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[michaeljb]

I would increase treasures for 5-6 and otherwise not, as a flat rule; while technically it's an option I don't think it's interesting enough to give it space on whatever screen.

I don't see how it would take more screen space in the game; the number on the Treasure pile is just bigger. Cap it at 99 if that extra digit doesn't fit I guess.

Not that I think it's super-interesting, in fact I think it is a more interesting game when Silver/Gold is one of the 3 piles. I just don't quite see what you mean.

[jonts26]

Pro games should absolutely not allow for people to have an individual veto list, no matter how short, because the purpose of a Pro ranking system is NOT to maximize each players individual enjoyment, it is to foster an environment conducive to the highest levels of competitive play. I'm sorry if you don't like e.g. possession, but it is a part of the game. Even if I hated the Dutch Defense, it would be silly to disallow it in a high level chess tournament. If there are cards you really can't stand you either A) suck it up for the relatively small percentage of games that card appears in, B) forfeit said game, or C) play casual.

D) host games and don't buy Alchemy. Alchemy is a separate product, it's only part of the game if you buy it. There's nothing analogous in chess.

Well, I guess we have to separate the ideal from reality. Ideally, you could only host pro games if you owned all the cards. And that might actually fly if the dominion community was as large as say, the chess community (and getting all the promos was easier). However, that restriction is likely overly prohibitive so we probably need to work around it.

One option is, just let people do that. That's not a great solution, but I think it's the best of a bad lot. Giving people an individual ban list, in fact, does not prevent people from abusing the problems introduced in option 1. It just adds another way to cheapen the competitive environment. There are some other things people have proposed (like multiple set based leaderboards - ick), but no one's really convinced me.

[Donald X.]

I don't see how it would take more screen space in the game; the number on the Treasure pile is just bigger. Cap it at 99 if that extra digit doesn't fit I guess.

Not that I think it's super-interesting, in fact I think it is a more interesting game when Silver/Gold is one of the 3 piles. I just don't quite see what you mean.

I meant, that on some options screen you are clicking "more treasures please." You bought Intrigue, you could add more Silvers but don't have to, we don't know if you want to or not, so there's this option somewhere. I don't think that option is earning its place on that screen.

[LibraryAdventurer]

I would be happy with any solution where: A) I could avoid a certain couple cards I don't like, and B) I can find someone to play with.
I don't care if this solution is implemented in casual or pro or unrated, but currently not many people with multiple sets seem to want to play casual games without exploiting their favorite combo, much less unrated ones. So I guess what I want is for casual and/or unrated games to be fixed so more people will want to play them, which woud mostly likely involve some way to be pretty sure that some jerk didn't craft the kingdom to exploit their favorite combo or whatever.

FWIW, I share LF's opinion about ratings: When playing a rated game, it's easier to get mad & frustrated if I lose. For this reason, unrated games can be more fun. Without ratings, Dominion is a game (unlike some others) where it can be just as fun to lose as it is to win, but ratings messes up that aspect.

Well, for the jerk issue, does highlighting picked cards do the trick? Obv. you can randomly generate lists repeatedly until you see what you like, but that doesn't seem so scary, how much preying on people is happening that way.

It would work for me, but I'm more concerned with whether it would work for other people so that other people would play casual games and I wouldn't have to play pro in order to find someone to play with.

What about if casual is just unrated? What are the merits of separate casual / unrated? "Casual" sounds to me like the kind of thing where I'm not worried about rating. Obv. people looking to get a high casual rating with KC/Masq would lose out but we are okay with that. People who aren't ready for pro humans but want a rating can play pro games against bots or rack up ratings of different kinds in adventures.

On one hand, I don't really care about rating. On the other hand, I would like to be matched with someone whose skill level isn't too far from mine, and I don't know how you'd do that without having a rating. So I think it's good to have separate casual and unrated types.

[Jake L]

I would love to see a tourney room not unlike Magic Online or Poker Stars; a 8 16 or 32 man queue that fires off when all the seats are filled, for example.  Perhaps with  tourney leader board or pro leader board points as payoff for doing well.

