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[Flip5ide]

Recently there has been a dropoff with anything remotely Dominion-related on f.ds... has anyone noticed this?

[Awaclus]

I don't think so. The only thing that we haven't gotten a lot lately is new articles, which is just natural since there haven't been new cards either. EDIT: I think there's room for another general engine article though, I feel like a lot of the actual stuff going on in high level engine games isn't really very common knowledge, so if someone wants to write a good quality post, there's a possible subject.

[blueblimp]

Yeah. I attribute this to:

• It's been almost three years since Dark Ages came out (last big expansion) and almost two years since Guilds came out (last expansion of any size). No new cards coming out means less to discuss.
• This might just be my perception, but the Goko era seems less conductive to sustaining a competitive scene than the isotropic era. Whether that's because of some failing of the existing Dominion Online, or the trauma of the switchover, or just people having played enough and moving on to other things, I don't know. But I remember more activity pre-switchover.

[dondon151]

What do you mean, lack of quality posts? There are plenty of Dominion memes and in-jokes.

[Kirian]

What do you mean, lack of quality posts? There are plenty of Dominion memes and in-jokes.

And forum games.

That said, what is "quality"? If the objective of being here is to discuss Dominion, then the quality of posts was inevitably going to decrease without new cards, and with the Goko switch.

If the objective is instead to maintain a community dedicated to Dominion, then all the ancillary posting does exactly that.  Even though I haven't played much Dominion lately, I'm still a bit excited about Adventures... but I wouldn't be if I didn't hang out here.

[werothegreat]

I think a lot of us are waiting for a) Adventures and b) "new" Goko

[ehunt]

I am not a top tier Dominion player, but I've been around for a long time.

The site used to be a bunch of people discovering Dominion together, if this makes sense. Many cards simply weren't well-understood until years after being released. It wasn't at all uncommon for a new combo to be discovered that completely changed the way you would play most boards.

Nowadays, our understanding of the game has evolved a lot, and the number of pretty-good players has gone way up as well. I can't remember the last new strategic insight from someone relatively new to the forum that I thought was worth thinking about.

Going back and reading theory's old posts to the blog, which at the time were brilliant, I'm struck by how many I now completely disagree with, or at least, which I think contain parenthetical remarks that I disagree with. Part of this, of course, is that the overall weight of the game has shifted as new expansions are released, so that cards which seemed must-buy around Prosperity time wasn't, but another part is just that the community has put in a massive amount of time on figuring this game out, and at this point we are sort of chipping at the margins instead of discovering great new swaths of territory. I think even with new cards, there will still be less to say, just because we'll already have a framework for thinking about them.

That said, I disagree with the premise a little. The "Game Reports" section is, for example, excellent; there are many quality posts and you can certainly improve your strategy and tactics by reading it.

[jomini]

Part of the problem I've seen is such Dominion talk as still happens is heavily circumscribed by "how frequent is that going to actually be" and "that is not what elite players do".

It used to be that if you wanted to talk about something interesting - like say which cards make Pstone good you could have a nice discussion about the relative merits. Because most people on the boards play all random all the time, you end up in the situation where two card combos are <1 in 500 games and there is heavy antipathy on the boards for discussing things that are "rare". This has gotten to the point that you can be discussing something and offer an example that is obviously contrived example to show a point and most of the thread becomes screed about how rare it is to have X + Y + Z. Dominion is large enough that any degree of specificity is going to be by definition rare, but the boards are pretty much intolerant of anything that isn't fiendishly common and frankly obvious.

The elite players bit is another huge thing killing the boards. It used to be a newb could come in say I think this is good and then people would debate on theoretical merit. Elite players have gotten good enough that, pretty much they can win with anything against non-elite players. The tacit skills of timing, adaptation, and end game strategy are now more than enough that elite players could be utterly terrible with some card or even class of cards, but their execution of a slightly weaker strategy is flawless (or close thereto) and will trump the idealized strengths of cards and combos. This leads to the boards becoming moribund. When arguments start getting made based on ranking it becomes really hard to delve into the subtle parts of the game; someone who executes better can just shut down a thread without actually addressing the dynamics in question. Coupling this with the heavy frequency bias and there just isn't a lot to talk about.

In order to have robust debate and new material you need to have open allowable spaces where people can come with explicit arguments. Virtually every dominion thread these days falls into three camps:
1. A newb come in and says something. There is a wealth of dogpiling that either the newb is utterly wrong, the topic is too rare to merit discussion, or that is not how elite players play.
2. An elite player broaching a "big topic" which tends use excessive generalities that make it really hard to get useful information out. Inevitably some people start offering counterexamples, but such discussions aren't particularly welcome and they die once people start talking about frequency.
3. Specific card discussions. For some unknown reason people think these are reference articles that newbs will read and learn to better play. Virtually all specific card discussion revolves around the most obvious combos, a few generic statements about board types of setups that favor the card, and maybe a few contraindications. In reality, nobody who can find the article will ever learn anything they couldn't have managed just by playing 10 or 20 boards with the card in question.
4. Specific kingdom discussions. These in theory should be a great place for specific discussions, but the board mostly is content to identify a handful of power cards and be done with a kingdom.

To whit, the goal of the boards is no longer to enjoy or understand Dominion; it is to become a strong Dominion player. Nothing wrong with that, but after a small amount of discussion nothing you can actually say is going to come close to the skill gain to be had from just playing more.

[WanderingWinder]

I want to say that I think a big part of the problem is that so much of the game comes down to how you play through the mid and endgame. Reacting to your opponents, adapting to the shuffles, dealing with buying power, jockeying for position for the endgame, where you are buying points and making sure that they can't pile out against you, whilst setting yourself up to do the same... this dominates, and it is very hard to discuss. I think part of the reason here is that it's hard to figure out at what point to start this, some of it is because it's hard to just get someone up to speed at this point. There have been a few endgame articles, but it's very difficult to say 'okay, on turn 15 I have X, Y, Z, he has J, K, L, we need to set up for Q, we need to be aware of his/her ability to R', etc. Moreover, it's really hard to do this in a way that will be generally applicable. "How to play this one particular game" is just not so much an article that is nice and generally helpful, but the situations are so varied, so different, that extrapolating very much from a single game is difficult to do, especially in a succinct manner that makes for an effective and interesting article.

I also think this is why videos and streaming have become much more popular, because this kind of thing is much easier to get across there.

[LastFootnote]

To whit, the goal of the boards is no longer to enjoy or understand Dominion; it is to become a strong Dominion player.

Nailed it.

Personally, I do not strive to become an elite Dominion player. I play Dominion because I enjoy playing it. I enjoy reading the discussion threads here, but do not so often get other value from them these days.

HOWEVER! There is one advantage of the situation that you have missed (because according to your stats you never go there), which is that the Variants and Fan Cards forum on f.DS is excellent. Both the quality of the posted ideas and the quality of feedback is worlds better than at e.g. BGG due to the same level of expertise that has made discussion of the published cards so stagnant.

[Awaclus]

The elite players bit is another huge thing killing the boards. It used to be a newb could come in say I think this is good and then people would debate on theoretical merit. Elite players have gotten good enough that, pretty much they can win with anything against non-elite players. The tacit skills of timing, adaptation, and end game strategy are now more than enough that elite players could be utterly terrible with some card or even class of cards, but their execution of a slightly weaker strategy is flawless (or close thereto) and will trump the idealized strengths of cards and combos. This leads to the boards becoming moribund. When arguments start getting made based on ranking it becomes really hard to delve into the subtle parts of the game; someone who executes better can just shut down a thread without actually addressing the dynamics in question. Coupling this with the heavy frequency bias and there just isn't a lot to talk about.

I don't believe that "elite players" are "utterly terrible" at anything. You don't become an elite player through memorizing 29384729384729837 different cool tricks you can do in different situations, and then lose games because your opponent used that one trick you didn't remember. You become an elite player through understanding how the entire game works as a whole (not perfectly of course, but on a certain level). When you're good at estimating the consequences of your actions in general, there won't be "some card or even class of cards" that you're "utterly terrible" at.

FWIW, I played Hermit/Market Square against Marin who had just returned and didn't know about the combo, he won that game.

[liopoil]

FWIW, I played Hermit/Market Square against Marin who had just returned and didn't know about the combo, he won that game.

Did... he see the combo though? I can't imagine uncontested hermit/market square loses often at all. Or maybe he just got hermits because it's a good card and it worked out?

[Awaclus]

FWIW, I played Hermit/Market Square against Marin who had just returned and didn't know about the combo, he won that game.

Did... he see the combo though? I can't imagine uncontested hermit/market square loses often at all. Or maybe he just got hermits because it's a good card and it worked out?

He didn't, but he bought so many Market Squares that I couldn't get enough Golds to do anything particularly useful. I don't remember the game too well anymore, but I'm pretty sure it would have been possible for me to win the game if I hadn't been all like "Yay, let's do this Hermit/Market Square trick and hope he doesn't know it! Let's see, first you do this, and then this..." and had paid attention to the relevant things instead.

[jsh357]

This is a quality thread about Dominion

[Archetype]

I'm mostly here for the forum games tbh.

[pacovf]

I'm mostly here for the RSP board, RSPII thread, fan card ideas, Mafia speccys, card previews, blueblimp's posts, necrophilia jokes, obscure references, painful puns, and the "Show unread posts since last visit." button.

[Ozle]

Recently there has been a dropoff with anything remotely Dominion-related on f.ds... has anyone noticed this?

I agree, you've hardly posted anything since August and only started a couple of threads in that time!

