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Author Topic: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]  (Read 164727 times)

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ftl

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #400 on: July 04, 2012, 09:20:04 pm »
0

REAL LIFE IS DIFFERENT FROM GAMES.

You can go find the earlier post where I wrote at length on this topic if you want to know more about my reasoning. My fingers are too tired to type more things over again.
And for anyone looking up that post, there's one after it where I shoot that down.


And for anyone looking up THAT post, there's one after it where I shoot it down better! And then there's a whole threadful of us and other people shooting each other down, up, and sideways.

Isn't it great?

...actually, I did look it up, and as far as I could tell you never addressed it... specifically, Donald X's post at #255.
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sjelkjd

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #401 on: July 04, 2012, 09:22:25 pm »
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arguments of the form "X is illegal in Offline Dominion so it is clearly illegal in Isotropic Dominion" ... [is] 100% invalid
Nice strawman.  The argument is X is illegal in Isotropic dominion(National qualifiers variant), as stated by the tournament organizer.  Furthermore, Isotropic Dominion rules are the offline rules by default.  Claiming that you get to reinvent all sorts of rules because you're playing on a computer is silly.
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Personman

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #402 on: July 04, 2012, 09:25:51 pm »
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They're not "completely different games." Monopoly and Scrabble are "completely different." Online and IRL dominion are almost entirely the same, except that there are some rules you can't enforce in online dominion. That's a false premise, so please reconsider using it as an argument.

I said they were "undeniably similar" and "reasonable to mix in a tournament"; if that's not enough for you, replace "completely different" with "distinct enough that you can't make the kinds of arguments I go on to talk about".

Weren't you among the group of people criticizing WW for how he used the word cheating? I stand by what I said, they're not completely different, and should have similar rules, especially as a qualifier for an IRL tournament. You can try to say that it doesn't matter that nationals are IRL all you want, it doesn't make it correct. You can say that that variant is the "best" variant all you want, when it comes to official tournaments, you use the official rules whenever possible.

You can keep saying your opinion and stuff, but there needs to be a definitively right answer in a qualifier like this. And the definitive answer should always fall back on the official rules where there is disagreement. You've had several people, including the maker of the game, clarify what the official rule is on this. Yelling from the rooftops that your dominion is better than his doesn't make it right.

My "opinion" that they are different games is well supported by fact. Many facts of life in Isotropic Dominion are cheating in offline dominion, and thus, as I said, an argument of the form "X is illegal in offline dominion so it is illegal in isotropic dominion" can be immediately rejected.

Now, you can reasonably posit bringing them in line where possible as a goal. That's fine. I probably even share that goal. However, I have a higher goal, and I think everyone else should share it (and I think they do, actually): fairness. We should not compromise the fairness of isotropic dominion in an attempt to make it more like offline dominion. Are you with me so far?

HERE is where I believe disagreement starts. I believe it is an objective fact that a rule against the extension is unfair. Other people disagree. I have tried to back this opinion up throughout the thread as thoroughly as possible; I do not believe I have been merely trumpeting its correctness from the rooftops. If you wish to bring a new objection to those arguments forward, please do. If you simply wish to ignore what I have actually done and tell me that I have done something else, this conversation is over.
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Personman

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #403 on: July 04, 2012, 09:28:42 pm »
0

arguments of the form "X is illegal in Offline Dominion so it is clearly illegal in Isotropic Dominion" ... [is] 100% invalid
Nice strawman.  The argument is X is illegal in Isotropic dominion(National qualifiers variant), as stated by the tournament organizer.  Furthermore, Isotropic Dominion rules are the offline rules by default.  Claiming that you get to reinvent all sorts of rules because you're playing on a computer is silly.

No, your face is silly!

...did you get anything useful out of that? No? Well, I too got nothing useful out of your post. Please try again, but with more logic & reasons, preferably relating to the logic and reasons I have put forth that you are claiming to refute.

Sorry I've started getting a bit more acerbic, it's been a long day.
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popsofctown

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #404 on: July 04, 2012, 09:30:59 pm »
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Try asking someone to turn their discard pile faceup in isotropic dominion, see if they oblige because the offline rules obligate them to.