[Donald X.]

Well, I guess we have to separate the ideal from reality. Ideally, you could only host pro games if you owned all the cards. And that might actually fly if the dominion community was as large as say, the chess community (and getting all the promos was easier). However, that restriction is likely overly prohibitive so we probably need to work around it.

I wonder exactly how much it would bother people if you had to own all the sets to host pro games (but didn't need the promos). If casual is rated then it's all just a tag, the fact that those games are labelled pro games. Without all the sets, you can host all the rated games you want, you can play in pro games you didn't host, but can't host the games (thus, no pro games vs. bots either).

It's the kind of thing I could see Making Fun consider because it encourages buying everything. The question would be, does it piss people off. I don't think the promos could be part of it.

It's not clear what the group is that would hate it. People with no expansions are already trying to join games with people who bought cards. And as it happens, most people who buy more than one set buy them all. So we are down to, people with one expansion who want to host pro games. Perhaps especially, to build up a rating vs. bots.

One option is, just let people do that. That's not a great solution, but I think it's the best of a bad lot. Giving people an individual ban list, in fact, does not prevent people from abusing the problems introduced in option 1. It just adds another way to cheapen the competitive environment. There are some other things people have proposed (like multiple set based leaderboards - ick), but no one's really convinced me.

You could go as far as a leaderboard per card. Really at that point it's not so much a leaderboard as it is a way to view the data.

[Donald X.]

I would love to see a tourney room not unlike Magic Online or Poker Stars; a 8 16 or 32 man queue that fires off when all the seats are filled, for example.  Perhaps with  tourney leader board or pro leader board points as payoff for doing well.

In the murky past the idea was to have one of the ways you got the shields (for buying promos) be from winning tournaments like that. That still sounds good.

I haven't talked with the Making Fun people about tournaments specifically; I don't know what their plans are there. Nothing short-term for sure.

[jonts26]

Well, I guess we have to separate the ideal from reality. Ideally, you could only host pro games if you owned all the cards. And that might actually fly if the dominion community was as large as say, the chess community (and getting all the promos was easier). However, that restriction is likely overly prohibitive so we probably need to work around it.

I wonder exactly how much it would bother people if you had to own all the sets to host pro games (but didn't need the promos). If casual is rated then it's all just a tag, the fact that those games are labelled pro games. Without all the sets, you can host all the rated games you want, you can play in pro games you didn't host, but can't host the games (thus, no pro games vs. bots either).

It's the kind of thing I could see Making Fun consider because it encourages buying everything. The question would be, does it piss people off. I don't think the promos could be part of it.

It's not clear what the group is that would hate it. People with no expansions are already trying to join games with people who bought cards. And as it happens, most people who buy more than one set buy them all. So we are down to, people with one expansion who want to host pro games. Perhaps especially, to build up a rating vs. bots.

Well, if the pool of players who would dislike the idea is already small enough (and we ignore promos) then perhaps it is something that could be done now. I mean, it's not like other competitive games don't often have a monetary barrier to entry. It's hard to become a pro golfer without buying some good clubs. And hey, if you really want you can wait around for someone else to host, so you're still not exactly barred from competition.

But some people will hate it. And it will cause some otherwise competitive players to not play pro. And that hurts the environment, which is bad. So the question is, is that group large enough that the loss of them outweighs the gains from an all set pro leaderboard? Well, I'm probably not the guy to answer that. I haven't exactly been hanging out in the lobbies.

[Jake L]

Thank you for the reply.  I would be willing to purchase tournament entry chits at say 2/$1, and I own all the sets.  That may mean further financial gain for the host that otherwise they would never see no matter how many thousands of games I should ever play.

[JW]

I wonder exactly how much it would bother people if you had to own all the sets to host pro games (but didn't need the promos). If casual is rated then it's all just a tag, the fact that those games are labelled pro games. Without all the sets, you can host all the rated games you want, you can play in pro games you didn't host, but can't host the games (thus, no pro games vs. bots either).