Forums ebb and wane though, new joiners have been steadily declining, as have total posts over all.

I blame Goko, because, well why not! Well it's either them or JSH!

[DG]

As someone who is still trying to write articles, I have to say that there hasn't been much positive feedback to encourage me to keep doing it. My last article had no responses whatsoever so I don't know whether it was liked, disliked, or should have been something different. If nobody responds then thread drops off the recent posts list very quickly as well.

I think the responses to the help! section could be more helpful and instructive (less dismissive).
We could do with some new (play based) puzzles and challenges, those seem to have dried up.
As a community we could do with a universal simulator that everyone can use easily and share scripts.

[jsh357]

I suppose there has been a fair amount of quality content on the streams.  I've learned a lot watching them. However, it doesn't translate so well to forum content generally.

[jomini]

The elite players bit is another huge thing killing the boards. It used to be a newb could come in say I think this is good and then people would debate on theoretical merit. Elite players have gotten good enough that, pretty much they can win with anything against non-elite players. The tacit skills of timing, adaptation, and end game strategy are now more than enough that elite players could be utterly terrible with some card or even class of cards, but their execution of a slightly weaker strategy is flawless (or close thereto) and will trump the idealized strengths of cards and combos. This leads to the boards becoming moribund. When arguments start getting made based on ranking it becomes really hard to delve into the subtle parts of the game; someone who executes better can just shut down a thread without actually addressing the dynamics in question. Coupling this with the heavy frequency bias and there just isn't a lot to talk about.

I don't believe that "elite players" are "utterly terrible" at anything. You don't become an elite player through memorizing 29384729384729837 different cool tricks you can do in different situations, and then lose games because your opponent used that one trick you didn't remember. You become an elite player through understanding how the entire game works as a whole (not perfectly of course, but on a certain level). When you're good at estimating the consequences of your actions in general, there won't be "some card or even class of cards" that you're "utterly terrible" at.

FWIW, I played Hermit/Market Square against Marin who had just returned and didn't know about the combo, he won that game.

See this is the sort of thing I'm talking about, I say they could be terrible and immediately you start as though I actually ever said such. This was a rhetorical contrived case to illustrate a point. And yes it does happen a lot that elite players do miss things because they have certain biases for and against things.

Dominion isn't about learning 1001 tricks, but learning about the tricks, particularly the less obvious shades of value are one way to "get an understanding" of how the game works. Take the long Counterfeit/Venture thread that was recently revived, the "trick" of Counterfeit being the strongest single copper trasher in a Venture deck is pretty weak. But the logic behind why Counterfeit works well when you are already committed to Venture is the type of "understanding" that lets you learn the game. Sure sitting down to crank numbers and the like isn't time effective, but the process of understanding where to find "tricks" is pretty good for learning board reading. Once you have a tacit feel for the game you could, theoretically, be utterly terrible at playing Venture decks, but odds are even when Venture is the strongest option, elite players could still win with something else; even when they lose it is awfully hard to see if they were wrong or just unlucky.

Now are elite players going to be actively bad? No. But there are things where they just have a good feel and the margin by which they are wrong isn't strong enough to swamp their tacit skill level. Think of this way, if I pick a better base strategy, just how much better does it have to be before I can beat someone with better sense of game flow and the like? Pretty high. Most of the interesting stuff about dominion is now going have less than 5% chance of swinging a game. Pick a card, even a strong on like Pool or Steward; try playing without buying it ever for a 100 games. How many extra will you lose? Not that many.

And this is the thing that kills actual Dominion discussion here, the stuff that isn't well mapped out is rare enough that even if, by some miracle, the elite players were completely ass-backwards about some card it wouldn't show up much in the stats. So for now, we've reached a point where the most efficient way to become an elite player is just to play a bunch and the interesting questions are actively killed on the board.

[Jack Rudd]

The death of Isotropic was the reason I'm no longer playing Dominion online. I don't feel like paying Goko/MakingFun/whoever for their implementation, and I have little interest in Base Set games. There are probably many others like me, who would otherwise be part of an online Dominion-playing community, sharing their games.

Some of this parallels what has happened in the development of chess. It's actually pretty hard these days to write decent strategy articles about chess, because so much of modern positional understanding is based on specific features of specific positions. John Watson's book Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy has much to say on this topic.

[popsofctown]

The death of Isotropic was the reason I'm no longer playing Dominion online. I don't feel like paying Goko/MakingFun/whoever for their implementation, and I have little interest in Base Set games. There are probably many others like me, who would otherwise be part of an online Dominion-playing community, sharing their games.

Some of this parallels what has happened in the development of chess. It's actually pretty hard these days to write decent strategy articles about chess, because so much of modern positional understanding is based on specific features of specific positions. John Watson's book Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy has much to say on this topic.

I actually have trouble happening upon base only games in automatch since my rating is decent..

I think the group size definitely shrank when things moved to Goko.  I play WanderingWinder and Stef and Mic Qsenoch all the time now with the same isotropish rating that wasn't good enough to get me a glimpse of those kinds of players back in the day because they could set to +-10 or +-5 and get games really quickly with the huge number of strong players playing.  The number of players overall might not have changed much but the number of mid-high level players has decreased

[werothegreat]

Well, everyone's gonna be fumbling around for a while once Adventures releases, so there'll be that.

[Flip5ide]

Recently there has been a dropoff with anything remotely Dominion-related on f.ds... has anyone noticed this?

I agree, you've hardly posted anything since August and only started a couple of threads in that time!

Forums ebb and wane though, new joiners have been steadily declining, as have total posts over all.

I blame Goko, because, well why not! Well it's either them or JSH!

Well you know... college and studying and stuff. I'm top of my class as it stands, so I think it was a reasonable trade-off.

[Awaclus]

The elite players bit is another huge thing killing the boards. It used to be a newb could come in say I think this is good and then people would debate on theoretical merit. Elite players have gotten good enough that, pretty much they can win with anything against non-elite players. The tacit skills of timing, adaptation, and end game strategy are now more than enough that elite players could be utterly terrible with some card or even class of cards, but their execution of a slightly weaker strategy is flawless (or close thereto) and will trump the idealized strengths of cards and combos. This leads to the boards becoming moribund. When arguments start getting made based on ranking it becomes really hard to delve into the subtle parts of the game; someone who executes better can just shut down a thread without actually addressing the dynamics in question. Coupling this with the heavy frequency bias and there just isn't a lot to talk about.

I don't believe that "elite players" are "utterly terrible" at anything. You don't become an elite player through memorizing 29384729384729837 different cool tricks you can do in different situations, and then lose games because your opponent used that one trick you didn't remember. You become an elite player through understanding how the entire game works as a whole (not perfectly of course, but on a certain level). When you're good at estimating the consequences of your actions in general, there won't be "some card or even class of cards" that you're "utterly terrible" at.

FWIW, I played Hermit/Market Square against Marin who had just returned and didn't know about the combo, he won that game.

See this is the sort of thing I'm talking about, I say they could be terrible and immediately you start as though I actually ever said such. This was a rhetorical contrived case to illustrate a point. And yes it does happen a lot that elite players do miss things because they have certain biases for and against things.

Dominion isn't about learning 1001 tricks, but learning about the tricks, particularly the less obvious shades of value are one way to "get an understanding" of how the game works. Take the long Counterfeit/Venture thread that was recently revived, the "trick" of Counterfeit being the strongest single copper trasher in a Venture deck is pretty weak. But the logic behind why Counterfeit works well when you are already committed to Venture is the type of "understanding" that lets you learn the game. Sure sitting down to crank numbers and the like isn't time effective, but the process of understanding where to find "tricks" is pretty good for learning board reading. Once you have a tacit feel for the game you could, theoretically, be utterly terrible at playing Venture decks, but odds are even when Venture is the strongest option, elite players could still win with something else; even when they lose it is awfully hard to see if they were wrong or just unlucky.

Now are elite players going to be actively bad? No. But there are things where they just have a good feel and the margin by which they are wrong isn't strong enough to swamp their tacit skill level. Think of this way, if I pick a better base strategy, just how much better does it have to be before I can beat someone with better sense of game flow and the like? Pretty high. Most of the interesting stuff about dominion is now going have less than 5% chance of swinging a game. Pick a card, even a strong on like Pool or Steward; try playing without buying it ever for a 100 games. How many extra will you lose? Not that many.

And this is the thing that kills actual Dominion discussion here, the stuff that isn't well mapped out is rare enough that even if, by some miracle, the elite players were completely ass-backwards about some card it wouldn't show up much in the stats. So for now, we've reached a point where the most efficient way to become an elite player is just to play a bunch and the interesting questions are actively killed on the board.

No, you don't get an understanding of how the game works by learning individual things that only apply in specific scenarios. You get an understanding of how that individual thing works in that specific scenario. I stopped reading the Counterfeit/Venture thread when the posts got tl;dr, so I'm not sure what kind of stuff was discussed there, but I'm sure that learning about "when cards dig for stuff, it's good to build your deck in such a way that they will hit stuff you want them to hit" is way more useful than learning about "Counterfeit is good with Venture". If you learn the first thing, you already know that you want lots of cantrips when Golem is your only splitter, you want as few non-Action cards as possible when Scrying Pool is your only draw, you don't want Estates when you're playing Rebuild and the Duchies are out, and a bunch of other stuff that will actually be useful in real games. You can say that these things are obvious, but it's not obvious how important it is to not have Estates with Rebuild, or to have lots of cantrips with Golem. I know I shouldn't have too many non-Action cards with Scrying Pool, but I really want to hit $5 so should I buy this Silver anyway? If I have a general understanding of how the game works, I can probably tell if it's worth it or not depending on the kingdom, but if I know how good Counterfeit is with Venture, that doesn't help me at all in that situation.

