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[funkdoc]

lately i've been thinking about how widely accepted variance is in eurogames, even at the most competitive levels, compared to the utter hatred for any of it it in competitive video games.  i'm sure a number of you are familiar with smash bros. tournaments banning items since they're highly random, and top players in any game get highly frustrated if a 2-out-of-3 set doesn't determine the better player.

i wonder if a major reason for this difference is the fact that IIRC there's no big competitive eurogame with serious money on the line.  i doubt i need to tell you about the prize pools for MOBAs and the like, and that adds an extra "gut punch" angle to losses that are out of your control.

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play.  i suspect the obvious swinginess would limit people's desire to put up money for tournaments or even a first-to-10 against one opponent (a common type of "exhibition" in fighting games).  as my entire reason for learning these games is competition, it makes me wonder just how far even a game as great as Dominion can go in that regard...

[Mic Qsenoch]

I would definitely play Dominion for money, I don't really know what pairings of $ amount vs # games per match I would be comfortable with though.

[JW]

I play Dominion for fun. Making money is what my job is for. Though I could see paying to enter a tournament where there was a prize, the prize wouldn't be the main motivation.

If I wanted to play a game where money was at stake, which I wouldn't do for the purpose of making money, I'd play poker with friends.

[AdrianHealey]

I would absolutely pay dominion for money, but I will never be at the level that people would pay me to play dominooion.

A competetitive scene for dominion sounds not absurd (similar to like Heartstone, Lol, Moba, Dota, SC, etc.) but the game, unfortunately, isn't popular enough.

I would also imagine tournament organizers coming up with a few rules of their own to minimize randomness. And maybe allow both players to veto any particular number of cards.

[SCSN]

I would definitely play Dominion for money, I don't really know what pairings of $ amount vs # games per match I would be comfortable with though.

Bandit Fort cage match.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I would definitely play Dominion for money, I don't really know what pairings of $ amount vs # games per match I would be comfortable with though.

Bandit Fort cage match.

No point for us, we'll just tie.

[Roadrunner7671]

There's a Dominion tournament at GenCon annually with a $1,000 cash prize on the line. So I could see myself playing for money.

[Watno]

I don't see anyone giving me a significant amount of money for playing Dominion.

[Polk5440]

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play. 

Adding variance also allows players of a larger range of skill levels to play together and feel like they have a chance to win which usually makes it more fun for everyone.

I entered that Chicago tournament a couple of years ago. There was a fee to enter and a monetary prize to the winner, so even though the prize was not the main motivation, the answer is "yes" to your original question.

[jsh357]

The money is just for playing? Okay. Who wants to sponsor me?

[Seprix]

I'd love to play Dominion for money. Now find willing people who want to pay me, or a popular tournament with cash prizes. There's the problem. The problem is lack of popularity. The competitive scene of Dominion just isn't that big. Hopefully Stef's implementation fixes this.

[A Drowned Kernel]

I don't think Dominion's level of variance would be an obstacle to playing for money; I'd say poker has at least as much if not more variance than Dominion and people are certainly willing to put money on the line for that.

[Titandrake]

On topic: I could see myself playing Dominion for money, but not for any big amounts. It's my hobby, not my job.

Off topic: I want to object to a few points you're implying.

lately i've been thinking about how widely accepted variance is in eurogames, even at the most competitive levels, compared to the utter hatred for any of it it in competitive video games.  i'm sure a number of you are familiar with smash bros. tournaments banning items since they're highly random, and top players in any game get highly frustrated if a 2-out-of-3 set doesn't determine the better player.

One of the main complaints about EVO this year was that it wasn't best of 5 until near the very end. Now, EVO couldn't do that because of time constraints, but it feels like you're implying the winner of every fighting game match is the better player. Which is completely absurd - upsets happen. When you're guessing how the other player is going to act, you're going to get randomness, even if the game doesn't have any randomness in it. What matters for competition is whether the player feels like they have a big enough impact on the outcome of the game.

It's possible you're talking to the wrong people about this. If you ask eurogame enthusiasts, of course they're probably going to say that variance is part of the game, because anyone who doesn't like that part of eurogames isn't going to hang around eurogame communities.

I'm also confused what grounds you're using to generalize this to outside just Dominion.

i wonder if a major reason for this difference is the fact that IIRC there's no big competitive eurogame with serious money on the line.  i doubt i need to tell you about the prize pools for MOBAs and the like, and that adds an extra "gut punch" angle to losses that are out of your control.

If there was money on the line, I'm sure people would care more, but they'd also heavily object to tournaments that don't give enough games to determine the better player with high certainty. See: Smash at EVO. People just straight up lose games of Magic: the Gathering to drawing too many or too few lands, and there's thousands on the line there.

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play.  i suspect the obvious swinginess would limit people's desire to put up money for tournaments or even a first-to-10 against one opponent (a common type of "exhibition" in fighting games).  as my entire reason for learning these games is competition, it makes me wonder just how far even a game as great as Dominion can go in that regard...

Luck has never stopped sufficiently devoted players from placing money on the line. There are the obvious examples like poker, but there are also smaller things. Mario Party money matches have happened. I know because I watched a livestream of one, and it was hilarious. There will always be people looking to put their money where their mouth is.

As to designers relying on luck elements to get replayability: can you think of any alternatives? I can't. In eurogames, players have to implement all the rules themselves (meaning they have to be simple). You also can't rely on forcing more mechanical skill, on players pushing each other to get better at hitting frame-perfect timings, because eurogames are almost always turn-based. Adding randomized setup is a simple way to get replayability without changing the complexity of the base rules - it's no wonder that so many games do it.

