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[LeagueKingdoms]

After getting some complaints a few seasons ago about the lack of diversity in the Championship which we tried avoid the last two Championships, we had complaints from some of the players about having pre-selected Kingdoms at all this time. The main complaint being that these games usually take longer than average since usually more cards are viable on each of the boards. They were advocating the full random selection process instead.

This is why we'd like to hear your feedback (from in and out of the League) on the whole issue:

• Do you consider the ability to submit boards for the Championship Match a good addition to the League experience?
• Does having presubmitted Kingdoms affect your viewing experience of the match?
• Does the possibility of having your own fun Kingdoms played by the Championship contestants affect your viewing experience?
• How do you feel about the classic "all-Random"for the matches?
• How could we alter our selection process to find a compromise between the two positions?

Feel free to answer partially if not all the questions are important to you.

[Polk5440]

1. Yes
2. Yes -- more likely to watch; makes going back to view replays of the games more worthwhile.
3. Yes -- makes it more fun.
4. The best argument for this is "that's how the kingdoms are selected for the rest of the league". But I like that the championship match is not all random. Random can produce some real duds, and no championship should have a single dud.
5. Select a wider variety of kingdoms; and that variety includes game time. There are definitely kingdoms that play fast and are interesting. Maybe the selection process is missing those?

[jsh357]

1.doesn't appeal to me
2. Na
3. It would if I did obviously
4. I prefer it. It's more fun watching people discover combos organically than watching them solve a predetermined puzzle, particularly when commentators are discussing their experience already, ruining all dramatic tension. I prefer being blind and debating with the chat about what could happen.
5. Less discussion of the kingdoms by commentators, I guess.

I am not everyone. I don't like playing prebuilt kingdoms but clearly many do.

[Titandrake]

1. Yes
2. Not really. In either case I'm wondering what you do. Pre-selected kingdoms make these questions harder, but random boards are still tricky enough for me.
3. Yes
4. Ambivalent about it, but with a slight leaning towards more all random. Because of my schedule, I usually only have time to watch the championship match, and from an educational perspective I like seeing how top players approach a board differently than I do. With pre-selected kingdoms, the examples you get from the match are very skewed towards kingdoms that are obviously complicated, but I think part of top play is the decisions you make in subtly complicated kingdoms.
5. You could alternate between random and pre-selected. Overall, I do like the kingdom submission process.

[liopoil]

I haven't been watching lately, but I agree with everything in Polk's post.

[Infthitbox]

This is why we'd like to hear your feedback (from in and out of the League) on the whole issue:

• Do you consider the ability to submit boards for the Championship Match a good addition to the League experience?
• Does having presubmitted Kingdoms affect your viewing experience of the match?
• Does the possibility of having your own fun Kingdoms played by the Championship contestants affect your viewing experience?
• How do you feel about the classic "all-Random"for the matches?
• How could we alter our selection process to find a compromise between the two positions?

Feel free to answer partially if not all the questions are important to you.

1. I don't know how much it really affects my League experience when I'm playing in the League. Maybe I'd feel more strongly about it if I wasn't able to or otherwise didn't play in a particular season to still feel a part of the community.
2. It does, but the effect isn't uniformly positive. My major gripe with the boards selected is that they tend to not be representative of all the types of games of Dominion. Watching a match when I know there won't be the full variety of game types cheapens the experience a bit, both from the educational aspect as well as from the angle of trying to crown a deserving champion. A Dominion champion should be crowned by winning games of Dominion across the spectrum, not just from a subset of those games, even if those are "more interesting".
3. Maybe, if I ever found a particular board I was that excited about and wanted to see top players play it.
4. I would feel better about this than the current state from the competition angle. Most league match streams are full random and they tend to be enjoyable to watch as well. For the commentary though, a set of six games chosen randomly (and then not screened, regardless of outcome) ahead of time for review so the commentators could play them would be best.
5. See above for my preferred setup. For a compromise position I'd say generate 4 random boards with no screening, let loose the commentators/playtesters, then fill the remaining 2 boards with submissions that were different from the 4 random boards for the best variety in viewing experience.

[dedicateddan]

5. I like having themes in the championship match.

It would also be nice to have more information on how kingdoms are selected.

I'd be excited to play a match with a theme like: "Black Market Cage Match" or "Strong Adventures Bias" or "Kingdoms selected by Donald X."

[Roadrunner7671]

"Black Market Cage Match"

Welcome to the Dominion forum, Satan!

[gkrieg13]

5. I like having themes in the championship match.

It would also be nice to have more information on how kingdoms are selected.

