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Author Topic: Thanks for helping me win!  (Read 14955 times)

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-Stef-

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #25 on: October 07, 2015, 08:49:39 am »
+3

I wonder what is required to make dominion more of a official competetive sport, like MTG for example. Getting more people into the game would be the most important thing for that I supose.

I guess it's not really going to happen but a man can dream.

The game is great, that's not the problem. A proper online environment would go a long way

Indeed, dream on.
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AdamH

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #26 on: October 07, 2015, 09:49:20 am »
0

But.. But.. They're the publishers! They should know their own game!

I guess they know what all of their games are about, but they don't specifically know every single rule by heart. Unlike us, those guys are not specifically Dominion nerds ;)

If you expect your tournament to have some legitimacy, you really need a moderator who knows the rules well enough to settle disputes and answer questions with some authority. This is the main thing keeping me from being able to play in my IRL tournaments since I can pretty much completely automate the rest of what needs to happen.

And even if you don't know the rules intimitely to this level, I would think you still need to know how to set up the game, so that you can at least make sure you have all of the materials needed on hand.

I wonder what is required to make dominion more of a official competetive sport, like MTG for example. Getting more people into the game would be the most important thing for that I supose.

I guess it's not really going to happen but a man can dream.

The game is great, that's not the problem. A proper online environment would go a long way

Indeed, dream on.

While I agree with this, I've also seen the online environments for MtG and I think there has to be something else that gets people so into the game so much more than Dominion. Every time I'm at the game store I use for tournaments, there are 20+ people participating in the weekly Tuesday night tournament, and 30+ there every Saturday for more of the same. Yeah, it's more established, and doing that is hard work with very slow progress.
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Dingan

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #27 on: October 07, 2015, 03:08:28 pm »
0

This might be getting waaaayyy off topic, but this is a good conversation to be had -- why isn't Dominion more popular??  It's such a great game, for so many objective reasons.   Is the online interface too clunky?  Is it not kid-friendly enough?  Is the learning curve too high?  Do people just not like good stuff?  Idk..

Sorry if this is too off topic.
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Voltaire

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #28 on: October 07, 2015, 05:52:37 pm »
+1

Well, I would counter by saying Dominion is insanely popular.
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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #29 on: October 07, 2015, 06:06:38 pm »
0

It's popular among board game players. Dunno about general gamers, which is a bigger slice of pie. The official competitive scene just isn't existent/organized very well and they don't have the massive fanbase built upon decades that games like M:TG have. RGG is a small company, so they probably realistically don't have the manpower to organize such things.

I dunno. I've thought about this a lot, but I don't have real answers. If I did I would have suggested them already. I do know that whenever I took cards to test for Adventures to the board game stores here, nobody was interested, so I personally have trouble seeing the game as 'insanely' popular, but it obviously must vary some by region.
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Beyond Awesome

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #30 on: October 07, 2015, 06:07:59 pm »
0

It is very popular, but it is not mainstream like Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh. Settlers of Catan has been catching on with the general public, but most people who don't play board/card games aren't aware of Dominion. I blame video games.

PPE

Edit: Party games tend to be popular. Cards Against Humanity has been the number Amazon seller in Toys & Games, well, pretty much forever.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2015, 06:09:38 pm by Beyond Awesome »
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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #31 on: October 07, 2015, 06:08:51 pm »
0

It's popular among board game players. Dunno about general gamers, which is a bigger slice of pie. The official competitive scene just isn't existent/organized very well and they don't have the massive fanbase built upon decades that games like M:TG have. RGG is a small company, so they probably realistically don't have the manpower to organize such things.

I dunno. I've thought about this a lot, but I don't have real answers. If I did I would have suggested them already. I do know that whenever I took cards to test for Adventures to the board game stores here, nobody was interested, so I personally have trouble seeing the game as 'insanely' popular, but it obviously must vary some by region.

What???? No one interested in play testing Adventures cards? Blasphemy.
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jsh357

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #32 on: October 07, 2015, 06:13:06 pm »
0

It's popular among board game players. Dunno about general gamers, which is a bigger slice of pie. The official competitive scene just isn't existent/organized very well and they don't have the massive fanbase built upon decades that games like M:TG have. RGG is a small company, so they probably realistically don't have the manpower to organize such things.

I dunno. I've thought about this a lot, but I don't have real answers. If I did I would have suggested them already. I do know that whenever I took cards to test for Adventures to the board game stores here, nobody was interested, so I personally have trouble seeing the game as 'insanely' popular, but it obviously must vary some by region.

