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4576

General Discussion / Re: Moral quandry....about travelling to work

« on: May 08, 2014, 06:41:09 pm »

Housing markets are awful, especially in London, going up about 10% a year.
2 bedroomed flats in really crappy areas are about £180k at the moment.
To buy an actual house anywhere in London where your likely not to get stabbed on your doorstep is at least £300k

Moving closer isn't an option, as work is in the middle of nowhere and I like to go out in london

Have you considered Michigan? According to Neil Gaiman, in Michigan you can get an Addams Family house for what in London would get you a parking space.

It's interesting that when you cite how expensive houses are in London, I think, wow, how affordable. Half a million dollars does not get you out of get-stabbed territory here in the SF bay area.

4577

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 08, 2014, 06:15:27 pm »

I see you've mentioned Fallout 3 a few times...are you a fan of the Elder Scrolls games at all? I absolutely loved Morrowind, Oblivion not as much. Skyrim is really fun and beautiful, but it feels like it doesn't have quite the same "depth" as its predecessors.

I've only played Oblivion and Skyrim.

Walking around in both games is fun. In Skyrim when you pick a flower, it shows that you picked it; in Oblivion, the flowers look better. Skyrim maybe gets the edge here; it gets a lot out of its environment premise.

In both games, dungeons are not as good as wilderness. They are just too repetitive. They kind of tried to address this in Skyrim but it's still true, except that one place, that was cool. The Oblivion planes are cool very very briefly, then crazy repetitive. For a 2nd play-through, just never do anything on the main quest, and so much for that nonsense.

Combat in both games is bad. You have had the experience almost immediately. I would recommend that they try something drastically different there next time, or make a game with no combat.

Both games have bad interface problems. Oblivion is mostly okay but man you could do with a better way to sell stuff. In Skyrim you are horribly punished for wanting to make potions. And unreadable perk trees, what's up with that. Oh they're so pretty and awful.

It's cool that the world scales to meet your level, once you know about it. It's bad when you don't know about it, and they could have been clearer there. But you know, you will not see everything in your first play-through of Oblivion. You can start over, teleport to a random town you haven't hung out in, and be a 1st level adventurer there; you aren't stuck playing the easy areas, they are all easy. The way you get better at skills works well for some skills, not so well for others. I don't want the game telling me to just randomly cast light spells a lot so my illusion skill can go up.

They did a poor job on the perks in Skyrim, even ignoring the interface, but it's still nicer to have them than not.

Overall I enjoyed both games, would play another. Not an MMO, but a real game, sure. Shivering Isles was fun, it was sad that the main plot was so much like the Oblivion gates, and the dungeons again get real repetitive real fast, but the giant mushrooms keep you entertained for the duration. I haven't played any DLC.

Fallout 3 is a step up in almost all respects. Combat is not great but still way better. Exploring the world is great. The dungeons get repetitive, especially the ruined subways, but they stay entertaining for longer; like, this is just another vault, but they each have a gimmick. Building up your guy is more fun; the perks are way better (though still room for improvement there). The interface has no major problems, wtf. You don't get to pick flowers but well you can't have everything.

Fallout 3: New Vegas, sans DLC, sucks. The world sucks, that's the biggest thing. It just has so little to offer you.

I didn't try New Vegas until you could get a version with all the DLC. The first expansion, uh the hotel one, the environment outside is cute, would have made a nice section of F:NV, but the hotel is dull and overall it's not great. The second expansion, the canyon one, is very scenic and overall entertaining. The third expansion, the mad scientist crater, is fantastic, just fantastic. The fourth expansion, the uh bridge over the wasteland, is okay. So, to make New Vegas good, they could have combined all the DLC, focused on the mad scientist crater as the centerpiece, maybe a third of the map, had a nice section of canyon, another third, stuck the hotel outside area in a corner as one dungeon why not, had the 4th DLC as a subplot, and just had as little content from the actual New Vegas as possible.

4578

Rules Questions / Re: Question about Remodel

« on: May 08, 2014, 07:47:17 am »

There exist no cards in Dominion that allow the player to gain Action cards to hand. There must be a good reason for why that is.

It tends to be crazy but is not impossible to do. There are two good examples in the outtakes article in the Cornucopia section.