From your post, I get the feeling you believe that
1. More people will play competitively if there's money on the line.
2. Luck makes people more hesistant to put money on the line.
3. Therefore, luck is bad for the development of a competitive scene.

To which I'd say,
1. More people play competitively if the game is fun. The vast majority of players will never be net positive in money after a tournament. They're there to challenge themselves and become better players.
2. I've never heard people say they didn't want to enter a tournament because the game was too luck based. They don't enter because the game isn't fun anymore. And yes, sometimes that's because they lost from bad luck.
3. So, I don't think luck stops competition at all, as long as it's reasonably small, and I'd say it is reasonably small in Dominion.

There are many more important factors for growth in a scene. Barrier to entry, easy to follow for spectators, whether there are storylines for famous players, and so on. Dominion is held back primarily by the first two.

[Awaclus]

If it was possible to make money through playing Dominion, I would certainly at least try. Dominion probably doesn't even have as much variance as Hearthstone does, and HS has a pretty good competitive scene.

[JThorne]

Actually, it seems to me that one of the greatest design elements in Dominion is the randomization of the kingdom itself, which is utterly irrelevant, since all players have access to the same cards. Sure, some of the cards are "swingy" but shuffle luck only plays some part in determining the outcome. There are pretty big CCG tournaments out there, and the shuffle luck aspect doesn't seem to hurt those.

Luck elements can be significantly reduced in games which spread out the per-player randomization over a large number of turns, meaning that the amount of good luck and back luck for each player will tend towards the mean, and the outcome will ultimately be determined much more by the decision-making skills of the players. Backgammon is one of my favorite examples of this. Download GnuBG and crank it up to "World Class" (or "Supernatural" if you're curious) and play a few games. No, play a few dozen games. Unless you're a Backgammon Giant, you'll be hard-pressed to win even a single game against it, much less a 17-point or 9-point match. The Internet is full of Backgammon "expert" players who absolutely swear that it's cheating, some of whom write extensive "proofs" of this. Except that it's open-source. And you can roll your own dice if you want. It won't help. You will be crushed. GnuBG is the king of YMYODL.

I've stopped cursing my luck when I lose at Dominion and started looking much harder at where my mistakes were and what I could have done to prevent the problem. One issue is that I've stopped buying cards while imagining the best possible shuffle, and started buying cards while imagining the worst possible shuffle. It changes the order in which you buy things and significantly improves your game over the long run.

If you like luck-free games, though, here's an interesting question: Have you ever tried Dominion with deck stacking? Eliminate the shuffle luck entirely and allow each player to stack their deck instead of shuffling. Heck, you could actually play a "Lucky Chancellor" deck! (In fact, Chancellor/Messenger/Scavenger become insane power cards.) But more likely, both players would be trying to figure out the optimal engine and points/turn, points/shuffle issues, possibly with some second-guessing of each other about attacks. Junking is no longer relevant, but discard certainly is. It would be a different game, with a kind of puzzle flavor to it. I'm not sure I'd want to play that way against Celestial Chameleon.

[dedicateddan]

Absolutely. A bigger prize purse might help grow and support the tournament scene

[mameluke]

Actually, it seems to me that one of the greatest design elements in Dominion is the randomization of the kingdom itself, which is utterly irrelevant, since all players have access to the same cards. Sure, some of the cards are "swingy" but shuffle luck only plays some part in determining the outcome. There are pretty big CCG tournaments out there, and the shuffle luck aspect doesn't seem to hurt those.

Luck elements can be significantly reduced in games which spread out the per-player randomization over a large number of turns, meaning that the amount of good luck and back luck for each player will tend towards the mean, and the outcome will ultimately be determined much more by the decision-making skills of the players.

I still don't believe this. The problem is that in many kingdoms, shuffle luck has a snowball effect: if I have better shuffle luck now/towards the beginning of the game, my deck is improved and there is less chance of having a bad draw on subsequent turns. If we both open Witch/Ratcatcher and you draw both of yours on T3, then you've both improved your deck and made mine worse at the same time through no particular strategic decision. And if mine are the bottom two cards of my deck after the first shuffle, or worse I draw the Ratcatcher dead with my Witch (and then shuffle to draw the second card), then man, game over. There's no recovery mechanism.

I mean yes, the name of the game is indeed improve your deck in order to afford Provinces, and this is a card game so yes, shuffling and draws are part of the game, but let's not pretend that luck is not a large part of the game. You can get destroyed despite making all of the correct decisions.

[Donald X.]

Actually, it seems to me that one of the greatest design elements in Dominion is the randomization of the kingdom itself, which is utterly irrelevant, since all players have access to the same cards. Sure, some of the cards are "swingy" but shuffle luck only plays some part in determining the outcome. There are pretty big CCG tournaments out there, and the shuffle luck aspect doesn't seem to hurt those.

Luck elements can be significantly reduced in games which spread out the per-player randomization over a large number of turns, meaning that the amount of good luck and back luck for each player will tend towards the mean, and the outcome will ultimately be determined much more by the decision-making skills of the players.

I still don't believe this. The problem is that in many kingdoms, shuffle luck has a snowball effect: if I have better shuffle luck now/towards the beginning of the game, my deck is improved and there is less chance of having a bad draw on subsequent turns. If we both open Witch/Ratcatcher and you draw both of yours on T3, then you've both improved your deck and made mine worse at the same time through no particular strategic decision. And if mine are the bottom two cards of my deck after the first shuffle, or worse I draw the Ratcatcher dead with my Witch (and then shuffle to draw the second card), then man, game over. There's no recovery mechanism.

I mean yes, the name of the game is indeed improve your deck in order to afford Provinces, and this is a card game so yes, shuffling and draws are part of the game, but let's not pretend that luck is not a large part of the game. You can get destroyed despite making all of the correct decisions.