  Furthermore, Isotropic Dominion rules are the offline rules by default.
« Last Edit: July 04, 2012, 09:54:37 pm by popsofctown »
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #405 on: July 04, 2012, 09:33:47 pm »
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This notion seems incoherent to me. I don't think an action (in a game) can be illegal without consequences. I'm not sure it can in real life, either, but I'm less sure of that, and I see the issues as separate. Again, this may be as far as we get on this, but I'll lay out my reasoning a bit further:

1. Competition should be fair.
2. If something is illegal without consequences, some people's morals will allow them to do that thing and others will not.
3. If the thing is advantageous, the people with the laxer morals will win more often.
4. That is unfair, and thus should not be a part of how competitions are run.
I fail to see how it is incoherent to have a rule that there are no consequences for, other than moral consequences. Indeed, the rules against hacking the server, etc. you seem to agree to this point on. "We need to have trust" in society at large, no?

You haven't addressed my logic at all. Yes, of course we need some trust in society at large (or at least, everyone's lives are much better since we do). We nevertheless have penalties for breaking that trust, whether they be legal or social, and if there are no such penalties for a thing, I think that's usually the same as that thing being okay.

In a tournament environment, especially one against strangers over the internet, you have to assume that social consequences go out the window, since the prize is likely all that matters to an unknown participant. Therefore, we need tournament regulations. To actually be regulations, they need to have consequences, or else they fail to regulate anything.
Okay. But your logic does not actually lead to the conclusion that such a regulation IS not a rule. It leads to the conclusion that it SHOULD NOT be a rule. Even if we are to accept it, which I don't. However, my larger point there was that it is not incoherent. And you know, I am not the only one who finds it coherent, so maybe you are incapable of understanding it (which would truly be sad, if true), but that doesn't make it incoherent. You're just going to have to trust us on this.
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You're right, I'm not using precedent to mean "previously handed-down judicial decisions". I'm using it to mean "previously community-accepted behavior". I'm sorry I misunderstood your position; I continue to maintain that given our respective preconditions, we both came to reasonable, contradictory conclusions on this front.
I mean, beforehand, I agree, and I could well see how you might be like "I don't see why this is against the rules", if you hadn't taken the time to really study the matter. But when it is explained, you should be like "oh shoot, you're right." Because they're pretty straightforward. In any case, that you got away with it before is certainly no basis for it to actually be legal, only some slight basis for you to perhaps think that it is so.
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Stop repeating this without addressing my reasoning for why it is false. Online dominion is a very different beast from paper dominion, and has no particular reason to fall back on the rulebook AT ALL. If it did, the differences between isotropic and the real rules would result in people "cheating" all the time, e.g. by hiding the top card of their discard pile.
Stop ignoring my point that the rulebook for offline dominion is perfectly able to be realized online, and that you in fact give no objective reason why it cannot be. I mean, you give some reasons why you think it SHOULD not be, I grant. But that does not mean that it CANNOT be. You keep asserting that they're different, but you have not actually established that.
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Notes being illegal is obviously not universally held either, as I've just demonstrated. So I don't really follow your logic here at all.
This is my point precisely. It is not clear. In situations where it is in fact not clear, that's where you go to the rulebook. The rulebook does not say you can do it, so you can't do it. You don't have the right to assume that you CAN do it, because that is not something which you can just generally assume, because it's not uniform across the board.
Follow that?

Quote
Stop switching between in-game and legal perspectives. Laws that are difficult to enforce are often a good idea because a) when they CAN be enforced you don't want to let the culprit off the hook because there is no law on the books and b) their mere existence is a strong moral deterrent for some people, and we should do whatever we can to stop people from doing things that are ACTUALLY BAD for society.

In-game, only enforcing things when you happen to be able to is terrible and unfair, and using the extension does not cause any real harm to society, so there are no justifications for avoidable unenforceable rules.
Again, we can have discussions like this on what the rules SHOULD be, but these reasons have no bearing on what the rules actually ARE.

