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[Kirian]

We've played this product for a long time and it's clear that an extremely significant portion of your customers do not like the animations. We are not asking anyone else to change how they play the game, or even for you to get rid of animations for everybody. Just a button in the settings which turns the animations off entirely.

We are not asking anyone else to change how they play the game, or even for you to get rid of animations for everybody. Just a button in the settings which turns the animations off entirely.

Just a button in the settings which turns the animations off entirely.

Just a button in the settings which turns the animations off entirely.

[dondon151]

Have MF staff ever played Dominion on Iso before

[AdamH]

Have MF staff ever played Dominion on Iso before

How long has it been since you played on Iso?

When I was a kid I thought the movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (and its sequel) were the funniest thing ever. I went back a few years later and watched them again and I found them to be childish.

It's frustrating to hear people say they want the new client to be like Isotropic. Isotropic was fine and great and I'm glad we had it, but I want something better than that. When someone watches my stream I want them to see something more attractive and intuitive than Iso was.

[funkdoc]

yeah, in 2015 you can't have a game just consist of text and some pictures.  unless it's an indie game driven more by story or generating some sort of unique feeling, anyway

the issue is how the animations slow down the game, but even more than that...everything about this implementation just looks so early-2000s.  if you're trying to draw in a more casual audience, you needed to redo the whole look of the game from scratch and modernize it.

[LastFootnote]

David,

The root of the problem here is not animations, but the artificial pause between each animation. Please, please remove that pause from all animation speeds. At one point I can believe it seemed important to have it, but now that gained cards hover in front of the screen, it's no longer necessary and is just detracting from the experience. It makes "digging" cards like Sage and Scrying Pool unbearably slow to resolve.

The pause has been shortened, but again, it should be removed entirely. Anybody who wants to see what's happening as it happens can set the animation speed lower; I know because I am such a person. Compare the current Making Fun version to the Goko version, each on a Medium-ish speed setting. No really, please try each one back-to-back. See how the Goko version is smooth as silk, while the Making Fun version is incredibly choppy? That's what needs to be fixed.

[Awaclus]

Well, the animations are fine if you use the maximum speed setting with a speed hack (I tried the speed hack at 3x speed and liked that setting). The problem with that, though, is that then it's going to take up a crap ton of CPU for sure.

[sc0UT]

Since some weeks the wording of the discussion about MF's work on Dominion 2.0 tends to get harsh with little
SCREAMING AARRRRRR incl.
It's maybe caused by the feeling that the feedback done by some f.ds members was not taken serious back in closed beta and still is not. Aggressive behavior is understandable but doesn't help to progress.

Someone who played the new version (I didn't, I've read posts about not negligible extreme warming and 100% CPU usage, I'm afraid of burning down my old machine) may try to write a friendly comment in the feedback & suggestions subforum. Feedback regarding Dominion 2.0 in f.ds forums does not help much, you should really post your feedback in their forums.

DavidTheDavid's response to the frequent suggestion to turn off animations shows that the wording "animations" can easily be misunderstood. The friendly comment therefore has to make clear what kind of animations are annoying as well as animation speeds of certain kingdom cards (Golem, Hunting Party, Scrying Pool etc.). SheCantSayNo did so in his reply, not friendly, but he did.

The glowing borders aren't what people talk about when they talk about animations (even though I'd love to turn them off as well). The animations that are problematic are those that actively take up gameplay time during which you can't do anything else. E.g. assume you have enough money and buys to empty the Estates. The process of emptying them should take at most 2 seconds (8 mouseclicks), yet on the new client it takes an endless eternity because after every single Estate purchase we are forced to sit through your submission for next year's Oscars. Not to mention much more extreme Hollywood ambitions like playing a bunch of Hunting Parties in a row. Too bad there's no Academy Award for best horror.

The next quote is very nice and one of my favorites in this thread. liopoil makes the obvious plausible and easily to understand for, literally, everyone.