Dominion has both a lot of luck and a lot of skill. Is there enough skill relative to luck that the best players tend to come out on top? Well as it happens we have a lot of data there. For example you could look at the final standings in the league (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?board=60.0), which has had 16 seasons.

[Eevee]

If anyone has bitcoins and wants to try some games, send me a pm!

[mameluke]

Actually, it seems to me that one of the greatest design elements in Dominion is the randomization of the kingdom itself, which is utterly irrelevant, since all players have access to the same cards. Sure, some of the cards are "swingy" but shuffle luck only plays some part in determining the outcome. There are pretty big CCG tournaments out there, and the shuffle luck aspect doesn't seem to hurt those.

Luck elements can be significantly reduced in games which spread out the per-player randomization over a large number of turns, meaning that the amount of good luck and back luck for each player will tend towards the mean, and the outcome will ultimately be determined much more by the decision-making skills of the players.

I still don't believe this. The problem is that in many kingdoms, shuffle luck has a snowball effect: if I have better shuffle luck now/towards the beginning of the game, my deck is improved and there is less chance of having a bad draw on subsequent turns. If we both open Witch/Ratcatcher and you draw both of yours on T3, then you've both improved your deck and made mine worse at the same time through no particular strategic decision. And if mine are the bottom two cards of my deck after the first shuffle, or worse I draw the Ratcatcher dead with my Witch (and then shuffle to draw the second card), then man, game over. There's no recovery mechanism.

I mean yes, the name of the game is indeed improve your deck in order to afford Provinces, and this is a card game so yes, shuffling and draws are part of the game, but let's not pretend that luck is not a large part of the game. You can get destroyed despite making all of the correct decisions.

Dominion has both a lot of luck and a lot of skill. Is there enough skill relative to luck that the best players tend to come out on top? Well as it happens we have a lot of data there. For example you could look at the final standings in the league (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?board=60.0), which has had 16 seasons.

No disagreement there. There is a lot of skill and strategy involved. Over enough games the better players definitely win a lot more. My opinion is simply that sometimes (and I would argue more than many people here give credit) when you lose the reason why is simply bad luck and you don't have to microanalyze your play and second-guess your decisions.

[Seprix]

Even with bad shuffles, I don't like blaming losses on those. The opponent can get them too, and suddenly, you're neck and neck. I've seen it a lot.

[Donald X.]

No disagreement there. There is a lot of skill and strategy involved. Over enough games the better players definitely win a lot more. My opinion is simply that sometimes (and I would argue more than many people here give credit) when you lose the reason why is simply bad luck and you don't have to microanalyze your play and second-guess your decisions.

The broader context of the post you replied to was the suitability of Dominion to money-on-the-line tournaments.

[mameluke]

No disagreement there. There is a lot of skill and strategy involved. Over enough games the better players definitely win a lot more. My opinion is simply that sometimes (and I would argue more than many people here give credit) when you lose the reason why is simply bad luck and you don't have to microanalyze your play and second-guess your decisions.

The broader context of the post you replied to was the suitability of Dominion to money-on-the-line tournaments.

Yeah. I guess I forgot to tie that back in in my original post. Because, IMO, luck can affect one game quite a bit (a bad draw early can snowball), I would prefer a Dominion tournament with money on the line to be something like a single game of Hearts, where each hand is (nearly) entirely independent from each other hand (excepting political moves regarding the score). A typical game of Hearts is probably between 8-12 hands -- this smooths out luck quite a bit. The question is, how many games would you need to play a single opponent in order to smooth out bad shuffles, starting hands, etc.? 10? How about each kingdom -- how carefully manipulated should they be in order to balance out enough luck? Or just full random?

[Dingan]

I would play Dominion for money.  I would also pay money as a contribution to a prize pool of which I could potentially win a share of.  I would also accept sponsorship deals in which people actually payed me to play Dominion (a man can dream, right?).  I might even pay my cable company to air high-profile Dominion play on TV, and sit through ads at regular intervals throughout said TV program.

Regarding luck in competitive play..
Luck can highly influence any 1 game, but that's why we play a lot of games.  For those that don't know, in league, you play 6 games against 4 or 5 (usually 5) other people per "season", for a total of 6*5=30 games.  And any 1 game equally influences your overall "score" as much as any other game does (sort of like in golf, how any 1 shot equally contributes to your final score).  So I just don't see the argument that luck prevents truly competitive play, as long as you design a system to limit luck's influence in the long run.  Sure, luck will always be there, but it's just so insignificant.  Just look at who is in which divisions throughout the league's 16 seasons -- clearly, even with the luck factor, the cream rises to the top.

I also think we've hashed out more-or-less very well-designed competitive structures already: the league and bracket-style tournaments.  If money was involved, I would think people would want to stick to one of these systems.  Unless people wanted to get funky with it like "I bet you $x that I can bump my Fairgrounds up to 8vp", but that would feel awfully close to the g-word.

The one tweak from the current systems I could see would be banning card-shaped things.  Rebuild, Cultist, Black Market, etc. come to mind.  Personally, I don't ban things, but I could see the argument either way.  If my Nike sponsorship deal allowed for banning, then so be it

I can't imagine >2 - player games being truly competitive though, because it would be possible for multiple players to form alliances so as to screw another player over (which is a thing in Poker, called "collusion").

[pingpongsam]

If it was possible to make money through playing Dominion, I would certainly at least try. Dominion probably doesn't even have as much variance as Hearthstone does, and HS has a pretty good competitive scene.

