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Author Topic: Features Thread  (Read 107493 times)

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rspeer

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #50 on: March 31, 2015, 10:47:36 pm »
+25

I second most of these suggestions. Here's another one that I tried to bring to Goko's attention early on in their closed beta, but they had already dug their grave with their platform:

Animation and gameplay need to have independent timing. Animations should not block gameplay.

Don't prevent me from clicking something just because there's an animation going on. Don't use animations as a constraint on the speed of bots. If there are long sequences of animations that would make it difficult to keep things in sync while I take more actions, try making those animations happen in parallel instead. (Do you see what Goko does with the VP from Goons? That's an example of animations that run in series instead of in parallel, and the result is really bad. Don't do that.)

For some examples of other games:

Hearthstone almost gets this right. You can queue up actions while things are animating. However, Hearthstone can end up with long animations that run in series, preventing the other player's turn from starting -- someone took this to an extreme and set up a turn that would take 40 hours to resolve.

Prismata, as far as I can tell, does this exactly right. People can choose to play it at lightning speeds, and the game interface will not interfere.

----

By the way, thank you for bringing this thread to where the community is, instead of making us register for some forum of yours like Goko would have done. I really appreciate it.

You're going to get a lot of harsh feedback, and that's because we've seen the promised land of Isotropic and had it taken away from us. If you can deliver on the promise made, like, four years ago that Dominion Online can be better than Isotropic, you will have a very loyal community, the kind that spreads virally on Twitch and stuff.

But if you really go through with things like hiding the log in a pop-up, like Goko tried to do and Salvager fixed -- that's going to burn a lot of goodwill right away. That would be taking away even more from us than we've already lost, for the sake of a mobile Dominion-playing community that does not, at this moment, exist. I think that Goko's widely-publicized failure had two causes: one, because the platform they designed was bad and they couldn't maintain it, but two, because any game depends on word of mouth. The only community that could give them word of mouth hated them, and considered them the enemy who was killing Isotropic, and therefore had no patience for their explanations and apologies.

I wish you luck on the release.
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AdamH

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #51 on: March 31, 2015, 11:22:49 pm »
+4

TBH, the +1s on posts speak volumes here.

But LastFootnote's comments ring especially true, he has a very level head about this stuff and may quite possibly be a genius. Have you at MF considered closed beta testing or having at least one representative from this community to be in closer contact with?
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markusin

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #52 on: April 01, 2015, 12:23:05 am »
+3

For my part, I'm mostly echoing the desire to have all the features in the current implementation plus Salvager, including a visible log for desktop versions. The easy access to the log matters to many players, and is especially important for streaming the game on Twitch or something.

But I really want to see all supply piles, including the Young Witch bane card and Ruins, on one page.

One small thing I'd like to add, consider changing the interface for rearranging cards with stuff like Scout and Navigator. If I remember correctly, cards are clicked one at a time to be put on top of the deck. This is rather unforgiving if the player accidently clicks the wrong card, and forces the player to visualize the desired order in his or her head in advance. Instead, the player should be able to rearrange the cards without having them put on the deck until the rearranging is finished and a confirm order button is selected. This lets the player visually verify the current card arrangement before committing to it. Cards can be reordered by having clicked cards move to the top of the arrangement, though drag-and drop isn't too bad an idea here.
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Chris is me

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #53 on: April 01, 2015, 12:51:56 am »
+1

I do wanna say that I really appreciate how you're reaching out to the player base to get suggestions on what changes to make and what improvements to implement. I'm sure years of pent up frustration about Goko Dominion are being vented in the thread right now, so I just wanted to make sure y'all know how much this is appreciated.

Most of my suggestions echo others. Persistently visible logs on desktop are an absolute must have. There isn't a "good enough" option to get to logs with a button click, they have to always be there. Mobile, whatever, it's cool if that isn't a thing there. Reduce the number of situations where a second page is necessary - Young Witch and Looters shouldn't trigger it. In general, cards that are not in the Supply can go on page 2, but everything in the Supply should be on page 1. Card concatenation is really nice. In situations where you have to select from a lot of cards (Scheme from a big turn) provide some way to make cards visible. When putting cards back on top of the deck "in any order", the interface should be less ambiguous - it ain't intuitively obvious that you click the cards in reverse order.