On the first line we have Craftsman: "+1 action, remodel a card to hand." It died because it's insane. Compare Upgrade; putting the card in your hand is like +1 card only better, and you're getting +$2 to Upgrade's +$1.

On the second line we have Craftsman: "+1 card +1 action, discard x cards, gain a card costing up to $x to hand." That's much harder to abuse. It's so hard to abuse that some people didn't like it much and I replaced it. It had a few fans, but other stuff was trying to get into the set, so I didn't keep working on it. Obv. you could try charging less or adding +1 of something.

So, I did try the concept, multiple times (including on other cards in other sets); it died each time, but for different reasons. It's plausible that there's a good approach (feel free to work on this project in the appropriate forum).

4579

Dominion General Discussion / Re: 206th card

« on: May 08, 2014, 01:30:01 am »

All I ask is that Goko makes this purchasable. I already have the 5 promos, so it is impossible for me to get otherwise unless I can outright buy it. Oh mighty Donald X. can you please tell MakingFun to do this? I mean what would they rather have, money or frustrated customers?

Right, is it really that important that we play the adventures? I'd pay actual money for Governor/Envoy/WV.

The idea at one point was that there would be multiple ways to get promos; adventures were just one way. The idea also was that adventures would be fun rather than awful. If you couldn't win tournaments and didn't want to shell out money, it would be nice that you could play some fun games of Dominion to get the promos. Obv. it has not worked out like that.

Obv. there's no point to programming the promo if you can't get it. At the same time they are extremely mindful of the need to make money from online Dominion. So I wouldn't worry there.

4580

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 07, 2014, 07:03:59 pm »

You've talked a lot about why spin-offs are better than more expansions, but not much about the other way around.

The advantage an expansion has over Dominion is that you can combine it with Dominion. You already have so much of that that that isn't swaying me. That that that.

Let's take your example of Dominion-with-a-Board, or DWAB. Although the board gives you new things to do, presumably a lot of the old things are still valid. In theory, this means that you'd just be reusing a bunch of card effects from Dominion. Smithy, for instance, is strongly likely to make an appearance.

The potential deckbuilding games I've worked on so far have not reused much from Dominion.

Any game with cards will have certain things that overlap - there are cards you draw and so a card can draw cards. Smithy is in lots of games. At the same time I try to focus on whatever is unique to that game, to do the new things that are possible, to do the classic effects that don't always work. A good example is "Return a card from your discard pile to your hand." It's a Magic staple but doesn't make sense for most games. So, when it does make sense, I go for it.

Anyway that isn't an issue; I am not looking at making a deckbuilding game with a huge card-mix overlap with Dominion.

Maybe I'm wrong. If nothing else, I suppose the cost system could be wholly different. You may get rid of the restrictions on Actions or Buys. That would severely reduce the number of cards you could make, but they would be supplemented by the new board-based effects.

The way to think of deckbuilding is, it's like a tableau, but with reduced complexity, because you aren't staring at all of it all the time. A tableau, like the cards you spread out in front of you in Race for the Galaxy / San Juan. You have a bunch of abilities and as it happens you shuffle them together.

Are tableau games stuck being clones of Race for the Galaxy? They aren't.

The other thing is that it just seems to me that you already made a deck-building game. All your other released/announced games are very different from Dominion and from each other.

I don't know what you mean by this. Yes I already made one. And publishers and fans would like another one.

As someone who already plays mostly with 2 sets at a time, I'm biased, but personally I'd rather see more expansions like Alchemy that need/want multiple cards out at once. Sure, part of the beauty of Dominion is being able to combine everything, but if that's standing in the way of creating more Dominion experiences, then maybe it's not worth mandating.

Enough people didn't like that that it doesn't make sense to do it. I should do something else, that isn't known to have issues.

You see this a lot on Mark Rosewater's blog. People say over and over how they want to return to Kamigawa. It was an unpopular setting so they are not returning there. It makes no sense to return there. Having fans doesn't change the fact that some other thing would have more fans.

4581

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 07, 2014, 06:46:03 pm »

You're just saying that because of the tiny thrill each completed post gives you.

I have clearly offended you - I apologise for that, it was not my intent.

I was just being hilarious dude. If you spelled apologize with a z you would never think I'd been offended there. (I am saying that Americans are rude (it's either that, or I'm some kind of monster).)

