fat and ugly. No sorting, filtering...
* This might be because I'm a guest -- is there no option to have the cards NOT show up until the game starts? Blind games are necessary.
* Apparently no restricting of generated kingdoms (why the hell did Goko rename them to "decks" instead of kingdoms?) by sets.
* Or any randomizing by any OTHER criteria ("must include at least 1 reaction" etc).
Better matching, and ways to muck with the set-of-10 without picking the specific cards, are features I expect to show up eventually.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Donald X. on October 25, 2012, 01:37:22 pm
I understand difficulty levels, but the company sells the zaps for money. It's "pay to win". I don't care if it's adventure mode (which is single player or not). It's NOT kosher to sell, for money, cheats.

$2 for 20 "goko points", which buys 280 coins, which buys 56 zaps.
If all you play is the campaigns and you just crush them, you will actually have a point where you run out of dominion coins that you could have used to buy more campaigns with, so that, if you don't want to play any non-campaign games ever, you would have to spend money on gokoins to buy dominion coins to buy campaigns. If you ever play any non-campaign games though, you will have infinite dominion coins, making campaigns and zaps strictly free. For any normal actual Dominion player, there is really no possibility of spending cash on these things.

Zaps only work in the campaigns (adventures), which are only single-player. Currently the campaigns are too hard (or in a few places, too easy), but that will be fixed. In the end zaps will do two things: 1) give you a choice of set-up conditions, via free zaps, and 2) let you essentially skip a level.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 01:40:37 pm
This could be some combination of, your OS isn't supported yet, your browser isn't supported yet, your internet connection is slow, or you have been on at times when they had server issues. When it's working, with my browser/OS/connection, it plays at a reasonable speed, except for the case of "click on multiple cards" things like Chapel, where it should buffer the set of choices and send them at once.
Win7-64 Firefox latest on a major research university pipe. Nope. Goko's just clearly not so good at making things.

Zaps only work in the campaigns (adventures), which are only single-player.
It doesn't matter to me that they only work in single-player adventures -- they're SELLING. cheats. for real money.


Sorry, Mr. V, but they're just not doing good things to your game.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Drab Emordnilap on October 25, 2012, 01:41:26 pm
One issue I don't think I've seen mentioned yet:

Everyone has said that the in-built solution to 6 being the default number of table seats is "You can start a game with empty seats", but what if I want to play a six, or a four player game? How can I tell which games will wait until they're full before they start, and which the host just wants to play a two player game and will start the game before anyone else sits down?
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 01:44:15 pm
One issue I don't think I've seen mentioned yet:

Everyone has said that the in-built solution to 6 being the default number of table seats is "You can start a game with empty seats", but what if I want to play a six, or a four player game? How can I tell which games will wait until they're full before they start, and which the host just wants to play a two player game and will start the game before anyone else sits down?

True. Ideally people won't be lazy and will set it to 2 if they want 2. The other thing is you might host a 6 player game but start it early because it's taking far too long to get full.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Donald X. on October 25, 2012, 01:47:38 pm
Win7-64 Firefox latest on a major research university pipe. Nope. Goko's just clearly not so good at making things.
IIRC Firefox is in fact not supported yet. I am using Chrome.

It doesn't matter to me that they only work in single-player adventures -- they're SELLING. cheats. for real money.
It's fair to say that they *intended* to do this. They have not managed it though and are giving up on it. Again, you get Dominion coins for playing, and spend those on zaps. There is an option to buy them for money, but no-one ever would, because you have plenty of Dominion coins without spending money.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: hsiale on October 25, 2012, 01:53:48 pm
At normal speed I think there's plenty of time to see everything your opponents do. Fast is too fast to see what's going on. On very fast however the status line tells you what cards they gained, which is often all you care about, and when you specifically want to know something else there's the log.
It would be really useful if you wouldn't have to turn the log on and off each time you want to check it. Having a log box somewhere on the table all the time showing a few latest lines would make it way faster to read.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Captain_Frisk on October 25, 2012, 02:00:22 pm
At normal speed I think there's plenty of time to see everything your opponents do. Fast is too fast to see what's going on. On very fast however the status line tells you what cards they gained, which is often all you care about, and when you specifically want to know something else there's the log.
It would be really useful if you wouldn't have to turn the log on and off each time you want to check it. Having a log box somewhere on the table all the time showing a few latest lines would make it way faster to read.