What???? No one interested in play testing Adventures cards? Blasphemy.
Well, at one store the guy working there told me Dominion was very popular several years ago, but people played it to death and now it would be hard to find anyone who wanted to play. That's somewhat understandable (remember, not everyone is as into the game as we are)

At the other store, I just couldn't get any biters. Tried three or four times; gave up.

At the DC meetup, a man working at the board game pub said he was surprised to see people playing Dominion.

These are all anecdotes, but this has been my experience w/r/t Dominion outside my circle of friends.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2015, 06:14:23 pm by jsh357 »
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scott_pilgrim

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #33 on: October 07, 2015, 06:15:01 pm »
+1

This might be getting waaaayyy off topic, but this is a good conversation to be had -- why isn't Dominion more popular??  It's such a great game, for so many objective reasons.   Is the online interface too clunky?  Is it not kid-friendly enough?  Is the learning curve too high?  Do people just not like good stuff?  Idk..

Sorry if this is too off topic.

I think it is very popular, relative to "similar" games.  But compared to games like Magic or Settlers, well those games have just been around a lot longer.  Compared to games like Hearthstone, those games have way more money behind them.  Having a game be really old is probably the best way to make it popular.  Look at chess, go, Risk, Monopoly, poker.  Those are all really old games that probably wouldn't do so well today if they had come out in the 2000's.  And then games like Hearthstone that are produced by big companies with lots of money and marketing with a well-known name behind them just get attention a lot more easily.

In other words, being a good game can only get you so far, unfortunately.  There are probably lots of fantastic games I haven't played because they just didn't catch my attention, either because they haven't been around long enough or they don't have enough marketing behind them.
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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #34 on: October 07, 2015, 06:19:43 pm »
+1

Even lots of marketing tends to not help a lot of games. I know. I was a game demo person for Wizards of the Coast, and for a while every year, they would try and launch a new game. Now, they mostly focus on Magic because they realized it is hard to get people to try something new.
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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #35 on: October 07, 2015, 06:30:56 pm »
+1

Even lots of marketing tends to not help a lot of games. I know. I was a game demo person for Wizards of the Coast, and for a while every year, they would try and launch a new game. Now, they mostly focus on Magic because they realized it is hard to get people to try something new.

They should make an expansion for Guillotine. I'd buy that.
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Voltaire

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #36 on: October 07, 2015, 11:01:48 pm »
+4

When you compare Dominion to something like Settlers, Cards Against Humanity, or Magic, you're talking about the cream of the crop as far as popularity is concerned - bring in poker, chess, etc., and you're talking impossible standards.

Consider the analogy where Dominion is a superstar player in your favorite sport. It's going to make the Hall of Fame when it retires, hands-down, and will be in the top 10 to ever play the game. But it's not a Gretzky, a Ruth, a Jordan.

And that's what I mean when I say Dominion is insanely popular. I will simultaneously say that I have the exact same experience as jsh (well, not the playtesting Adventures cards part  :() in that I bring Dominion to my store's game night every week, and the other regulars think of me as that quaint Dominion guy. Every now and then they play a game out of a lack of better options, but it's normally newcomers and people others perceive as more "casual" gamers who play with me.

tl:dr Dominion is famous and "serious" boardgamers are cult of the new
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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #37 on: October 08, 2015, 04:57:30 pm »
+5

reasons not mentioned yet:

- eurogames in general are still a really niche market.  catan & ticket to ride are about the only ones that have reached beyond that to any extent. oh, and munchkin if that counts.

- the dominant culture of boardgaming is one of collecting, one of playing a bunch of new games maybe a couple times each.  competitive play is still not seen as much of a factor, as evidenced by the lack of player elimination in these games. heck, i remember hearing that rio grande outright refuses to publish any game with player elimination!

- believe it or not, "big money OP" is still THE dominant meme wrt dominion for a large portion of boardgamers.  as i've said on here before, if you search for dominion on twitter, you'll probably find more tweets whining about BM than anything else.  the problem is that a lot of people judge a game by its base set - if that experience is bad, it's awfully hard to convince them that the expansions help as much as they do. engine-building also isn't very accessible to new players.

- furthermore, if you actually get good at dominion, all the shuffling can make IRL play a bit of a chore. dominion is much better suited for online play imo

- finally, dominion's art & theming are pretty fuckin wack and that is a huge deal with boardgamers. this was touched upon recently in that wil wheaton thread - much easier to get excited for captain america vs. the red skull than playing 5 "bridges".  the core audience here wants fantasy & sci-fi & trains, and dominion doesn't deliver much of that.

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #38 on: October 08, 2015, 11:26:16 pm »
0

That last one's a big deal. 
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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #39 on: October 08, 2015, 11:42:57 pm »
+6

That last one's a big deal. 

