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Author Topic: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success  (Read 4997 times)

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Beyond Awesome

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Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« on: November 10, 2015, 06:19:29 pm »
+12

So, I have been thinking about this a little. I know overall a lot of us aren't happy with Dominion Online right now. I know I'm not. Right now, it apparently erases all data to whatever folder it is downloaded to. It crashes and overheats for a lot of people. Adventures hasn't been implemented. It's still not on Steam, the web version is unplayable at least for me, the iPad version is not out (plus no offline, what's up with that?) Also, it is damn hard to see what is in play, especially when it matters like with Scheme. Plus, there are other issues as well that have never been fixed like first turn order after winning/losing a game after playing the same opponent again. So, I'm not saying they are the most competent developers around, but please here me out.

Overall, I feel MF wants Dominion to be a success. They aren't Goko. Goko was probably made just to make someone rich and had no intention of serving the fan at all or making a successful Dominion product. MF has other games under their belt. They may have paid money to get the rights from Goko, or maybe RGG was nice and let them have the rights since they already put work into it. Either way, they were spending thousands each month keeping the older servers up. They are paying people's salaries to work on this game. So, they are spending something on this project, which means it is an investment to them and they want it to succeed just as much as we do.

Now, I know progress has been slow. We saw little progress until recently. Actually, I would argue the bulk of the progress we have seen happened after Goko got shut down, probably because they realized they needed to show results, or who knows what. Anyway, I want to know what we can do to help them.

Overall, I feel the forum went in a negative direction after Goko was shut down and for understandable reasons which unfortunately led to a feud between two respected posters on here. No names mentioned. We all know what happened. Anyway, after the backlash of Goko being shut down, it seems MF has pretty much ignored us. Now, I know they listen if we contact them directly. But, I want to help change the perception they may have of the community at the moment.

So, here is my proposal, we try to work with MF, and I don't mean just tell them what we don't like about the product. I think they have some idea of what changes need to be made. What I am thinking is asking them if it would be okay to set up a donation page. Honestly, I paid Goko 3 years ago for a product, not MF, and I got thousands of games worth of my $45 investment. I have no problem giving MF more money if I actually think it will be put to good use. I know some of you may be against my donation idea, and that's okay.

My second idea is to maybe see if they are willing to work on the development with any of us that are really program savvy. SCSNs mod has helped a lot. If SCSN or anyone else is willing to donate time to the project so we get the best game possible, I think that would be great. Now, maybe SCSN or some of you are against the idea of working with MF. Or, maybe MF is against the idea as a whole. I'm just brainstorming ways we can help out and help restore the image of this community.

I love Dominion just like all of you. I want the online experience to be successful. I want MF to succeed. I want it to have all the features we would like and also all the features a mainstream crowd would like. I want it to reach as many people as possible and maybe even bring new people to the game. I would love it if we got tons of new members because of how successful the online implementation became. Now, that may or may not never happen, but I want the best for everything and everyone. I want our community to thrive and for us to look back on this time period as a turbulent time that tested us, but ultimately led to our community becoming stronger than ever and Dominion being stronger than ever.

Any suggestions or ideas to help MF are welcome.
« Last Edit: November 10, 2015, 06:49:09 pm by Beyond Awesome »
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yuma

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #1 on: November 10, 2015, 06:28:59 pm »
+3

So, here is my proposal, we try to work with MF, and I don't mean just tell them what we don't like about the product. I think they have some idea of what changes need to be made. What I am thinking is asking them if it would be okay to set up a donation page. Honestly, I paid Goko 3 years ago for a product, not MF, and I got thousands of games worth of my $45 investment. I have no problem giving MF more money if I actually think it will be put to good use. I know some of you may be against my donation idea, and that's okay.

Donations to a corporation are dumb. However, I have always stated that I would be willing to pay a monthly service fee for the playing services. When did Goko come out? Summer 2012? I think I actually bought into a bit after that. Let's say October 2012. So that is 36 months for $45ish dollars, maybe I paid again for Guilds? $1.25 a month about. I would be willing to double that: $2.50. Let's round up to $3 a month (let's say $30 a year if you do a yearly discounted subscription) for a good, high quality service with all sets, including Adventures. I think others have stated the same.

But honestly, I first have to be able to access it and play it and certainly won't be paying anything until I can at the very least access it. I hope that MF's resources last long enough, but after that I really, really think they need to switch their pay model.

That would be my contribution. Not making a big, giant fuss if they started to introduce monthly fees instead of a lifetime subscription that would show that they have a long term plan in place to generate the necessary revenue to stay afloat. I don't know the legality of that, but I am sure there is a way.
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theright555J

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #2 on: November 10, 2015, 06:43:11 pm »
+3

I really like this post! Overall I think this is well put.

