Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

26

Rules Questions / Re: Possession/Outpost

« on: February 12, 2013, 03:58:43 pm »

I know Donald X has said he always thought Possession was worth the complexity but, man, when I saw that FAQ in the rule book (before I even found ds.com), I immediately thought "this FAQ ALONE says this card is a bad idea".  IMO, it's an un-creative idea that adds a ton of complexity and very little depth.  Plus, even after that wall-of-text-FAQ, the most involved and dedicated players still find questions to ask about it...  Yech... I never even bothered sleeving my IRL copies.

I probably sound like I'm railing against Donald, but I don't intend that.  He made an amazing game and the fact that I can just omit Possession from my own games is part of that.  I just really don't understand why that card made it into the final game.

It's definitely a weird card, but why would you say it's "uncreative" and "adds very little depth"? It not an easy card to use right, and it can completely change the game. It's definitely a weird card rules-wise and interaction-wise, but I wouldn't say it's uncreative, and it definitely adds a good bit of depth.

I would say uncreative because I, personally, find it to be obvious.  More-objectively, there's nothing unique to Dominion about it.  You could put "steal a turn" in every game that has turns.

In a similar way, Smithy is also uncreative.  You could put "draw cards" in every game that has cards.  But I like Smithy and think it has a fine place in the game, especially as part of the base set; lack of creativity isn't the only reason I dislike Possession.

I say adds very little depth because, IMO, it discourages creativity.  Limitations should create trade-offs instead of cutting out strategic options.  Possession has no in-game counter (it's not an Attack), so the primary counter strategy is to play simpler.  Avoid powerful engines and megaturns as they could be used against you.  And if the winning engine on the board is still faster than Possession, then Possession was a wasted card in the kingdom.  Its fundamental competitive purpose is to counter a strategy slower than itself.

So, in my view, it's not adding much strategically.  I get that it adds flavor and Timmy players like it and, yes, that it can be used to great effect. But it's also a single card that temporarily and fundamentally alters what things like Trash and Gain mean.  No single card is worth that, IMO.

But the most unfortunate thing to me is that Possession takes a slot in a limited line-up of cards.  That's really what I was trying to say when I said "I just really don't understand why that card made it into the final game".  That's a slot that could have been used for something way cooler, IMO.  For my definition of cooler.

I probably sound like I'm railing against Donald, but I don't intend that.  He made an amazing game and the fact that I can just omit Possession from my own games is part of that.  I just really don't understand why that card made it into the final game.

I wanted Alchemy to have some exotic stuff because of the flavor, and I wanted it to have something really exciting because I always want that. Possession was exotic and exciting. There are people who hate it, and don't play with it; there are also people who cite it as their favorite Dominion card. As always the people who love it wouldn't have it if it wasn't in the set, the people who hate it can often leave it out, and if there were no hated cards there would be no loved cards.

The FAQ is a monster, for sure, I would like that to be simpler. Most of it comes down to "yes really" though.

Thanks, Donald X.  I didn't mean to summon you to defend Possession.

27

Rules Questions / Re: Possession/Outpost

« on: February 11, 2013, 07:30:43 pm »

michael (possessed) - plays Possession and Outpost
michael - choose whether Outpost or Possession turn happens first; pick Outpost
michael - take Outpost turn
Morgrim (possessed) - just a turn where nothing confusing happens

Just a clarification from the Possession FAQ in the Alchemy rule book (which is dense and has a lot of information in there) is this tidbit:

Code: [Select]

If you play both Outpost and Possession in the same turn,
the Outpost turn happens first.

So it is always Outpost turn, then Possession turn. It is an explicit ordering and not a choice.

Possession, the only Dominion card that required more than a full page of explanation.

I know Donald X has said he always thought Possession was worth the complexity but, man, when I saw that FAQ in the rule book (before I even found ds.com), I immediately thought "this FAQ ALONE says this card is a bad idea".  IMO, it's an un-creative idea that adds a ton of complexity and very little depth.  Plus, even after that wall-of-text-FAQ, the most involved and dedicated players still find questions to ask about it...  Yech... I never even bothered sleeving my IRL copies.