Also, even though we are all Wandering Winder, elite players are, surprisingly enough, actually not a hive mind. Everyone has their own playing style and it influences things, and some elite players are simply even better than some other elite players and that also influences things. I remember a lot of games where I went for a different strategy than my opponent, and one of us won because we both implemented our strategies fairly well and one strategy was better than the other. I don't remember a lot of games where I went for a different strategy than my opponent and felt that the winner had the worse strategy, but played it so much better that he won anyway. The majority of time, I'm probably going for the same strategy as my opponent, but there are times when someone tries out something new. It might be the case that there's stuff that you would try out, but an elite player wouldn't, and then we don't have data about elite players trying it out, but I'm not buying it that there's any major reason for this other than that the strategy actually isn't very good and elite players can see it without even having to try.

If you pick a strong card like Scrying Pool and ignore it for 100 games, you will probably lose pretty much all the games where the card is on the kingdom. Which is not that many. And if you would have lost somewhere around 50% of those games anyway, it's just natural that you won't lose that many extra games because there aren't that many extra games that you could have possibly lost in the first place. Maybe there's one or even two games where ignoring Pool is actually correct, but most of the time, it won't be, and if you ignore it regardless, there's just no way you're ever winning the game against someone who doesn't.

It's not a bad thing to ask questions on the forums. People will answer the questions and you can learn something from that. If you refuse to learn, that's your own problem, not the forum's.

[Mr.Oatmeal]

Expanding on some things that WW and jsh said, I think the community (at least in my experience of it) has moved to more streaming and YouTube videos. These videos allow discussion about the mid-game strategies that WW pointed out are so hard to put into an article.
One specific thing that I have picked up from watching these videos is I have caught myself  thinking "ok, my opponent has X gains, so he can't end the game next turn, so I am safe to keep building."  Typing up how to track that would be hard, but to see the things that the streamers consider when checking for piles is very straight forward.
Also, some of the combo discussions that seem to be missing in the forum take place in the chat on twitch.

These videos don't address your issue with the possibility that elite players may not value certain cards or combos, but I think that learning to control my deck and understand what may be coming over the next few turns is going to help me understand, appreciate and play the game of dominion better.

[LastFootnote]

It does seem to me (from the advice in the Game Reports forum) that a lot of high-level players will stick to their tried-and-true strategies rather than trying new things. I think it is entirely reasonable to believe that these players sometimes win through tactical skill even though they chose a "sub-optimal" strategy. Whether that's a bad thing is a matter of opinion, I guess.

[ehunt]

The death of Isotropic was the reason I'm no longer playing Dominion online. I don't feel like paying Goko/MakingFun/whoever for their implementation, and I have little interest in Base Set games. There are probably many others like me, who would otherwise be part of an online Dominion-playing community, sharing their games.

Some of this parallels what has happened in the development of chess. It's actually pretty hard these days to write decent strategy articles about chess, because so much of modern positional understanding is based on specific features of specific positions. John Watson's book Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy has much to say on this topic.

for the record, you really don't have to buy to play games at more-or-less the same rate as you did on isotropic. i don't own any cards and don't have trouble getting non-base-set games.

[AdamH]

Expanding on some things that WW and jsh said, I think the community (at least in my experience of it) has moved to more streaming and YouTube videos. These videos allow discussion about the mid-game strategies that WW pointed out are so hard to put into an article.

For me personally, this is very much the case. It's much easier for me to contribute to the community through video than it is through text, so that is most of what I've been doing for quite some time now. I've written one article, but I've put out countless hours of videos and live streams and commentary that is collectively much more valuable than my Jack article.

I mean, I'd rather watch/listen to a video than read an article (though I love doing both) but I imagine videos are much more accessible for lots of people.

Personally I think it's a good thing, if I'm not totally off-base in thinking that videos are better than text in some ways, then a shift towards more video content is an improvement in the content we see. At least it's better for me.

I feel much closer to the F.DS community interacting with them in real-time, whether that's on Skype or through the chat. I've even gotten to meet a few of you IRL and it's been a blast.

[jomini]

No, you don't get an understanding of how the game works by learning individual things that only apply in specific scenarios.
You get an understanding of how that individual thing works in that specific scenario.

No what you want to get is why these things work and particularly why X is better than Y. If you play enough, the "why" question just becomes innate. I've seen people tell me I'm wrong about things they actually have done when playing me. If you want to understand the game, why is by far the more interesting question. This doesn't make you a stronger play particularly fast, but you have a much better understanding of things. Much like how chess problems don't give you a huge leg up in competitive play but do allow you to understand the game better.

I stopped reading the Counterfeit/Venture thread when the posts got tl;dr, so I'm not sure what kind of stuff was discussed there, but I'm sure that learning about "when cards dig for stuff, it's good to build your deck in such a way that they will hit stuff you want them to hit" is way more useful than learning about "Counterfeit is good with Venture".

The latter is a specific instance of the former as you are I'm sure aware. However, no one reading the board is a moron and we all can learn inductive or deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is typically easier for people to grasp and far more rapidly integrated (hence part of the reason humans use so many analogies in argumentation); but the board may be skewed. Nobody thinks learning every possible synergy between any two cards is a good idea, but the skills find such synergy as exists can come either top down or bottom up. In Dominion the former has the advantage of being "applicable" more often, the latter has the advantage of not get edge cased to death and actually can be discussed in concrete or even quantifiable turns.

Regardless, the most efficient course of action isn't to read anything, it is just to go play more and observe your opponents when they beat you.

Also, even though we are all Wandering Winder, elite players are, surprisingly enough, actually not a hive mind. Everyone has their own playing style and it influences things, and some elite players are simply even better than some other elite players and that also influences things. I remember a lot of games where I went for a different strategy than my opponent, and one of us won because we both implemented our strategies fairly well and one strategy was better than the other. I don't remember a lot of games where I went for a different strategy than my opponent and felt that the winner had the worse strategy, but played it so much better that he won anyway.

Ehh its pretty hard to disambiguate "shuffle luck" from tacit timing and end game skill. When both players get up in skill, the changes we are talking about are likely less than flipping a 45-55 split to a 55-45. You'd have to squint hard to see that in a single game. We hear about the epic things (like buying an Herbalist for $11 and that being the right timing), but a lot of games have small timing choices that have a non-negligable impact on score, often a larger degree than the objective strength of the strategy. I mean consider Big Money games. If we are both playing BMX then whoever picks the better X should win ... but we had to go through a fairly extensive optimization of the end game. If you are better and deducing the point when to start swapping into Estates or when to get an extra $8 gold and I'm not doing end a solidly end game timed BM you can win with a lot weaker X's. If timing skill didn't matter you couldn't have sims get noticeably better with more in depth timing routines.

The majority of time, I'm probably going for the same strategy as my opponent, but there are times when someone tries out something new. It might be the case that there's stuff that you would try out, but an elite player wouldn't, and then we don't have data about elite players trying it out, but I'm not buying it that there's any major reason for this other than that the strategy actually isn't very good and elite players can see it without even having to try.

The odd thing is we see pretty big swings still year to year with different card rankings. This shouldn't be happening if the game is revolving around accurate picking of card strength. Changes should be relatively static and there should be convergence in elite player thought on exactly what the strong cards are. It is only where players have different tacit, tactical skills where you can have divergence.

Given that elite players are divergent on their card rankings, I think it is a safe bet that a big portion elite play (particularly given your admittance to playing a lot of mirrors) is timing skill.

If you pick a strong card like Scrying Pool and ignore it for 100 games, you will probably lose pretty much all the games where the card is on the kingdom. Which is not that many. And if you would have lost somewhere around 50% of those games anyway, it's just natural that you won't lose that many extra games because there aren't that many extra games that you could have possibly lost in the first place. Maybe there's one or even two games where ignoring Pool is actually correct, but most of the time, it won't be, and if you ignore it regardless, there's just no way you're ever winning the game against someone who doesn't.

You can safely ignore it much more often. Take Rebuild. In ~1% of Pool Games you will also have Rebuild. I can't think of a single Rebuild board where Pool is a good buy. In about .1% of Pool games you will have Hermit/Market Square which is very often going to beat Pool handily. In maybe .25% you have a viable pin deck. And so on and so forth just for the two card combos.

My guess is that you can safely ignore Pool twice as often (which is still saying Pool is exceedingly often a high power buy), but again my point isn't that some elite player is horrid at Pool. It is that even if he is relatively bad with Pool, his experience wouldn't be able to show it. You could drop 10% of your win rate with a certain card and you still wouldn't see it unless you have extremely strong recall and a good statistical sense for these sorts of things. Differentiating card strength (what people played), tacit timing skill (when/how they played it), and shuffle luck is extremely hard.

Again, if you just want to be an elite player, skip the boards. Go play or maybe watch several games. You will learn far more for your time.

[Mic Qsenoch]

The comment about skipping SP on ~100% of Rebuild boards is simply wrong. Would be happy to play a set of games with jomini or anyone who wants. I'll always skip Rebuild, you always skip SP.

[liopoil]

Expecting mic to win 70%+ of those games, without regard to player strength.

[jomini]

The comment about skipping SP on ~100% of Rebuild boards is simply wrong. Would be happy to play a set of games with jomini or anyone who wants. I'll always skip Rebuild, you always skip SP.