Also - while they have aimed it at ipad resolution (1024 x 768) - it isn't playable on an ipad right now... and most of us are sitting with big juicy monitors.  The extra space could do something like leave the play log up all the time.

If they did that, i'd probably be playing.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Drab Emordnilap on October 25, 2012, 02:01:56 pm
The other thing is you might host a 6 player game but start it early because it's taking far too long to get full.

But how is that fair to the other three people who've been waiting for the 6 player game to fill? Now they're stuck playing a 4 player game they weren't necessarily interested in.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Ozle on October 25, 2012, 02:03:14 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

Pah, my latest game of Mafia has all of those!*


*Some are still in development
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: theory on October 25, 2012, 02:03:57 pm
Single Player Mafia?  Imagine the WIFOM.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 02:05:16 pm
Single Player Mafia?  Imagine the WIFOM.

Just play it Morgrim style. self hammer! You get a double win for that right?
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Captain_Frisk on October 25, 2012, 02:06:26 pm
Mogrim7 Style - the upcoming hit video from psy.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: ftl on October 25, 2012, 02:10:23 pm
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1204.msg124562#msg124562
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Ozle on October 25, 2012, 02:11:45 pm
Single Player Mafia?  Imagine the WIFOM.

I have multiple personalities so it gets pretty intense!
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: michaeljb on October 25, 2012, 02:18:02 pm
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1204.msg124562#msg124562

Glad I'm not the only one.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Kuildeous on October 25, 2012, 02:43:17 pm
It doesn't matter to me that they only work in single-player adventures -- they're SELLING. cheats. for real money.

If it's part of the rules, then it's not cheating.

Campaign mode is designed to give you a ridiculously easy game at the start of the chapter. You trounce the AI the first few times; if you don't then you had bad luck or bad play and need to face that opponent again anyway.

Then it gets harder. It gets to the point where it's almost impossible to win. You are allowed to customize your deck and your opponent's deck ahead of time. You start off with zaps, and you can gain zaps by playing more Dominion. You could bypass that part with real money if time is a factor.

These are in the rules. This is how campaign mode is played. It'd be cheating if you could somehow change the cards without using zaps. Maybe there's a security hole I don't know about, but I haven't heard of such a thing. Therefore, there is no cheating in campaign mode.

While I disagree that Goko sucks (sure, it needs improvement but "suck" is such a strong word), I can respect most of your points….except this one. It's so full of hyperbole and fearmongering that it's hard to take you seriously. I have to cover up that part of the screen to see the validity in the rest of your post.

Is campaign mode for you? Probably not. It's not my cup of tea either. It passes the time when I don't have the attention to devote to a live game. But screaming about cheats where there aren't any doesn't exactly earn a lot of respect, especially since it looks like you created this account for the intent of ranting.

Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Ozle on October 25, 2012, 02:45:31 pm
Ok, imagine there is no Adventure mode (like on Iso or the knockoffs)

Would Goko suck more? Or suck less?
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Kirian on October 25, 2012, 02:47:25 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

Heh, nice CF.  Now get your tongue out of your cheek. :p
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: slimeball9999 on October 25, 2012, 02:51:08 pm
These are in the rules. This is how campaign mode is played. It'd be cheating if you could somehow change the cards without using zaps. Maybe there's a security hole I don't know about, but I haven't heard of such a thing. Therefore, there is no cheating in campaign mode.
Goko [the company] has it built into the game for people to pay money to win at it. That puts them in the same pits as Zynga and co. "Pay to win" (single player or not) is bad. I want nothing to do with a company that has that as part of its business model. This is indeed a separate issue from Dominion.Goko [the game] being rubbish.

Ok, imagine there is no Adventure mode (like on Iso or the knockoffs) Would Goko suck more? Or suck less?
It would suck just the same.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: GendoIkari on October 25, 2012, 02:56:23 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

Despite understanding the tongue-in-cheek nature of this, I still want to get an explanation for #5. Iso does have single player; and I'm not sure what you mean by "you can choose 2, 3 or 4 players - but not 5 or 6"... both Goko and Iso allow 1-6 players; I think Iso also allows 7 and 8...
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Ozle on October 25, 2012, 02:57:37 pm
Single player is different from solo play ibelieve he means, in the same way you cN play warcraft 2 against AI
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 02:58:11 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

Despite understanding the tongue-in-cheek nature of this, I still want to get an explanation for #5. Iso does have single player; and I'm not sure what you mean by "you can choose 2, 3 or 4 players - but not 5 or 6"... both Goko and Iso allow 1-6 players; I think Iso also allows 7 and 8...