In Diablo II (a game not dissimilar to Fallout 3), you could argue that you are conditioned to expect meaningful loot when you kill a monster (normally by repeatedly clicking).  At the start of the game this happens every few minutes.  As the game progresses the intervals become longer and longer, and yet you keep clicking.  Obviously there are many more levels to it then that (and of course the world exploration and game mechanics make a more complex scenario), but I still believe there is a underlying comparison to the skinner box.

I don't think Diablo II is much like Fallout 3. Diablo II is much more repetitive. A huge part of the joy of Fallout 3 is exploring the world; Diablo II just does not compare there.

I played a game of Fallout 3 in which I mostly didn't even take loot from monsters. I decided to play as a mute guy. The horrors of the wasteland struck me dumb. So, I couldn't go to stores, I couldn't go on quests that required talking to someone. I couldn't get a house; all I could have was what I could carry. At some point most loot is useless. There's no point opening that toolbox, seeing what that ghoul was carrying; I'm not taking it. I didn't stop killing the ghouls that crossed my path; I wasn't killing them for the loot. No Skinner box whatsoever. You can try pointing at the experience you get for killing them, but I was never eagerly waiting for that next level, plus you eventually hit a level cap and are not looking to rush that.

(Eventually I looked at a tape about the missing android, and after that a woman would periodically run up to me to talk about the android. She forces you to talk to her and is unkillable. So I had to run away from her. I was stalked across the wasteland by this woman.)

Diablo II has elements of a Skinner box game, to use the term people use. Those elements make it a worse game; I went back to Fallout 3, I didn't go back to Diablo II. I'm not in it for the grinding.

In general intervals don't really become longer in RPG-type games. I don't have specific data on Diablo II here. But you know. The RPG thing. You're level one and fight goblins; later you're level ten and fighting giants. The battles are different but similar; the fights scale to your level. It's as hard to kill the typical high level monster when you're high level as it was to kill the typical low level monster when you were low level. You get a longer fight by fighting something above your level, or a boss.

4582

Dominion General Discussion / Re: 206th card

« on: May 07, 2014, 05:49:30 pm »

How did you get to be a playtester?

My old online Dominion playtesters are mostly gone to the four winds (Jeff Wolfe is still playtesting stuff for me, and Wei-Hwa discussed the card wording with me). I wanted another outside playtester, in particular just as another data point on how fun the card was. I looked at some posters here and on BGG. LastFootnote was especially active and was still playing. So I offered up playtesting the promo and he went for it.

I play at public game nights with whoever shows up wanting to play, so that's a good way to be a playtester. Someone eHunt knows played with the promo that way.

4583

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 07, 2014, 05:36:19 pm »

I guess they wanted to make something similar to Catan World (which was their take on Settlers of Catan, probably Settlers' publisher didn't stop them and what they created was awful even compared to Settlers).

I should be clear that by "earlier guys" I meant guys who never worked on online Dominion.

Other people wanted to make online Dominion; Jay had to pick guys to go with. One group that was in the running wanted to make some kind of Farmville Dominion. Jay did not go with them. He went with Goko, who wanted the game to work on every platform ever.

Goko then also wanted some kind of micropayment thing. Perhaps partly because we weren't interested, and partly due to not thinking it through, what they ended up with was no fun and could not make money.

4584

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 07, 2014, 05:30:33 pm »

Exactly.  I was also probing whether it is possible to make a philosophical leap between different types of 'reward' loop behaviour.

You're just saying that because of the tiny thrill each completed post gives you.

That said: It's really tempting to look at what you should do now (e.g. delete adventure mode, remove game lobbies, etc. etc.)

I don't see any beauty to deleting adventure mode. The existing adventures suck, but plenty of people would enjoy playing sets of games vs. bots with pre-chosen sets-of-10. Obv. the lobbies should go, replaced by a matchmaking system as proposed in another thread.

Crucially beyond that (and I look at the dominion community - and I see an absurd amount of programming talent per capita), and I'd be focusing very heavily on enabling user generated content (be it new game modes, new cards, tournament structures, complete game overhauls etc.) that then could be sold with the developer and the creator taking a cut each.

They are eager to enable user-generated content, but do not be hoping for user-generated cards.

An iPad/android version (mainly to finance the above)

They certainly want that.