We are not asking anyone else to change how they play the game, or even for you to get rid of animations for everybody. Just a button in the settings which turns the animations off entirely. You know that button that turns the music off? Yeah, it's pretty important. Imagine if it didn't exist. You might get used to the music after a while, might even think it's kind of catchy. That's no reason not to include the button.

[SCSN]

Henceforth, I shall dutifully play only when my full attention can be given the game. I shall exercise diligence, attentiveness, and full cognitive capacity. Please tell me how I should be playing so that I can meet your expectations. See, this isn't really going anywhere

So a dilligent user detailing widespread concerns about your product and suggesting ways to improve it isn't going anywhere? We've all known for a while that providing feedback was futile, but it's sort of nice that a company rep now admits it on record.

Btw, I wasn't at all telling you to change your play and it's quite incomprehensible how you got that idea from my post. I was going to say you might benefit from a careful rereading of it, but that made me think of my following point.

As before, you're welcome to come and provide your feedback. It was welcome before, and it still is. Hopefully, it can be something positive to move the game in a positive direction, especially for the diehards that tend to frequent this forum.

The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

[SCSN]

SheCantSayNo did so in his reply, not friendly, but he did.

It's very hard to remain friendly to the people who ruin my favorite game and who are deaf to all feedback.

[Donald X.]

Have MF staff ever played Dominion on Iso before

At least a little.

[werothegreat]

The whole point of a beta test is to figure out what players like and don't like.  If testers tell you they don't like something, and your response is "You haven't played it enough to have a good opinion on the matter", there is a problem.

Personally, I like the animations.  I like having a visual reminder of what is going on, in addition to a log.

THAT SAID, when animations get in the way of actual gameplay, there is a problem.  Whether that be covering up how many Actions/Buys you have left, or artificially slowing down your playing speed, animations should always just be fripperies, not obstacles.

Look at Hearthstone.  Yes, it has all sorts of fancy animations, and it has its own speed problems, but for the most part, you can still keep throwing down cards and attacking with minions while animations are resolving.  It'll take the animations a while to process all the way, but in the meantime I can still use the interface to do stuff, and finish my turn on time.

What you should take away from this: any successful implementation of Dominion online needs to be able to accommodate both speedy, competitive players who see any delay caused by animations or CPU overload as a frustration, and casual players who are basically Magpies in front of a Christmas tree.

[Donald X.]

SheCantSayNo did so in his reply, not friendly, but he did.

It's very hard to remain friendly to the people who ruin my favorite game and who are deaf to all feedback.

I think it's important to remember that David neither caused any problems, nor has a way to solve them. He is the guy they hired to read the forums and say "go team Making Fun!" and maintain a list of things people have complained about. So it's no surprise that he tows the company line. If he suddenly said "we did blow it there," that would have to be an official company position handed down to him, or he would not be the right guy for the job. Of course at some point denying reality is not helping the company either, but then that's for them to decide, as far as he is concerned.

I also did not create these problems, and also cannot solve them, so there. I could probably convince RGG to drop them at whatever date that becomes possible, and so they probably respect that to a certain degree. So, fix this stuff guys! ("Ticketed!")

For sure the slow-mo Hunting Party is not beneficial to anyone anywhere. New players cannot consider and process the extra information and it's just making them wait; Hunting Party gives you a card you didn't have, here it is, that's all they need. Experienced players can look at the log to see what went by and do not want to sit through the animation. There will never be a card that triggers on being revealed, I promise (I did try it on Fortress). So, there's no reason to slowly step through that. It's not just that there needs to be a way to turn it off; it's a strict negative for everyone always.

And that's all something to *tell* David, but not something to *discuss* with him. I am not believing for a minute anyone else's stance that they know better about new players; man, I know better, and have a track record to prove it.

The one thing you could actually do for new players for Hunting Party would be a message explaining the situation when Hunting Party fails to find a card. It would of course be absolutely essential to be able to turn off any such messages.