He means that if you have the table set to 5 or 6 on goko single player doesn't work.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: GendoIkari on October 25, 2012, 03:00:10 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

Despite understanding the tongue-in-cheek nature of this, I still want to get an explanation for #5. Iso does have single player; and I'm not sure what you mean by "you can choose 2, 3 or 4 players - but not 5 or 6"... both Goko and Iso allow 1-6 players; I think Iso also allows 7 and 8...

He means that if you have the table set to 5 or 6 on goko single player doesn't work.

Now that's bizarre... what would be the reason for such a limitation?
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Captain_Frisk on October 25, 2012, 03:01:25 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

Despite understanding the tongue-in-cheek nature of this, I still want to get an explanation for #5. Iso does have single player; and I'm not sure what you mean by "you can choose 2, 3 or 4 players - but not 5 or 6"... both Goko and Iso allow 1-6 players; I think Iso also allows 7 and 8...

He means that if you have the table set to 5 or 6 on goko single player doesn't work.

Actually i was referring ot the single player button on the home screen.  Press it and you get a quick math against 1,2 or 3 opponents.

I don't know about solo play as guest, but i've definitely done it as logged in user... accidentally hitting play before putting a bot in.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 25, 2012, 03:04:52 pm
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

Despite understanding the tongue-in-cheek nature of this, I still want to get an explanation for #5. Iso does have single player; and I'm not sure what you mean by "you can choose 2, 3 or 4 players - but not 5 or 6"... both Goko and Iso allow 1-6 players; I think Iso also allows 7 and 8...

He means that if you have the table set to 5 or 6 on goko single player doesn't work.

Actually i was referring ot the single player button on the home screen.  Press it and you get a quick math against 1,2 or 3 opponents.

I don't know about solo play as guest, but i've definitely done it as logged in user... accidentally hitting play before putting a bot in.

Ohh. well solo play I've tried today and it doesn't work anymore.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: kn1tt3r on October 26, 2012, 03:03:24 am
I don't agree with most of the Goko bashing going on, because well, it's not perfect, but it's fine I think. But this one is really something that could be improved:

* Sinfully ugly. Animations everywhere. Flashing. Stupid design decisions for placement of things. Even if you tell it "very fast" animations. And if you speed up the animations so you can play your turn better, you have an even harder time following what your opponents are doing.
* All but impossible to keep track of what your opponents are doing unless you really want to click the read log button every turn.
At normal speed I think there's plenty of time to see everything your opponents do. Fast is too fast to see what's going on. On very fast however the status line tells you what cards they gained, which is often all you care about, and when you specifically want to know something else there's the log.

The point is that your opponent's actions are really fast, while some of your actions are painfully slow (like trashing stuff with Chapel for example - there is quite a long pause between each trashed card that seems not really necessary to me).

And of course there is the in-game log and the status line, but the status line information is really limited (and I often don't recongnize it, since it's sort of integrated into the overall background design), and as for the ingame log, it would really help if you could open it in a seperate window.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Brane on October 26, 2012, 05:07:36 am
Yep I would agree that the interface needs some work when it comes to playing your own cards - I've realized I was deciding against buying some cards not because of my strategy, but because they slowed down gameplay to uncomfortable levels.

Just yesterday I played a match where my opponent decided to buy as many Villages/Spies/Militias as possible, and I got meself a few Moats... and man did that "play reaction"/"done with reactions" dance got old very quickly. In the end I resigned, I just couldn't bare the thought of yet another turn chokeful of Spies. He beat me through attrition, what can I say. Nice work. Gee gee.  :)
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: cactus on October 26, 2012, 07:07:38 am
As a long-time Isotropic player (and not one who wins lots of games, has a high rating, etc)... Goko sucks. I can say with certainty not only will I not be paying for it, I won't even be using its free features.