I think comparing Dominion to HS in terms of gameplay, and setup and delivery is a fair comparison. However, the fact a competitive scene exists there is largely due to the overwhelming popularity of Blizzard (and their infrastructure). If Hearthstone was the first release from a never-been-heard-of Blizzard I'm not so sure it would be the success it is at all. I mean, the game itself, heavily borrows from an original hit from the same company in order to attract the existing player base.

[schadd]

I bet you $x that I can bump my Fairgr

deal

[trivialknot]

Dominion has both a lot of luck and a lot of skill. Is there enough skill relative to luck that the best players tend to come out on top? Well as it happens we have a lot of data there. For example you could look at the final standings in the league (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?board=60.0), which has had 16 seasons.

This strikes me as an interesting little data analysis problem.  The question I have though, are the full results of Dominion League stored anywhere in some sort of standard format?

[Qvist]

Dominion has both a lot of luck and a lot of skill. Is there enough skill relative to luck that the best players tend to come out on top? Well as it happens we have a lot of data there. For example you could look at the final standings in the league (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?board=60.0), which has had 16 seasons.

This strikes me as an interesting little data analysis problem.  The question I have though, are the full results of Dominion League stored anywhere in some sort of standard format?

It would be quite useful if someone could do that. Unfortunately the outcome of the Championship match was rarely documented in a thread, so it will be difficult to find out the winner of each season.

[JW]

Records for the first ten seasons are here: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Dominion_League

Three more recent championship matches are recorded here.

[Qvist]

Records for the first ten seasons are here: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Dominion_League

Three more recent championship matches are recorded here.

Cool, thanks didn't know they were on the wiki. Makes sense.

[pacovf]

Accepting money to play Dominion with people you don't know is disgusting. You should wait until after you're married to do it.

[Seprix]

Accepting money to play Dominion with people you don't know is disgusting. You should wait until after you're married to do it.

To the strangers? Are you advocating for polygamy?

[trivialknot]

Records for the first ten seasons are here: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Dominion_League

Three more recent championship matches are recorded here.

The championship matches aren't that important for doing statistics.  I think for a basic analysis, I'd just take a bunch of tournament games, and then strip out the identities of any of the players.

Using the wiki article linked, I can figure out the outcomes of the matches for the first ten seasons and make a histogram.  There have been [11,  28,  44,  84,  44,  28,  11] matches with scores [0-6, 1-5, 2-4, 3-3, 4-2, 5-1, 6-0].  Not sure how my histogram code is handling ties but that's not too important.  My first attempt to fit to a binomial distribution shows that Dominion is 112% luck.

I think what this shows is that I need to account for the 1st player advantage in my model.

[trivialknot]

Never mind, I just figured out the problem with my math.

An individual game of Dominion is 88% chance.  That means that the more skilled player loses 44% of their games (ignoring ties).  In a 6-game match, the more skilled player wins 47% of the time, and ties 30% of the time.

Caveats: this is only true of the A division of the Dominion league in the first 10 seasons.  When players are more evenly matched (ie the Dominion League is doing its job well), the more chance is involved.  Also, my model doesn't account for the 1st player advantage, and it shows.  In the tournament, tied matches occur about 35% of the time, whereas my model predicted 30%.

[Seprix]

Never mind, I just figured out the problem with my math.

An individual game of Dominion is 88% chance.

Without doing any research, I can tell you with absolute certainty that you are completely and utterly wrong.

[Donald X.]

Never mind, I just figured out the problem with my math.

An individual game of Dominion is 88% chance.  That means that the more skilled player loses 44% of their games (ignoring ties).  In a 6-game match, the more skilled player wins 47% of the time, and ties 30% of the time.

Caveats: this is only true of the A division of the Dominion league in the first 10 seasons.  When players are more evenly matched (ie the Dominion League is doing its job well), the more chance is involved.  Also, my model doesn't account for the 1st player advantage, and it shows.  In the tournament, tied matches occur about 35% of the time, whereas my model predicted 30%.

I think what you've got here is a statement about the A league and not a statement about Dominion.

Two equally matched players of Foo split the games 50-50. Some people point at that and say "Foo is all luck." But in fact Foo could be chess or whatever. Once you subtract skill, luck is what's left.

By looking at just matches between A division players, you are subtracting lots of skill. (Yes I suggested looking at that data.)

[trivialknot]

Never mind, I just figured out the problem with my math.

An individual game of Dominion is 88% chance.  That means that the more skilled player loses 44% of their games (ignoring ties).  In a 6-game match, the more skilled player wins 47% of the time, and ties 30% of the time.

Caveats: this is only true of the A division of the Dominion league in the first 10 seasons.  When players are more evenly matched (ie the Dominion League is doing its job well), the more chance is involved.  Also, my model doesn't account for the 1st player advantage, and it shows.  In the tournament, tied matches occur about 35% of the time, whereas my model predicted 30%.

I think what you've got here is a statement about the A league and not a statement about Dominion.

Two equally matched players of Foo split the games 50-50. Some people point at that and say "Foo is all luck." But in fact Foo could be chess or whatever. Once you subtract skill, luck is what's left.

By looking at just matches between A division players, you are subtracting lots of skill. (Yes I suggested looking at that data.)

Yeah pretty much.  I think it goes to show that in a competitive game, you actually want lots of luck.  Because what you want is people who are equally matched, and when people are equally matched, luck is what you have.

[Qvist]

Records for the first ten seasons are here: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Dominion_League

Three more recent championship matches are recorded here.

I couldn't sleep, so I updated the data for the last 6 seasons. But not the Head-to-head Records, I don't think it's worth it to keep that updated because it's very cumbersome and the table gets way too big if we include every player who was in A. Maybe it would make sense for like the Top 10 players with the most games in A.

[Titandrake]

Never mind, I just figured out the problem with my math.