It's the kind of thing I could see Making Fun consider because it encourages buying everything. The question would be, does it piss people off. I don't think the promos could be part of it.

As someone who at times hosts pro games and owns multiple (but not all) expansions, this would be extremely annoying. There's a much thinner market for casual 2p games than for pro 2p games. Part of the reason for this is that people have are suspicious that every kingdom in casual is designed or is something you practiced multiple previous times. Pro games are a solution to that whether you own all the cards or not.

It seems much more reasonable to simply have the number of sets that each person owns displayed when they host a game. I state which sets I have in the game title, but not everyone does and this would ensure that no one is surprised to be playing a base-only pro game.

Edit: A further problem with not letting people host pro games unless they own all of the sets is that unless you own all of the sets you won't be able to play, say, 20 pro games against bots to get a decent ranking so that you can start playing human opponents with rankings filters.

[Donald X.]

Thank you for the reply.  I would be willing to purchase tournament entry chits at say 2/$1, and I own all the sets.  That may mean further financial gain for the host that otherwise they would never see no matter how many thousands of games I should ever play.

This point will not be lost on them.

[yed]

Pro mode should remain all random without the ability to see the cards before game start.
No veto or ban list in pro. I am also against same starting hands, that is no longer Dominion, that is variant.

[Donald X.]

As someone who at times hosts pro games and owns multiple (but not all) expansions, this would be extremely annoying. There's a much thinner market for casual 2p games than for pro 2p games. Part of the reason for this is that people have are suspicious that every kingdom in casual is designed or is something you practiced multiple previous times. Pro games are a solution to that whether you own all the cards or not.

Okay so this is a separate issue: casual needs to get rid of that problem. Like, normally you don't see the set of 10 in casual, only cards they picked out, so if you can see all 10 you know they hand-picked the set, and if you can only see Develop then you know it's Develop and 9 random cards.  You have a banned cards list that means you aren't worried the cards you can't see will be the ones you hate.

[Awaclus]

It's not clear what the group is that would hate it. People with no expansions are already trying to join games with people who bought cards. And as it happens, most people who buy more than one set buy them all. So we are down to, people with one expansion who want to host pro games. Perhaps especially, to build up a rating vs. bots.

I have two, and I host pro games when nobody who has all of the sets is around.

[dondon151]

An option for casual/unrated games is to allow the game host to select an undesirable card and substitute a random displacement. I play against friends who refuse to play with certain cards, and most kingdoms that I generate will tend to have at least one of cards such as Possession, Goons, Knights, etc. that they either hate playing with or hate playing against me with, but are otherwise good kingdoms.

The whole process for being able to specify kingdoms needs to be streamlined. Iso did it pretty well because you can just c+p parts of randomly generated kingdoms and allow the randomizer to do the rest. Unless I'm missing something, you can't do that in Goko.

[yed]

The whole process for being able to specify kingdoms needs to be streamlined. Iso did it pretty well because you can just c+p parts of randomly generated kingdoms and allow the randomizer to do the rest. Unless I'm missing something, you can't do that in Goko.

I don't understand what "c+p" means.
But you can create a Kingdom with only 2 cards, Goko will generate the rest random for each new game.

[Awaclus]

The whole process for being able to specify kingdoms needs to be streamlined. Iso did it pretty well because you can just c+p parts of randomly generated kingdoms and allow the randomizer to do the rest. Unless I'm missing something, you can't do that in Goko.

I don't understand what "c+p" means.

Copy & paste.

[qmech]

I would like to see Pro games be fully random.  That includes not using things like onigame's Kingdom generator to produce "interesting" Kingdoms.  That's not the computer's job: it's my job to work out what might make a given Kingdom interesting.