This so strange to me. I played Temporum with some new players the other day, and when we finished, one of the players complained about the theme being "bolted on", and made some comment about some other game where "you really feel like you are traveling through the forest" (or something like that). This is obviously a thing that people care about, but I just don't get it. I don't understand how the theme of any Euro game could be any thing more than "bolted on". (/pointless rant)
« Last Edit: October 08, 2015, 11:43:59 pm by Deadlock39 »
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Burning Skull

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #40 on: October 09, 2015, 06:04:44 am »
0

The game is great, that's not the problem. A proper online environment would go a long way

Indeed, dream on.

That.
Current realisation is like Progressive Metal: it all seems wanky and uncomprehensable from the first glance, and you need to dig for it's good moments. And when you finally find ones you might still not want to listen to it, because all the goodness is wrapped in too much crap.
I really can't see how goko version and upcoming MF version can attract somewhat noticable amount of new players.

How the hell our league only holds less than 100 players? It's a great event and with a proper game client and with some extra advertising it could have been magnitudes more than that.
By the way (super offtopic), had anyone thought of providing such advertisement?
What can be done for league to grow?
It would be nice to cooperate with MF somehow on that matter, but I guess they kinda have a lot other stuff to do right now...
Maybe we can place some ads outside f.ds (even if some of that needs to be for money maybe we could find some soultion)?


Davio

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #41 on: October 09, 2015, 06:38:28 am »
0

The two main problems here are:

 1) the idea that it's required to play the same kingdom on every table, and therefore it's not practical to play with a lot of sets.
 2) the idea that a single game of dominion is a meaningful result.


2P, 3P or 4P is probably just a matter of preference, but on these two points I think this organization simply fails hard.

Perhaps it would be nice if we (f.ds community) could write a document that helps them (officials that get the assignment of organizing a dominion tournament despite having no clue what the game is about).
They originally didn't feel like they would need to use the same kingdom on every table. But they also used VPs as a tie breaker in the tournament. I emailed the organisation that using VPs as a tie breaker is a horrible idea, but if they were going to do that, they should at least use the same sets. So that's where that came from.

The last one I went to (in The Hague I think) was 2p with some sort of accelerated Swiss with players qualifying in preliminaries. That was the best possible format for serious players. But they decided that it didn't need to be that serious anymore.

Also, the organisation was transferred. I strolled around the Spellenspektakel conference last year and found out by chance that they were holding the championships (4p base + intrigue) then and there, but sadly I couldn't/didn't want to make time to partake.
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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #42 on: October 09, 2015, 09:33:32 am »
0

I'm an unabashed Eurogamer, and really like digging deeply into heavy Euros, but they have some problems:

1)  High barrier to entry related to difficult mechanics, iconography, decision making
2)  Long playtime
3)  Groupthink tendencies to develop with repeated plays with the same gaming group
4)  Realization that at higher levels, especially in 2P, "cutthroat" tactics are usually among the most optimal ways to play
5)  Lots of neat titles and limited gaming time = few plays per game before pulling out a new game

These barriers routinely make it very difficult for me to get experience with games like Caylus, Agricola, Tzolkin.  Heck, I actually studied Caylus extensively including reading the rules, printed out a pdf of all the buildings, read all the strategy articles on BGG, and then still had to fight a tough learing curve on BSW to get any plays at all. I simply CANNOT get that game to the table IRL and have 100% of the time had to omit the provost or everyone just quits.

My wife loves Race for the Galaxy and we both climbed the learning curve together and have very good competition together.  Unfortunately, we've been experimenting with the Orb Scenario from Alien Artifacts, and I'm convinced that a strong blocking/denial strategy is the way to go at least in 2PA.  Needless to say, this hasn't led to a very pleasant gaming experience.

I think this is why a strong online server is the only way to fully mine the depths of these games. With Dominion, I'm fairly certain I never would have gotten past the Big Money stage if it weren't for online Dominion and these forums.  However, Dominion has a low enough entry point that I can get it to the table routinely.  The more it at least gets to the table, the more people actually have a chance to enjoy it.

The real question to me is: Why is a game like Hearthstone more popular than Dominion?  Having played both, I conclude that Dominion is a flat-out better game.  Whatever Blizzard is doing, we need to help RGG and MF do!
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jsh357

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #43 on: October 09, 2015, 09:42:13 am »
+2

A big part of Blizzard's success with Hearthstone is that they already made a name for themselves with the online gaming community. I have met people IRL who swear by Blizzard and don't play a whole lot of other games. Starcraft is maybe the most popular competitive game worldwide. World of Warcraft has an insane number of players even to this day. Blizzard also have their own DRM client, which has a list of their available games whenever you turn it on, so all they had to do was add Hearthstone and they captured the interest of many of their built-in fanbase right off the bat. A lot of those players were already big streamers, so Hearthstone got free advertising on their streaming channels. These are only some of the factors involved in the game's success, but my point is that unless Blizzard themselves or a similarly big company hosted Dominion, it's unlikely it would reach the same level of popularity as Hearthstone.