An individual game of Dominion is 88% chance.  That means that the more skilled player loses 44% of their games (ignoring ties).  In a 6-game match, the more skilled player wins 47% of the time, and ties 30% of the time.

Caveats: this is only true of the A division of the Dominion league in the first 10 seasons.  When players are more evenly matched (ie the Dominion League is doing its job well), the more chance is involved.  Also, my model doesn't account for the 1st player advantage, and it shows.  In the tournament, tied matches occur about 35% of the time, whereas my model predicted 30%.

I think what you've got here is a statement about the A league and not a statement about Dominion.

Two equally matched players of Foo split the games 50-50. Some people point at that and say "Foo is all luck." But in fact Foo could be chess or whatever. Once you subtract skill, luck is what's left.

By looking at just matches between A division players, you are subtracting lots of skill. (Yes I suggested looking at that data.)

Yeah pretty much.  I think it goes to show that in a competitive game, you actually want lots of luck.  Because what you want is people who are equally matched, and when people are equally matched, luck is what you have.

I don't see how that follows at all.

I feel like you have some misconceptions that are very obvious from my end. Like, conflating the competitive value of a game with how easy it is to pair up people in 50/50 matches. Or, that there is some fixed amount of skill + luck, and since the skill "cancels out", if you have lots of luck you have lots of "game" left over.

If I'm honest, I actually don't understand your conclusion at all.

[trivialknot]

I feel like you have some misconceptions that are very obvious from my end. Like, conflating the competitive value of a game with how easy it is to pair up people in 50/50 matches. Or, that there is some fixed amount of skill + luck, and since the skill "cancels out", if you have lots of luck you have lots of "game" left over.

If I'm honest, I actually don't understand your conclusion at all.

Yeah, it's hard to understand.  Fundamentally, the problem is that "How much luck is there in Dominion?" is an ill-posed question.  Philosophers disagree on whether this kind of question makes sense at all.

So as a data analyst, I ask a similar but distinct question: What percent of the total variance comes from luck, and what percent comes from the players?  And that's why skill + luck adds up to 100%.  When both players have equally matched skill, the skill difference doesn't account for anything and then it's just 100% luck.

[Ratsia]

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play. 

Adding variance also allows players of a larger range of skill levels to play together and feel like they have a chance to win which usually makes it more fun for everyone.

I was about to write the same reply before seeing yours. The main target audience for typical eurogames does not play any individual title for more than perhaps 5-10 times (*), and hence the issue of extensive play is probably not very high on the priority list of most designers. The somewhat high luck factor is indeed more because it is an easy and accepted way of evening out the crowd while the game is still new, whereas for extreme longevity the design space of low-luck games might actually have more to offer. In fact, the eurogames often played competitively have little (TtA, Agricola) or practically no (Terra Mystica, Puerto Rico) random elements besides initial setup. Dominion, clearly designed for repeated play, sits somewhere in between those and classical card games that are intended for extreme repeated play while still having high luck factor.

I've also played Dominion for money in the sense that I did pay a small entrance fee to a national championships and won somewhat larger monetary price after winning the title (like seven years ago -- no chance of doing that today), but I wouldn't say money played any role here.


(*) Some stats on this would be nice to see. I bet the mean is clearly higher than median, and the latter might be as low as 3-4 for typical games.

[trivialknot]

I just added a 1st player advantage to my model.  Now the best fit says that luck determines about negative 12% of games .  Not sure why you're all doubting the mathematical model, it is obviously 100% accurate and has no problems whatsoever.

Now show me a data set consisting entirely of games between Stef and Lord Bottington and I will show you how little luck is involved there.

[Davio]

Doesn't Magic have a lot of variance too? And Hearthstone?

[Chris is me]

Dominion is a probability management game. "You Make Your Own Shuffle Luck" might be intended as a joke or something, but that is actually what you are trying to do really. Playing with and through the luck, and trying to manipulate your deck for the best odds of success, really is what the game of Dominion fundamentally is, and it is totally a competitive game even if the most skilled player doesn't win every individual game.

The important thing in games like Dominion is to not put excessive weight into a single game. There is a reason every good online tournament is best of 6-7. This allows for natural variance to occur, and requires players to demonstrate proficiency in a variety of game states. This is also the reason the competitive ladder works well - large numbers of games trend toward predicting success.

Having variance doesn't make a game non-competitive, unless it's like Mario Party or something where it's totally out of whack. Humans have natural variance in skill and rationality that rivals the placement of cards in a shuffle.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Records for the first ten seasons are here: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Dominion_League

Three more recent championship matches are recorded here.

I couldn't sleep, so I updated the data for the last 6 seasons. But not the Head-to-head Records, I don't think it's worth it to keep that updated because it's very cumbersome and the table gets way too big if we include every player who was in A. Maybe it would make sense for like the Top 10 players with the most games in A.

I agree that including everyone who's ever been in A would be an eyesore. As far as cumbersome to update, I believe pubby originally created all the tables and had scripts to automate updating them. He's not been around in some time but if someone intends to keep that page updated, it might be useful to contact him.

[DG]

I suspect that a specialist online game viewer would be a big help in promoting Dominion as a spectator event. This would probably show card play at a pace dictated by the viewer (rather than use the actual game timings), have a voice recording or commentary added with timing adjusted to fit the card play, and include deck tracking.

If people do start playing Dominion for money then we'll all probably have to become less amateur and start doing boring things like card counting. We'll have to worry about people using automated deck trackers, instant simulators, and other tools for online play as well. Players could even get together and secretly play as a team.

[Infthitbox]

Players could even get together and secretly play as a team.