I probably sound like I'm railing against Donald, but I don't intend that.  He made an amazing game and the fact that I can just omit Possession from my own games is part of that.  I just really don't understand why that card made it into the final game.

28

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: February 07, 2013, 08:40:41 pm »

It seems like you frequently mention card concepts you gave up on.  Are there card concepts you initially doubted, tried anyway, and found surprisingly good?

29

2012 / Re: Final / Third Place Match livetopic

« on: February 04, 2013, 08:11:13 pm »

Wow, that must have been very long ago. I can't remember the Throne ever being denieable.

It was probably 8ish years ago...?  Holy crap... I'm getting older...

Anyway, even at that time, we were playing a retro version at a LAN party because some heroes were hilariously broken.  The current version at the time didn't let you deny the throne but I just tried out of frustration.  It worked, so our team piled on and finished it.  Then we celebrated like we were the winners!

30

2012 / Re: Final / Third Place Match livetopic

« on: February 04, 2013, 04:11:12 pm »

Resignation actually steals a small amount of initiative back even though you lost. By Golly! This game is ending when I say it will.

This can be more psychologically important than most people realize.  I remember playing a game of DotA many years ago and the other team dominated and was just toying with us.  They wouldn't finish the game, so we just attacked our own throne and ended it while they were ignoring us.  We technically lost, but it felt like a win.

31

Council Room Feedback / Re: Supply-based Card Stats

« on: February 01, 2013, 01:50:45 pm »

Your respect/posts ratio is pretty impressive ;P.

It's... it's higher than Donald's!  He IS THE CHOSEN ONE!

32

Rules Questions / Re: Border Village and Top-Decking?

« on: February 01, 2013, 12:26:33 pm »

I don't know. Maybe I'm too much of a "rules lawyer", then. It just gets me when I'm playing a game and someone does something other than what's proscribed to happen by the rules, even if it's a little thing.

This has happened to me with other games also. At GenCon I got into a serious argument playing Magic with someone (in a multiplayer game) about what happens when a player loses the game with an Oblivion Ring in play. (The permanent removed by the Oblivion Ring never returns, because the leaves play ability can't go on the stack, because the player who would control that ability isn't in the game.) It wasn't super-relevant to the outcome of that game, but I couldn't help but be like, "Come on! There are rules to this game; I want to play the game described by these rules."

And yeah, I'm also the guy who wants to see your Treasure when you buy something. I hate when people just dump their whole hand in their discard and pick up a Gold, silently. 

Don't worry, man, you're not alone.   I mean, if you're getting into a real argument, it's usually because the other person also knows/cares about rules; I see nothing wrong with discussing and resolving the issue.  I usually want to do that just to make sure I understand the correct rule, anyway.  I do overlook small mistakes from players who are *just* learning, though - I find trying to correct those immediately can be confusing if they don't already grasp the basics.

Counting treasure is also important to me, not because I think people want to cheat, but because we all make mistakes all the time.  I try to model / teach players to show all their money, say how much they have, and then what they're doing with it.  It just makes the whole game smoother for everybody.  And it helps prevent the whole "what did you do on your turn?" issue.

33

Rules Questions / Re: Border Village and Top-Decking?

« on: January 30, 2013, 05:49:34 pm »

Donald, I read this thread and it all makes sense, given the rules that have been stated.

I'm just curious about the reasoning that covering a card in the discard pile loses track of it.  Is there a specific interaction this simplifies?  I'm not suggesting it should be any other way, but I could also understand if a coarse "it's in the discard" was all the cards cared about for tracking.

34

Rules Questions / Re: Talisman + Sir Martin

« on: January 29, 2013, 05:47:52 pm »

It seems to me the main issue in this thread is that some people are hung up on their personal, intuitive understandings of the wordings "buy a card" and "copy".  I'm sure Donald chose those words because they concisely cover the 99.999% cases while making the game simple, but they are not particularly technical descriptions of the mechanics, as I understand them.