Rotating 'free' cards (like league of legends free heroes) to enable a taste for all players beyond the base game

All cards are rotating free if you consider that you can play against another human who has cards you don't. I sprinkled in some other-set cards into a few of the fixed adventures, including the main set one (which everyone has access to). Having a free card-of-the-week or something has been proposed.

An exist strategy (one of the main reasons I haven't bought more than a couple of expansions in Goko, is that I simply don't trust that one day in the not too distant future it simply won't be there)

The only exit strategy on the table currently is potentially having the option to pay by the month.

4585

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 07, 2014, 05:22:34 pm »

I've seen you say many times that you would much rather create a Dominion spin-off at this point rather than another expansion. What sort of ideas/mechanics would qualify as a spin-off? Have you already created spin-offs that you either killed off or would consider releasing after further refinement?

Feel free to just post a link if you've answered these questions before (or elaborate more and reveal your secret dominion plans).

The first spin-off turned into Kingdom Builder. The second spin-off, minus the deckbuilding, is a game that's coming out this year. It hasn't been announced yet but for sure it is coming. I am pretty pleased with it and have made an expansion that obv. will only come out if the game is successful enough.

Keeping the deckbuilding in is apparently a problem for me. I don't want to have it just to have it; it has to be better to keep it.

Originally I thought the spin-offs would be like, it's Dominion but there's a board and you have ships on it that sail around, so now there can be "+1 Move" and stuff. And the board always matters so it's not like an expansion where we would set up the board and then not buy that card, or have the issue that the cards got better when more than one was out. That all sounded easy and good. And I guess it's still on the table if I get desperate.

At this point a lot of people have made "it's just Dominion but with a little extra" so that's not so compelling anymore. Now I feel like the spin-off has to be more different. To qualify as a spin-off, you will have a deck that you build during the game; the rest is up in the air.

4586

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 07, 2014, 05:13:58 pm »

I don't think ta56636 was referring to Farmville-style mechanics or a pay-to-win system: what he meant is, a really successful single-player game rewards the player through a positive feedback loop.  For example: in an RPG, success means your character keeps leveling up and gains access to more powerful things, allowing you to experience even more success. 

I was referring to Farmville though, prior to being called upon to discuss Skinner boxes. "Positive feedback" isn't the same thing as "Skinner box." I like building up my guy, but in say Fallout 3, I'm having novel experiences the whole way; I'm exploring different places and doing different things and even building up my guy differently. I'm not being conditioned to press the lever at intervals or stay out of the left half of the box. I will learn things about the game world that will keep coming up - kill that particular monster from a distance - but really, no connection to Skinner boxes.

4587

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 07, 2014, 04:58:50 pm »

Was their notion of "Farmville Dominion" having you build a Kingdom and unlocking certain cards after a number of "achievements".  Like, you know, build a moat around your Castle to be able to use the Moat card.

"Come visit my Kingdom and water my grape vines.  I need to build a Vineyards!"

I don't know what the details were for the earlier guys, just that they wanted to make a micropayments game of some sort with the Dominion brand. For Goko you can at least see that they had the idea that somehow zaps would make money, despite making their existence unpleasant and not charging money for them.

4588

Dominion General Discussion / Re: 206th card

« on: May 07, 2014, 04:56:51 pm »

That being said, I wouldn't expect it to be implemented quickly, assuming it's more on the order of Black Market and Stash (rather than Envoy, Walled Village, and Governor). Basically, if it needs a new interface to do its thing, I expect it to take awhile.

Here's a secret about the promo that perhaps it's time to reveal:

LastFootnote playtested the promo.

4589

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 07, 2014, 06:06:20 am »

Aren't many (most?) aspects of games in some way based around a Skinner box concept?  Only some are more or less exploitative.  And some are more or less interesting.

No, they aren't.

Periodically on BGG someone will make a thread asking what ameritrash games are, as distinct from euros, and people will trot out their definitions. When I trot out mine, it's:

Euros are about having fun with a game.
Ameritrash is about having fun with your friends.
War games are about not having fun.

I have nothing against war games, I just have the third thing to be more entertaining.

It's funny because it's true. Euros really are about having fun with a game, exploring a particular playground for the mind, solving puzzles, fighting the board. Ameritrash really is about the social aspect above other things, hanging out with your pals, having novel experiences together. Many games don't uniquely categorize as one or the other and well let's get back on track here.

