3. Ability to select "timed game" as an option. One way to implement a "timed game" would be to enable the players to set a base time (i.e, 5 minutes, whatever), and an increment (i.e., 2 seconds). Each player starts with the base time, and during his or her turn, it ticks down, while being increased by the increment with every action taken. So the opponents' base time is the "dead time" I'm willing to invest in the game, since the increments offset the time spent by the opponent actually playing and taking action. Players could even set separate (personal) base times and increments (perhaps as a profile setting), and the matching feature could enable the ability to accept only opponents meeting a chosen threshold for base time / increment. In this way, players could be operating with different starting "base and increment" times, while all players are satisfied with the timing setting.
In my oppinion a timer should not be a standard feature for Dominion. It can be something like a special add-on, but the way Dominion is designed doesn't really fit a timer.
I think a lot of you are a bit influenced by chess, where timers work great since every move (not the thinking about it, but the move itself) takes almost the exact same amount of time. In Dominion, however, the difference between resolving Smithy and Scrying Pool can be huge. This means (and you've seen this with the Blitz feature in the MMF mod) that a timer greatly influences the strength of certain cards and the viability of certain strategies, which is not really the point of a timer.
Well, the idea is that *every* action you take during your turn would trigger the increment. So every time you play Scrying Pool on your turn, you trigger the increment. Every time you play Smithy, you trigger the increment. This way, it does not matter which cards are in the kingdom; it just matters that play proceeds with reasonable flow, even if entire turns vary drastically in terms of their actual length. Both a quick Smithy turn and a lengthy Scrying Pool turn would result in (approximately) the same time remaining in the bank, if the player plays both turns with the same pace.
Your turn:
Play Cartographer (+5 seconds), draw card, look at top 4 cards, decide which to discard, rearrange the rest (takes 8 seconds)
Play Scrying Pool (+5 seconds), decide on opponent's card, decide on own card, draw a shitload of cards (takes 5 seconds)
Net: -3 seconds
My turn:
Play Village (+5 seconds), draw card (takes 1 second)
Play Smithy (+5 seconds), draw 3 cards (takes 1 second)
Net: +8 seconds
This is remedied by having *every decision acted upon* trigger the increment, as I've been trying to suggest. (I think I've not been as clear as I should have been.) When you make the decision on the 4 cards for Cartographer, that is 4 triggers of the increment. Scrying Pool triggers it 3 times: when you play the card, when you decide about your top card, and when you decide about your opponents' top card.
The idea here is NOT to make time / speed a way to win a game. The idea is to ensure that when I start playing a game, I will ACTUALLY be playing a game, not sitting there after each of my turns until my opponent decides to return from surfing the web while I'm playing my turn. Since each person chooses his or her own base time + increment, and chooses an acceptable threshold for his/her opponent's base time and threshold, the result would be a game that flows according to a pace both players are happy with. If it's not flowing at that pace, the player causing the delay will end up losing once time runs out,
which is exactly the point. If you've caused the game to drag on longer than the amount of dead time agreed to by your opponent, then that is the very reason the timer is in place, so your opponent should be credited with a victory and both can go their separate ways, either to finish whatever random task you were trying to accomplish while playing Dominion, or to play a game with an opponent who will remain attentive and active during the game.
This would be a setting ("Timer" or something) just like the current setting regarding the point counter: you could set it to "Always," you could set it to "Prefer to use it," you could set it to "Prefer not to use it," and you could set it to "Never." If you choose any of the first 3 settings, you'd need to specify your base time and increment, as well as the acceptable level for your opponents' base time and increment.
Thus, for those saying that it would slow down your ability to get an automatch, you would just set it to one of the "Prefer..." settings, which would match you as you prefer (if available), or against whichever opponent is ready to play if your preference is not available.