* Sinfully ugly. Animations everywhere. Flashing. Stupid design decisions for placement of things. Even if you tell it "very fast" animations. And if you speed up the animations so you can play your turn better, you have an even harder time following what your opponents are doing.
* All but impossible to keep track of what your opponents are doing unless you really want to click the read log button every turn.
* Sounds are terrible. Too many of them (really, a "shuffle deck" sound). And the few useful ones ("It's your turn!") are annoying. Background music? (Yes, I know there are options for it -- but sound is currently binary all on or off.)
* The UI itself is atrocious. I really have to click "done" before it lets me play treasures? Why are there no hover context menus to show cards instead of me having to click on it? (I know clicking's there for so-called 'mobile' compatibility -- but no reason to not include mouseovers).
* Load times are unbearably long.
* Everything's slow too. When I click to "play treasures" for example, it takes multiple seconds to process.
* No one-player "try things out" option? (Ie, single-seat tables).
* Multiplayer "play now" just joins you to the first table, rather than you having a preference of how big a table you want.
* Multiplayer really pushes 6 seat games. Dominion is terrible with that many players; it should default to the real value: 4.
* Multiplayer lobby is pretty damned fat and ugly. No sorting, filtering...
* This might be because I'm a guest -- is there no option to have the cards NOT show up until the game starts? Blind games are necessary.
* Apparently no restricting of generated kingdoms (why the hell did Goko rename them to "decks" instead of kingdoms?) by sets.
* Or any randomizing by any OTHER criteria ("must include at least 1 reaction" etc).

It's really an embarrassment to Don X's name that such an elegant game gets such a shoddy official digital release.

Constructive criticism? I can't really say that it does anything well...

I for one agree with pretty much all of these points. Some will say that the criticisms of Goko are unfair and overly negative. I think on the whole they are not negative enough. They took Dominion and tried to turn it into Farmville (and they did a completely incompetent job of it). It was broken at launch, it was broken at second launch, and months later it is still broken.

"It's really an embarrassment.... that such an elegant game gets such a shoddy official digital release." +1
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: cactus on October 26, 2012, 07:08:41 am
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. Official Art
2. Music
3. Animations
4. Artificial Intelligence
5. Single Player (its still there - even for guests - you can choose 2,3, or 4 players - but not 5 or 6)
6. Cool 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to constrain their cards
8. Rewards for playing with your google account.  Iso gives you no such bonus.
9. Adventure mode
10. Far fewer people in lobby - so you don't have to worry about chat spam.

All of this I agree with also.... especially loving the faux irish music.... and the avatars that all look exactly the same.... and the compulsory googlism.... just all of it really, I love it all.

Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Ozle on October 26, 2012, 07:14:01 am
So - goko has a bunch of things that Iso doesn't

1. The same art as the cards
2. Repetitive Music
3. Too fast or Too slow animations
4. An Artifical intelligence that my dog has just beaten
5. A mode for people who cannot beat real players
6. Crap 3d avatars
7. A casual leaderboard for people who want to game the system
8. Requirement for special account in order to get everything
9. Pay-to-win mode
10. An mainly empty lobby

*translated*
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Donald X. on October 26, 2012, 07:40:55 am
The point is that your opponent's actions are really fast, while some of your actions are painfully slow (like trashing stuff with Chapel for example - there is quite a long pause between each trashed card that seems not really necessary to me).
The problem with Chapel is that it communicates after each click. Ideally it would buffer the set of choices and communicate them once (same for Cellar etc.). If that were fixed then the only speed issue it would have is whatever speed issue you have everywhere - if it's slow to communicate then you are seeing that constantly, it's just emphasized by Chapel.

And of course there is the in-game log and the status line, but the status line information is really limited (and I often don't recongnize it, since it's sort of integrated into the overall background design), and as for the ingame log, it would really help if you could open it in a seperate window.
Obv. it would be nice to have the log onscreen if your screen is resolute enough. I would go for that rather than a separate window; if my screen won't hold the window then I'm not sure it's helping.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Kirian on October 26, 2012, 08:45:25 am
I don't know about solo play as guest, but i've definitely done it as logged in user... accidentally hitting play before putting a bot in.

Ohh. well solo play I've tried today and it doesn't work anymore.