Haven't got the time at the moment, maybe in two weeks? I don't think this will determine anything other than the fact that you are indeed a better player than I; I expect you'd also beat me if I skipped Rebuild and you skipped Pool. Which again is going to make it hard to disambiguate how much of the result is due to you being a better a player, how much is due to shuffle luck, and how much is due to card strength.

Regardless, I'd be curios to know your reasoning. Why do you think this plays better? I get Pool is extremely good cycling and draw with a an attack particularly well suited to mucking around with Rebuild, but I'd think you need a decent bit of support to make Pool inherently stronger.

[Awaclus]

Regardless, I'd be curios to know your reasoning. Why do you think this plays better? I get Pool is extremely good cycling and draw with a an attack particularly well suited to mucking around with Rebuild, but I'd think you need a decent bit of support to make Pool inherently stronger.

You don't need a decent bit of support to make Scrying Pool strong. Scrying Pool is the decent bit of support, and then you just need an actual strategy (i.e. payload) that you can support with it.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Haven't got the time at the moment, maybe in two weeks? I don't think this will determine anything other than the fact that you are indeed a better player than I; I expect you'd also beat me if I skipped Rebuild and you skipped Pool. Which again is going to make it hard to disambiguate how much of the result is due to you being a better a player, how much is due to shuffle luck, and how much is due to card strength.

I'm not magic. I'm just guessing and muddling through like everybody else. Maybe I muddle through a little less? I dunno. I think I remember you posting a screenshot or something of you taking a guest account pretty high on the leaderboard so I don't have any doubt that your play is skilled enough to be competitive with mine. I regularly play nice competitive games with people from 5000 on up. As an "elite" player, I am not so impressed with us to be honest. We mess up all the time!

Anyway, let me know when you have free time if you're still interested then. I agree we can't separate all the different factors out (luck, skill difference, limited number of games, etc.), it's just for fun and maybe to see some examples of where one card or the other is dominant.

Regardless, I'd be curios to know your reasoning. Why do you think this plays better? I get Pool is extremely good cycling and draw with a an attack particularly well suited to mucking around with Rebuild, but I'd think you need a decent bit of support to make Pool inherently stronger.

I think for instance that most boards with Colony will heavily favor SP. Goons/Bishop/Monument will help a lot. Vineyards or Fairgrounds should help SP. Boards with trashing, +buy/gainers, discard attacks. Cards that support big action engines like KC/TR/Procession. Bridge/Highway go really well with SP. Basically anything that can either lengthen the game (so alt-VP and attacks), shorten the SP build time (trashing/gaining), or increase the engine's power make SP a lot more attractive.

I don't know if this all sounds too obvious, I don't mean it to be. I just want to make it clear that there are a lot of cards that make SP stronger and I think if the kingdom has even a couple of the classes of cards I mentioned above SP has a good chance of beating Rebuild. In the cases where you have 3-4 of the above things (and many cards are in more than one "class"), I really like SP over Rebuild.

I guess the general idea is that Rebuild isn't enabled by many other cards, it is very strong as a baseline but doesn't improve much with other kingdom cards.  SP has a lot of enablers.

[Mic Qsenoch]

And a bit of trivia, the first kingdom I rolled last night when looking at Rebuild/SP kingdoms had

Expand, Border Village, Wharf, Rebuild, Ironworks, Conspirator, Scrying Pool, Pearl Diver with Colonies. I can't remember the last two cards and gokosalvager.com is down.

I felt like the Universe was sending me a message and didn't roll any more kingdoms.

[pacovf]

Are you sure you are not magic?

[Chris is me]

So I'm a fairly new poster, maybe I can provide some useful thoughts here. I've been playing Dominion online since last summer, and I've been really playing seriously for a few months now. I always knew this site existed, and ate up all of the articles on DS.com proper as well as the wiki. I'm the kind of person with a lot to say who tends to post frequently on forums for things I'm interested in. But f.ds always seemed weird and I had trouble jumping in to post, well, anything.

I think there are a few reasons for this:

• The forum is pretty hard to navigate; there's a ton of subforums to pilfer through just to find a half dozen recent discussions, and the layout can be confusing
• There aren't a lot of discussions going on at any one time. People tend to avoid topics already talked about; "noob" posts asking more basic questions never seem to happen, etc. I suspect a lot of y'all have already gotten your "can you think of niche edge cases to use THIS card???" discussions out of the way.
• The lack of active existing threads makes it hard to tell what kind of content would be tolerated / accepted - would people react positively to some thread where I just gush about how much I like Baker versus Market? Do I have enough knowledge to open a discussion about what best supports an IGG rush? Hard to gauge this sort of thing without examples

Lately I've found a thread or two I can say things on and jumped in, but I'm honestly a lot more active on Reddit or even the wiki than I am here. I'd like that to change, there's just not a lot to talk about I guess. Hopefully Adventures helps. I'm also hoping the Goko replacement simulator comes with a functional Lobby chat room, where people can casually discuss Dominion strategy; that would beget more lasting interest in the game and thus more posting.

[SCSN]

I suspect a lot of y'all have already gotten your "can you think of niche edge cases to use THIS card???" discussions out of the way.

That's certainly what you'd expect...

To get an overview of the latest posts you can use the Show unread posts since last visit link you see at the top of the forum when logged in. You can customize what boards it shows posts from depending on your interests. I get served only Dominion related stuff.

[bardo]

How do you customize which boards the "Show unread posts since last visit" link pulls from?

[JW]

How do you customize which boards the "Show unread posts since last visit" link pulls from?

Profile--> Modify Profile --> Ignore Boards Options.

A board you're ignoring won't show up when you "Show unread posts."

[Gherald]

That's nice. There's still too many sections (should be maybe 5 Dominion-related sections, not 10) but at least it's more manageable seeing only Dominion stuff.

By the way, I bet none of you knew http://boardgamestrategy.net/forum is ... this very forum, on a different URL.

[LastFootnote]

That's nice. There's still too many sections (should be maybe 5 Dominion-related sections, not 10) but at least it's more manageable seeing only Dominion stuff.

By the way, I bet none of you knew http://boardgamestrategy.net/forum is ... this very forum, on a different URL.

Yes, I knew that. theory said so when he set it up.

[Awaclus]

I think there are a few reasons for this:

• The forum is pretty hard to navigate; there's a ton of subforums to pilfer through just to find a half dozen recent discussions, and the layout can be confusing
• There aren't a lot of discussions going on at any one time. People tend to avoid topics already talked about; "noob" posts asking more basic questions never seem to happen, etc. I suspect a lot of y'all have already gotten your "can you think of niche edge cases to use THIS card???" discussions out of the way.
• The lack of active existing threads makes it hard to tell what kind of content would be tolerated / accepted - would people react positively to some thread where I just gush about how much I like Baker versus Market? Do I have enough knowledge to open a discussion about what best supports an IGG rush? Hard to gauge this sort of thing without examples

A lot of stuff is tolerated. I think usually when someone's posts aren't generally tolerated or accepted, it's because he's being arrogant and contemptuous towards other people. Or ruining a mafia game for everyone. You could totally open a discussion about what best supports an IGG rush, you could state your own opinions there and/or ask for other people's opinions, there would be an opportunity for fruitful discussion there and I'm sure nobody would mind it. But if you started insulting everyone who disagreed with you, then I don't think that would be tolerated.

It's true that we don't have a lot of newbies posting newbie stuff here, but it's not because it's not allowed, it's because people have a tendency to stop being newbies at some point when they're reading and posting a lot here, and as a result, there aren't that many newbies around. There are some examples of what isn't allowed though, but as you can see, they're super rare.

For navigation, I don't think it's very hard. The Dominion FAQ board could go I think, people confuse it with Rules Questions all the time and there aren't that many relevant things there, they could probably just be in a sticky thread somewhere else. But other than that, the boards are pretty straightforward.

[XerxesPraelor]

I'm a newbie and have stayed around, but that's mainly because I'm interested in the forum game (check them out) and the variants forum. I expect most people who participate in the Article or Play Reports do get better.

[Ozle]

Holy crap, this threads still on topic!

[DStu]

I think the only Dominion-related topics from "newbs" that we are really annoyed of are
- card X is so overpowered you should just buy it and win trololol
- omg just play BigMoney-X, this beats everything this game suckz

While also there, it's the tone that matters, (probably most of us found this or another forum by thinking "this can't be, X is so strong there must be something wrong, lets check the internet"), but if you come here telling us that we are all idiots not understanding how simple the game is after playing in total half the games that many here play or played in a day, don't expect to get liked.

For everything else, as long as you can live with your topic getting derailed, just try it and it should go fine...

[iguanaiguana]

I will agree though with some of the other posters that it is very intimidating to jump into this community. Part of that is simply that dominion is a serious game where a lot of serious thinking can go on. It is natural then that the community who takes a serious strategy game very seriously would be somewhat intimidating to join in on.

[Chris is me]

Thanks for all the helpful replies, everyone. Adding the filter to recent posts makes it a lot easier to navigate this website and participate.

I would just like to add that my comments were more intended as my initial perception of the forum, rather than what it accurately is. While I'm glad the forum isn't intimidating and welcomes posts like the ones I suggested, that's just kind of the initial vibe I got. Do with it what you will, just some thoughts.

Looking forward to some quality discussions about whatever niche card combo I bump into next.

[markusin]

Thanks for all the helpful replies, everyone. Adding the filter to recent posts makes it a lot easier to navigate this website and participate.