A more-technical wording of "buy a card" might be "pay the cost of the top card of a non-empty supply pile".  Unqualified, vanilla "gain" would be "move the top card of a non-empty supply pile to your discard pile".  And a "copy of a card" would be "one instance of a card", as shMerker pointed out.

With this in mind, here's the original wording of Talisman:

While this is in play, when you buy a card costing 4 treasure or less that is not a Victory card, gain a copy of it

And here's my technical translation:

While this is in play, when you [pay the cost of the top card of a non-empty supply pile] costing 4 treasure or less that is not a Victory card, [move [one instance of the card] from a non-empty supply pile to your discard pile].

Not explicitly conveyed in the "technical" translation is that this does not interrupt your normal gaining of the card you bought (which is what "copy" helps convey).

I think this understanding is consistent with the game's rules/mechanics and, if you follow the steps one-by-one, I believe it clearly leads to the behavior Donald described, because the Talisman-gain happens before your buy-gain.  But let me know if I messed something up.

35

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 29, 2013, 02:47:27 am »

In other words, I'm not saying there's a reason to constrain your video game to cards.  I'm saying I see reasons to constrain your card game to being virtual.  Being virtual confers properties that are totally orthogonal to whether it's a card game or not.

But once I constrain a card game to being virtual, I'm unlikely to keep it cards. Being cards is no longer relevant.

That makes sense and I totally respect it.  I just also see an opportunity for somebody to make virtual card games because they like card games and they like virtual things.  It isn't likely to be you and I didn't mean to imply you should, but it does seem that there's valid design space there with some specific benefits (if a designer seeks those).  The hurdles, complexity, cost, and risk you bring up all make a lot of sense to me, too.

But I'm happy making physical games. It's not so bad that I can't tweak the cards once they're published.

This is the essence of what I was looking for in my original question, btw.  As somebody who probably values flexibility more than normal people, the draw of virtual is strong for me and it's probably why I'm a software engineer as opposed another type of engineer.  I was hoping to get some insight into how you value that stuff and I did, so thanks!

36

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 09:23:42 pm »

Sorry, Donald, I don't feel like my questions are being understood.  Let me try one more time. If this doesn't work, I'll drop it.

1) If you could retroactively change, remove, and add Dominion cards at will, would you want to? For example, you could magically change the text on every printed copy of Throne Room.
2) Given that this is impossible with physical games, but possible in video games: Do you agree that this ability could be a valid reason to implement a card game exclusively as a video game? (Even if it doesn't appeal to you, personally). If not, I'm curious why not.

Being able to tweak cards later would be nice, sure. That's no reason to make a video card game. I can make Starcraft and tweak units later, or whatever; I'm not giving up the ability to tweak things by not confining myself to cards.

If I made a card game, and decided it could only be done as a digital game, then the digital game could probably be further improved by making it even less like a card game. The only reason to make it a digital card game is to also sell the physical card game, in which case the cards at some point are set in stone by what's printed (although if the digital game was first there might be a window for tweaking them) (or like I said before, you might make it cards to cash in on the recognition people have of the CCG format).

Let's say you came up with Galaxy Trucker. Only you thought of it as a computer game. Maybe the spaceships are built in 3-D. Why confine them to tiles? If 3-D is too hard, they still don't need to be 2-D tiles all the same shape. Or a given spaceship piece might vary in size/shape depending on where you put it. The physical limitations don't apply to you, and there's no reason to cling to them (same caveats as before).

Ok, thanks, I appreciate the answer.  For sure, you're "not giving up the ability to tweak things by not confining myself to cards".  Totally agree with this.  I'm thinking about the issue that you do give up some ability to tweak things by publishing a physical copy.  The cat's out of the bag, as they say.  CCGs aside, yes, you could print a new version of the same game, but that's complicated for consumers.