I'd be excited to play a match with a theme like: "Black Market Cage Match" or "Strong Adventures Bias" or "Kingdoms selected by Donald X."

I like the idea of themes

[funkdoc]

i'm closest to jsh on this one.  having done commentary, i'd actually prefer having to discuss boards on the fly.

i also strongly agree with point #4 in titandrake's post.  i find top player skill to be most evident on boards with a mediocre power level, where there are small decisions that add up.  basically we need more Good Stuff Decks in championship matches!

we've discussed the commentary fears but i think they're overblown.  a boring BM board only takes a few minutes, so if anything it's easier for us to come up with crap to talk about.  at least when you compare it to that vagrant/great hall game from the last title match...

i guess the biggest risk is games where there's nothing to do besides junk your opponent or play ghost ships.  i could see an argument for half-random/half-selected.

[DG]

I'd prefer playing finals without them all being super fancy kingdoms (they didn't treat me well). I'd suggest not having designed adventures kingdoms when the expansion first gets released (even though people want to see those cards played).

As for submitting interesting kingdoms, the kingdoms that look good enough to submit tend to have the same sorts of complex cards. Alt vp is ever present. Submitting kingdoms that are almost interesting but different is as troublesome as it sounds.

[xyz123]

I like the process as it currently is.

The championship match is billed as a showcase match and as such it should use kingdoms that give the players involved the chance to demonstrate their skills. I want to see boards that allow them to show why they are some of the best in the world. I would not like to see them play a board with a simple dominant strategy that basically comes down to who has the better draws.

I also like the current submission process. I have been fortunate enough over the seasons to have had three boards selected. Seeing my kingdoms played adds a lot to the experience in my opinion, as on each occasion the way it has been played and the commentator's analysis have highlighted some facets or interactions on the board that I have missed. I have found this a great way to understand some of the more subtle aspects of the cards better.

[Haddock]

I like the process as it stands.

But I can see the argument for wanting a wider variety of game types for the match.

A themeing idea seems like a good one.  You could even have people submit Kingdoms under different categories, and put a mix of categories into the match - 3 traditional enginey boards, 1 combo, one which leans to Alt VP and one that looks sloggy; or that sort of thing.

[drsteelhammer]

5. I like having themes in the championship match.

It would also be nice to have more information on how kingdoms are selected.

I'd be excited to play a match with a theme like: "Black Market Cage Match" or "Strong Adventures Bias" or "Kingdoms selected by Donald X."

I can provide more information: We gather all the submitted in the Kingdoms in a spreadsheet. The playtesters play as much Kingdoms as they have time for, usually a core 3-4 people have been playing almost every Kingdom in each season (and replaying a chunk of them). We rate the Kingdoms to showcase our approximate approval of each Kingdom and comment on it with more information, usually reasoning why we like or dislike a Kingdom, but also to share some tricks that other people may have missed. Also we share track records if there are different strategies that appear to be viable.

A few days before the Champion match, we all name our favourite Kingdoms together with the highest rated ones (obviously there is quite some overlap) and we try to choose six from these. A major criteria is the diversity of the six chosen boards, so they don't feel as repetitive. Also, we try to be take last Champion match into account, we try to avoid choosing the same kind of slog every time for example.

It may be the case that we've underrated certain styles of Kingdoms in the past and I'd be glad to hear what these look like. It's true that we mostly ruled out boards where 7-8 cards were completely useless.

Someone mentioned the amount of Alt-VP boards: This is certainly true, but we also get a lot of Alt-VP submissions. I really dread the Vineyard rushes that I playtest which are about every tenth board submitted.  And I mean rushes, not counting boards where Vineyard is available but does not need to be rushed. But this is a good point and the kind of feedback that is really helpufl if we were to continue having a submission contest.

1. Yes
2. Yes -- more likely to watch; makes going back to view replays of the games more worthwhile.
3. Yes -- makes it more fun.
4. The best argument for this is "that's how the kingdoms are selected for the rest of the league". But I like that the championship match is not all random. Random can produce some real duds, and no championship should have a single dud.
5. Select a wider variety of kingdoms; and that variety includes game time. There are definitely kingdoms that play fast and are interesting. Maybe the selection process is missing those?

To 4: I feel that this is a big argument against full random. I know not many people watch a lot of streams, but you can easily see 300 games of random Kingdoms streamed over the course of a season, a good chunk of them played by the very best. I agree with the second sentence though.

To 5: Good point, I think I may have been stuck in the mindset that more Dominion = more fun even if it can get repetitive and less fun to watch.