I would just like to add that my comments were more intended as my initial perception of the forum, rather than what it accurately is. While I'm glad the forum isn't intimidating and welcomes posts like the ones I suggested, that's just kind of the initial vibe I got. Do with it what you will, just some thoughts.

Looking forward to some quality discussions about whatever niche card combo I bump into next.

I can understand where you're coming from. I think I was a lurker of awhile before finally signing up to contribute to a thread where you post your best and worst kingdom based on win rate given availability (back when Council Room was up). That thread was for fun rather than hard analysis. I imagine a lot people on the forum like the forum games, but you can't see those unless you're signed in with an account. Basically, you can't "check the forum games" until you commit to making an account.

To this day most of my posts are not related to serious Dominion analysis, despite having become a decent player at some point within the Goko era. I did write an article on Graverobber, but even writing just one article feels like a feat of bravery considering the amount of scrutiny and criticism that is typically expected from the community.

There have still been examples of new or infrequent posters providing quality posts and receiving praise for them in recent times. However, these posts often included huge amounts of statistical data, simulation data, or introduced new tools developed by the poster to the forum. Even then, the initial reception is full of comments on how to improve the quality of the data and tools, as well as inquiries on how the results were attained.

All this to say, the bar to impress the community seems pretty high these days.

[qmech]

All this to say, the bar to impress the community seems pretty high these days.

6/10, would read again.

[hvb]

Nice impulse, Flipside. I have the feeling this thread and some of Wero got the discussion into motion a bit.

[jsh357]

Flipside is the glue that holds this community together.  He is our hero, the one we deserve and need.

[enfynet]

Flipside is the glue that holds this community together.  He is our hero, the one we deserve and need.

I thought the community was held together by WanderingWinder?

[Witherweaver]

Holy crap, this threads still on topic!

We all appreciate you keeping the quality of posts low so that this thread can remain relevant.

[hvb]

Oh and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown

[AdamH]

So I've been thinking about this for a while.

Between this thread and the Adventures previews, there's been a lot of activity on the forums recently, and an increase in Dominion-related posts. This is probably a good thing. But I don't think we've gotten any better at talking.

I started a thread a while ago, hoping to contribute to some good Dominion-related discussion. The intent of the thread was to highlight two-card interactions that had interesting and/or useful synergy, enough that you should probably look out for it when you're playing just about any game with those two cards. I gave a few examples, and some more people came in with good examples, and there was intelligent discussion on the examples given. This looked like a great start to a great thread.

Some people posted two cards that didn't quite have that great synergy, though it may look like it. Others chimed to constructively correct them. This is also awesome.

Some people gave interactions like [specific card]/[type or class of cards]. This wasn't exactly the spirit of the thread, since that kind of discussion probably belongs with the discussion on [specific card], but at least it was constructive and had some value.

But then the Chancellor jokes, and the Scout jokes, and the censored-redacted jokes, and the combos that are anti-synergies posted as jokes; even discussion on edge cases which starts out constructive quickly becomes pedantic and cumbersome. The thread got derailed so quickly, and so incredibly much that the two or three actual card combos posted afterward were buried in a sea of off-topic rambling. After a thread gets off-topic, it's so hard to get it back on that it usually requires direct intervention from theory or else the thread just goes off on its own little tangent in its own direction until it gets bored, falls asleep where it is, and in the best case is never seen again.

Best case? Never seen again? Yeah exactly, because if someone reads that thread and doesn't know much about Dominion, the best metric they have of telling the good ones from the bad ones are the +1 counts, and those aren't helpful. A thread like that, which started as a way for someone to quickly read through some card pairs and have their brain tickled, is now potentially destructive and misleading for a new player to read.

Sure, some people have some good laughs and press the +1 button, this only encourages people to keep making the same jokes so they can get more +1s, so these jokes keep coming up, and keep coming up, and keep coming up. Look, I don't mind the jokes -- go ahead and make them, but what I didn't realize until recently is that this is making it nearly impossible to actually talk about Dominion.

That's a real cost, and I don't think I'm alone in saying this: reading the same joke for the thousandth time is not worth the cost of having a conversation about Dominion.

The Adventures preview threads have even gotten derailed significantly, and even though I know there are relevant posts in there, I've stopped reading them because I don't want to look back 3 pages to before the giant argument on commas that I skipped over to get some context for what I'm reading. It's so frustrating because I want to read what people have to say about the cards, but the culture here is such that I can't do that.

So this post has been pretty much whining so far, but don't fear! I have an idea for something we might be able to do about it, and I think identifying the problem is important because I can see similar things that have happened in my IRL gaming group -- I was talking about this with one of my friends from there and she had an idea from somewhere on Reddit where this was also an issue.

What if we had some kind of tag for certain threads to mark that they are for serious discussion? You could post [serious] in the title of the thread as a signal for people to keep the discussion on topic. We can still have our talk about Dominion without a bunch of people coming in and yelling their same tired jokes so loud that we can't hear each other anymore. Please, go make those jokes in your own thread that I can tune it out without it ruining my discussion.

I'm using some harsh words here, it's because I'm really disappointed about all of this. I used to brag to people about the forums here, how the community was really good at exploring the strategic depths of Dominion and avoided the common problems most online communities have with trolls and such; it was a selling point for Dominion when people tried to tell me that Big Money was unbeatable and Dominion is multiplayer solitaire. I know many of the same people have been here for a while, so I would strongly hope that we're capable of implementing something like this and keeping ourselves to it.

Unless there are any objections, this weekend I'm going to start a new thread, basically the same thread I linked above only with the serious tag. I'll weed through the old thread and find all of the bits that were good and reference them, and maybe we can have some more discussion. I feel like that thread had lots of potential.

[theory]

I think your idea about a [serious] tag has come up before, but it doesn't seem to have been implemented.  I wholeheartedly agree and think it's a great idea.

We could use some discussion on what [serious] entails.  In my view, it would be 1) no jokes; 2) no going on irrelevant tangents (e.g., commas).  Is anything else that should be included?

[AdamH]

We could use some discussion on what [serious] entails.  In my view, it would be 1) no jokes; 2) no going on irrelevant tangents (e.g., commas).  Is anything else that should be included?

2) irrelevant tangents for sure. I realize this isn't exactly helpful, but there comes a certain point where discussion of edge cases becomes off topic. I have no idea how to identify this point, though. It's probably subjective; all I know is that I think it should be less than what it is, but not zero. Yup, not helpful at all.

If anything else should be included, I might want something about keeping criticism constructive, but I haven't had a chance to organize my thoughts on this to my satisfaction -- it's a bigger topic and I don't have anything resembling an answer so I'm staying quiet on that for now. Maybe it doesn't make sense to put it under the serious tag, either.

[JW]

The Adventures preview threads have even gotten derailed significantly, and even though I know there are relevant posts in there, I've stopped reading them because I don't want to look back 3 pages to before the giant argument on commas that I skipped over to get some context for what I'm reading. It's so frustrating because I want to read what people have to say about the cards, but the culture here is such that I can't do that.

Having more moderators who can split off-topic discussions into their own threads would be useful for this kind of thing.

[Donald X.]

What if we had some kind of tag for certain threads to mark that they are for serious discussion? You could post [serious] in the title of the thread as a signal for people to keep the discussion on topic. We can still have our talk about Dominion without a bunch of people coming in and yelling their same tired jokes so loud that we can't hear each other anymore. Please, go make those jokes in your own thread that I can tune it out without it ruining my discussion.

In my experience, if this has any moderation behind it, it doesn't work, it just sucks. It is more fun to participate when you are not punished for what you say. You type up your reasonable post and also have a joke because you are that kind of guy and then it's like, oh do I have to edit that part out? And censoring yourself sucks but fortunately next time you can avoid that experience by not posting at all.

I am of course one of those people you are complaining about. I mean you aren't complaining about my jokes, which are beyond reproach, but you know, I come in and say my witty thing. So, I would like to do that, and not to feel like I'm going to get banned for it, and not to feel like I'm just getting away with it because people don't want to scare me away.

There are ignore lists. I mean I don't know if we have them, but they are a thing in the world. The posters you identify as just clownin' around, you reduce to a thing that you could click on if you wanted to see their post. I've never actually tried them myself, being good at scrolling, but some people swear by them.

You could remove some of the reward for jokes, by getting rid of respect. It seems like it's mostly just used to indicate the funniest posts. Then people would quote a post and say lol and that would eat up more space but you know, not as often.

If "serious" is pursued, it could be a subforum rather than a tag. Then it's easy to avoid for people who don't want to get banned for being funny. You could take this further and make it read-only except to an invited list of serious players. And then let them joke around because you know they mostly won't. Then people would make threads outside of that forum for replying to threads in that forum, but that's fine, you got your jokes isolated. They will do that anyway, whether it's threads or a forum. I mean man. If there's a "serious" tagged thread, why risk it? I can make a safe thread for replying in, even if I wasn't going to be all that non-serious.

[Witherweaver]

Honestly, I like the jokes.  I like the serious content, too, and I don't really have any problem with them all mixed together.  I think it's better that way.  A sort of "don't post here unless you have something worthwhile to say" idea runs into the problem of "worthwhile" being subjective.  I mean, sure, you can say the one-liner running jokes are just "junking" the thread, and (for example) Wandering Winder's posts are almost certainly going have something valuable in them, but in between there there has to be some grey area. 

You can say some of the jokes are old, repetitive, not innovative, and I see your point, but really I think a lot of people on this forum are witty and clever, and part of the reason I actively read this is because it makes me laugh a lot.