Really minor pet peeve, when the button to display the whole kingdom is picked, all ten Knights are just spread out over the entire kingdom so you have to read the kingdom over two pages, defeating the entire purpose of the feature. Just leave the Knights represented by the randomized card on page 1 of that view, and show all 10 on page 2.

I don't know if this is fixable, but the act of pausing the game to check if the other player wants to react inherently reveals to the curent player that the other player has that card in hand. I don't think there's a way around this but it's an unfortunate gameplay consequence that gives away some info.
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DavidTheDavid

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #54 on: April 01, 2015, 08:15:09 pm »
+3

Thanks, all, for the continued replies. Very much appreciated.

And thanks for pointing out the +1's, AdamH. I wasn't looking at those, but that's good info.

Oh yeah, and I still am curious what people think about reporting abusive players. Should it be built in? What would you like it to look like? That's one of those issues that comes my way on occasion, so the developer asked what my supervisor and I think about it.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2015, 08:21:45 pm by DavidTheDavid »
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Gherald

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #55 on: April 01, 2015, 08:27:55 pm »
+8

Regarding abusive players, Salvager has a blacklist and for most of us that is adequate.  I'd say implement something similar

This isn't the best place to get feedback or ideas on that issue, since many of us play with folks who are ranked beyond a certain level and we don't come across abuse so often as the general player base
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Marcory

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #56 on: April 01, 2015, 08:39:47 pm »
0

What would constitute an abusive player in this context? I can think of four possibilities, none of which would require serious intervention from MF. These are, in decreasing order of severity, 1) verbal rudeness in the chat bar; 2) slow players; 3) repeat quitters and 4) people who game the leaderboards.

#3 is probably already adequately addressed via the public Quit Percentage.
#4 is often reported and investigated by members of this forum, so I think that MF could rely on forum members to assemble evidence. But this could probably be solved by requiring that placement on the top echelon of the leaderboard require multiple games, at regular intervals, against a large number of high-level opponents.
#1 is probably solved with a mute and/or blacklist feature. For severe cases, it might be nice to have a 'report' button, and set a threshold--say, 20 'reports' from different opponents--before MF investigates the chat logs, so that MF has to get involved in only the most serious cases.
#2 is probably the hardest problem to police--but again, it's probably easier to simply let players blacklist perceived slow-players than have MF get involved.
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theblankman

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #57 on: April 01, 2015, 08:40:45 pm »
0

Oh yeah, and I still am curious what people think about reporting abusive players. Should it be built in? What would you like it to look like? That's one of those issues that comes my way on occasion, so the developer asked what my supervisor and I think about it.
On the whole I find this to be one of the most well-mannered online communities I've ever been part of.  In the rare instance that someone is abusive, I just block them with Salvager's blacklist feature, so I'd say that's adequate. 
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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #58 on: April 01, 2015, 08:41:51 pm »
0

I don't know if this is fixable, but the act of pausing the game to check if the other player wants to react inherently reveals to the curent player that the other player has that card in hand. I don't think there's a way around this but it's an unfortunate gameplay consequence that gives away some info.

What I've heard some places do before is to make it so that in any case where there may be a reaction, it pauses for a few seconds to make it seem like the other person maybe has it.
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Elanchana

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #59 on: April 01, 2015, 08:45:36 pm »
+4

Number one thing for me would definitely be reconnect. I remember complaining about that on the MF forums even before I joined f.ds. Players with weak internet connections NEED to be able to refresh without being penalized and get back to the same screen they were on. For more information, read LastFootnote's post on the issue.

People haven't been saying this but please keep unrated mode. It's great for training, experimentation, kingdom design, and just playing when you aren't completely on your game.

Chris's suggestion about the knights being spread out on the "big cards" page has been bugging me as well. If this isn't too hard to implement, I'd suggest using the knights placeholder card on that page but make it clickable so that it links to descriptions of all ten knights.

Separate buttons for discard and trash, discard and topdeck, trash and topdeck, etc. instead of drag and drop - again, already been said, but worth mentioning again. Also, I think there needs to be a way to get people familiar with the colors (green for play, red for trash, yellow for discard, etc.). They're good choices but there's gotta be some way to accidentally ignore them less.