Games are about having fun. One way or another.

Skinner boxes aren't about having fun.

If you reduce life to "everything is a Skinner box and what does fun even mean" then the term is no longer doing any work for you; we need a new term to talk about the recognizable subset we're actually interested in. Let's use "Skinner box" for that subset; we've got the term already and everything. So then, no, most games aren't Skinner boxes, most games aren't Skinner boxes at all.

Now then. I said "Skinner box game" to communicate "one of those games, you know which ones I mean;" it's an existing term used by other people talking about video games, to talk about certain kinds of games. I was referring to those games, not looking for a new way to talk about games that would involve the Skinner box concept. I didn't want Dominion to be "one of those games." I detest those games. You know the ones I mean.

Some people who wanted to make online Dominion wanted to make it Farmville. I didn't want that, Jay didn't want that. Jay went with some people who weren't going to do that, and then they still wanted Farmville. They didn't get it. The current guys won't either. We are fine with making money, but we are not looking to leech all utility out of transactions with our fans. We like our fans. Let's all share that utility.

Online Dominion doesn't have to be a "Skinner box game" to have a more sensible way of paying for the online version. You could just pay by the month. The servers aren't free; the game keeps you playing by being fun, but it doesn't keep you paying once you've bought all the cards. As you note, it's set up like it's going to be free-to-play-but-if-possible-we-bleed-you-dry, and that's not actually what we're doing. So it's not a great set-up.

This all sound good, however, the reason I actually raised the online game in the previous post, is I actually think there is an opportunity to create a really interesting game (shell) within which to play to play online dominion (a good example of this kind of relationship include the pairing of the campaign mode in Total War to its RTS battles, or to some extent the arena mode in hearthstone), as apposed to the misunderstood quasi-not free to play model (but based on free-to-play mechanics) that currently exists.

Well feel free to outline somewhere exactly what you'd like to see in online Dominion. The Making Fun guys may well be interested.

4590

Dominion General Discussion / Re: 206th card

« on: May 07, 2014, 05:14:42 am »

Is this cards will be available on goko immediatly ?

I suspect they will not have it up as soon as the physical version is available (due to when they get given it or how quickly they get to it), but I do expect they will add it, and will prioritize adding it.

4591

Dominion General Discussion / Re: 206th card

« on: May 07, 2014, 02:32:09 am »

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/173202/item/3206610#item3206610

Potentially some information about when the promo will appear.

4592

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 06, 2014, 07:20:12 pm »

Although I realise that the online Dominion is nothing to do with you, I also think it offers a clear insight into the (arguable) failing of this version.  Far more than the interface (which is fine) or the reliability (which is more questionable), Goko fails to offer a viable reward loop - or to put it a game layer on top of the game to make the free to play model work.  Thus it fails to appeal to one player archetype.  By failing on matchmaking it fails to deliver to another archetype.  And the adventure mode - the first time I played that I thought 'if this was my first experience of Dominion I would think it's a terrible game'!

Well I specifically don't want online Dominion to be a Skinner box game.

The plan is certainly to have matchmaking and to fix the adventures. There is also a plan to add achievements, which would provide a certain amount of reward for a certain kind of player.

4593

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 06, 2014, 05:50:31 pm »

Monster Factory probably needs to be in stores like Target if it wants to reach that kind of audience. Or at least in more Barnes and Noble stores. Or something. Someplace that non-gamer parents and grandparents shop. I don't expect Piña Pirata to be a big hit for similar reasons. Heck, I couldn't even find The Dwarf King or Ghooost! at my local game store. Presumably Piña Pirata will be just as rare.

That's not to say that you shouldn't make those games. Monster Factory is good for at least a few plays even among adults that are not hardcore gamers and I'm very much looking forward to playing Piña Pirata with my extended family. But if publishers want to sell games to kids, it seems like they should figure out a way to make those games visible to them or their parents.

I think Monster Factory will in fact show up in some store like Barnes and Noble.

I just make whatever games I can, and publishers publish whatever games they want. There is though the in-between step where I decide how much to try to get a game published. Any game that seems like it could be a hit if only its audience found out about it, probably I try to get published. After that it's up to them though.

4594

Other Games / Re: Pina Pirata (by DXV)

« on: May 06, 2014, 02:35:11 am »

There is finally a seller on Amazon that's carrying this. I ordered one. At the time of this writing, there are 11 copies left.