Confirmed.  Can't play a 1-player game any more.  They're really breaking new ground here.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: GendoIkari on October 26, 2012, 10:53:14 am
I don't know about solo play as guest, but i've definitely done it as logged in user... accidentally hitting play before putting a bot in.

Ohh. well solo play I've tried today and it doesn't work anymore.

Confirmed.  Can't play a 1-player game any more.  They're really breaking new ground here.

Well the official rules of Dominion don't allow for 1-player games, so I'm sure that they're just doing everything they can to keep true to the spirit of Dominion itself; trying to avoid adding any unnecessary things that aren't part of the actual-

Ok, I simply can't say that with a straight face.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Grujah on October 26, 2012, 11:24:32 am
The point is that your opponent's actions are really fast, while some of your actions are painfully slow (like trashing stuff with Chapel for example - there is quite a long pause between each trashed card that seems not really necessary to me).
The problem with Chapel is that it communicates after each click. Ideally it would buffer the set of choices and communicate them once (same for Cellar etc.). If that were fixed then the only speed issue it would have is whatever speed issue you have everywhere - if it's slow to communicate then you are seeing that constantly, it's just emphasized by Chapel.

And of course there is the in-game log and the status line, but the status line information is really limited (and I often don't recongnize it, since it's sort of integrated into the overall background design), and as for the ingame log, it would really help if you could open it in a seperate window.
Obv. it would be nice to have the log onscreen if your screen is resolute enough. I would go for that rather than a separate window; if my screen won't hold the window then I'm not sure it's helping.

There are stuff that are generally slow, like animation when cards goes from "in-your-face" middle of screen to discard - i feel it is slow, and doesn't respond while it lasts. This might be worst in multiplayer game where you play a mountebank.

Log still doesn't work as it should - no scrollbutton support and if you drag it and move the pointer to the right it often loses focus.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Brane on October 26, 2012, 01:17:58 pm
I don't know about solo play as guest, but i've definitely done it as logged in user... accidentally hitting play before putting a bot in.

Ohh. well solo play I've tried today and it doesn't work anymore.

Confirmed.  Can't play a 1-player game any more.  They're really breaking new ground here.

Well the official rules of Dominion don't allow for 1-player games, so I'm sure that they're just doing everything they can to keep true to the spirit of Dominion itself; trying to avoid adding any unnecessary things that aren't part of the actual-

Ok, I simply can't say that with a straight face.

Well played.  :)
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: GendoIkari on October 26, 2012, 01:33:08 pm
The point is that your opponent's actions are really fast, while some of your actions are painfully slow (like trashing stuff with Chapel for example - there is quite a long pause between each trashed card that seems not really necessary to me).
The problem with Chapel is that it communicates after each click. Ideally it would buffer the set of choices and communicate them once (same for Cellar etc.). If that were fixed then the only speed issue it would have is whatever speed issue you have everywhere - if it's slow to communicate then you are seeing that constantly, it's just emphasized by Chapel.

And of course there is the in-game log and the status line, but the status line information is really limited (and I often don't recongnize it, since it's sort of integrated into the overall background design), and as for the ingame log, it would really help if you could open it in a seperate window.
Obv. it would be nice to have the log onscreen if your screen is resolute enough. I would go for that rather than a separate window; if my screen won't hold the window then I'm not sure it's helping.

There are stuff that are generally slow, like animation when cards goes from "in-your-face" middle of screen to discard - i feel it is slow, and doesn't respond while it lasts. This might be worst in multiplayer game where you play a mountebank.

Log still doesn't work as it should - no scrollbutton support and if you drag it and move the pointer to the right it often loses focus.