[tufftaeh]

• Do you consider the ability to submit boards for the Championship Match a good addition to the League experience?
• Does having presubmitted Kingdoms affect your viewing experience of the match?
• Does the possibility of having your own fun Kingdoms played by the Championship contestants affect your viewing experience?
• How do you feel about the classic "all-Random"for the matches?
• How could we alter our selection process to find a compromise between the two positions?

• I haven't submitted a kingdom yet but I might do so in the future, so yes.
• Yes. Really interesting kingdoms with several attractive options (some of which might actually not be as attractive as at first glance) don't happen as often in all-random.
• See question 1. Yes.
• See question 2. I'd rather have presubmitted kingdoms.
• Use 3 preselected and 3 all-random kingdoms?

[Mic Qsenoch]

I prefer all random, but would settle for just more random. My perspective is mostly as a participant and not a spectator.

The least fun Dominion games to play/watch for me involve a mandatory weak engine and a long game. These get picked a fair amount because it's "interesting" to have engines with a weak/weird way to draw the deck or underpowered payload. Probably some Alt-VP too. Oh and they love to have topdeck manipulation. And the engine is spread out over 5 components so there's no chance of a 3 pile. These games suck out my soul. And as a competitor you don't want to screw up any of the dumb little decisions and lose so you play slow. I find these games interesting to think about and a chore to play. I would much rather play Embassy-BM.

I don't particularly find that the submitted kingdoms are more skill intensive than random. A lot of times you can see that the submitter had in mind two possible strategies but really one is a lot better than the other.

For me there's no contest between enjoying the pace of 6 random kingdoms vs 6 selected ones, random is just way more enjoyable to play 6 game matches with. A lot of the submitted kingdoms are cool and I like playing them, but I'd much rather play 1-2 of them in a match than 6.

I want people to enjoy watching the match, but I wonder if the viewing experience is really all that different with random kingdoms? I'd like it if we tried all random (or maybe half?) for one championship and see what people thought.

[Deadlock39]

I do think selecting kingdoms in some manner is a good addition to the Championship match. While I certainly think there are improvements that should (and hopefully can) be made to the process, I believe the ultimate goal behind the selection process is to really test the skill of the players involved. I agree the using random boards would match the league structure better, but I would be disappointed if a BM/Cultist, or Rebuild board came up. Beyond those extreme examples, there is also a spectrum of games that don't produce a high quantity of difficult decisions. I feel that using random boards would marginally reduce the competitiveness of the match.  I also think we need to figure out a way to increase the diversity of the boards selected to increase the competitiveness of the match. Right now, the heavy engine skew of the boards marginalizes the competitiveness as well.

It would also be nice to have more information on how kingdoms are selected.

I've been involved in this process since season 10.

We receive around 20-35 submissions from players during the season. I try to test all of them, but it requires a lot of dominion over the course of about 2-3 weeks, so we don't always get everyone through all the boards.  I try to rate kingdoms primarily based on the difficulty of the play decisions that are involved to challenge the championship match players. drsteelhammer outlined the process pretty well, so I won't talk much about that.

There are a number weaknesses in our system. 

The first is probably that the vast majority of boards submitted are "engine boards". I'm not sure what the best solution to this issue is, but we could have the test group generate some additional boards as a part of testing in attempt to fill in the strategic space. I think the "engine meta game" promoted around here lends to this pretty strongly. I have seen boards that I thought were very interesting get rated poorly by the other testers, perhaps because they were considered boring.

Another issue is personal bias. I won't name any names, but some of my fellow playtesters have a particular love for Procession and Black Market, and boards that contain them tend to end up with consistently high ratings. I certainly won't claim that I am not also part of this issue because I'm sure I have my own biases.

We also suffer from the problem of not being one of the few players who actually play at the level of the players we are picking these for. I'm not a bad player, but A board with competing strategies that isn't obvious to me, might be obvious to the top players in A. Then again, we have seen the players on rare occasion pass on the strategy that seemed dominant in testing. I think it would be great if some of the players who have competed at the A level had time to give at least some basic impressions on the boards after we have narrowed the selection down a bit.


I would support trying a different selection process out if it is preferred. My suggestion for a more random set would be to generate random boards prior to the match, and remove any that contain a unopposed monolithic strategy like Cultist/Rebuild/Embassy+BM. This would help maintain competitiveness, and allow commentators to familiarize themselves with the boards.