For me, threads having off-topic discussions isn't a big issue.  I mean, sure, we talked about commas in the previews thread.  But we also talked about the cards.  I don't personally think the comma discussion prevented discussing the cards. 

Edit: Ninja'd by Donald, basically saying what I was thinking in a better way, as usual.

[Donald X.]

2) irrelevant tangents for sure. I realize this isn't exactly helpful, but there comes a certain point where discussion of edge cases becomes off topic. I have no idea how to identify this point, though. It's probably subjective; all I know is that I think it should be less than what it is, but not zero. Yup, not helpful at all.

Man Adam, stick to the topic! If you want a thread for discussing what should be allowed in serious-tagged threads, make it in Feedback. This thread is for complaining about the lack of quality posts. And yes this post is off-topic too, but I'm not the one advocating no off-topic posts, so there.

[AdamH]

Sure, "no jokes" may be a little too much. My article on Jack is the most "serious" thing I've ever written on the forums IMO and it had jokes all throughout.

A subforum may very well be more appropriate than a tag. I honestly don't know.

I would think that defining the spirit of [serious] and trying it out might be the best way to discover what it should mean. I've identified some issues I have and hoping [serious] might correct them, but of course it's not just about what I want. I'm just trying to articulate my thoughts and suggest things that will make life better.

[jsh357]

I think it would be best to get rid of respect or only allow an OP to get respect, but that's just me.  A lot of the jokes on the forum are clear respect mines.  Another solution?  Stricter rules specifically in the Articles, Game Reports, and Simulation forums.  Those are really the ones that need it.

In truth, though, some of this is just one of the big downsides of forums.  I have been using web forums since the mid 90s, and the longer a community exists, the more injokes and flippant attitudes toward 'serious' things appear.  It's human nature, I think, and you can only police it so much without the forum just becoming a dead, dry place.  Believe me, I have seen that happen to a forum I used to love, and it did the world no favors.  Look at it this way: it's a great thing that there are as many posts here as there are.  That means there are people who still post on a Dominion forum, which means, even if they aren't always having serious discussion, they are interested in talking with other people who like this cool thing too.

The comma thing was embarrassing, though, and I even hated the comma because grammar used to be my job. 

[Polk5440]

You could remove some of the reward for jokes, by getting rid of respect. It seems like it's mostly just used to indicate the funniest posts. Then people would quote a post and say lol and that would eat up more space but you know, not as often.

I do not like the idea of a serious tag. The default for a thread should be [serious].

Removing respect is not really a solution. People thumb jokes. The people want jokes. The people get jokes.

If people who participate on this forum want serious Dominion analysis, use the +1 to thumb those posts that say anything constructive about Dominion. Not just those that are insightful or 100% correct or by top players. I am on the top 10 +1-ers list because I try to thumb all relevant Dominion posts I read to encourage more of what I want to read about when I come to this forum: Dominion Strategy. I wish more people did the same.

[werothegreat]

Punctuation isn't grammar.

Anyway, I can see where AdamH is coming from, but honestly I've found most of the stuff in the Adventures Previews entertaining - while there have been a couple Scout joke posts, for the most part, people have been posting new jokes, in addition to a lot of interesting ideas about the new cards.

This isn't something you're going to be able to enforce.  When it is enforced, it just makes people mad.  Take, for example, the polandball subreddit.  A reddit ostensibly devoted to being silly and stupid and joke-y.  They are SO fucking touchy about making sure very single comic follows their insane list of rules - no this, no that, can't do this, none of this over there - and while you could argue that it's led to higher quality posts, honestly, all it really does is make posts that conform to the rules, which can make no sense, or just not even be funny or interesting.  There have been plenty of polandball comics which conform quite strictly to the rules, but are, if not incomprehensible, just kind of... lame.

What I'm saying is, this kind of enforcement doesn't encourage serious posting, it just discourages creativity.

[LastFootnote]

I think jokes are great. I think running gags (Scout jokes, Mint/Mine, Moat?) are the real problem. People need to stop beating those dead horses. I try to do my part by not upvoting them.

I like the respect system. It gives me a good gauge for how interesting people find a specific fan card, for example. I think it would be just great if there were two parallel respect systems. One for "this post made me laugh" and one for "this post made me think/this post was well written/I agree strongly with this". That may sound weird, but I bet we'd get used to it.

What constitutes an "edge case" or tangent is often purely subjective. Deleting posts because they're slightly off-topic is a recipe for bad times. Go try to post on Smogon if you want an example. I think moderators splitting side discussions off into new threads is a far better solution.

EDIT: Also, I think it's perhaps misleading to say that derailment is responsible for the end of thoughtful discussion on a subject. If people have things they want to say, it's easy for them to say them and get the thread back on track. I think what you're seeing is threads that fill up with derailed comments because nobody has anything they want to write about the original topic. Getting rid of derailments won't necessarily keep actual discussion going longer.

[werothegreat]

I like the respect system. It gives me a good gauge for how interesting people find a specific fan card, for example. I think it would be just great if there were two parallel respect systems. One for "this post made me laugh" and one for "this post made me think/this post was well written/I agree strongly with this". That may sound weird, but I bet we'd get used to it.

I like this.  Do this.  Two arrows, one with a brain and an exclamation mark over it, the other with a smiley face over it.

[Witherweaver]

I think jokes are great. I think running gags (Scout jokes, Mint/Mine, Moat?) are the real problem.

I really don't think it's a problem. Is it so hard to just pass over them?

Also, if we ban Mint/Mine jokes, what will become of Sudgy?!
 

[Polk5440]

In truth, though, some of this is just one of the big downsides of forums.  I have been using web forums since the mid 90s, and the longer a community exists, the more injokes and flippant attitudes toward 'serious' things appear.  It's human nature, I think, and you can only police it so much without the forum just becoming a dead, dry place. 

Before Adventures was announced, I was expecting this forum to die off. But if expansions keep coming out and the game keeps growing, the forum can, as well.

[Polk5440]

Game Reports is the section of the forum that handles beginners/experts divide quite well. There is a Help! subforum for beginners and experts can post advanced stuff in the main game reports area. Experts comment expertly on experts' game reports and people give more basic comments in the Help! subforum depending on what the OP seems to need.

What about trying some divides like that elsewhere? Like have a "beginner's" or "learning the game" subforum in General Discussion?

[jsh357]

Punctuation isn't grammar.

That's true, but brevity is the soul of wit.  A guy named Billy Shakesbad, I think, said something to that effect.

[Witherweaver]

Punctuation isn't grammar.

That's true, but brevity is the soul of wit.  A guy named Billy Shakesbad, I think, said something to that effect.

No poetry tangents!

[AdamH]

I certainly wouldn't like to deal with enforcing something like this, if we have to go that far then yeah I agree, it sounds like a nightmare and isn't any fun. I haven't +1-ed a Scout joke in a really long time but that by itself isn't doing it, so here we are.

But I was thinking something more along the lines of the tag meaning "hey, I'd like to keep this discussion on topic, please" -- I'd like to think that with this crowd that would be more effective than anything else, since we actually seem to respect each other. I'd really like to think that if I started a thread and bolded that quote at the top of it, that we could do it.

honestly I've found most of the stuff in the Adventures Previews entertaining

Clearly there needs to be a balance of people like you (and many others) who enjoy this and others who can potentially have their experiences ruined by it. There doesn't seem to be any doubt that there are people who enjoy it, but I'd be willing to bet that there are just as many people out there (probably more) who don't; we just don't hear from them because they're either turned off by it and never post, or don't post much in general, or sometimes are just drowned out by the tangent that's going on.

What is that balance? Well we can talk about a whole bunch but I think it would be much more helpful to try it out and see what people like too. Is there anyone that thinks that doing this with an open mind is a bad idea?

[Witherweaver]

I sort of think it will go the other way.. like you see a post with a bunch of the top Dominion players in the world, and you think, man, I'm not going to post in there, I'm going to look stupid.  Maybe that's the purpose of this idea, but it also discourages participation.  Maybe it wasn't your intent to joke, maybe you just had a question, or a thought, but now you're going to censor yourself.

[AdamH]

EDIT: Also, I think it's perhaps misleading to say that derailment is responsible for the end of thoughtful discussion on a subject. If people have things they want to say, it's easy for them to say them and get the thread back on track. I think what you're seeing is threads that fill up with derailed comments because nobody has anything they want to write about the original topic. Getting rid of derailments won't necessarily keep actual discussion going longer.

For-suresies this is sometimes the case, but not always. It's important to realize that we can't realistically hope for everyone to be perfectly happy with a change we make here, but rather to improve the current situation.

I sort of think it will go the other way.. like you see a post with a bunch of the top Dominion players in the world, and you think, man, I'm not going to post in there, I'm going to look stupid.  Maybe that's the purpose of this idea, but it also discourages participation.  Maybe it wasn't your intent to joke, maybe you just had a question, or a thought, but now you're going to censor yourself.

There are dangers to going too far in either direction. I just think there's not much of an outlet for serious conversation, which means we're too far in one particular direction. Should we go all the way back to NO FUN ALLOWED EVAR? Of course not, that sounds awful.

[werothegreat]

Also, AdamH, if you're looking for serious/quality discussion, why not add your thoughts to the Card of the Week thread?    Talisman beckons.

[enfynet]

I think the nature of this community is that of sarcasm and dry humor. You can't [seriously] change that.

[Witherweaver]

There are dangers to going too far in either direction. I just think there's not much of an outlet for serious conversation, which means we're too far in one particular direction. Should we go all the way back to NO FUN ALLOWED EVAR? Of course not, that sounds awful.