[Seprix]

[SCSN]

I think it's important to remember that David neither caused any problems, nor has a way to solve them. He is the guy they hired to read the forums and say "go team Making Fun!" and maintain a list of things people have complained about.

I wrote something similar when David first showed up on the forums, defending him against the sentiment that he should be burned solely based on his company's track record:

While I agree with everything you say, I think it's better to be friendly and open to any sign of a positive direction. In the long run we prefer the company running Dominion Online to be represented on this forum and share with us as much as reasonable. So if a representative of MF comes on here with a humble attitude there's really no point to beating him with stuff he may not even have been involved with. He could easily have stayed away without doing any further harm to the brand's image (which, granted, is pretty much impossible).

Had he come here with an arrogant attitude of "wtf are you guys whining about, the site is perfectly fine, it has an uptime of over 50%!" I'd have been the absolute first to burn him into the ground so completely as to make him regret he'd ever been born, but seeing that he seems to have good intentions and provides useful information, let's at least try to withold judgment until he proves us wrong.

The problem is that for some reason he decided to change his attitude from the first bolded part...

I want an option to disable animations, too, and pro players, and most likely people who start casual and then become fluent, want the same thing. There is a ticket on the issue.

...to the second:

If you only play a little and have the same reaction to the animations, of course your opinion doesn't change. I've played enough now that I don't notice them.

I see a lot of hasty judgment being passed by people who formed an opinion and revisit the game only long enough to reinforce that opinion.

I'll leave things as they are, which apparently is nowhere in particular to anyone's satisfaction. But that's fine...most of what I've read here has been an echo chamber of predetermined opinion.

So...

And that's all something to *tell* David, but not something to *discuss* with him.

...the whole problem is that when we do exactly that—tell him about issues we have with their software—instead of taking it up with the people responsible, he's now shitting on our concerns.

[ehunt]

I have little sympathy for Making Fun at this point. I'm especially disappointed to get a Goko-esque "you're not the intended user" as a response to valid criticism.

However, let's keep the discussion professional (i.e. profanity-free) please.

[sudgy]

The one thing you could actually do for new players for Hunting Party would be a message explaining the situation when Hunting Party fails to find a card. It would of course be absolutely essential to be able to turn off any such messages.

This conversation happened while I was playing dominion online earlier:

Opponent: That didn't work right, did it?
Me: What didn't work right?
Opponent: King's Courting my Hunting Party.  I didn't draw any cards.
*short pause*
Me: You have no cards in your deck.
Opponent: lol

[Cave-o-sapien]

yeah, in 2015 you can't have a game just consist of text and some pictures.  unless it's an indie game driven more by story or generating some sort of unique feeling, anyway

I don't accept your assertion that the user interface zeitgeist has changed significantly in the two-three years since Dominion on Isotropic was wildly popular.

If anything I've seen a shift towards minimalist design over the past 5 years.

(maybe my sarcasm detector needs to be recalibrated?)

[Seprix]

I'd rather play the same game with images at a slower speed than the game very quickly with just text and an ugly interface. Like most people, I process things visually, and images are quicker than text.

[Cave-o-sapien]

I'd rather play the same game with images at a slower speed than the game very quickly with just text and an ugly interface. Like most people, I process things visually, and images are quicker than text.

Your statement seems to contradict itself.

On the one hand you're saying you'd rather play the same game more slowly with images, but then you say that processing images is quicker than processing text.

So if it's faster for you to process an image-centric UI, wouldn't it be frustrating to have the game engine lagging behind your decision making?

[Seprix]

Images are automatically going to be slower than text. If I have to wait .2 seconds instead of .000002 seconds, I'm not going to care.

[werothegreat]

yeah, in 2015 you can't have a game just consist of text and some pictures.  unless it's an indie game driven more by story or generating some sort of unique feeling, anyway

I don't accept your assertion that the user interface zeitgeist has changed significantly in the two-three years since Dominion on Isotropic was wildly popular.