Oh here's one! Warn someone when they're about to time out if they've taken too long on a turn.

And here's another thing that would take a while to implement and might not be favored by everyone, but I'd like some kind of social feature. It could (and probably should) be as simple as a one-way friendlist/whitelist of people you know or like playing with, and you could somehow tell when they are online and what server they are in.
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Rubby

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #60 on: April 01, 2015, 09:15:31 pm »
0

Although the reporting feature would be a nice bonus, I think the ability to blacklist specific players is far more important. Hope that's in the new version, along with the ability to filter based on rating.

I also think the ability to see what card sets someone has before joining a pro game is much needed. (I don't mean show the kingdom, of course; I mean show what sets the kingdom will be generated from.) This seems like such a basic need that I hesitate to even call it a feature.

And I agree with everyone that the always-visible log is a must-have for the desktop version.
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jsh357

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #61 on: April 01, 2015, 09:18:00 pm »
+3

On the subject of telling what expansions people have, I think you should get rid of table titles.  Just print the names of the users, their levels, their sets, and any special stuff going on in the match (VP counter for instance).  I have seen a fair amount of gross table names over the last few years, and there's no reason for them to exist really.
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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #62 on: April 01, 2015, 09:53:29 pm »
+6

Is there a reason for tables to exist in the first place? This isn't games.yahoo circa 1998.
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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #63 on: April 04, 2015, 05:18:29 am »
+1

Please get Adventures in asap.
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Watno

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #64 on: April 04, 2015, 05:21:06 am »
+3

David, I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding about the reconnect feature. What people want is the ability to rejoin a game in progress even if they've quit their browser entirely. Isotropic worked like this. If you accidentally closed your window or tab, but then logged back in before the game ended, you just picked up right where you left off. You didn't go through the lobby or anything. If you left a game that's still in progress, you immediately resume that game upon logging back in.

Too expand on this, it should be even possible to reconnect from another device/after restarting your computer, provided this happens in a reasonable timeframe.
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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #65 on: April 04, 2015, 08:11:54 am »
+2

Please get Adventures in asap.

This!

Please take my money.
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AdamH

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #66 on: April 04, 2015, 10:15:26 am »
+5

To echo this, I posted here a while back about opportunity: I'm practically foaming at the mouth to start streaming some Adventures, and people REALLY want to watch that now. If Adventures can be released online in the next month or so, there's a huge opportunity for both Making Fun and streamers for free visibility.

If it takes much longer than that, it's a HUGE opportunity lost. I know it's not reasonable to expect that Adventures will be online any time soon given how slow this entire process has been, but maybe there's still a chance? Pretty please?
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #67 on: April 04, 2015, 10:22:43 am »
+9

To echo this, I posted here a while back about opportunity: I'm practically foaming at the mouth to start streaming some Adventures, and people REALLY want to watch that now. If Adventures can be released online in the next month or so, there's a huge opportunity for both Making Fun and streamers for free visibility.

If it takes much longer than that, it's a HUGE opportunity lost. I know it's not reasonable to expect that Adventures will be online any time soon given how slow this entire process has been, but maybe there's still a chance? Pretty please?

The thing is, what I don't want them to do is rush out a product to try to take advantage of timing, and end up releasing something which is sub-standard. I expect they're going as fast as they can.

Seprix

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #68 on: April 04, 2015, 10:24:36 am »
0

To echo this, I posted here a while back about opportunity: I'm practically foaming at the mouth to start streaming some Adventures, and people REALLY want to watch that now. If Adventures can be released online in the next month or so, there's a huge opportunity for both Making Fun and streamers for free visibility.

If it takes much longer than that, it's a HUGE opportunity lost. I know it's not reasonable to expect that Adventures will be online any time soon given how slow this entire process has been, but maybe there's still a chance? Pretty please?

Seconded. Seems like a very difficult demand though, and I'll be streaming Adventures either way tho.
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DavidTheDavid

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #69 on: April 04, 2015, 10:27:56 am »
+2

To echo this, I posted here a while back about opportunity: I'm practically foaming at the mouth to start streaming some Adventures, and people REALLY want to watch that now. If Adventures can be released online in the next month or so, there's a huge opportunity for both Making Fun and streamers for free visibility.