Well, I just don't agree.  I think there is an outlet for serious conversation, and I see a lot of it.  Are there a large number of posters that feel their threads get derailed and don't get the discussions they were looking for?  (That's not rhetorical, I'm actually asking.)

[Mic Qsenoch]

Well, I just don't agree.  I think there is an outlet for serious conversation, and I see a lot of it.  Are there a large number of posters that feel their threads get derailed and don't get the discussions they were looking for?  (That's not rhetorical, I'm actually asking.)

I tried to start a thread about how cool the color orange is and all anyone did was talk about this stupid new Dominion card.

[LastFootnote]

Are there a large number of posters that feel their threads get derailed and don't get the discussions they were looking for?  (That's not rhetorical, I'm actually asking.)

Sure, I mean it's happened. It's no fun when you make the mistake of naming a fan card "Monopoly" and the thread gets filled with Hasbro jokes instead of useful feedback. But you've just got to take it in stride and realize that if your card were compelling, folks would be talking about it between the jokes.

[AdamH]

Also, AdamH, if you're looking for serious/quality discussion, why not add your thoughts to the Card of the Week thread?    Talisman beckons.

This may happen, though I really like to think through what I say very thoroughly before posting it here when it comes to Dominion advice. Especially when it doesn't quite jive with what really good people are saying.

Well, I just don't agree.  I think there is an outlet for serious conversation, and I see a lot of it.  Are there a large number of posters that feel their threads get derailed and don't get the discussions they were looking for?  (That's not rhetorical, I'm actually asking.)

This is a really good question, I'm tempted to make a poll to find out but I don't know if that's a good idea. Knowing the answer to this question would certainly help guide us to what our "happy medium" is.

I didn't notice this effect until recently when it happened to my own thread (go figure) but then I started seeing it elsewhere. I also know from my IRL group that the ones who feel how I do are the quieter ones who don't voice their opinions as much. This is a small sample size, of course; I could very well be wrong, but evidence would help.

It's a hard question to answer, and then once you have the answer you don't know if it's right or not. 

[ehunt]

A few things:

1. I have noticed a rise in a sort of pseudo-badassness, wherein people who are very good at Dominion leave a comment that's undoubtedly insightful, but short, cryptic, and flippant. I really dislike this, I find it both rude and unhelpful to the game. One nice thing about the new card reveals is that there's less of this (presumably since no one knows the cards that well). (OK OK, I just upvoted a comment in the Talisman thread saying "Talisman sucks" but I mean come on, it's Talisman.)

2. I don't think Scout jokes are funny, but I doubt that's keeping people away from the forums. Same with Mine/Mint, moat, etc. In fact is it even true that we have a retention problem? Lots of new faces around here.

3. Generally when you're posting an edge-case, you don't feel like it's an edge-case, even when most people would disagree with you; I would not like to see that banned from even a proposed "serious" forum (an idea which I am not that into). There's also extreme edge-cases listed as more or less jokes; that can be a little annoying, but sometimes funny and in any event very skippable.

[Mic Qsenoch]

1. I have noticed a rise in a sort of pseudo-badassness, wherein people who are very good at Dominion leave a comment that's undoubtedly insightful, but short, cryptic, and flippant. I really dislike this, I find it both rude and unhelpful to the game. One nice thing about the new card reveals is that there's less of this (presumably since no one knows the cards that well). (OK OK, I just upvoted a comment in the Talisman thread saying "Talisman sucks" but I mean come on, it's Talisman.)

I know some people don't like these, but a short statement is often the best way to convey an idea. These statements might be flippant, but they are usually far away from cryptic. The most confusing posts in the world to me are ones with lots of explanation and/or equivocation. It's worth considering that some posters/readers value brevity. Some people value lots of extra text. I don't think it's such a terrible thing for people to write in a way that they would prefer posts be written. Whether that's long/short/jokey/dismissive or whatever.

[sudgy]

I think jokes are great. I think running gags (Scout jokes, Mint/Mine, Moat?) are the real problem.

I really don't think it's a problem. Is it so hard to just pass over them?

Also, if we ban Mint/Mine jokes, what will become of Sudgy?!

Hey, I now only make them if I think they're clever!

(Whether they are or not though is up for debate.)


Anyway, the reason [Serious] didn't work last time we tried it was that it was put on a thread that was not serious whatsoever, Random Stuff.  It could maybe work.

I think a better idea would be if the OP of a thread said "Let's keep this on topic, please" in the OP and/or when the discussion gets out of hand.

[werothegreat]

I think jokes are great. I think running gags (Scout jokes, Mint/Mine, Moat?) are the real problem.

I really don't think it's a problem. Is it so hard to just pass over them?

Also, if we ban Mint/Mine jokes, what will become of Sudgy?!

Hey, I now only make them if I think they're clever!

(Whether they are or not though is up for debate.)


Anyway, the reason [Serious] didn't work last time we tried it was that it was put on a thread that was not serious whatsoever, Random Stuff.  It could maybe work.

I think a better idea would be if the OP of a thread said "Let's keep this on topic, please" in the OP and/or when the discussion gets out of hand.

I'll just post a picture of a cat-'o-nine-tails and nudge my eyebrow at it significantly.

[Witherweaver]

1. I have noticed a rise in a sort of pseudo-badassness, wherein people who are very good at Dominion leave a comment that's undoubtedly insightful, but short, cryptic, and flippant. I really dislike this, I find it both rude and unhelpful to the game. One nice thing about the new card reveals is that there's less of this (presumably since no one knows the cards that well). (OK OK, I just upvoted a comment in the Talisman thread saying "Talisman sucks" but I mean come on, it's Talisman.)

I know some people don't like these, but a short statement is often the best way to convey an idea. These statements might be flippant, but they are usually far away from cryptic. The most confusing posts in the world to me are ones with lots of explanation and/or equivocation. It's worth considering that some posters/readers value brevity. Some people value lots of extra text. I don't think it's such a terrible thing for people to write in a way that they would prefer posts be written. Whether that's long/short/jokey/dismissive or whatever.

I agree with this, and actually you could argue that some meaning is conveyed in the brevity.  For example, the post that gave rise to the describe-a-card-in-ten-words thing. (Was it WanderingWinder's?)  It can be a way of saying, "Look, this is the important fundamental thing."

[Witherweaver]

I think jokes are great. I think running gags (Scout jokes, Mint/Mine, Moat?) are the real problem.

I really don't think it's a problem. Is it so hard to just pass over them?

Also, if we ban Mint/Mine jokes, what will become of Sudgy?!

Hey, I now only make them if I think they're clever!

(Whether they are or not though is up for debate.)


Anyway, the reason [Serious] didn't work last time we tried it was that it was put on a thread that was not serious whatsoever, Random Stuff.  It could maybe work.

I think a better idea would be if the OP of a thread said "Let's keep this on topic, please" in the OP and/or when the discussion gets out of hand.

I'll just post a picture of a cat-'o-nine-tails and nudge my eyebrow at it significantly.

Fry meme: Not sure if wants me to get on topic... or wants to do BDSM stuff with me.

[Donald X.]

I tried to start a thread about how cool the color orange is and all anyone did was talk about this stupid new Dominion card.

Just use the [orange] tag. Then people can't talk about other colors.

[sudgy]

I tried to start a thread about how cool the color orange is and all anyone did was talk about this stupid new Dominion card.

Just use the [orange] tag. Then people can't talk about other colors.

...and a joke!

Anyway, I just realized that another big problem is that some people go here for the community, and not for the dominion discussion.  I think I go on here more for the community and jokes, just with a spice of dominion on the side.  What it is right now is great for that, but it does make it harder for the people who come here for dominion strategy.

[Witherweaver]

Some people come here for the forum games.  Have you checked them out?

[enfynet]

Active discussions may lack in continuity or quality of on-topic posts, but the forums as a whole certainly do not. Half of these jokes come from often repeated comments about actual Dominion-related topics. (i.e. Scout)

[Rubby]

I made a Scout joke in that card combos thread, but at least it was a good and original one. What's tiresome are the endless repetitions of the same old joke, like the "explaining the joke makes it funnier" joke, and the Moat thing.

But I don't see a dire lack of outlet for serious Dominion discussion, and - although maybe a subforum or tagging convention could be OK - I don't see a need for any systemic change. I think if you say, at the start of your thread, something like: "Please post only real things. Feel free to use humor in your writing, but no content-free joke posts, please", people will respect it.

[SCSN]

3. Generally when you're posting an edge-case, you don't feel like it's an edge-case, even when most people would disagree with you; I would not like to see that banned from even a proposed "serious" forum (an idea which I am not that into). There's also extreme edge-cases listed as more or less jokes; that can be a little annoying, but sometimes funny and in any event very skippable.

Edge-casings are the worst offenses of everything mentioned so far and I absolutely loathe them. Whatever sustained motivation I may otherwise have had to write more substantial contributions is killed by knowing that a legion of asshats would be lining up to release their convoluted concoctions.

I'm not talking about people offering valid criticism or having genuine misconceptions about how the game works, but comments where the commenter knows full well that I sacrificed rigor for the sake of brevity yet can't help himself but exploit this opportunity to score debating points or otherwise put himself in the spotlight. The difference is very easy to spot.

I've combated it to some extent by utilizing a highly hyperbolic style that makes exceptions so obvious that you'd feel foolish rather than clever for pointing them out, but it comes at the cost of depth and nuance.

