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[Watno]

Yeah, he's the messenger - this is my entire problem. Why should he be the messenger?

Because he's the only person here who has means to contact MakingFun apart from their support forum/email?

[sudgy]

First up, humourous noises like whizzes and pops when you buy or play certain cards.

Done.  Humorous whizzes and pops will be implemented in the next release of Salvager.  There will be an option to disable it, but only with Ozle's permission.

This should be done on April 1st.

[Beyond Awesome]

First up, humourous noises like whizzes and pops when you buy or play certain cards.

Done.  Humorous whizzes and pops will be implemented in the next release of Salvager.  There will be an option to disable it, but only with Ozle's permission.

This should be done on April 1st.

Better yet, Dominion Online should be replaced with isotropic on April 1st.

Anyway, in regards to the WW/Donald X. debate, I don't think WW's intention is to debate Donald or be rude. I think he is trying to say most people who frequent this site aren't casual players and thus, when it comes to "pro" mode, we have our own biases as to what we think that means which might not correlate to how Donald X. envisions Dominion should be played. As a result, he WW is saying that Donald X. is a good representative for certain aspects of Dominion Online, but not the "pro" mode feature.

[GeoLib]

My 2 cents. Pro mode is pretty much fine as is, except that goko (or making fun, I guess?) really needs to implement automatch and a proper lobby system. There shouldn't be any kind of ban list or anything. In my mind "pro" means all-cards, full-random, no knowledge of the kingdom before hand. Obviously people having different set ownerships messes with this somewhat, but I don't really see any practical way to fix that. I don't think it's fair to exclude people who don't have all the cards from hosting pro (especially, what if they have all the sets, but not all the promos. Would that be enough?). Anyway, I don't see a practical solution to that issue. I do think that it makes sense that "pro" mode should be aimed at the interests of the competitive players though.

I think the real problem, as mentioned in the OP is that playing casual "it'd be hard to find an opponent because all the better players seem to just play pro." I think if casual were fixed up a little bit then perhaps people would be more willing to play it too. I probably would still only host pro-mode matches, but I'd be willing to join casual games if it were possible to see what criteria someone used when picking the game (including what sets were drawn from). This would require goko implementing a server-side functioning kingdom generator. LF points out that someone could just keep generating kingdoms until they got, say KC/Goons/Masq, which I guess is an issue, but I think if you were only allowed to put in your parameters and then you didn't see the kingdom until you hit "create game," then generating kingdoms until you got the one you want would be a sufficiently large hassle that it wouldn't be that much of a problem. Some dick would probably still do it, but, oh well, this is casual mode and I don't think it would happen very often.

[SirPeebles]

Again, I fail to see how I'm killing him. Quite frankly, I don't understand how the whole boycott business wasn't way more out there than this, but whatever. Yeah, he's the messenger - this is my entire problem. Why should he be the messenger?

So this is a response to the whole discussion, but I didn't want to repost a huge quote.

The way I see this, LibraryAdventurer posted a complaint about Dominion Online.  Donald showed up and basically said, hey I've got some sway with MakingFun, let's brainstorm some solutions, how about a 3-card ban list?  Then you came along and, rather than contributing to the brainstorming session, essentially called out Donald and complained that he doesn't speak for us.

You talk about how the world should be, but I think you are idealizing things too far.  The people at MakingFun are people.  They have a lot to do and limited resources with which to do it.  Of course they give more weight to Donald's suggestions than they do a specific player.  Of course they do.  And it is perfectly rational for them to be doing so.  There is a lot of work for them to be doing right now.  They are in a position to make some massive improvements with just an ounce of common sense and direct insight from Donald, rather than going through time consuming market research (player surveys and such).

Still, it sounds like you wish that MakingFun would listen to the players.  That is a laudable and understandable desire.  Right now, they aren't doing it.  So, what is the best thing we can do to fix this issue?  Well, we more or less have Donald on our side as an advocate.  I bet if -- rather than complaining that Donald does not and should not speak us -- we offered constructive ideas on how MakingFun could converse with the player base, Donald would be happy to use his (so undeserved!) sway with MakingFun to pass along the suggestion.  Of course, it is still likely that it isn't worth MakingFun's time at this particular moment to have that conversation.