If it takes much longer than that, it's a HUGE opportunity lost. I know it's not reasonable to expect that Adventures will be online any time soon given how slow this entire process has been, but maybe there's still a chance? Pretty please?

The thing is, what I don't want them to do is rush out a product to try to take advantage of timing, and end up releasing something which is sub-standard. I expect they're going as fast as they can.

I asked about this just yesterday actually, in response to a question on our forums. Here's what I was told:
Our first priority is getting the 2.0 version of the existing game out for web and then mobile. After those are live it will be a high priority to get Adventures live. "High", but not necessarily "highest". Adventures will be a major effort requiring substantial enhancements to the engine, AI and user interface, and we already have a long list of post-launch enhancements to the existing game.
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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #70 on: April 04, 2015, 11:07:55 am »
+12

In terms of features:

Number one is Stability. Okay, this maybe isn't a feature, but it needs to run, run well, not break all that often. That might sound obvious, but it's not something we've always had.

Number two is a good matchmaking system. Minimal functionality means I need to be able to play against a specific person if I want (this enables the League, tournaments, playing with friends) as well as being able to have the system match people in open play against other people with a reasonable set of parameters (number of players, rating range, set ownership). The current 50-in-a-lobby just doesn't make sense at all - stick everyone in the same pool.

Number three is speed. I shouldn't be forced to wait for animations if I don't want animations. Similarly with music, noises, etc etc. It would be very nice to have an option (key word here is option, it should be possible to have it either on or off) to have the game make a noise at me if it's my turn to do something, any time the game is waiting for me. Or in matchmaking, it would be nice to have the option to make it hit me with a noise if a match has been made, and I just need to click to start the game.

markusin

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #71 on: April 04, 2015, 11:24:15 am »
+2

To echo this, I posted here a while back about opportunity: I'm practically foaming at the mouth to start streaming some Adventures, and people REALLY want to watch that now. If Adventures can be released online in the next month or so, there's a huge opportunity for both Making Fun and streamers for free visibility.

If it takes much longer than that, it's a HUGE opportunity lost. I know it's not reasonable to expect that Adventures will be online any time soon given how slow this entire process has been, but maybe there's still a chance? Pretty please?

The thing is, what I don't want them to do is rush out a product to try to take advantage of timing, and end up releasing something which is sub-standard. I expect they're going as fast as they can.
Yes, we are all excited about Adventures, but I think there is ultimately more value in building a stable and maintainable product. People will come to play Adventures, but they'll stay for the quality product.

Still, it's good to have implementing Adventures be a high priority after version 2.0 is launched. When Goko first released Dominion Online, many players in the community considered the initial lack of all the cards as a turnoff point. For Adventures, it's maybe not as dramatic because there won't be an open online implementation of Dominion that has the cards beforehand, but there will still be many players with the physical copy of Adventures waiting to jump online once Adventures is included.

Best of luck, by the way.

Edit: For the record, count me in to the group that's really excited to have the Adventures expansion online. I don't have much of an IRL playgroup.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2015, 11:29:41 am by markusin »
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AdamH

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #72 on: April 04, 2015, 11:30:03 am »
+1

I'm not saying they should push it out and have it be bad. Maybe it sounds like I was suggesting that but I'm not, just to be clear.

I've decided that stupid optimism that everything will be perfect is the way to go here until I'm proven wrong, then I'll make sure to broadcast my overly emotional and melodramatic disappointment for the internet to see.

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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #73 on: April 04, 2015, 01:55:27 pm »
+1

How did I miss this thread?

Alas I haven't time to fully read it.  Just tagging, back later...
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Re: Features Thread
« Reply #74 on: April 04, 2015, 05:41:48 pm »
0

I asked about this just yesterday actually, in response to a question on our forums. Here's what I was told:
Our first priority is getting the 2.0 version of the existing game out for web and then mobile. After those are live it will be a high priority to get Adventures live. "High", but not necessarily "highest". Adventures will be a major effort requiring substantial enhancements to the engine, AI and user interface, and we already have a long list of post-launch enhancements to the existing game.

So like half a year?

I'm not clear on what you are actually doing: Are you rewriting the whole thing from scratch or are you using anything Goko made?

Also, i don't know how many people care about AI, are you sure this should be higher priority then getting Adventures out?
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