Excellent, I will get a secret history up in the near future.

4595

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 06, 2014, 12:14:54 am »

BTW, is having another hit game a (significant) goal of yours?

Well, yes and no. It would be nice to feel like Dominion could stop selling and I'd still be making money. As time goes by it gets easier to feel like Dominion will just keep making money though.

I have to work on stuff I'm able to get work done on, that sounds good to me personally. After that I have to make games that the people I play games with want to play, or the game will never get enough playtesting to go anywhere. If I get a new game we like I'm pleased, and that's an accomplishment right there. After that I can worry about, will anyone want to publish this, if so how do I polish it up with that in mind. Can I make it better for the kind of person who would like it; can I cut components, extend the number of players.

The typical kind of game I make is probably only going to appeal to gamers; I can hope for a Race for the Galaxy level of success, but not a Dominion level. Other games appeal more to casual audiences that I don't know how to reach, but if they find out about the game I might have a hit.

I was expecting Monster Factory to be a hit; I think, if you have kids and see that game, you'll buy it. People have not found out about it yet, although it has gotten a 2nd printing, so it's got more of a chance. Piña Pirata could be a hit, if its audience finds out about it. Greed could be popular among gamers, but for a mass audience there's the problem of "turn 1, read 12 cards; turn 2, read 11."

4596

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 05, 2014, 08:54:19 pm »

As long as the expansions are good, there will always be an audience of some size for them, even if they are overly complex. But Dominion gets played by gamer's spouses and gamer's parents and gamer's kids. It is so successful because it is not just for gamers. So I think it only makes sense that Dominion products try to be good for that audience, the actual bulk of people playing.

It still looks like the audience of just gamers that would devour a new and a lot more complex Dominion expansion is big enough for the reward making economic sense. I am way off? I get a feeling (which could be completely mistaken) that is mostly your own "moral" reward is not good enough for you to make another one and that an economic argument, while true, is not THE actual obstacle. Is that possible?

You have to factor in opportunity cost though. Instead of designing and playtesting another Dominion expansion, Donald could just make a new game.

That's true although the math is more useful and more accurate if we compare a Dominion spin-off. A Dominion spin-off will probably have a larger audience than a new Dominion expansion. Any random game may well be a dud; I won't have another hit game if I don't make new games, but a Dominion expansion will probably do better than a typical random game. For that matter a typical random game might not even find a publisher.

I don't know what you soulnet mean by "moral" rewards. Economics is for sure not holding me back; if I really want to make another Dominion expansion, I'll make one, and I'm sure it will get published, and I'm sure it won't lose money for RGG. It won't be standing in the way of other games getting made; they'll get in line and I'll get to them.

It makes more sense to make spin-offs, etc. etc., I have gone over this so many times. I may end up making another Dominion expansion, if either I don't manage to make a spin-off, or if there's just some time going by with no new Dominion product, spin-off or otherwise, and the publisher is all, man, it would be good to have another product. I like to be friendly. Dominion expansions are great projects; you play Dominion a lot, with people who do not mind complex cards in the slightest. It was fun playtesting the new promo. But you know, the first 7 expansions covered what I wanted to do, they all stretch back to before the main set was published, they cover the most basic ground. If I had an 8th thing like that it would have come out already. I don't feel obligated to keep making expansions just because it's possible.

4597

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: May 05, 2014, 06:55:18 pm »

Somewhere you said (and I paraphrase badly) that you could have made a 'complicated' expansion if you had wanted to.  What did you mean by that: complicated in terms of number of processes/clarity of processes or complicated in terms of complex decision making in the turn (e.g. Remodel is more complex in this regard than Lab).  Or some other form of complexity?  Could you offer an example? 

I am talking about words, word complexity. Strategic complexity is fine. Simple ideas that take a lot of words, like Adventurer, are not as bad as complex ideas that take a lot of words, like Hermit, but they still add up to an intimidating package if there are a bunch of them.

Probably the most complex Dominion card is Tournament. It gives you a 2x2 grid of results to wrap your head around, then requires you to read 5 more unique cards to know what you're getting.