[WanderingWinder]

Again, I fail to see how I'm killing him. Quite frankly, I don't understand how the whole boycott business wasn't way more out there than this, but whatever. Yeah, he's the messenger - this is my entire problem. Why should he be the messenger?

So this is a response to the whole discussion, but I didn't want to repost a huge quote.

The way I see this, LibraryAdventurer posted a complaint about Dominion Online.  Donald showed up and basically said, hey I've got some sway with MakingFun, let's brainstorm some solutions, how about a 3-card ban list?  Then you came along and, rather than contributing to the brainstorming session, essentially called out Donald and complained that he doesn't speak for us.

You talk about how the world should be, but I think you are idealizing things too far.  The people at MakingFun are people.  They have a lot to do and limited resources with which to do it.  Of course they give more weight to Donald's suggestions than they do a specific player.  Of course they do.  And it is perfectly rational for them to be doing so.  There is a lot of work for them to be doing right now.  They are in a position to make some massive improvements with just an ounce of common sense and direct insight from Donald, rather than going through time consuming market research (player surveys and such).

Still, it sounds like you wish that MakingFun would listen to the players.  That is a laudable and understandable desire.  Right now, they aren't doing it.  So, what is the best thing we can do to fix this issue?  Well, we more or less have Donald on our side as an advocate.  I bet if -- rather than complaining that Donald does not and should not speak us -- we offered constructive ideas on how MakingFun could converse with the player base, Donald would be happy to use his (so undeserved!) sway with MakingFun to pass along the suggestion.  Of course, it is still likely that it isn't worth MakingFun's time at this particular moment to have that conversation.

This is entirely reasonable. And I am for having the debate (though it's been had a number of times before). The issue I have is, it doesn't look like Donald is really just "pass[ing] along the suggestion". He's shaping it and then passing it along. So, I disagree with that, but you more or less get my position. The bulk/root of my problem is actually with MF not listening to anything, assuming that continues, but to be fair to them, they haven't been at it long, and they have had a LOT of more pressing things to work on. So I'm actually (cautiously) optimistic that they will listen to people, in some form, once they get a better handle on trying to fix the leaking dam.

[SirPeebles]

it doesn't look like Donald is really just "pass[ing] along the suggestion". He's shaping it and then passing it along.

Oh, for sure.  He is definitely participating in the discussion.  He isn't intending to pass along suggestions unless he's been personally convinced that they are good ideas.  Which is kind of necessary if he wants to pass along concrete suggestions with a unified and coherent voice.  Otherwise he would just being forward a batch of raw, contradictory comments, which would require a lot of processing on MakingFun's part and therefore be less likely to be considered or implemented.

To my knowledge, Donald hasn't suggested that f.ds get together and convene an online convention where we draft and ratify a unified message to MakingFun.  But hey, maybe if we asked Donald he would agree to personally pass along just such a coherent and unified message, presumably with the caveat that he does not necessarily endorse it himself.

[WanderingWinder]

it doesn't look like Donald is really just "pass[ing] along the suggestion". He's shaping it and then passing it along.

Oh, for sure.  He is definitely participating in the discussion.  He isn't intending to pass along suggestions unless he's been personally convinced that they are good ideas.  Which is kind of necessary if he wants to pass along concrete suggestions with a unified and coherent voice.  Otherwise he would just being forward a batch of raw, contradictory comments, which would require a lot of processing on MakingFun's part and therefore be less likely to be considered or implemented.

To my knowledge, Donald hasn't suggested that f.ds get together and convene an online convention where we draft and ratify a unified message to MakingFun.  But hey, maybe if we asked Donald he would agree to personally pass along just such a coherent and unified message, presumably with the caveat that he does not necessarily endorse it himself.

Yeah. And again, I don't expect him to pass on things he doesn't agree with. People certainly can't endorse those things they don't agree with, and there's not real reason for him to pass them along like "people want this, I'm against it" (though this would be nice). So I don't expect him to.