[SCSN]

Not that I'm particularly active in the competitive dominion community anymore but my thoughts anyway:

Pro games should absolutely not allow for people to have an individual veto list, no matter how short, because the purpose of a Pro ranking system is NOT to maximize each players individual enjoyment, it is to foster an environment conducive to the highest levels of competitive play.
...
Now if there were cards which hindered high level competitive play for whatever reasons (which I don't think there are)

But there are cards that much reduce the skill factor and thus in a sense hinder high-level competitive play. IGG and to a somewhat lesser extend Swindler ruin many otherwise interesting kingdoms. And it is already possible to use a mutually agreed upon banlist, as long as you're fine with playing with 9 cards: you can just make a gentleman's agreement not to buy a certain card. I've done so on multiple occasions against another good player in IGG games, and I'd much like this process to be automated.

[Davio]

There will never be something like "full random" as long as you have people who don't have all the cards (like me).

So the best option for me would be to just list which sets were used for the random selection and don't allow any veto-ing.

I think the system as it is now, works well enough. I don't have a feeling like the guys at the top of the leaderboard are just lucky and I don't come across a lot of luck-dependent sets. I mean, I do occasionally, but that's just the way it is.

And even if you get a board that's supposedly not luck dependent, you might end up choosing the exact same strategy as your opponent, making luck the deciding factor yet again.


So for me: Just random and displaying the pool that was chosen from is sufficient.

[silverspawn]

I'm pretty much just repeating myself, and I don't have anything new to bring anyway, but I'll still post it.  Since this is a kind of semi official thread now, it seems like a bad idea not to express my opinion here.

- you can pick 3 cards total from expansions/promos, but not the main set (this is to reduce the potential to game the system)
- the creator of a game chooses either to not include cards on all players' lists (the default) or to not include cards on any player's list (so, if you don't want to use this system, that's already the default; don't pick 3 cards, leave it on "all")
- matchmaking allows 1) I want "gone if all banned it," 2) I want "gone if any banned it," 3) I don't care, match me already

So, I like this. Basically, there are three big things that bother me about dominion gameplay: 1) losing games despite playing better 2) masquerade and 3) possession. There is nothing that can be done about 1), it constatly happens both ways and that's just part of the game; but this solution would fix 2) and 3) for me, and even allow me to avoid rebuild on top of that.

Alas, even though I wouldn't have done it quite like that, it's good enough. I don't even want to suggest anything else, if this gets implemented I'm happy.

Also, you can't game the system with that. Honestly, it's three cards out of 205. I mean, even if you replaced "exactly" with "up to" on farmland, players would have a different experience, in the same way that 1 is bigger than 0.9999. This doesn't hold up as a serious argument, why would you care if someone gets, idk, +50 ranking points because of this. And even if someone owns just one extension, it's still pretty unsignificant, and it's not going to help him in tournaments anyway. I care lot about rankings, I think more than most people, and it still wouldn't bother me if some guy tops my rank by doing this. Someone, I'm sure, will care, but whatever, every solution has a drawback. The point is, it's minor.

[greatexpectations]

my two cents:
- pro mode should keep up with keeping cards hidden until the game starts. there should be a way of quickly showing what cards are in the selection pool for that game though. 
- ideally you would have the option of using all cards owned between the players involved in the game.
- i don't see why veto/ban decisions have to be so concrete for a pro mode. we are using computers, we can do fancy things like probabilities. you could do something like give users X% points to distribute among cards, with that percent reducing the probability of seeing that card in a kingdom. if you want to burn it all to stop 2 cards from showing cool. if you want to just bias it against say alchemy cards then hey that's fine too. to me that allows you to achieve most of your enjoyment without adding in metagames or deviating too far from the full random model of competitive games.
- obviously matchmaking would be nice, as would AND options for identical starting hands and point counters. it would also be cool to see first turn dependent on previous games but that is a little further down for me.
- there needs to be some way to return back to your game session if you lose connection for whatever reason. you should be able to lose your internet connection or accidentally close your browser and not have to lose your game. ratings can be silly when you get credited with a loss for the crime of having a 2 second blip in your connection.