Let's consider three main set cards: Thief, Chancellor, Throne Room. Thief is the wordiest card in the main set, but what it does is straightforward and grokable. Chancellor is very simple but baffling. Throne Room looks straightforward but ends up creating rules questions. The problem isn't that I don't want sets full of Chancellors - though I don't - or Throne Rooms - though I don't. Those cards are problems but I do not have the problem of having tons of those cards lying around - they are rare. Instead the issue is that more and more of the possible cards to make (factoring in lots of stuff into that word "possible") end up wordy like Thief. While I tolerate a certain amount of that, especially for attacks (where the complexity is harder to avoid and the card is more important to the set), I sure don't want every card to be that wordy.

When you play Dominion, there are rules. Some are in the rulebook; some are on the cards. They are all in one place or the other; if I don't want a rule in the rulebook, it has to go on the cards, if I don't want it on the cards, it has to go in the rulebook. This seems straightforward. The general rule is, the number of cards you can make for a game is proportional to the product of the complexity of the game, and the amount of space you allow yourself for card text. The rules have to go somewhere.

You can obviously make Dominion cards for forever, if you don't hem yourself in with restrictions. The example I always used for Magic was, you could make the Scrabble expansion. It's all about anagramming. The game however has some serious restrictions. Aside from stuff like, no-one wants Dominion: The Catapult, the main audience for the game does not want it to be too complex. And they like that nearly everything is on the cards rather than in the rulebook.

I have already done the experiment of making an expansion after it was time to stop; that expansion is Guilds. It has a new mechanic that requires reading the rulebook to understand. As a result of moving rules for those cards to the rulebook, the cards themselves are sleek and simple, except Butcher. There is another mechanic that does not really require the rulebook. Those cards all have two abilities and are complex, except Masterpiece. Then there is an attack that's extremely wordy and does multiple things, and then three innocent cards that never hurt anyone, although if I had it to do again I would drop the "they only draw if they got cursed" bit from Soothsayer (a minor example of how I went too far trying to squeeze playability out of later cards).

I remain pleased with Guilds, although it will be surely be the expansion that sells the worst (we already have enough expansions, some foreign publishers will have stopped before this, it's small and people like those less, later expansions are more complex and people like that less). But uh I think it's there in my analysis: it's some fun new cards, where the complexity went into the rulebook for some cards and on the cards for others, and both add up to the game being more complex.

As long as the expansions are good, there will always be an audience of some size for them, even if they are overly complex. But Dominion gets played by gamer's spouses and gamer's parents and gamer's kids. It is so successful because it is not just for gamers. So I think it only makes sense that Dominion products try to be good for that audience, the actual bulk of people playing.

P.S. Without wanting to rake over first player advantage again, have you seen the hearthstone 'Coin' Card mechanic (which, although not without problems, does lead to a near 50/50 1st player/2nd player win rate, but perhaps more importantly, is an interesting mechanic).  Anything you could see with a similar methodology applying to Dominion?

I haven't looked at Hearthstone; I know it's some kind of online Magic Lite. I am not unhappy with where things stand for first player advantage in Dominion. There are boards where a very minor compensating advantage for the 2nd player would still be too much - including, for example, half a VP.

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Goko Dominion Online / Re: Games not (playing)

« on: April 30, 2014, 05:58:33 pm »

I'm having the same problems, can create a game but no-one joins, and can't add bots either. Additionally, my automatch isn't working, and the people in the lobby seem to be sorted randomly (not by rating, like my default setting), and I can't click on their avatars to view other information like usual. Basically, Goko's being rubbish, and as a result some of the extension things aren't working for me

EDIT: I can play bots using the "Play Bots" option, when I do this, the in-game Salvager extension is working fine

http://forum.makingfun.com/forumdisplay.php?78-Dominion-Online

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Goko Dominion Online / Re: Isotropish Leaderboard (alternative to Goko Pro)

« on: April 30, 2014, 05:54:32 pm »

To be honest, I worry about the reverse Turing test, where it turns out I'm actually a cylon machine.

Tanya had me fooled for a while, but she just posted, "Unfortunately online services needs maintenance every noun, and we have to do it."

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Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko Ace of Spades

« on: April 24, 2014, 06:10:44 pm »

Well I don't quite get the need or point of this 'simplification', but okay... adds some amusement I suppose.

To precisely simulate the physical game, they should let you type in whatever name you want. But in practice just providing one alien option is sufficient. For sure it's better to provide one than not.