This hasn't destroyed the Magic: The Gathering Online mostly because the big prize for online events is qualification for invitation-only "paper" tournaments. A similar model could work well for Dominion if it was big enough. It'd be a long time before we had to worry about that though.

I will admit to thinking about running simulators at the beginning of online matches, but I've never actually done it. If I had, I probably wouldn't have tried to play Beggar/Gardens against MegaGoons last league season. As for card counting, I don't use any aids to do this while playing online, which would be pretty trivial to do, but I don't think it would ruin the game if people did so. They'd get better results in Dominion Online, but they'd probably cap their paper performance because they'd never get used to doing it mentally.

[eHalcyon]

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play.

Well, there's Chess. And if you mean modern games, there are lots of abstracts in the same vein as Chess. There are non-abstracts with zero or low luck too. Kemet and Puerto Rico come to mind.

[Kirian]

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play.

Well, there's Chess. And if you mean modern games, there are lots of abstracts in the same vein as Chess. There are non-abstracts with zero or low luck too. Kemet and Puerto Rico come to mind.

Puerto Rico has a small but significant amount of luck (plantation cards).

Terra Mystica has zero luck after the initial setup, though.

[Kirian]

On-topic, though:  Yes, I could see myself playing for money.  I wouldn't expect to win without much more practice than I currently get, obviously.

This then leads to the question:  can we turn Dominion into a more-popular spectator sport?

It's obvious why DOTA, for instance, or Starcraft, are a spectator sports: they have excitement similar to football, with accessibility similar to football.  Anyone can set up two goals and kick a football around on a nearby field, anyone can play DOTA or Starcraft.  In both cases becoming very good takes tons of practice, but only one requires running for 90 minutes.

It's less obvious why Chess, MTG, and Hearthstone are spectator sports.  Both have similar accessibility to football, but the excitement is all mental.  (Does chess actually count as a spectator sport?  There are large tournaments, there are heaps of cash on the line, but I've no idea who sponsors that cash.  We all know where the cash for MTG and HS come from.)  MTG, I think, was in this unique place in time, and picked up a huge amount of steam because it was unique.  HS, of course, has the weight of Blizzard behind it.

And Dominion is missing, I think, one key element:  there's just about zero incentive for a FLGS to sponsor a Dominion tournament, much less one every week.

My FLGS runs Friday Night Magic, like just about every other FLGS.  Assuming they get 24 people to show up, they take in $360 in entry fees, and "spend" 120 boosters on the draft itself and prizes.  They turn a small profit on the tournament itself.  You can't do that with Dominion.

[Dingan]

This then leads to the question:  can we turn Dominion into a more-popular spectator sport?

Note that we just might be able to do this really easily in the near future.

A 'spectator mode' that allows you to observe any game running on the server, if the players permit it. For entertainment value, or just to wait until your friend is finished playing a game and can play against you.

[Infthitbox]

And Dominion is missing, I think, one key element:  there's just about zero incentive for a FLGS to sponsor a Dominion tournament, much less one every week.

My FLGS runs Friday Night Magic, like just about every other FLGS.  Assuming they get 24 people to show up, they take in $360 in entry fees, and "spend" 120 boosters on the draft itself and prizes.  They turn a small profit on the tournament itself.  You can't do that with Dominion.

The big reason to run an MTG tournament from a store's perspective is to sell product: constructed tournaments will always feature people buying singles last minute to complete sideboards or whatever (even watched someone crack packs for a solid 10 minutes trying to find an uncommon the store was out of). Stores don't even have to structure tournaments to be intrinsically profitable to be worth it (even though they will bitch and moan endlessly about how the tournament structure is killing them and refuse to acknowledge their true status as loss leaders). However, you can't endlessly sell Dominion products to tournament-goers; at best you might sell an expansion or three to someone who doesn't actually own the whole thing yet.

[Watno]

It's obvious why DOTA, for instance, or Starcraft, are a spectator sports: they have excitement similar to football, with accessibility similar to football.  Anyone can set up two goals and kick a football around on a nearby field, anyone can play DOTA or Starcraft.  In both cases becoming very good takes tons of practice, but only one requires running for 90 minutes.

It's less obvious why Chess, MTG, and Hearthstone are spectator sports.  Both have similar accessibility to football, but the excitement is all mental.  (Does chess actually count as a spectator sport?  There are large tournaments, there are heaps of cash on the line, but I've no idea who sponsors that cash.  We all know where the cash for MTG and HS come from.)  MTG, I think, was in this unique place in time, and picked up a huge amount of steam because it was unique.  HS, of course, has the weight of Blizzard behind it.

I don't think any of the games you mention are nearly as accessible as football. Like every 6 year old can understand the basics of football, while for all these other games, many, if not most adults would probably say they don't understand it.

(Also, football is way less exciting than any of these games, but I guess that's subjective)

[popsofctown]

lately i've been thinking about how widely accepted variance is in eurogames, even at the most competitive levels, compared to the utter hatred for any of it it in competitive video games.  i'm sure a number of you are familiar with smash bros. tournaments banning items since they're highly random, and top players in any game get highly frustrated if a 2-out-of-3 set doesn't determine the better player.

i wonder if a major reason for this difference is the fact that IIRC there's no big competitive eurogame with serious money on the line.  i doubt i need to tell you about the prize pools for MOBAs and the like, and that adds an extra "gut punch" angle to losses that are out of your control.

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play.  i suspect the obvious swinginess would limit people's desire to put up money for tournaments or even a first-to-10 against one opponent (a common type of "exhibition" in fighting games).  as my entire reason for learning these games is competition, it makes me wonder just how far even a game as great as Dominion can go in that regard...

