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[GendoIkari]

in the comments (and in other threads) it is seen that this is about good players who think it is beneath them to have to play with beginners, and there have been several examples of exactly how stupid moves their opponents have made. I feel more for the beginners who have had to play against condescending experts

The only thing condescending here is this text of yours. Not liking to play against poor players has nothing to do with thinking it's "beneath us" or some such nonsense, it's just not much fun for anyone if there is a big skill gap in every single game you play.

I'm gonna disagree with SCSN here (big shock, I know). I don't see anything condescending about what pst said.

I also think that threads where the top players are making fun of the plays their opponents are making comes off pretty poorly. It makes them/us look elitist and I don't think that's what is intended.

I think you're really misreading our intent when we make threads like that.  The issue isn't that the opponent bought a turn 1 Spy.  It's not trivially super obvious why turn 1 Spy is bad for a player who is new to Dominion.  The butt of the joke is the matchmaking that put a iso 25+ player into the same game as that when they checked "compatible rating".

If we were trying to shame people we would quote the username of the player involved.

I don't think I'm misunderstanding the intent at all. I think many people are unaware of how it can come across, which was the whole point of my post.

Agreed with you here. The thing is, to make the point of "matching against similar ranked opponents doesn't seem to be working correctly", one could easy simply say that based on the stuff they've seen their opponent do, they're pretty sure it's not working right. There's no reason here to mention any of the specific bad moves they are making. While I'm sure that the intent wasn't negative or elitist; it could easily be read that way.

[popsofctown]

I really don't see how "I know matchmaking is awful because my opponent played awfully last game I matched up" and "I know matchmaking is awful because my opponent opened Scout, which is awful, last game I matched up" have different levels of toxicity.  But I'm open to hearing an explanation that convinces me there's a difference.

[GendoIkari]

I really don't see how "I know matchmaking is awful because my opponent played awfully last game I matched up" and "I know matchmaking is awful because my opponent opened Scout, which is awful, last game I matched up" have different levels of toxicity.  But I'm open to hearing an explanation that convinces me there's a difference.

Basically, to someone who doesn't know your intentions already, the latter can sound like it's making fun of the opponent, the former less so. At least I'd imagine it would come across that way to the person who is being talked about if he/she were to read it.

[Witherweaver]

In activities (games, sports, even something academic, whatever), I think "bad" and "inexperienced" should be treated differently.  Yes, if you are inexperienced you are "bad" compared to someone else with experience and skill, but not necessarily "bad" compared with the level you should be at if you were experienced.  I think of "bad" as more of a case where your skill level is low but your exposure time is high.  Like you've been playing for years but haven't improved past the stage of making basic mistakes; i.e., you haven't learned anything.  Inexperienced just means you may still yet improve, but you haven't had the time/exposure to get to a higher level.

Now I know it's a bit of an issue of not hurting feelings and people shouldn't be so sensitive, but, hey, being told you suck sucks.  It can discourage people that have the potential to become good from becoming good.  Some people, though, may have a thick skin and realize that they only suck because they don't know enough and resolve to improve.  Others may just get discouraged and quit.

It's probably not a big step to just use different language for this.  Just saying "beginner" or "inexperienced" instead of "bad" or "awful" is an improvement, I think.*  In my experience, non-native English speakers (and specifically European) tend to be more blunt with these kinds of criticisms.  I'm not certain if it's because of different nuances in connotation of the words or because it's more of a cultural norm.

*Though when someone begins to act superior and condescending to others without the skill to back it up, then all politesse is off and they are, indeed, bad    

[GendoIkari]

In activities (games, sports, even something academic, whatever), I think "bad" and "inexperienced" should be treated differently.  Yes, if you are inexperienced you are "bad" compared to someone else with experience and skill, but not necessarily "bad" compared with the level you should be at if you were experienced.  I think of "bad" as more of a case where your skill level is low but your exposure time is high.  Like you've been playing for years but haven't improved past the stage of making basic mistakes; i.e., you haven't learned anything.  Inexperienced just means you may still yet improve, but you haven't had the time/exposure to get to a higher level.

Now I know it's a bit of an issue of not hurting feelings and people shouldn't be so sensitive, but, hey, being told you suck sucks.  It can discourage people that have the potential to become good from becoming good.  Some people, though, may have a thick skin and realize that they only suck because they don't know enough and resolve to improve.  Others may just get discouraged and quit.

It's probably not a big step to just use different language for this.  Just saying "beginner" or "inexperienced" instead of "bad" or "awful" is an improvement, I think.*  In my experience, non-native English speakers (and specifically European) tend to be more blunt with these kinds of criticisms.  I'm not certain if it's because of different nuances in connotation of the words or because it's more of a cultural norm.