Does the log show the entire game? Or just the last turn or couple turns? If it shows the entire game, that's certainly game-changing and allows for cheating. Iso seems to show the entire game in the log from time to time; some sort of random bug.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Insomniac on October 26, 2012, 01:36:57 pm
It shows the entire game last time I checked
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 26, 2012, 08:52:04 pm
I only have one real problem with Goko Dominion. It is SLOW. And, I constantly need to clear my cache. Like after every game, I clear my cache, and I notice that if it is a long game, towards the end, my computer gets really slow. I have 1 GB of Ram. Maybe, I need more RAM, but really, I shouldn't have to get more RAM just to play an online card game. Also, I am using Chrome Browser. If there is a browser that is better for Goko Dominion, please let me know.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Beyond Awesome on October 26, 2012, 08:52:23 pm
It shows the entire game last time I checked

Yes, it does.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: ftl on October 26, 2012, 08:53:19 pm
Nope, Chrome is pretty much the best at the moment, it's worse on Firefox.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Morgrim7 on October 27, 2012, 08:14:44 am
How many Goko vs. Isotropic threads do we have now?
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: SwitchedFromStarcraft on October 27, 2012, 09:03:47 am
How many Goko vs. Isotropic threads do we have now?
I haven't counted, but the over/under in Vegas is 163.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: vvuk on October 28, 2012, 04:38:52 pm
Nope, Chrome is pretty much the best at the moment, it's worse on Firefox.

Firefox dev here.  Yep, it's worse in Firefox performance wise, those these days it seems to mostly 'work'.  Goko Dominion seems to be being developed basically as a WebKit-only (happens to work sorta ok in Chrome), or maybe even iPad-only.  Notice the fixed resolution?  1024x768, which is the iPad resolution (scaled up for newer Retina iPads).  That seems to be -the- primary target user, and this is visible from the UI that seems intended to be played for touch.

Those are my #1 and #2 frustrations with Goko right now -- performance is overall terrible, and a fixed iPad screen resolution is annoying to frustrating on anything but an iPad.  I'm sure it's fantastic to play Dominion online on an iPad.  But making my gameplay suffer on my laptop or on any of the Android tablets that I have (none have the 4:3 aspect ratio of the iPad, and the game doesn't do a few simple things to let itself scale usefully) is obnoxious.  If they wanted to release an iPad Dominion, they should have done just that.

FWIW, I don't necessarily agree with most of the original post; most of it boils down to "goko isn't isotropic", which is totally true, and it's also absolutely fine.  The Goko implementation is pretty (too pretty in some cases), but lacks some "advanced" functions -- such as better constraints for randomizing kingdoms.  But I'm sure (hope) that those will come.  (On a side note, without having any of the market background, I think leaving isotropic up would have negligible effect on goko's bottom line -- isotropic is for diehard dominion players, whereas goko's version has significant mass-market appeal.  The number of people who would 'prefer' the isotropic UI and implementation is likely to be tiny compared to those who will chose Goko.)
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Captain_Frisk on October 28, 2012, 08:54:39 pm
Those are my #1 and #2 frustrations with Goko right now -- performance is overall terrible, and a fixed iPad screen resolution is annoying to frustrating on anything but an iPad.  I'm sure it's fantastic to play Dominion online on an iPad.  But making my gameplay suffer on my laptop or on any of the Android tablets that I have (none have the 4:3 aspect ratio of the iPad, and the game doesn't do a few simple things to let itself scale usefully) is obnoxious.  If they wanted to release an iPad Dominion, they should have done just that.

I can speak from experience that if you think that goko sucks in firefox on your big beefy computer, running it on an ipad in safari might cause you to broaden your vocabulary.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: aaron0013 on October 29, 2012, 08:05:34 am
I believe they are making an app for it.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: SwitchedFromStarcraft on October 29, 2012, 09:55:44 am
Now THAT'S funny.
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: Captain_Frisk on October 29, 2012, 10:05:02 am
I believe they are making an app for it.

I think what they've said so far is that a native (ie - optimized for ios app) is "planned", but the first version that is released is really just a wrapper around the browser - so that it can be installed as a little app, and Apple can take it's micropayment cut. 
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: vvuk on December 03, 2012, 11:04:36 am
Nope, Chrome is pretty much the best at the moment, it's worse on Firefox.

Firefox dev here.  Yep, it's worse in Firefox performance wise, those these days it seems to mostly 'work'.

Replying to my own post here -- it looks like perf is bad in Firefox 17 and earlier, but it's fine in 18/19 (currently beta/Aurora).  Pretty smooth there and playable without being jarring.  It doesn't solve the other Goko issues, but at least perf isn't a problem any more :)
Title: Re: Goko, quite simply, sucks
Post by: hsiale on December 03, 2012, 02:10:07 pm
I use Firefox 17 (on Windows 7) and play at Goko a lot with no performance problems.