At the end of the day I'm happy just posting stuff this forum makes me feel like posting (witticisms, insightful snark, comical slights at Goko (whose very existence is a case of self-parody)) and reserve the rest for my streams, but I do sometimes regret that the atmosphere isn't conducive to more in-depth discussion.

As for a solution: what about giving a thread starter the ability to delete (but not edit) any and all posts from his threads. That way people can decide for themselves how much nonsense they're willing to put up with, and you can just chose to not participate in threads whose starter tolerates stupid derailings.

[Witherweaver]

As for a solution: what about giving a thread starter the ability to delete (but not edit) any and all posts from his threads. That way people can decide for themselves how much nonsense they're willing to put up with, and you can just chose to not participate in threads whose starter tolerates stupid derailings.

I could see this leading to arguments.

[ehunt]

3. Generally when you're posting an edge-case, you don't feel like it's an edge-case, even when most people would disagree with you; I would not like to see that banned from even a proposed "serious" forum (an idea which I am not that into). There's also extreme edge-cases listed as more or less jokes; that can be a little annoying, but sometimes funny and in any event very skippable.

I'm not talking about people offering valid criticism or having genuine misconceptions about how the game works, but comments where the commenter knows full well that I sacrificed rigor for the sake of brevity yet can't help himself but exploit this opportunity to score debating points or otherwise put himself in the spotlight. The difference is very easy to spot.

Yeah, I am going to backpedal, the second of these two things is in fact really frustrating on this forum.

[WanderingWinder]

1. I have noticed a rise in a sort of pseudo-badassness, wherein people who are very good at Dominion leave a comment that's undoubtedly insightful, but short, cryptic, and flippant. I really dislike this, I find it both rude and unhelpful to the game. One nice thing about the new card reveals is that there's less of this (presumably since no one knows the cards that well). (OK OK, I just upvoted a comment in the Talisman thread saying "Talisman sucks" but I mean come on, it's Talisman.)

I know some people don't like these, but a short statement is often the best way to convey an idea. These statements might be flippant, but they are usually far away from cryptic. The most confusing posts in the world to me are ones with lots of explanation and/or equivocation. It's worth considering that some posters/readers value brevity. Some people value lots of extra text. I don't think it's such a terrible thing for people to write in a way that they would prefer posts be written. Whether that's long/short/jokey/dismissive or whatever.

I agree with this, and actually you could argue that some meaning is conveyed in the brevity.  For example, the post that gave rise to the describe-a-card-in-ten-words thing. (Was it WanderingWinder's?)  It can be a way of saying, "Look, this is the important fundamental thing."

It was Stef's

[ehunt]

1. I have noticed a rise in a sort of pseudo-badassness, wherein people who are very good at Dominion leave a comment that's undoubtedly insightful, but short, cryptic, and flippant. I really dislike this, I find it both rude and unhelpful to the game. One nice thing about the new card reveals is that there's less of this (presumably since no one knows the cards that well). (OK OK, I just upvoted a comment in the Talisman thread saying "Talisman sucks" but I mean come on, it's Talisman.)

I know some people don't like these, but a short statement is often the best way to convey an idea. These statements might be flippant, but they are usually far away from cryptic. The most confusing posts in the world to me are ones with lots of explanation and/or equivocation. It's worth considering that some posters/readers value brevity. Some people value lots of extra text. I don't think it's such a terrible thing for people to write in a way that they would prefer posts be written. Whether that's long/short/jokey/dismissive or whatever.

Got it. Definitely don't think brevity is bad. Brief flippancy in particular gets under my skin (it reminds me of the dialogue of the movie Inception.)

[iguanaiguana]

Learning for the first time that people don't think scout jokes are funny anymore :/ I guess that makes sense, considering some of you have been hearing them for a half decade. There is so much to learn when you are new to a community.

[Witherweaver]

Learning for the first time that people don't think scout jokes are funny anymore :/ I guess that makes sense, considering some of you have been hearing them for a half decade. There is so much to learn when you are new to a community.

This is funny because your post-count title is "Scout".

[werothegreat]

Learning for the first time that people don't think scout jokes are funny anymore :/ I guess that makes sense, considering some of you have been hearing them for a half decade. There is so much to learn when you are new to a community.

This is funny because your post-count title is "Scout".

Come on, imagine how Donald X feels when we mercilessly deride a card he spent who-knows-how-much-time working on.

[Witherweaver]

Learning for the first time that people don't think scout jokes are funny anymore :/ I guess that makes sense, considering some of you have been hearing them for a half decade. There is so much to learn when you are new to a community.

This is funny because your post-count title is "Scout".

Come on, imagine how Donald X feels when we mercilessly deride a card he spent who-knows-how-much-time working on.

It's okay, he realizes they can't all be the most respectful forum community ever.

[eHalcyon]

If there is a serious post for serious discussion and it starts to go off the rails, just speak up and ask for people to get back on track.  I'm sure most will respect the request and they can move the tangent to a new thread if they wish.  If it's especially egregious, you can report the first off-topic post and ask theory to fork the thread himself.

Sometimes I get over-invested in some arguments (sorry) and sometimes I go off-topic, but such is the nature of conversation.  It flows.  If I go off topic and somebody points it out, I will certainly try my best to reign it in.  I have confidence that others in this forum would do the same.

[ehunt]

The thing about Scout jokes is that most of the conceptual space has been explored. I mean, it's a 4 cost card, it's not good, it puts victory cards in your hand. As true as "they can't all be the best card ever" is, it's also true that "one of them has to be the worst card ever." It was Scout. We get it.

Moat? in spoilers, that was Ozle's joke, the joke was that Ozle guesses moat for all the puzzles, but for a while he didn't explain he was doing it non-seriously, and so you were like, wait why is this guy guessing Moat for this puzzle, and you would like, think about it, till like 8 puzzles in and then you were like, OH, he's just a joker. That was hilarious. Then when someone else did it the first time, that was also funny for similar reasons. But now it doesn't have much going for it.

Mine/Mint -- Eh. Isotropic hasnt been online in like, 2 years, do people really still confuse these cards?

[werothegreat]

Moat? in spoilers, that was Ozle's joke, the joke was that Ozle guesses moat for all the puzzles, but for a while he didn't explain he was doing it non-seriously, and so you were like, wait why is this guy guessing Moat for this puzzle, and you would like, think about it, till like 8 puzzles in and then you were like, OH, he's just a joker. That was hilarious. Then when someone else did it the first time, that was also funny for similar reasons. But now it doesn't have much going for it.

Hey, I got a Moat? joke in, and it actually worked as a serious answer!

[Awaclus]

Jokes become funny when you repeat them often enough.

Mine/Mint -- Eh. Isotropic hasnt been online in like, 2 years, do people really still confuse these cards?

The joke is mostly funny because both words are homonyms, not just because of the confusion. Courtyard/Crossroads jokes aren't funny.

[Ozle]

These jokes are seriously annoying, we should just stick to the dominion stuff and discuss things like adults

[Awaclus]

Pic also related.

[blueblimp]

sacrificed rigor for the sake of brevity

This is a pet peeve of mine about internet writing: prioritizing simplicity over actually being correct. Stating the assumptions required for a conclusion adds value, because it helps the reader judge when the advice applies and when it doesn't.

[SCSN]

Thank you for illustrating the point of my post.

[DStu]

As for the [serious]-tag, I haven't understood Adam to have a very strict banning/moderation rule on this. You may say without it it doesn't work, but I think it would.  It also doesn't have to work perfectly, it's not to prevent people making jokes because we are so emotionally invested in the topic that we couldn't stand being joked about it, it's to prevent the topic to get derailed in jokes and edge cases.

You make you're scout joke because this time it's really funny, go for it (I even upvoted the forumgame joke some posts above because it really caught me off guard there), maybe you get 5 upvotes less because "you don't joke on a serious topic". But I imagine more importantly it will not be replied by 3 more Scout jokes, 2 jokes and an edgecase how Scout could indeed be usefull in this situation, but people just let it sit there, maybe laugh maybe not, and let the thread go it's intended way from there on.

Only problem I see there is that everybody than thinks that their topic is so important that it needs a serious tag, the jokes can be done in the other threads.

[markusin]

I'm strongly opposed to invite-only threads, if that's still being considered. Not being invited to such a thread sends the message that "you are not good enough. Come back when you've got a higher Iso level or Tournament result". Everyone should feel like they have the potential to contribute meaningfully to the discussion.

I don't care how many Moat jokes Ozle has made. If we're talking about Moat and he has something insightful to say about it, I want to hear about it. Looking through the previews thread, I saw a few new posters who were bringing up good points and questions about the cards. You can't discourage that.

I like jokes sprinkled into serious discussions. It makes reading through threads less intense. The real problem is threads getting derailed towards topics that many members of the forum don't want to participate in. Those could be running jokes, but also serious arguments about semantics with no jokes in it. But those discussions matter to some people, and moving those discussions to separate threads seems like the most appropriate course of action. Like, the comma thing in the Adventures previews could have been its own thread. People care about commas.

But running jokes, it's a bit harder to justify moving to it's own thread (though hey, the Sage jokes were moved to its own thread). To minimize those, I think a tactful prod back towards the original point of discussion should work for the most part. Clear expectations in the OP are also an option, but it's a pain to always have to explicitly mention those in an OP. I can understand wanting to have commonly accepted rules for certain types of topics.

I think the problem is most pronounced in the general discussion subforum where the tone of discussion is the most varied. game reports and help subforums don't see lots of jokes, nor does the puzzles subforum. This suggests to me that the problem of thread derailment is a bit overstated.