Quote
There's a really important point here that I'm surprised hasn't been brought up by more people, so I'm being liberal with my use of bold. I freely admit that there are unavoidable unenforceable rules in online Dominion. The obvious example is collusion/collaboration. Two players in a multiplayer game could be sitting next to each other, or use any communication device, to conspire against another. One "player" could in fact be a whole room full of Dominion experts conferring about what to do. These are obviously against the rules, and obviously unenforceable. This is an unsolvable structural flaw with all online competition, and it is a compelling reason not to use online competition for things that REALLY matter. I accept that we have to trust people not to do these things, because there is simply no alternative except not holding online competitions. However, this is not a good reason to add additional, unnecessary unenforceable rules. I agree that the line is blurry, and I don't think anyone can draw it. My opinion about where the extension falls in relation to that line is inevitably colored by the fact that I think it makes it a better game, or at least those who do not accept my arguments will always see it as so colored. I think this is the strongest argument against my position, and I'm really surprised that it has only come up once, in passing, near the beginning of the thread.
Because the whole thing is irrelevant. We are not discussing what the best game would be. If we were, I would be talking about re-wording throne room, buffing scout, doing all kinds of stuff. But no. We are talking about what the rules ARE. Whether they are enforceable or not does not change whether they are rules. Ontologically, they cannot be anything else. You can argue that they don't exist, but man, I can point to them. So I mean, that is not the argument. Furthermore, these rules CAN be enforced, it just has some level of tediousness to do so. But again, that's not relevant if everyone just lives up to the agreements they've made.

Personman

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #406 on: July 04, 2012, 09:42:30 pm »
0

REAL LIFE IS DIFFERENT FROM GAMES.

You can go find the earlier post where I wrote at length on this topic if you want to know more about my reasoning. My fingers are too tired to type more things over again.
And for anyone looking up that post, there's one after it where I shoot that down.


And for anyone looking up THAT post, there's one after it where I shoot it down better! And then there's a whole threadful of us and other people shooting each other down, up, and sideways.

Isn't it great?

...actually, I did look it up, and as far as I could tell you never addressed it... specifically, Donald X's post at #255.

You know, you are totally right. I'll do it now! Here's that post:

Quote from: Donald X
I think "games are different from life" is a very misleading way to look at it. Yes, in a game of Diplomacy, maybe you will backstab somebody who you would not backstab outside of a game. That's not relevant though. The issue of cheating is an issue of what people do in life. Choosing to take notes is not something you do inside the game.

Choosing to take notes once that has been ruled illegal is cheating. Choosing to take notes when it is legal is a valid use of your resources during gameplay.

This issue is sort of tangential though. The entire point of separating life from games was to make a point about why a certain school of thought is appropriate when writing rulesets for tournaments that is blatantly not appropriate when evaluating real life situations. My argument was never "this is just a game, so I can cheat", which seems to be what Donald is refuting here.

Quote
It is fair to say that you don't enjoy playing in online tournaments with significant prizes, because you expect to be up against cheaters. To me this just suggests that online tournaments should not have significant prizes, rather than somehow meaning that the game should be changed so that all is permissible. People will cheat online even with no prize, but I think there we just provide a way to block people, and don't rank games where the card mix was picked out, and then there's the issue of how you handle time-outs.

All of this is reasonable but does not attempt to refute anything I said.

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czechvarmander

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #407 on: July 04, 2012, 09:43:01 pm »
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Now, you can reasonably posit bringing them in line where possible as a goal. That's fine. I probably even share that goal. However, I have a higher goal, and I think everyone else should share it (and I think they do, actually): fairness. We should not compromise the fairness of isotropic dominion in an attempt to make it more like offline dominion. Are you with me so far?

HERE is where I believe disagreement starts. I believe it is an objective fact that a rule against the extension is unfair.

Bolded words added by me for emphasis.

An objective fact? Really? REALLY? You truly believe that there is an objective standard of fairness? Not just in a Dominion tournament, but anywhere?

I believe your argument was that the PCE enhanced fairness because everyone would have access to the information (forget that fact that it displays in a far more user-friendly way for the person with the app installed) and that that would mitigate the advantage you felt WW had by having a stronger ability to memorize this information without the app.

You believe that WW having a stronger memory than others is unfair? Or that it would force you to resort to pen and paper note-taking (which is also against the rules).

I AGREE! It's also UNFAIR that WW and the other tippity top players have more experience and analytic skills than me. Were there available tools or extensions to replicate these skills I think it would totally fine for me to utilize them, even if the tournament organizer told me not to.

Everyone else can use it to, you know because it's an OBJECTIVE FACT that leveling the playing field so everyone is at the same skill level is what is meant by fairness.