On the topic of commentary, I don't think having board the commentators haven't seen would improve things. I think being able to answer questions about what works or doesn't work and why is better than just guessing at things. I suppose not having knowledge to speak from would force commentary to stick more to what is happening with the players, which might be preferred by some viewers. I know from my experiences doing it that it is hard to follow the game closely and discuss general strategy at the same time.

[Polk5440]

If the number of kingdoms submitted really is that low and a lot are very similar, just remove the guarantee that 6 of the submitted kingdoms will be chosen.   It's not unreasonable to make a judgement call and say out of the submissions, only four are interesting and varied enough to be included. The rest will be random.

If the league goes the kingdom submission route, I will submit this time. Maybe more people will, too, having seen this thread.

If you need kingdom play testers/evaluators, I can help out this time, too.

[Deadlock39]

I wouldn't say there is a problem with not having enough quality submissions, and the engines we get are pretty diverse. We just don't get very many other board styles, and sometimes the few that we get aren't very good.  We should perhaps come up with some guidelines for what board types the matches should cover, and generate boards to fill gaps when we have them.

I suspect we will probably use at least a few submissions this season since it has already started under that premise, but I am not sure what drsteelhammer is thinking.

[Seprix]

the lack of diversity in the Championship

#DominionGate

Do you consider the ability to submit boards for the Championship Match a good addition to the League experience?

Yes.

Does having presubmitted Kingdoms affect your viewing experience of the match?

Yes. It will likely be a more complex board, and thus more entertaining.

Does the possibility of having your own fun Kingdoms played by the Championship contestants affect your viewing experience?

Of course.

How do you feel about the classic "all-Random"for the matches?

It would get rid of any potential 'rigging', but I don't think any rigging is even going on, so it would overall probably be more boring.

How could we alter our selection process to find a compromise between the two positions?

You could add some random matches and some selected matches, but that's kind of lame. Either go all random or don't do random at all. Is there a problem with the current process of selected kingdoms? The only potential problem I could have is who selects the Kingdoms. As far as I know, Hillary Clinton or Joseph Stalin aren't selecting the cards, so I'm pretty sure whoever is doing that is doing a perfectly fine job.

[schadd]

some of my fellow playtesters have a particular love for Procession

i like the process as well but it might be because i'm in it (i'm surprised deadlock didn't mention fairgrounds in that sentence) and i'm happy that most of the spectators like it. it's like posting a game in the game reports thread but the pros are forced to respond.

i do want to address what mic said because he is one of the important ones:

The least fun Dominion games to play/watch for me involve a mandatory weak engine and a long game. These get picked a fair amount because it's "interesting" to have engines with a weak/weird way to draw the deck or underpowered payload. Probably some Alt-VP too. Oh and they love to have topdeck manipulation. And the engine is spread out over 5 components so there's no chance of a 3 pile. These games suck out my soul. And as a competitor you don't want to screw up any of the dumb little decisions and lose so you play slow. I find these games interesting to think about and a chore to play. I would much rather play Embassy-BM.

does dominion have those?

i'd appreciate, for your customer satisfaction, if you could rate these following kingdoms out of 10 in terms of how fitting they would be for the final match:

Code: [Select]

Vagrant, Great Hall, Scheme, Trade Route, Scavenger, Wandering Minstrel, Worker's Village, Band of Misfits, Cartographer, Royal Sealthe vagrant/great hall one that you played last season; seems to be the target of your complaints in the quoted paragraph.

Code: [Select]

Stonemason, Develop, Masterpiece, Bishop, Sea Hag, Ghost Ship, Mandarin, Mine, Rabble, King's Courtyou played this vs. stef season 12; if i recall you went for sea hag into masterpiece whereas stef went for the engine and won after many minutes.

Code: [Select]

Embargo, Develop, Hermit, Village, Workshop, Fortress, Smithy, Spy, Baker, Graverobberthe develop/fortress thing that was the alternate in season 12. this is clearly a fast game where the decisions are meaningful and distinct.