[Polk5440]

So I guess to distill my thoughts into concrete ideas,
   0. Keep pro mode as it is.
   1. allow casual games to hide or show cards. There's already a randomizer button. Default it to hide cards and have a "show cards" button by the "require colony" / "require shelters" option.
   2. If there isn't a customizable randomizer, at least allow picking expansions via my cards. Show what expansions/promos people are randomizing among by displaying the expansion icons next to the pro/casual symbol on the game table.
   3. If individual cards were required (as they currently can be via my cards), highlight them and always display the whole kingdom.

I would be happy with any solution where: A) I could avoid a certain couple cards I don't like, and B) I can find someone to play with.
I don't care if this solution is implemented in casual or pro or unrated, but currently not many people with multiple sets seem to want to play casual games without exploiting their favorite combo, much less unrated ones. So I guess what I want is for casual and/or unrated games to be fixed so more people will want to play them, which woud mostly likely involve some way to be pretty sure that some jerk didn't craft the kingdom to exploit their favorite combo or whatever.

FWIW, I share LF's opinion about ratings: When playing a rated game, it's easier to get mad & frustrated if I lose. For this reason, unrated games can be more fun. Without ratings, Dominion is a game (unlike some others) where it can be just as fun to lose as it is to win, but ratings messes up that aspect.

Well, for the jerk issue, does highlighting picked cards do the trick? Obv. you can randomly generate lists repeatedly until you see what you like, but that doesn't seem so scary, how much preying on people is happening that way.

It would work for me, but I'm more concerned with whether it would work for other people so that other people would play casual games and I wouldn't have to play pro in order to find someone to play with.

As someone who at times hosts pro games and owns multiple (but not all) expansions, this would be extremely annoying. There's a much thinner market for casual 2p games than for pro 2p games. Part of the reason for this is that people have are suspicious that every kingdom in casual is designed or is something you practiced multiple previous times. Pro games are a solution to that whether you own all the cards or not.

Okay so this is a separate issue: casual needs to get rid of that problem. Like, normally you don't see the set of 10 in casual, only cards they picked out, so if you can see all 10 you know they hand-picked the set, and if you can only see Develop then you know it's Develop and 9 random cards.  You have a banned cards list that means you aren't worried the cards you can't see will be the ones you hate.

I really need some clarification here. Is there really a perception that people are attempting to game the kingdom when playing casual??? In the last year and a half I have NEVER come across a kingdom where I thought someone set it up for the express purpose of exploiting some secret combo or evil pin.

Isn't it more likely just sour grapes? You got beat and you didn't see the winning strategy so it must be that the other person did something nefarious rather than just beat you?

The closest thing I've gotten to a set up was the most enjoyable casual game I've played. It was against a low ranked player who set up a Dark Ages only kingdom. I looked at the kingdom before joining and thought "that's interesting!" and decided to play it. It turns out that she played REALLY well. In the chat I commented on how well she was playing and she said that the kingdom was a recommended Dark Ages kingdom and it was the 4th or 5th time she has played it in a row. She said that Dark Ages made her interested in playing Dominion again and she really loves playing that particular kingdom because it has so many options. It was a great game. I was pleased because she played much better than her ranking. I guess I could see where others would be upset by that. I don't know.

When I play casual games, it's usually with my friends. We are playing three player and Skyping at the same time. We usually play "simpler" games (I get requests for Labs and Markets and such). No mega-engines where each turn takes 5 minutes that only I will build and limited expansions. By seeing the cards I can quickly re-randomize if the kingdom isn't interesting at all or is too much of a complicated engine. Sometimes Mountebank is fine, sometimes KC is fine; other times not. I usually draw three or four kingodms and then play.

What about if casual is just unrated? What are the merits of separate casual / unrated? "Casual" sounds to me like the kind of thing where I'm not worried about rating. Obv. people looking to get a high casual rating with KC/Masq would lose out but we are okay with that. People who aren't ready for pro humans but want a rating can play pro games against bots or rack up ratings of different kinds in adventures.