Not sure if I would actually donate, but again I just greatly appreciate the aim and tone of this post.

The active game/seek counter during that crystal ball screen has also been an eye opener for me. Really only 200-600 games at any given time? 2-8 active seeks? That just seems like very low traffic to me. Would a subscription service even help raise a substantial enough amount of revenue to keep Dominion online going at the level we would like it to?
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popsofctown

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #3 on: November 10, 2015, 06:53:21 pm »
+3

I really like this post! Overall I think this is well put.

Not sure if I would actually donate, but again I just greatly appreciate the aim and tone of this post.

The active game/seek counter during that crystal ball screen has also been an eye opener for me. Really only 200-600 games at any given time? 2-8 active seeks? That just seems like very low traffic to me. Would a subscription service even help raise a substantial enough amount of revenue to keep Dominion online going at the level we would like it to?

To be fair, the 2-8 active seeks is not an indicator of low traffic when the matchmaker slams people together like schoolteachers at the fifth grader's valentine's dance instead of doing due diligence to find good skill pairings. 

It seems like there was some improvement but I'm still pretty sure I'm not getting well matched games, although I do have some really snappy queue times.
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SCSN

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #4 on: November 10, 2015, 07:06:45 pm »
+3

My second idea is to maybe see if they are willing to work on the development with any of us that are really program savvy. SCSNs mod has helped a lot. If SCSN or anyone else is willing to donate time to the project so we get the best game possible, I think that would be great. Now, maybe SCSN or some of you are against the idea of working with MF. Or, maybe MF is against the idea as a whole. I'm just brainstorming ways we can help out and help restore the image of this community.

Working at Making Fun has been my lifelong dream.

Joking aside, I'd gladly contribute a tenner towards paying someone to sabotage the office television.

Ok, really, [serious cat mode] when I read their forums earlier today I saw some stuff about the heating problem and how they're not going to work on it for a while because of lack of manpower, and at that point I considered pm'ing Jeff offering to look at the code for free and trying to fix it, but then I remembered Donald saying Jeff remembered me from when David left the forums (his favorite series started), which somehow didn't quite have the ring of a shining endorsement, so I estimated the chance of him sending me the source at approximately zero.

Which is not to say that I wouldn't like to have a look at it if I somehow got it in my hand. It's a simple game and my laptop with i7 4790k processor gets pretty warm on it, so there's definitely room for improvement. [/serious cat mode]
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singletee

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #5 on: November 10, 2015, 07:26:01 pm »
+1

I would be entirely willing to pay a reasonable monthly fee to use the Dominion online service. I would be less willing to donate but maybe I could be persuaded. Right now MF's business model relies on attracting new users constantly, and I don't see how that is going to be sustainable in the long run. And I feel like a monthly payment versus up-front would give them some accountability to us. Maybe give N months credit for people who have already bought sets.

200-600 games does not seem like an especially small amount. On Goko I remember 5-8 full rooms of 50 players usually. As far as active seeks vs. games, I think this may be a side effect of the rematch option. If I'm playing someone several times in a row, I spend very little time in between games. So there's a tradeoff of waiting longer to get into the first game versus less time in between games after that.

Cave-o-sapien

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2015, 07:28:44 pm »
+7

I'm not sure I agree with supporting a corporations's flawed business model by donating to it, especially when they have consistently failed to meet customer expectations and deadlines.

If they don't see this passionate, dedicated user base as an asset then a couple hundred bucks in random donations isn't going to change that perception.


Edit: I came back to this forum when I first heard that Making Fun's edition was in open beta after not playing on Goko since its beta. While I enjoyed bitching and kvetching about the animations and the plaintext passwords and all the rest of that with everyone here, I also DOWNLOADED AND INSTALLED the game. And I've been playing it now (too much) for months. I'm about 1/3 of the way through purchasing all of the cards.

My point is that the discussion here -- even when it's negative toward Making Fun -- has in many ways sustained my interest in Dominion Online.

Sure, this is an N of 1, but I hope MF doesn't see this forum as a net-negative.

« Last Edit: November 10, 2015, 07:34:09 pm by Cave-o-sapien »
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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #7 on: November 10, 2015, 07:31:53 pm »
+2

What if we ask them to send us the source and we can all look at it and make suggestions?  I wouldn't be surprised if they were against that, but I feel like it's worth a shot.
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Beyond Awesome

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #8 on: November 11, 2015, 02:46:15 pm »
+3

Thanks everyone for chiming in.