Code: [Select]

Cellar, Urchin, Village, Militia, Remake, Merchant Guild, Wharf, Witch, Border Village, Expanda kingdom i just made up in an attempt to not have any of the things that you expressed a distaste for.

naturally i would want the kingdom selection process to proceed as is because of the whole i'm in it spiel, and also other people seem to be a fan, however, varying it in the way you mentioned may well be worthwhile to make sure we're doing it the best way. if we did random ones (and this might be something solved in past seasons that i wasn't in) how would we iron out the kingdoms that are definitely bad? as in, stef says "rebuild?" in chat and you respond "rebuild." do you gentleman's agreement to just not do that one, or just play it out?

as for other concerns in the thread:
we do try to avoid predetermination in kingdoms in that they are not design with any intention in mind because they were not designed. maybe the selection process evolves kingdoms that are close to designed kingdoms but i try to push forward kingdoms that i don't know the answer to.

another thing to do to address this is not only to submit random kingdoms but also ones that you don't think are interesting. it is odd that the submission thing tells you to send the interesting ones when the uninteresting ones are often good for competition as well.

i also think that commentary should be impromptu, the only thing is that's harder to do as a commentator because there's always weird pressure to say things about the kingdom that are correct and having more time allows you to be more confident. popular sovereignty seems to indicate, well, too bad.

[Mic Qsenoch]

@schadd mostly I guess

Dominion is full of dumb little decisions, but they're really only annoying when you're doing the same ones 5 times each turn for 10 turns. And then online you can't undo things so it's a physical and mental dexterity test which is a bit tiresome.

Those kingdoms are all pretty cool. The first one is a bit of a chore to play from experience. The second one was good times to play. The third and fourth look awesome.

To be clear, I've never played any selected kingdom that I disliked so much I thought it should never be included in one of these matches. In other words, as individual kingdoms they are really fine. My experience has just been that over a match of 6 games I've enjoyed the matches more when the kingdoms are not selected. Since I've never played with some selected and some random I don't know if 6 random is my favorite, it could be that pi random games on average is the path to true joy.

I don't have any useful suggestions for how to improve the selection process. You all are limited by the sets people submit, and then by whatever ideas each of you has about what makes a kingdom good/bad.

If random kingdoms were used, I see no need at all to cull out "duds". I don't have any problem with playing Rebuild mirrors, or whatever other thing commonly complained about, in championship matches. In basically all games the player decisions will still matter, people will still be making mistakes. It seems no problem to me if a game is over fast and the excitement comes from seeing what kind of hands each player draws and some small number of high impact decisions. In fact a couple games like that in a match is a huge feature in my experience as a player and viewer.

[assemble_me]

some of my fellow playtesters have a particular love for Procession

I don't have any clue what you want to tell me  (btw. the Procession board was not my highest rated one this season )

What I think we could do:
- Only have "some" submitted boards (like 2-4) and some more random boards, at least as a test. We'd have to figure out how to alternate among those.
- We could have "random preselected" ones instead of just full random, by having some of us organizers doing random and filtering those ultimately dull ones (Rebuild-nothing/Cultist-nothing). We shouldn't use too high standards, otherwise those boards won't be much different than the usual submitted ones.

[Deadlock39]

some of my fellow playtesters have a particular love for Procession

I don't have any clue what you want to tell me  (btw. the Procession board was not my highest rated one this season )

What I think we could do:
- Only have "some" submitted boards (like 2-4) and some more random boards, at least as a test. We'd have to figure out how to alternate among those.
- We could have "random preselected" ones instead of just full random, by having some of us organizers doing random and filtering those ultimately dull ones (Rebuild-nothing/Cultist-nothing). We shouldn't use too high standards, otherwise those boards won't be much different than the usual submitted ones.

Ha, well it wouldn't have as much of an impact except for the fact that you happen to have an accomplice in your Processioning who happens to have a Ph.D. in deforming metal .

If we do pre-screen some random boards, then I agree the standards should not be high.  I don't think we would be playing them (at least not before selecting). We would just want to check for obvious near-coin-flips like Rebuild and such.

[Infthitbox]

some of my fellow playtesters have a particular love for Procession

I don't have any clue what you want to tell me  (btw. the Procession board was not my highest rated one this season )

What I think we could do:
- Only have "some" submitted boards (like 2-4) and some more random boards, at least as a test. We'd have to figure out how to alternate among those.
- We could have "random preselected" ones instead of just full random, by having some of us organizers doing random and filtering those ultimately dull ones (Rebuild-nothing/Cultist-nothing). We shouldn't use too high standards, otherwise those boards won't be much different than the usual submitted ones.

Ha, well it wouldn't have as much of an impact except for the fact that you happen to have an accomplice in your Processioning who happens to have a Ph.D. in deforming metal .

If we do pre-screen some random boards, then I agree the standards should not be high.  I don't think we would be playing them (at least not before selecting). We would just want to check for obvious near-coin-flips like Rebuild and such.

If you're going to go with that, just publish a banlist of cards for the champion random boards up front and be done with it. That way the criteria is set ahead of time and there's no specific judgment that needs to be handled on one of the random kingdoms.