It's just, this changes things. It's a one-man veto. So something along the liens of drafting some unified "this is our consensus as a group" thing would be ideal, but there are practical problems, the biggest of which is, I don't think you can actually get a consensus. But it would be nice to try, at least when it looks like they (MF) have time to move on things (I don't think you're going to get a lot of action from people beforehand).

[sudgy]

I think that pro should stay as is, unranked become the new casual (casual players don't really care about rating I would think), and casual gets turned into whatever we're talking about here.  This is just my opinion, of course.

[dondon151]

Oh cool, people are mad at WW instead of me this time for disagreeing or arguing with Donald X. I'm fine with that.

[DG]

Maybe Donald could suggest to MakingFun that we have a representative from the forums (and BGG, etc) who can poll the community and contact them with suggestions. This takes the onus away from Donald to do extra stuff, it hopefully gets us communication from Making Fun, and clarifies our message (whatever that message is). MakingFun might not want be drawn into working on our ideas but that would be their decision.

[Beyond Awesome]

I think that pro should stay as is, unranked become the new casual (casual players don't really care about rating I would think), and casual gets turned into whatever we're talking about here.  This is just my opinion, of course.

This is probably the most elegant solution.

[LibraryAdventurer]

My 2 cents. Pro mode is pretty much fine as is, except that goko (or making fun, I guess?) really needs to implement automatch and a proper lobby system. There shouldn't be any kind of ban list or anything. In my mind "pro" means all-cards, full-random, no knowledge of the kingdom before hand. Obviously people having different set ownerships messes with this somewhat, but I don't really see any practical way to fix that. I don't think it's fair to exclude people who don't have all the cards from hosting pro (especially, what if they have all the sets, but not all the promos. Would that be enough?). Anyway, I don't see a practical solution to that issue. I do think that it makes sense that "pro" mode should be aimed at the interests of the competitive players though.

Being able to see what sets the host of the game owns beforehand might be good. And/or require that the host of a pro game have bought at least one expansion*. I'm a little disappointed when I join a pro game and it turns out to be base-only. Part of the reason I join pro games is that they tend to have more expansions than casual games.
(*Which I haven't yet but that's fine because the only time I ever hosted pro games is when I played bots to raise my rating. And the only reason I wanted to raise my rating is so I join games that said 3000+. I'm sure I'll get around to buying some online expansions eventually, but then I'll be hosting more casual games.)

I think the real problem, as mentioned in the OP is that playing casual "it'd be hard to find an opponent because all the better players seem to just play pro." I think if casual were fixed up a little bit then perhaps people would be more willing to play it too. I probably would still only host pro-mode matches, but I'd be willing to join casual games if it were possible to see what criteria someone used when picking the game (including what sets were drawn from). This would require goko implementing a server-side functioning kingdom generator. LF points out that someone could just keep generating kingdoms until they got, say KC/Goons/Masq, which I guess is an issue, but I think if you were only allowed to put in your parameters and then you didn't see the kingdom until you hit "create game," then generating kingdoms until you got the one you want would be a sufficiently large hassle that it wouldn't be that much of a problem.

I like this suggestion and the one about unrated becoming casual, and casual becoming an intermediate level. The intermediate could have the kingdom generator that you suggest here.

In the meantime before MF/Goko gets around to doing this, I wonder if Salvager could be made to let people know that its kingdom generator was used to create a game in casual or unrated mode and maybe show the parameters to anyone looking at the card set. Would more people play casual if it did this?

PS: Thanks to Geolib for getting back to the topic of the thread.

[Donald X.]

What. The. Fuck. WW?

It's difficult, but important, to remember, when someone is being amazingly antagonistically patronizing, when they say how awful you are and point out how rude they aren't being, and so on, that, well, autism is a spectrum. You may be just as alien to them as they are to you.

Stop.  Killing.  The.  Messenger.