I used to be a huge advocate for doing monthly payments. Heck, I would happily pay them monthly if that is what it took to make Dominion Online good. However, I think a major issue is that having monthly payments will make it hard to grow a customer base. I mean, I guess they could have a free version where you only play with base for free. They could even make a promotion where the first month is free so you get a chance to play with all the expansions, but I don't know. I mean, it could work, but in today's app age, it seems people want to make micro purchases.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #9 on: November 11, 2015, 02:55:15 pm »
+1

Thanks everyone for chiming in.

I used to be a huge advocate for doing monthly payments. Heck, I would happily pay them monthly if that is what it took to make Dominion Online good. However, I think a major issue is that having monthly payments will make it hard to grow a customer base. I mean, I guess they could have a free version where you only play with base for free. They could even make a promotion where the first month is free so you get a chance to play with all the expansions, but I don't know. I mean, it could work, but in today's app age, it seems people want to make micro purchases.

Agreed. Most of the point of having a mobile version on the app store is to grow the user base. Mobile customers would see that there's a subscription fee and never give it a second look.
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pst

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #10 on: November 11, 2015, 04:13:32 pm »
0

If they don't see this passionate, dedicated user base as an asset then a couple hundred bucks in random donations isn't going to change that perception.

+1. They have access to a passionate dedicated user base that includes several of good programmers, but don't let us help in a meaningful way. Meaningful would have been for example to have access to their bug reporting system instead of just having someone say "thanks for your report, I've sent it on to our developers" and no way for us to know if they still even have that issue open, what reactions there has been to it etc. My "favourite" complaint is about the point counter preferences, because it WOULD BE SO EASY to make it right, and yet month after month goes by without a fix. The first(?) time it was reported at MF's forum there was a thanks for telling us, it has been added in the issue tracker, but it was intentional for the time being to make it easier to get matchups but would be changed after 1.0. When it was reported again much later there was a new "thanks for telling us, it has been added to the issue tracker". (As a new issue? As a re-opening of the old one which had been closed for whatever reason? No idea.)

Stef suggested they'd look at how many games didn't make it across the first move to see how common the current crashing problem is. That wasn't accepted for some reason I didn't understand. ("Counting server games doesn't provide output logs.")
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yed

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #11 on: November 11, 2015, 05:31:07 pm »
+1

You can donate by buying useless ducats.
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DG

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #12 on: November 11, 2015, 06:43:23 pm »
+2

One reason for poor communication could be outsourcing. If our community only ever talks to intermediaries at MF then we will never get a direct response to our problems.
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Chris is me

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #13 on: November 12, 2015, 08:27:02 am »
+9

The thing I don't really get is that this Dominion community is made up of at least dozens of smart programmers. Lots of these people are willing to *volunteer* hours to make their favorite game better (Isotropic, Salvager, MMF). And MF is already outsourcing large chunks of their code. Why can't MF just outsource some of this work to Dominion fans? They know what they want, because they're the customer base, and Dominion fans have done enough work at this point to rewrite the game a few times over between the three different versions. Or, I mean, why didn't they just buy Isotropic and make it pretty.

I know there are good answers for all of these questions, but it's just frustrating to see that the game is being made better by decompiling the code and reverse-engineering it, instead of soliciting at least feedback and maybe even patches directly from these people.
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funkdoc

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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #14 on: November 12, 2015, 09:19:31 am »
0

yea, the whole "MF isn't actually the developer, they're outsourcing it to lord knows who" thing really leaves me skeptical.  i've seen a lot of this in video games and while it can produce the occasional success (e.g. mega man 9, wii punch-out), far more often you get the likes of super princess peach or this:



and that's with big franchises from top-tier developers, mind you!

i will say one thing, though: i think SCSN should ask them anyway.  i really don't see the big harm in being told "no" here, and it can't take that much time or effort.  just think of it as a quick hail mary.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2015, 09:21:19 am by funkdoc »
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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #15 on: November 12, 2015, 11:32:34 am »
+9

If anyone is determined to donate to MF, but wants to be sure some good will come of it, you can send the money to me and I will purchase expansions with it. There is no way I am spending my own money on the product that currently exists.
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Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success
« Reply #16 on: November 12, 2015, 12:18:04 pm »
+1

If anyone is determined to donate to MF, but wants to be sure some good will come of it, you can send the money to me and I will purchase expansions with it. There is no way I am spending my own money on the product that currently exists.

I would definitely pay (I did buy the humble bundle earlier this year also because of Dominion), but I doubt I'd ever pay more than a third of what they are asking now.
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