This way, everyone has an equal chance of winning without unfair natural advantages getting in the way. Heck, the tournaments can be way faster if we just use a random number generator to pick the winner. IT'S AN OBJECTIVE FACT THAT THAT IS THE FAIREST WAY TO DECIDE THE BEST DOMINION PLAYER.
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greatexpectations

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #408 on: July 04, 2012, 09:44:29 pm »
0

Choosing to take notes once that has been ruled illegal is cheating. Choosing to take notes when it is legal is a valid use of your resources during gameplay.

Quote
Also, while we're here, in Dominion, you may not take notes. I am making this clear for anyone who somehow does not get it. You can't. You didn't know before, so that wasn't cheating, but if you do now, it's cheating. I would get into the idea of variants but let's keep this simple.
source
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popsofctown

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #409 on: July 04, 2012, 09:46:15 pm »
+1

No matter what side you're on here, caps lock is not classy.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #410 on: July 04, 2012, 09:47:03 pm »
+3

My "opinion" that they are different games is well supported by fact. Many facts of life in Isotropic Dominion are cheating in offline dominion, and thus, as I said, an argument of the form "X is illegal in offline dominion so it is illegal in isotropic dominion" can be immediately rejected.

Now, you can reasonably posit bringing them in line where possible as a goal. That's fine. I probably even share that goal. However, I have a higher goal, and I think everyone else should share it (and I think they do, actually): fairness. We should not compromise the fairness of isotropic dominion in an attempt to make it more like offline dominion. Are you with me so far?

HERE is where I believe disagreement starts. I believe it is an objective fact that a rule against the extension is unfair. Other people disagree. I have tried to back this opinion up throughout the thread as thoroughly as possible; I do not believe I have been merely trumpeting its correctness from the rooftops. If you wish to bring a new objection to those arguments forward, please do. If you simply wish to ignore what I have actually done and tell me that I have done something else, this conversation is over.

You have not given a decent reason why a rule against the extension is unfair.  Fair means that everyone starts on an even playing field.  If everyone uses the extension, that is fair.  If everyone does NOT use the extension, that is ALSO fair.  A rule against the extension is fair so long as everyone is expected to abide by it, and they are, because it's a rule.

Your argument, as far as I can tell, is that it is unfair if there is a rule against it and someone uses it anyway.  Well yeah, that is unfair.  Someone is cheating.  Cheating is unfair.

But you cannot say a rule is unfair on the basis that someone might break it.  That is true of every rule.  The logic here leads to the conclusion that there should be no rules at all.

So instead of removing a rule because it could conceivably be broken, you should trust that your opponents have the integrity to obey the rules.
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sjelkjd

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #411 on: July 04, 2012, 10:07:48 pm »
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Well, I too got nothing useful out of your post. Please try again, but with more logic & reasons, preferably relating to the logic and reasons I have put forth that you are claiming to refute.
Sure, a strawman argument is a logical fallacy used to promote a position by constructing a false version of the opponents position and knocking it down.  In this case, the opponent's position is "x was ruled illegal in this tournament, thus you should not do x in this tournament."  The strawman constructed was "x is illegal in offline dominion, thus you should not do x in this tournament."  I am not claiming that doing x in this tournament is wrong because you should not do X in offline dominion.  I am claiming that you should not do X in this tournament because the tournament organizer said not to do it.  Your argument is invalid because you are taking my position, and constructing a strawman.  This is a logical fallacy.
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Personman

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #412 on: July 04, 2012, 10:12:21 pm »
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Quote
Notes being illegal is obviously not universally held either, as I've just demonstrated. So I don't really follow your logic here at all.
This is my point precisely. It is not clear. In situations where it is in fact not clear, that's where you go to the rulebook. The rulebook does not say you can do it, so you can't do it. You don't have the right to assume that you CAN do it, because that is not something which you can just generally assume, because it's not uniform across the board.
Follow that?

I need to step away from this thread for the night; I intend to respond to your full post tomorrow. But I want to pick out this section because I think it's an amazingly clear example of you using strictly faulty logic.

1. Some communities (for instance A) think that the default state of things is that note taking in games is legal.
2. Some communities (for instance B) think the opposite.
3. Dominion, and in particular this tournament, does not specify.
4. People from A and people from B may have different starting beliefs about the rules of this tournament for this reason.
5. When this discrepancy is discovered, resorting to the rules does not satisfy: people from A will say "It's not mentioned here, so it goes to the default: notes are legal!" People from B will say the obvious similar thing.