Make no mistake, I am not just a messenger. I can just snap my fingers and make decisions about Dominion, physical or online; I can get an expansion made, prevent one from happening, say no to the VP counter, force the VP counter to always be on. I could only be so unreasonable before they decided, oops I guess this isn't working out, but there is certainly room for me to get things I want.

I got this power somehow, maybe in a lottery or something, and that's that. Sure it's idiotic for someone to think, if I for example say "that will never happen" to something a business will never do because money, that that's me showing my strength, saying "I shoot this down, behold my power." Still that power is there and it's not going anywhere. However friendly I may have been in the past, who knows what the future holds, and there's no overturning this dictatorship. The upside is, anyone can leave whenever they want.

Donald... Thank you for being willing to interact with us, answer questions, give your opinions, pass ideas on to Making Fun, and so on.   I will completely understand if you disappear from this forum again, and just go do what you do best which is designing games.  I've half a mind to leave myself.

I'm there for you. I wasn't trying to threaten people, as if my presence is exciting enough to have losing it matter; I just like to know where I stand.

[Donald X.]

I do think that it makes sense that "pro" mode should be aimed at the interests of the competitive players though.

That sounds good from the name, "pro," and well I don't have much data yet, but I bet that a bunch of competitive players would like to not play with whatever cards they hate the most.

I think if casual were fixed up a little bit then perhaps people would be more willing to play it too. I probably would still only host pro-mode matches, but I'd be willing to join casual games if it were possible to see what criteria someone used when picking the game (including what sets were drawn from). This would require goko implementing a server-side functioning kingdom generator. LF points out that someone could just keep generating kingdoms until they got, say KC/Goons/Masq, which I guess is an issue, but I think if you were only allowed to put in your parameters and then you didn't see the kingdom until you hit "create game," then generating kingdoms until you got the one you want would be a sufficiently large hassle that it wouldn't be that much of a problem.

KC/Masq is the big one, and the program could actually just call it out, warning warning this player set up a KC/Masq game.

It has to be possible to pick all 10 cards (because I say so and my word is law, obv. if I had an acceptable reason for saying this I would endlessly spell it out), but if it tells you "they picked all 10 and here they are" vs. "they picked 5 seaside 5 prosperity" then uh well sometimes people would get suckered and maybe never even know it, but it sounds acceptable. I guess the question then is, how much do people care about seeing the exact set of 10, provided that they get to see the decisions made on generating them? The point to seeing the set of 10 is, I am going to guess, to make sure you don't get a game you won't like; I say "5 seaside 5 prosperity," and who knows, you may be looking at an attack-heavy game you'd decide against playing. OTOH if you have a short banned list you at least get to dodge those.

Of course it's not great if you click on a game and it gives you a page of information about the set-up - they picked 5 seaside 5 prosperity but banned mountebank and sea hag and require at least one village and require lighthouse if there's an attack. This might be a reason to have it be that past a certain point it treats it like you picked all 10 and shows them.

[Donald X.]

Oh, for sure.  He is definitely participating in the discussion.  He isn't intending to pass along suggestions unless he's been personally convinced that they are good ideas.  Which is kind of necessary if he wants to pass along concrete suggestions with a unified and coherent voice.  Otherwise he would just being forward a batch of raw, contradictory comments, which would require a lot of processing on MakingFun's part and therefore be less likely to be considered or implemented.

I'm not just avoiding incoherency or whatever; I'm actively pushing for things I want. If I want something because I think you-all want it, that's still me pushing for what I want. It's a dictatorship and there's no need to sugarcoat it.

You know for a time the standard way they converted movies from movie-size to TV-size was to pan & scan. Woody Allen had it in his contract that they couldn't do that to the TV versions of his flick Manhattan; it's letterboxed. It's just like that. Some guy gets to make the call and if you don't have a zoom button you're out of luck.

It's a world of dictators. I personally am just glad for each day that goes by without Lindt deciding to stop making the chocolate bar I like.

[Donald X.]

Oh cool, people are mad at WW instead of me this time for disagreeing or arguing with Donald X. I'm fine with that.

Oh man, I remember that. Kirian agreed with me about something and you called it a circle jerk. I bet it was pretty exciting when you found out what a circle jerk actually was.