*Though when someone begins to act superior and condescending to others without the skill to back it up, then all politesse is off and they are, indeed, bad

While I somewhat agree with this, I also think that SCSN's point is correct; especially in a game like Dominion, people can play a lot, but still play casually. You could have hundreds or even thousands of games of Dominion under your belt, but that doesn't mean that you are working hard to improve your game, visiting forums on Dominion strategy, watching streams to see how good players play, etc. There's plenty of people who simply won't ever be a higher rank; not because they're "bad", but because they're just more casual.

[Witherweaver]

Yeah, I agree, there's another level---"casual"---but I still think that's not the same as "bad", because they're not actually making it a goal to be among the top players.  This is true for all activities, even sports.

[popsofctown]

Yeah, I agree, there's another level---"casual"---but I still think that's not the same as "bad", because they're not actually making it a goal to be among the top players.  This is true for all activities, even sports.

This is true, which is why I think meeting matchmaking complaints with "Playing people who are much better than you is the best way to get better at the game. Cherish these moments <3" is not necessarily any more helpful for attracting casual players to the new client than complaining about their poor play is.

[Witherweaver]

Yeah, I agree, there's another level---"casual"---but I still think that's not the same as "bad", because they're not actually making it a goal to be among the top players.  This is true for all activities, even sports.

This is true, which is why I think meeting matchmaking complaints with "Playing people who are much better than you is the best way to get better at the game. Cherish these moments <3" is not necessarily any more helpful for attracting casual players to the new client than complaining about their poor play is.

Well it's slightly better, because it's not as negative and those casual players may indeed decide they want to be more serious and competitive.  It also has an ASCII heart.   But, yes, I see your point.

[Cave-o-sapien]

In activities (games, sports, even something academic, whatever), I think "bad" and "inexperienced" should be treated differently.  Yes, if you are inexperienced you are "bad" compared to someone else with experience and skill, but not necessarily "bad" compared with the level you should be at if you were experienced. 

You could argue that a large part of being "good" at Dominion is being experienced enough to know the relative strengths of cards and card-combinations.

For example, I've got a lot of experiencing playing Dominion with all the sets that were out on Isotropic. After Isotropic shut down, my play with the newer sets has been limited to face-to-face games, so if you put me in a game with lots of Guilds/Dark Ages cards I'm less likely to do as well as I would otherwise.

[Dingan]

The problem is that the players are not given the choice.  We can debate whether it's right or wrong, offensive or inoffensive, blah blah blah, for skilled players to avoid less skilled players or not.  But regardless, the fact that we are not given the choice to play any given person is what is most annoying.  I usually prefer playing people that are near my skill.  But I like getting the crap kicked out of me by the Stefs amd MQs sometimes.  And yes I like beating up on noobs every once in a while.  But what I don't like right now is that I can't choose which of these things to do, or at least I don't know which one I'm getting in to beforehand.

[Chris is me]

I mean, if we got desperate, we could go to the chat and ask for high ranking players to challenge us. Honor system for that, I guess.

[pst]

The problem is that the players are not given the choice.

Exactly. I think the system shouldn't care what our criteria are. Playing should be fun and players themselves will be the best judges of if a proposed game seems to be fun.

I'm sorry about my unkind words about some remarks about players who aren't very good. I really think some of those remarks were out of the line, but it was totally wrong of me to bring that up so it could steal focus in my last posting here.

[DG]

You have to make fun of error reports like these don't you.

An attempt was made to use an object that is not, or is no longer, usable

[ravi]

I can certainly think of other things I would prefer differently, but I think that top priority should be to not "force" us into games we don't want to play with changes as suggested above, of which one of the most important and the easiest one to implement is to extend point counter settings to on/off/don't-care with the last one being the default.

While I like playing with the VP counter, I think that the default should be "off" not "don't care".  "Don't care" may be confusing to beginners and the game was meant to be played without a VP Counter right?

[Awaclus]

While I like playing with the VP counter, I think that the default should be "off" not "don't care".  "Don't care" may be confusing to beginners and the game was meant to be played without a VP Counter right?

Why would it be confusing to beginners? No preference should be the default, since that way you'll get into a game sooner and a beginner is probably more likely to care about that.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Uh, dragging cards?  Why would you not change that interface?  Watchtower, Cartographer, anything with choosing card locations. 

After playing a dozen or so games with Watchtower, this is at the top of my list. It's almost enough to make me not do Goons/Watchtower.

It's an awful design choice made more baffling considering someone went out of their way to implement it. The simpler design of two buttons is superior in every way.

As for matchmaking, it seems like the user should be given more control over how long of a wait is acceptable before (apparently) abandoning the user's matchmaking criteria.