On one hand, I don't really care about rating. On the other hand, I would like to be matched with someone whose skill level isn't too far from mine, and I don't know how you'd do that without having a rating. So I think it's good to have separate casual and unrated types.

Yes, I agree. Really the only reason to have a rating system is to be able to play against people who are similarly skilled to you which makes for more interesting games. I do look at the casual and pro rankings when joining a casual game I don't create. If I can play someone ranked 3000 versus 0, that tells me a lot about how the game is going to go -- even if it's "easier" to game the casual rating. I join LastFootnote's unrated games because I know he's a good player. For various reasons people may play very differently than their rankings indicate (recommended kingdom, they've played this kingdom before, they're only familiar with some expansions, etc.). So even an ungamed rating only goes so far. I guess I think there is use for a casual ranking for matchmaking, but it's never going to be perfect.

[LastFootnote]

Yes, mostly I played two expansions with 5 cards from each, although I also played the large expansions by themselves, especially Dark Ages. The cards aren't trying to be better for that format, but you do see set themes reinforced that way. Some cards do end up better, due to being combos with the set themes.

"Pick from 2 sets" seems like a good option provided there aren't lots of options like that (which is to say, I still favor not having a bewildering list of options). Wait, this can be folded into the previous proposal; you can label a slot "from random set #1" or "from random set #2" and then you know, if you have three random set #1's they are from the same random set.

How my randomizer works now is effectively:

• Add promos
  • Put slips of paper into a hat.
    • One for each promo you own with the promo's name on it.
    • One blank slip for each non-promo card you own.
  • Draw out 10 slips and add any promos drawn to the board.

• Choose expansions
  • Put slips of paper into a hat.
    • One for each small set.
    • Two for each normal-sized set.
    • Three for Dark Ages.
  • Draw out 2 slips.

• Choose cards
  • For each remaining slot on the board, round-robin a random card between the selected sets.

So this algorithm allows for e.g. all-Prosperity sets, but not all-Alchemy sets. It also has the advantage that you see each card you own with approximately equal frequency. If you were to insist that a game need to pull cards from exactly two sets (rather than up to 2 sets), I'm not sure how you would weight the sets such that you'd see each card about the same amount of time. It's a non-trivial probability calculation.

Probably optionally specifying a minimum number of expansions for matchmaking is okay? People for sure specify how many sets they have, that they don't want a certain quit% (though that needs fixing), that they want a certain rating.

If Making Fun is OK with that, who am I to complain? I assumed they might not want to specifically enable freeloaders by allowing them to insist that they're matched with somebody owning all the sets.

Okay so this is a separate issue: casual needs to get rid of that problem. Like, normally you don't see the set of 10 in casual, only cards they picked out, so if you can see all 10 you know they hand-picked the set, and if you can only see Develop then you know it's Develop and 9 random cards.  You have a banned cards list that means you aren't worried the cards you can't see will be the ones you hate.

When talking about how much information to display when showing a Casual board and how it was created, it is worth bearing in mind that even now, looking at which cards are in a table is mostly just asking for your seat at that table to be sniped by someone less picky. All this work showing exactly how a set was generated may be for naught if players cannot practically see that information and then still join that game.

I like the idea of putting up a flag right on your table that says, "This game has King's Court/Masquerade/discard attack". But that flag should appear when you create such a set, too, so you know why people aren't joining your game.

[Donald X.]

- i don't see why veto/ban decisions have to be so concrete for a pro mode. we are using computers, we can do fancy things like probabilities. you could do something like give users X% points to distribute among cards, with that percent reducing the probability of seeing that card in a kingdom. if you want to burn it all to stop 2 cards from showing cool. if you want to just bias it against say alchemy cards then hey that's fine too. to me that allows you to achieve most of your enjoyment without adding in metagames or deviating too far from the full random model of competitive games.

It's great to have computers do fancy secret tricksy things. It's not so great to have an interface with lots of options you aren't using.