[Donald X.]

Maybe Donald could suggest to MakingFun that we have a representative from the forums (and BGG, etc) who can poll the community and contact them with suggestions. This takes the onus away from Donald to do extra stuff, it hopefully gets us communication from Making Fun, and clarifies our message (whatever that message is). MakingFun might not want be drawn into working on our ideas but that would be their decision.

Say whatever you want to Making Fun, no-one's stopping you. I suspect Making Fun will tend to be more interested in improvements that benefit casual players, because there are more of them, and it's not like Magic where the pros spend more money. But for sure there is value to them in pleasing serious players too.

[Donald X.]

And/or require that the host of a pro game have bought at least one expansion*. I'm a little disappointed when I join a pro game and it turns out to be base-only. Part of the reason I join pro games is that they tend to have more expansions than casual games.

It seems good to have the game indicate how many expansions are available for it. Requiring people to own an expansion to host a pro game seems like it will just annoy potential customers.

I like this suggestion and the one about unrated becoming casual, and casual becoming an intermediate level. The intermediate could have the kingdom generator that you suggest here.

When finding players is an issue, you want as few groupings as possible; so, having an extra division has to really be worth it.

[GeoLib]

I do think that it makes sense that "pro" mode should be aimed at the interests of the competitive players though.

That sounds good from the name, "pro," and well I don't have much data yet, but I bet that a bunch of competitive players would like to not play with whatever cards they hate the most.

I think if casual were fixed up a little bit then perhaps people would be more willing to play it too. I probably would still only host pro-mode matches, but I'd be willing to join casual games if it were possible to see what criteria someone used when picking the game (including what sets were drawn from). This would require goko implementing a server-side functioning kingdom generator. LF points out that someone could just keep generating kingdoms until they got, say KC/Goons/Masq, which I guess is an issue, but I think if you were only allowed to put in your parameters and then you didn't see the kingdom until you hit "create game," then generating kingdoms until you got the one you want would be a sufficiently large hassle that it wouldn't be that much of a problem.

KC/Masq is the big one, and the program could actually just call it out, warning warning this player set up a KC/Masq game.

It has to be possible to pick all 10 cards (because I say so and my word is law, obv. if I had an acceptable reason for saying this I would endlessly spell it out), but if it tells you "they picked all 10 and here they are" vs. "they picked 5 seaside 5 prosperity" then uh well sometimes people would get suckered and maybe never even know it, but it sounds acceptable. I guess the question then is, how much do people care about seeing the exact set of 10, provided that they get to see the decisions made on generating them? The point to seeing the set of 10 is, I am going to guess, to make sure you don't get a game you won't like; I say "5 seaside 5 prosperity," and who knows, you may be looking at an attack-heavy game you'd decide against playing. OTOH if you have a short banned list you at least get to dodge those.

Of course it's not great if you click on a game and it gives you a page of information about the set-up - they picked 5 seaside 5 prosperity but banned mountebank and sea hag and require at least one village and require lighthouse if there's an attack. This might be a reason to have it be that past a certain point it treats it like you picked all 10 and shows them.

To clarify, I meant that you would see the set of ten and the parameters they used to pick it (including the possibility to pick all 10. This is a useful feature and I don't think it should go away). Maybe it pops up that this set contains tournament and you don't join the game. If it comes up with a huge wall of text on all the requirements they used, you don't have to read it all. You can just decide that you'd rather not play that game (or play it anyway).



Also, can we please discuss potential improvements to the online Dominion implementation rather than who was a jerk to whom when?


PPE:

I like this suggestion and the one about unrated becoming casual, and casual becoming an intermediate level. The intermediate could have the kingdom generator that you suggest here.

When finding players is an issue, you want as few groupings as possible; so, having an extra division has to really be worth it.

That doesn't introduce an extra division, just keeps the existing three and makes one of them more usable (in my opinion).

[rrenaud]

Why not require all exps for pro?  It says pro, not noob, after all.

[theory]

Why don't we try again with a new topic and hopefully start off on the right foot this time.