If anything I've seen a shift towards minimalist design over the past 5 years.

(maybe my sarcasm detector needs to be recalibrated?)

Hah.

Haha.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Cave-o-sapien]

yeah, in 2015 you can't have a game just consist of text and some pictures.  unless it's an indie game driven more by story or generating some sort of unique feeling, anyway

I don't accept your assertion that the user interface zeitgeist has changed significantly in the two-three years since Dominion on Isotropic was wildly popular.

If anything I've seen a shift towards minimalist design over the past 5 years.

(maybe my sarcasm detector needs to be recalibrated?)

Hah.

Haha.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Ok ok. Maybe that's some hyperbole, but it seemed quite popular in spite of its rudimentary interface. I guess maybe I'm just nostalgic like everyone else?

I do wonder about peak game usage rates. How do they compare from Isotropic to Goko? Surely these metrics are somewhere.

[DavidTheDavid]

Choose your own adventure!
1) Reply, "No, you just don't get it!" Proceed to page 134 [I die in a black pit, alone].
2) Reply, "You obviously didn't read what I wrote!" Proceed to page 134 [I die in a black pit, alone].
3) Quote my quoted quotes Inception style. Proceed to page 67, turn to page 178, then 67, repeat. [We make horrible, communal text gif].
4) Forego internet gotcha. [read below]

Sorry, couldn't resist.     

Still forgoing internet gotcha games, I've been thinking about (part of) this thread as I've been working through the Alchemy campaign.

For me, the animations aren't an issue , though as my Alchemy campaign battles stacked up with curses, cards to trash the curses, Golems to bypass the curses, cards to draw cards, and so on and so forth, I can see how someone who is happy to scan the log for results might like play sans animations and just nigh instant results, so in the vein of keeping the game appealing to all players and that some players (most likely expert players, I'd wager) dislike the animations, what solutions might there be? I mean, beyond the obvious "turn off animations." Keep in mind that the goal right now, as Jeff explained in our announcements section, is feature parity with 1.0, so any new features such as we might generate are down the road. He really has kept the door open to future ideas and features fwiw.

So what would an "Expert Mode" entail? Just brainstorming here:

• animations are off, cards just layer out in sequence
• all reactions are manual (because of oddball circumstances such as Donald X. mentions in this post).
• Or discriminate certain reactions? Or have a first time option to determine all subsequent reactions of a type
• stack multiples always on?
• more difficult campaign builds and/or AI opponents - relevant to just those matches of course

I dunno, what else?

I remember when Memoir '44 came out online. I haven't played it in a long time, but expert mode was "computer handles nothing, players do it all." That seems extreme and neglects the benefit of the server avoiding human errors. But there's an idea fwiw.

[DavidTheDavid]

And I'm in the 2.0 queue if someone wants to pound on me proper like. 

[LastFootnote]

For me, the animations aren't an issue , though as my Alchemy campaign battles stacked up with curses, cards to trash the curses, Golems to bypass the curses, cards to draw cards, and so on and so forth, I can see how someone who is happy to scan the log for results might like play sans animations and just nigh instant results, so in the vein of keeping the game appealing to all players and that some players (most likely expert players, I'd wager) dislike the animations, what solutions might there be? I mean, beyond the obvious "turn off animations." Keep in mind that the goal right now, as Jeff explained in our announcements section, is feature parity with 1.0, so any new features such as we might generate are down the road. He really has kept the door open to future ideas and features fwiw.

Good God, man! Remove the delay between the animations! REMOVE THE DELAY BETWEEN THE ANIMATIONS! I guarantee that it would solve all these problems. If you'd just REMOVE THE DELAY BETWEEN THE ANIMATIONS, the fastest setting will be fast enough for experts. The delay between animations isn't helping new players, either! Removing them will make the experience better for everybody!

The 1.0 version doesn't have delays between animations. If you're priority is feature parity with 1.0, YOU NEED TO REMOVE THE DELAY BETWEEN ANIMATIONS!