In other words, I'm not saying there's a reason to constrain your video game to cards.  I'm saying I see reasons to constrain your card game to being virtual.  Being virtual confers properties that are totally orthogonal to whether it's a card game or not.

Hopefully that clears up my point, even we don't see eye-to-eye.  Again, appreciate your thoughts!

37

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 08:24:26 pm »

Sorry, Donald, I don't feel like my questions are being understood.  Let me try one more time. If this doesn't work, I'll drop it.

1) If you could retroactively change, remove, and add Dominion cards at will, would you want to? For example, you could magically change the text on every printed copy of Throne Room.
2) Given that this is impossible with physical games, but possible in video games: Do you agree that this ability could be a valid reason to implement a card game exclusively as a video game? (Even if it doesn't appeal to you, personally). If not, I'm curious why not.

38

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 06:36:11 pm »

This last sentence surprises me.  Do you truly see "no real point in simulating cards on a computer"?  Maybe I'm being too literal, but assuming I want to make a game that would, IRL, be a card game, I see a few benefits of doing that on a computer:

Blueblimp has it right. There's no point to limiting yourself to what cards can do if you're making a computer game. You can do it to cash in on something - you make a CCG that's digital only and you make it cards so people know it's a CCG. Players know what to expect from cards, and cards are a familiar way to display certain information. But you don't have to do cards.

Instead of cards we can consider "rules components." These are things in a game that have rules associated with them. They are typically cards for physical games, but don't have to be. For a computer game you can think of them as cards, but they aren't cards at all. For example there's no uh Medusa card in Heroes of Might and Magic III. There's a creature with associated rules, but it's not card-like. When I get a particular perk in Fallout 3, that's like a card in a tableau, but it's not doing anything to imitate a card. For a physical game you couldn't deal with making sure all your perks happened when they were supposed to. For a computer game it's no trouble.

Yes, I agree you don't have to do cards.  I didn't mean to suggest that video games *should* limit themselves to cards but, just as there is no point in limiting yourself to that, I also see no point in dismissing the design space.

I bring it up because, if Dominion were online-only, it'd be the core game we all love, but you'd be able to make all those changes you wanted and include all the cards you wanted.  Maybe Dominion makes more money and is more popular with IRL publishing, but that's sort of besides my point.  I see those online advantages as very compelling potential reasons to "simulate cards" instead of publishing IRL and I was just wondering if you agree.  And, if not, why not?

39

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 28, 2013, 05:38:16 pm »

If Dominion had been computerized from the start, are there mechanics you would have liked to have tried that would only work on a computer? (random numbers, etc)

Meh, not really. The big thing you get out of a computer is tracking; you can do more stuff like Pirate Ship and Monument without worrying about it. I did those cards anyway though. If I were really making a computer-only Dominion-like game though, it would probably end up nothing like Dominion. There's no real point in simulating cards on a computer, except you know, when there's a real-life card game you want on your computer.

This last sentence surprises me.  Do you truly see "no real point in simulating cards on a computer"?  Maybe I'm being too literal, but assuming I want to make a game that would, IRL, be a card game, I see a few benefits of doing that on a computer:

• Mutability. In your case, you wouldn't have a "Dominion Time Machine" post, since you could just implement those changes.
• There would be no physical limit to the number of cards you could create, since you're not constrained by physical publishing limitations.

Are these differences irrelevant or undesirable to you?  Or do you simply think the flexibility of the computer design space would inevitably lead to a different game?

40

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Math request: Nomad Camp

« on: January 22, 2013, 09:15:35 pm »

Sorry, but this immediately came to my mind after reading the question and the answer:

http://xkcd.com/169/

This problem is ONLY hard because they stated it poorly, and that upsets me. That comic, OTOH, makes me very happy.

I've read that comic over and over... and I've read the Explain XKCD for it twice.  I cannot, for the life of me, parse the first panel into anything other than the obvious meaning. How can it possibly be parsed into meaningful English such that the smug joke works?