I think Smash players' ire for items is more comparable to Dominion players' ire for Swindler.  Fighting games have inherent variance, because to some sort of extent there is rock paper scissors throwing and although the best players are making a lot of predictions, some of the throws go unpredicted and are caught randomly.  Items provide additional variance beyond what's already there.

[eHalcyon]

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play.

Well, there's Chess. And if you mean modern games, there are lots of abstracts in the same vein as Chess. There are non-abstracts with zero or low luck too. Kemet and Puerto Rico come to mind.

Puerto Rico has a small but significant amount of luck (plantation cards).

Terra Mystica has zero luck after the initial setup, though.

I know of that in Puerto Rico and often point it out to people who claim there's no luck at all, but people so often forget about it that I thought it wasn't especially significant.

[arcee]

When you think Dominion (or any game) has too much luck to play for money, that just means you're playing for too much money.  Poker is a skill game and yet it's still completely stupid to put your entire life savings into a heads-up match even as the favourite.  Instead you wager small amounts and play a lot, against different people.  What does it matter if Donald X gets me with the lucky Black Market or whatever, I'll just keep making money on average from other people.

[Davio]

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play.

Well, there's Chess. And if you mean modern games, there are lots of abstracts in the same vein as Chess. There are non-abstracts with zero or low luck too. Kemet and Puerto Rico come to mind.

Puerto Rico has a small but significant amount of luck (plantation cards).

Terra Mystica has zero luck after the initial setup, though.

I know of that in Puerto Rico and often point it out to people who claim there's no luck at all, but people so often forget about it that I thought it wasn't especially significant.

Well, with a game like Puerto Rico, there is already luck in the setup. Often, being the guy with the same starting plantation as someone before you is detrimental because the market or ship spots are already taken.

[eHalcyon]

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play.

Well, there's Chess. And if you mean modern games, there are lots of abstracts in the same vein as Chess. There are non-abstracts with zero or low luck too. Kemet and Puerto Rico come to mind.

Puerto Rico has a small but significant amount of luck (plantation cards).

Terra Mystica has zero luck after the initial setup, though.

I know of that in Puerto Rico and often point it out to people who claim there's no luck at all, but people so often forget about it that I thought it wasn't especially significant.

Well, with a game like Puerto Rico, there is already luck in the setup. Often, being the guy with the same starting plantation as someone before you is detrimental because the market or ship spots are already taken.

In that case, Chess also has luck in the starting setup just by turn order. But if that's not considered low luck, I don't know what is.

[pingpongsam]

Terra Mystica has zero luck after the initial setup, though.

You can say the same thing about Candyland.

[ThetaSigma12]

Terra Mystica has zero luck after the initial setup, though.

You can say the same thing about Candyland.

Not true. Studies have shown that in evenly matched teams, red wins 20% more often. The player who gets red has an advantage.

[Seprix]

Terra Mystica has zero luck after the initial setup, though.

You can say the same thing about Candyland.

Not true. Studies have shown that in evenly matched teams, red wins 20% more often. The player who gets red has an advantage.

I mean, I know sports teams win more often while wearing red, but I can't imagine that effect also happens with individual game pieces!

[Awaclus]

Never mind, I just figured out the problem with my math.

An individual game of Dominion is 88% chance.

Without doing any research, I can tell you with absolute certainty that you are completely and utterly wrong.

I'm pretty sure it's 90-93% chance.

[pingpongsam]

Terra Mystica has zero luck after the initial setup, though.

You can say the same thing about Candyland.

Not true. Studies have shown that in evenly matched teams, red wins 20% more often. The player who gets red has an advantage.

You've clearly never played Candyland. There are no teams. It is a completely deterministic game that is determined simply by the order the cards appear when drawn. It's not really a game; it's just an obtuse way to discover card order relative to board spaces. The color of the meeple has zero bearing on the game as the cards nor the spaces ever reference that criteria.

After having typed all that I'm starting to believe you were responding to Kirian on Terra Mystica (which I know nothing of).

[Deadlock39]

No, they are just referencing a scientific study that concluded Sports teams that wear red are more likely to win. It is a joke because there is no reason to think the study would apply to the color of your meeple in a board game.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/6097954/Why-teams-in-red-win-more.html

[pingpongsam]

Yeah, ok, that one went over my head entirely.

[Kirian]

Terra Mystica has zero luck after the initial setup, though.

You can say the same thing about Candyland.

You can say a lot of things about Candyland.  However, the endpoint of the game is not known after initial setup in TM, as it is in Candyland.

[JThorne]

However, the endpoint of the game is not known after initial setup in TM, as it is in Candyland.

Now there's a can of worms to open. The endpoint of Candyland may be predetermined, but it's not "known."

Unfortunately, this distinction is lost on a great many people who think that Rabble's discard effect is part of the attack, because, "Argh! You skipped my King's Court!" The same people who think Millstone is a denial card in Magic: "Look, I milled away your Jace! Millstone denied you that card!"

Nope. In both cases, shuffle luck denied those cards, not the deck-to-discard mechanism. Unless you somehow topdecked them intentionally before activating the Rabble/Millstone, then the position of KC/Jace has just as much chance to be on the top of the deck as the bottom, so the "denial" is simply moving random cards from one place to another. The card is predetermined, but random. The fact that the card is known in retrospect doesn't suddenly make it an actual denial attack, and it doesn't change the fact that what you moved was a random card, not a KC/Jace.

I'm going to have to start calling the top of the deck "Schrödinger's Card." It's almost as difficult a concept to explain.

P.S.: Rabble gets a very, very tiny asterisk: Even if all it does is skip three non-VP cards, not topdecking anything, it's still a statistically effective attack due to the fact that your remaining VP cards now have a higher percentage chance of being within your remaining deck speedbumping your next turn. But if everyone's trashed all of their Estates and is in a green-free engine-building phase of the game, at that moment Rabble's effect is actually helping opponents by cycling their decks even faster. Which is why I always cheer when anyone at the table plays Rabble and everyone else swears about the cards they're "losing."