[Witherweaver]

Uh, dragging cards?  Why would you not change that interface?  Watchtower, Cartographer, anything with choosing card locations. 

After playing a dozen or so games with Watchtower, this is at the top of my list. It's almost enough to make me not do Goons/Watchtower.

It's an awful design choice made more baffling considering someone went out of their way to implement it. The simpler design of two buttons is superior in every way.

I recently top-decked a Curse with Watchtower because I double-clicked it.  Obviously, the game should have known where I wanted it to go~

[Cave-o-sapien]

Uh, dragging cards?  Why would you not change that interface?  Watchtower, Cartographer, anything with choosing card locations. 

After playing a dozen or so games with Watchtower, this is at the top of my list. It's almost enough to make me not do Goons/Watchtower.

It's an awful design choice made more baffling considering someone went out of their way to implement it. The simpler design of two buttons is superior in every way.

I recently top-decked a Curse with Watchtower because I double-clicked it.  Obviously, the game should have known where I wanted it to go~

After tiring of dragging I noticed that the highlight around the gained card was red. "Aha," I thought. "I can just click on this and it will be trashed."

Nope. Apparently in this context, a red border means "put it on top of my deck". Because of course it does.

[popsofctown]

Uh, dragging cards?  Why would you not change that interface?  Watchtower, Cartographer, anything with choosing card locations. 

After playing a dozen or so games with Watchtower, this is at the top of my list. It's almost enough to make me not do Goons/Watchtower.

It's an awful design choice made more baffling considering someone went out of their way to implement it. The simpler design of two buttons is superior in every way.

As for matchmaking, it seems like the user should be given more control over how long of a wait is acceptable before (apparently) abandoning the user's matchmaking criteria.

I've gotten ridiculously inferior opponents after 1 second queue times.  I'm pretty sure that's not what's going on.

[blueblimp]

I can certainly think of other things I would prefer differently, but I think that top priority should be to not "force" us into games we don't want to play with changes as suggested above, of which one of the most important and the easiest one to implement is to extend point counter settings to on/off/don't-care with the last one being the default.

While I like playing with the VP counter, I think that the default should be "off" not "don't care".  "Don't care" may be confusing to beginners and the game was meant to be played without a VP Counter right?

Polls on this forum show that a strong majority of f.ds players prefer to play with a VP counter. (I think there was a similar poll that showed most players don't like to play with full deck tracking, but I couldn't find that one.) So for people who haven't expressed an opinion, I think it's a bad guess to assume they are in the minority that prefer playing without a VP counter (or for that matter, among the apparently non-existent subset of players who refuse to play unless the VP counter is off).

[menagerie a trois]

On my mac, I have no way to exit fullscreen mode or do anything else with my computer when playing. If my wifi connection drops out, I can't attempt a reconnect because I'm stuck in the game.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Uh, dragging cards?  Why would you not change that interface?  Watchtower, Cartographer, anything with choosing card locations. 

After playing a dozen or so games with Watchtower, this is at the top of my list. It's almost enough to make me not do Goons/Watchtower.

It's an awful design choice made more baffling considering someone went out of their way to implement it. The simpler design of two buttons is superior in every way.

As for matchmaking, it seems like the user should be given more control over how long of a wait is acceptable before (apparently) abandoning the user's matchmaking criteria.

I've gotten ridiculously inferior opponents after 1 second queue times.  I'm pretty sure that's not what's going on.

I'm just grasping for some explanation. I can see someone making the decision that a poorly matched game is better than waiting for a game. Maybe it's just ranking potential matches and always giving you the "best" one. In other words, it never returns an empty list of "potential" matches.

[Cave-o-sapien]

On my mac, I have no way to exit fullscreen mode or do anything else with my computer when playing.

This is a known issue that got introduced in 2.0.35 (or thereabouts). I have no idea why it's taking so long to fix.

[yuma]

How about can't access in any shape or form. Online won't work. Download causes computer to crash. Completely unstable platform.

I have no idea what problems exist within the game itself because I have yet to actually play a game on the version. That is a major problem.

{never had a problem getting onto Goko aside from global shutdowns}

Was able to get into a game by leaving browser open for 15 minutes that it took web application to load. From there played two games against a bot. Third one froze and crashed with a string of error codes. Haven't been able to reload again despite leaving browser open and not doing anything else for 30 minutes multiple times. Tried to download again but again it crashed my laptop. Won't be doing that again. Won't be trying to play again until I hear platform is at least as stable as goko's was

[AdamH]

On my mac, I have no way to exit fullscreen mode or do anything else with my computer when playing. If my wifi connection drops out, I can't attempt a reconnect because I'm stuck in the game.

+1 for username