41

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 22, 2013, 07:43:32 pm »

What's your favourite flavor of ice cream?

Bittersweet Nugget.

Who makes the best ice cream? James Bond or Indiana Jones?

Hans Solo, but you have to be careful not to eat any of the carbonite.

I knew it!  Donald thinks he's too good to eat carbonite!

42

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 07, 2013, 02:30:18 am »

In the Rules Questions subforum, there was recently another question about the interaction of Ironworks / Trader.  I noticed that you didn't say anything specific about this confusion in your Dominion Time Machine post a while back (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=3353.0), although you did say you would consider dropping the reaction on Trader.

If you had it to do again, would you reword Ironworks somehow?  Which (if any) other cards would you reword purely to clarify intended behavior / interactions?

43

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 03, 2013, 08:39:28 pm »

I think we have also been conditioned to perceive confidence as arrogance. If you state something succinctly and concretely, you must obviously be arrogant, since only arrogant people do not hedge and concede with every statement.
Now, of course that is hyperbole and not meant at anyone in particular. I think it stems at least in part from the same thinking that handed out trophies to everyone on every team in little league, but had nothing to congratulate the team who actually won the play-off.

I think that's probably part of it, but I also think that's an easy excuse for the insensitive.  I can think of several extremely confident people who don't come off as arrogant.  There's a real but hard-to-define line there.

Part of communicating effectively is knowing your audience and if you're perceived as arrogant, you can't simply say "well that's just your perception" and expect people to accept it.  IMO, that would actually be arrogant, since you're effectively putting the blame on anybody but you.  Something causes that perception.  If it's rare, isolated cases, you can shrug it off as anomaly.  If there's a pattern, then maybe you're sending different signals than you thought.

BTW, this isn't directed at Donald or anybody else.  It's just, like, my opinion, man.

44

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 03, 2013, 06:25:56 pm »

My two cents on the ego thing: I also have the impression of him giving egotistical answers, and I think this is primarily because...

I also have two cents to chip in, but they're a bit more general than that.  I think smart people (like Donald) tend to state things very efficiently and matter-of-factly, which can create an arrogant tone, especially via text.  I honestly think the majority of perception issues stem not from what Donald says, but how he says it.

Take the "so much crap about Dominion clones" issue brought up earlier.  Every version of the answer Donald generated about playing other people's games starts with "Basically never."  This is super word-efficient but sets the tone as "I don't have time for that" rather than "I'd like to, but I'm too busy".  Personally, I find the tone of the first to be impatient/offputting and the tone of second to be apologetic/conciliatory.

Good, meaningful PR is a weird and delicate art, which is why you usually hire somebody skilled to do it.  I'm not always good at generating it, but I think I recognize it decently-well.  It's really cool that Donald interacts directly with the community, but I think he's a game designer first and PR guy second, so it doesn't surprise me that these issues come up.

45

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: December 20, 2012, 02:54:41 pm »

some people felt like $7's would break the game, not realizing that, even if I made say four of them, you still wouldn't have one in most games.

This piqued my interest, because it seems that a card "breaking the game" only really matters when it's in the game.  That is, if it "breaks" the game, it doesn't matter how often it shows up - it's probably just a bad card.

But clearly you playtested the heck out of the $7s and they do not break the game.  Maybe they skew games toward themselves, but that's what all good cards do, right?  In the big picture, that's actually variety.

So what was the concern, exactly?  That the existing $7s were just too powerful?  Or that any card at $7 would inherently be too powerful?  The latter seems mistaken; any achievable cost can be "balanced" (even though most of them won't be worth doing).

46

2012 / Re: Upsets

« on: December 17, 2012, 09:21:27 pm »

Giga, it depends on your winrate for each individual game. Someone with a 60% winrate will win a best of 7 ~71% of the time, someone with a 55% winrate will win a best of 7 ~61% of the time. The same numbers for a best of 51 would be ~92% and ~76.5%.