[AdrianHealey]

It seemd to me you are confusing ex ante and ex post.

[Awaclus]

However, the endpoint of the game is not known after initial setup in TM, as it is in Candyland.

Now there's a can of worms to open. The endpoint of Candyland may be predetermined, but it's not "known."

Unfortunately, this distinction is lost on a great many people who think that Rabble's discard effect is part of the attack, because, "Argh! You skipped my King's Court!" The same people who think Millstone is a denial card in Magic: "Look, I milled away your Jace! Millstone denied you that card!"

Nope. In both cases, shuffle luck denied those cards, not the deck-to-discard mechanism. Unless you somehow topdecked them intentionally before activating the Rabble/Millstone, then the position of KC/Jace has just as much chance to be on the top of the deck as the bottom, so the "denial" is simply moving random cards from one place to another. The card is predetermined, but random. The fact that the card is known in retrospect doesn't suddenly make it an actual denial attack, and it doesn't change the fact that what you moved was a random card, not a KC/Jace.

I'm going to have to start calling the top of the deck "Schrödinger's Card." It's almost as difficult a concept to explain.

P.S.: Rabble gets a very, very tiny asterisk: Even if all it does is skip three non-VP cards, not topdecking anything, it's still a statistically effective attack due to the fact that your remaining VP cards now have a higher percentage chance of being within your remaining deck speedbumping your next turn. But if everyone's trashed all of their Estates and is in a green-free engine-building phase of the game, at that moment Rabble's effect is actually helping opponents by cycling their decks even faster. Which is why I always cheer when anyone at the table plays Rabble and everyone else swears about the cards they're "losing."

But Rabble's attack is precisely the part where it discards the cards. If you reveal three Estates, it doesn't do literally anything. Millstone is different though because it discards all the cards so it's actually just random.

[Haddock]

I'm not sure you can say "the discard is the attack" or "the topdeck is the attack".

It's both.  The effect, as a whole, increases the green density of your remaining deck.  THAT'S the attack, and to do it requires both the discard part and the topdeck part.

[JThorne]

I'm not sure you can say "the discard is the attack" or "the topdeck is the attack". It's both.  The effect, as a whole, increases the green density of your remaining deck.  THAT'S the attack, and to do it requires both the discard part and the topdeck part.
...
Rabble's attack is precisely the part where it discards the cards. If you reveal three Estates, it doesn't do literally anything.

Correct, and correct. That's exactly the point I make in my postscript.

It seemd to me you are confusing ex ante and ex post.

To be clear, that's not my mistake, that's the mistake made by people I have played with who lament the "lost" or "skipped" cards that Rabble turns up, even in a scenario in which the Estates are already gone and all players are in pure building phase. In that scenario, Rabble is similar to Millstone, except that in a vacuum, milling cards in Dominion helps players by cycling their deck more quickly.

The ex-ante analysis tells you that Rabble, in a game with no VP cards in decks, is a benefit to the "attacked" player, as stated above. If Rabble mills a desirable card, an ex-post analysis of that one play tells you that Rabble harmed the "attacked" player.

However, ex-post analysis is only useful if applied statistically across a large sample of actual events, and it would have to take into account times when it skipped cards you didn't want to draw in favor of ones you did want to draw. In the absence of VP cards, all randomized cards are equal in the eyes of Rabble, which means that an ex-post analysis with a large enough sample size would come out in favor of the attacked player, since the subsequently drawn post-attack cards would be more likely to contain shuffled-in cards purchased in the previous turn due to increased cycling.

In other words, anyone who has ever said anything like "Argh! Rabble skipped my Grand Market!" and factored that into their thought process about how good an attack Rabble is is working from a fundamental misunderstanding. Counting the hits is one of the oldest statistical fallacies in the book and leads to all kinds of unfortunate belief systems.

I sometimes ask them to imagine that Rabble took the top three cards, shuffled them without looking, and placed them at the bottom of the deck. Would that be an effective attack, or is that just changing the order of already-randomized cards? Does it change just because you looked at them first?

There have been a number of discussions about this phenomenon before. What's especially interesting is that early cycling is so beneficial that there is some argument that Rabbling early, even with three Estates in the deck, is still beneficial to the attacked player in the long run. Anyone remember where that thread is? When Rabble really starts hurting is during the greening process, and when engines can play multiples per turn so that attacked players end up with a stack of three green cards on top almost every turn.

[Awaclus]

I'm not sure you can say "the discard is the attack" or "the topdeck is the attack".

It's both.  The effect, as a whole, increases the green density of your remaining deck.  THAT'S the attack, and to do it requires both the discard part and the topdeck part.

But you're topdecking cards that were already on the top of your deck. That's not really an effect at all.

[Morghas]

Back to the idea of money and Dominion.

I would be curious to try and implement a poker style betting in rounds to Dominion. Say its $1 to play then you can bet again after x hands, if everyone in still in keep playing and bet again after x hands. Thus players who get beaten by a 5/2 split or something can bow down and 'fold' their decks early on. You would probably want about 3 rounds of betting, one round before the game starts but after seeing the board, another not too deep into the game maybe turn 4 or 5 then another around turn 12, then play it out.

I am more than happy playing for no money but I would definitely sign up to something like this...

[Davio]

I once proposed a doubling cube: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=4966.msg118599#msg118599

You can introduce bluffing by letting players check or bet before each hand, so you can pretend you're holding KC-KC-Bridge(x3) and bet a bunch of $.