Perhaps getting on Steam was one of MF's hopes in this regard. The problem there is they are a mere drop in the bucket on Steam, whereas Blizzard's games get premium screen time on Battle.net.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2015, 09:43:27 am by jsh357 »
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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #44 on: October 09, 2015, 09:53:14 am »
+6

Perhaps getting on Steam was one of MF's hopes in this regard. The problem there is they are a mere drop in the bucket on Steam, whereas Blizzard's games get premium screen time on Battle.net.

I still think the main problem is that MF's product is a terrible playing experience.
If you have a great game with a great online implementation but without any of the advertisements, sure it will take a while but at some point it will become a success.
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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #45 on: October 09, 2015, 10:21:00 am »
+1

Perhaps getting on Steam was one of MF's hopes in this regard. The problem there is they are a mere drop in the bucket on Steam, whereas Blizzard's games get premium screen time on Battle.net.

I still think the main problem is that MF's product is a terrible playing experience.

This x 10.000. Marketing can create exposure; it cannot create a loyal customer base.

If you run a hotel that has non-functioning sewerage, brown tap-water and enough crawling vermin to make your average rain forrest see green with envy, you can spend billions on marketing all you want, but your guests are still going to run away.

And although MF isn't quite that bad, it's pretty damn close.
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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #46 on: October 09, 2015, 01:05:22 pm »
0

yes, i wasn't going to mention it but the awful online product dampens my hopes of turning my friends onto this game. and the sad thing is it's still like 10x better than BSW!

does the eurogame world just not see online as important, or what

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #47 on: October 09, 2015, 01:19:50 pm »
0

That last one's a big deal. 

This so strange to me. I played Temporum with some new players the other day, and when we finished, one of the players complained about the theme being "bolted on", and made some comment about some other game where "you really feel like you are traveling through the forest" (or something like that). This is obviously a thing that people care about, but I just don't get it. I don't understand how the theme of any Euro game could be any thing more than "bolted on". (/pointless rant)

Oh, it's not that Dominion's theme is bolted on, it's that half the art is ugly.

If something pretty was bolted on it'd help a lot.
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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #48 on: October 12, 2015, 05:15:05 pm »
0

Also, there is another mistake in the Dutch translation of Adventures, but I should look that one up.
It's Plan (Plan): It says 'vernietig een kaart wanneer je een kaart van die stapel speelt', but it should say 'vernietig een kaart wanneer je een kaart van die stapel koopt'.

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Re: Thanks for helping me win!
« Reply #49 on: October 13, 2015, 07:02:13 am »
+2

I think there's a few reasons games like Magic hold people's interest more than Dominion. Obviously there's legacy reasons in play, Magic is over 20 years old now and it's one of the most popular nerdy games out there. There's a nationwide, worldwide network of nerdy gamers at every game store in America who play this shit multiple times a week. Everyone who games a lot knows how to play the basics of Magic. The social factors more than anything else are going to drive millions of people toward it.

I also think a big factor is the cost and release model of Magic. It definitely costs more to play Magic than to play Dominion, yes. About $500 gets you physical and online copies of every Dominion expansion there has ever been, plus sleeves and a big box. You can obviously spend that much and more on Magic, and to some extent, your competitiveness is directly limited by your budget. Sounds like a big plus for Dominion (and in fact that's the biggest reason I initially got invested in this game), but the way you spend money in Magic (on collectibles) produces a more rewarding experience. Coveted, collectible cards that make you more competitive as you seek and trade them out is just more engaging - it gives you hope to get better, it gives you a way to slowly improve your deck and odds of winning with work that isn't just "play a bunch of games", and the effects of a purchase have an immediate impact on how good you are. This kind of reward for investment is a positive feedback loop like no other and that's why an entire economy exists for this shit.

I don't think it's impossible for Dominion to get ferociously, rabidly popular like that, and I hope it does, but it's distribution model, while far less exploitative and far more actually good, doesn't have that reward mechanism / feedback loop that Magic does, and I think that's a really big thing. If card stores nationwide had weekly dominion nights, that would go a long way though. It is a perfectly accessible and fair game where your financial investment only plays a role in your success to the extent that you have experience in the game.

Kind of a rambley post without a huge coherent point sorry
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