Well, yeah, I know more games is more accurate. No finite number of games would totally eliminate the luck, but there's a limit to what's feasible for a tournament, of course.

My question wasn't intended to be mathematical, though.  I'm curious how many games players want to play per round.  What's the right balances of feasible and satisfying (so that everybody's convinced that the winner consistently played better)?  It may be everybody likes 7, but when olneyce called it out as not being enough to wash out the luck, I was just curious if he actually wanted more (which I guess was an assumption that he'd want to minimize luck...).

47

2012 / Re: Upsets

« on: December 17, 2012, 08:39:21 pm »

Small-sample size.  In several ways.  First, Dominion has a lot of luck in it.  Seven games isn't enough to wash that out, so you'll always see some 'upsets' that are more about card distribution than anything else.  Second (and more importantly), it's a small tournament. A couple big upsets (Me, RJ, Marin) will make things seem really wacky, but don't ultimately mean a whole lot.  We are primed to look for interesting results, so we ascribe more significance to the upsets.  Have there really been a bunch more upsets this year compared to last?

I bet once it's all done, the number of upsets won't seem ALL that far out of line with expected results.

Oh, and I bet that a fair number of lower-ranked players could be 5-10 levels better if they really focused.  Tournament games inspire that focus.

First, are we actually seeing more upsets than last year?  I'm a little guilty of jumping on the bandwagon since people were making a big deal about the upsets.  I just assumed they were talking about "in comparison to last year" as it's our only other data point.

Second, how many games do you think would wash it out?  To me, seven certainly feels like the better player should win the majority of the time.  I'm curious if people have an opinion about this.

Overall, I don't think these "upsets" aren't really that upset-ful.  I think we assign significance to them because they're unexpected - not because they're truly unlikely.  I think the simplest explanation is that these lower-level players are actually good and would be higher level if they put the time in.

48

2012 / Re: Upsets

« on: December 17, 2012, 06:58:36 pm »

I was thinking it's combination of two main factors:

• Iso levels decay really quickly.
• There are fewer frequent Isotropic players as Goko waxes and Iso wanes.

I think we've got people who are pretty good at Dominion but their skill isn't represented in their Iso level, so the seeding is all over the place.  Not that there's a clearly-better way to do it, given the circumstances.

49

Game Reports / Re: WWAG #2

« on: December 17, 2012, 02:58:22 pm »

I don't see any discussion of a double Masquerade opening here.  Is that just obviously-bad?  Or is it just totally overshadowed by Masq/Jack?  My first thought would be to win the Masq war, getting Silvers along the way.  Then I expect to be hitting 5 consistently and throwing in a few Cities / Torturers until I'm hitting 6+ for GMs (and winging it from there).

Now that I describe it, it does sound a bit slow.  Jack is gaining Silver and trashing Estates at the same time, but I really don't want more than 3 or 4 Silver, right?  And one Masq isn't going to get rid of the Coppers very well.  But maybe that's not as big a deal as I tend to think it is.

50

Game Reports / Re: Why "playing around" is worth it

« on: December 14, 2012, 07:35:52 pm »

"Estate as Apprentice fuel" is a fallacy though. It costs you 2 cards and 1 action point to gain.. 2 cards and 1 action point. The hand you end up with is exactly the same as if you hadn't had Estate or Apprentice at all. Estate is still a good target for Apprentice in order to get RID of Estates, but buying Estates to target is just spinning your wheels.

I agree with this, but he didn't buy Estates - he Remodeled Coppers into them.  It kinda works as fuel + thinning, where thinning is the important part.  Apprenticing a Copper just gets rid of it; you don't do that unless your Action phase is basically over.  If you can instead Apprentice an Estate (that used to be a Copper), then you got a little card draw boost from the Copper (in an albeit roundabout way).  Seems like a nice little touch in this case but, yeah, it's not the foundation of the strategy.