You have said "You don't have the right to assume that you CAN do it, because that is not something which you can just generally assume, because it's not uniform across the board." but this is nonsense; I can recast it from my perspective and has the same logical content, ie, none: "You don't have the right to assume that you CAN'T do it, because that is not something which you can just generally assume, because it's not uniform across the board."

You can quote me Donald's quote about things not permitted being illegal, but it's just totally false as we've already covered. He himself has said you can say the score out loud as you play; that's not obvious to everyone and it's not in the rules. Nor are all manner of benign things like turning duration cards sideways to note that they are old, etc. etc. It's just that for some people from communities like B, note taking is "obviously" not in the same class as those things, so they find this argument silly. But for people like me, from a community like A, the reverse is just as true.

I'm not lying when I say it still fundamentally baffles me that people can't see why note taking (up to a time limit) is beneficial and not cheating in any relevant game. Like, i can wrap my head around the fact that different people have come from different communities, and end up thinking differently, just like I grudgingly accept that some people legitimately believe in God, or the Republican Party's platform. But it takes conscious effort to remind myself that other people don't see things the same way I do.

Perhaps, instead of assuming duplicity on my part, you should try making a similar effort to believe that I actually sincerely hold the views that I have expressed in this thread, no matter how outlandish they initially seem.
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Personman

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #413 on: July 04, 2012, 10:17:59 pm »
0

Well, I too got nothing useful out of your post. Please try again, but with more logic & reasons, preferably relating to the logic and reasons I have put forth that you are claiming to refute.
Sure, a strawman argument is a logical fallacy used to promote a position by constructing a false version of the opponents position and knocking it down.  In this case, the opponent's position is "x was ruled illegal in this tournament, thus you should not do x in this tournament."  The strawman constructed was "x is illegal in offline dominion, thus you should not do x in this tournament."  I am not claiming that doing x in this tournament is wrong because you should not do X in offline dominion.  I am claiming that you should not do X in this tournament because the tournament organizer said not to do it.  Your argument is invalid because you are taking my position, and constructing a strawman.  This is a logical fallacy.

Thank you for taking the time to rigorously state your case. I truly appreciate it.

The part that I take exception to is the part where you claim that the extension was ruled illegal. (Well, it eventually was, I didn't use it. But that is not what you are talking about.) As I have repeatedly explained, I find the phrase "Don't do it but I won't DQ you" to be made out of two contradictory parts, "I request that you don't do it" and "I won't DQ you if you do it" == "Doing it is explicitly legal." I also find the latter statement, which concerns legality and consequences, to be much stronger than the former, which is a personal request. Therefore, I have no choice but to accept that the latter statement overrides the former.

You will note, however, that I did not simply silently accept my own logic and proceed to use the extension. Instead, I brought up the issues with such a self-contradictory phraseology, and the resulting discussion ended with a less contradictory one that actually DID ban the extension, and I went on TO NOT USE IT.

And now I'm actually out, at least for several hours, and probably til tomorrow. To those that have listened and been patient, thank you.
« Last Edit: July 04, 2012, 10:21:12 pm by Personman »
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sjelkjd

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #414 on: July 04, 2012, 10:25:51 pm »
0

Try asking someone to turn their discard pile faceup in isotropic dominion, see if they oblige because the offline rules obligate them to.

  Furthermore, Isotropic Dominion rules are the offline rules by default.
Ok, this is an interesting idea and is linked to Personman's argument.  The argument goes like this.  There are certain things you have to do in real life dominion that translate poorly to a computer version.  One example is viewing the top card of the discard pile.  In real life it's trivial to decide what you want on top of the discard pile.  If you discard cards from your hand during cleanup phase, you can gain an advantage by choosing which cards to discard - ie, I drew both of my moats, played one, and my opponent has a witch, but doesn't want to play it if I have a moat in hand.  I can discard my unplayed moat under an estate to hide that information from him.  In the computer version, that implies you need to control the order of every discard.  That would suck, so the solution is to not show the discard pile.  This is a concession made to the online format, because in online, discarding in an arbitrary order is easy, discarding in a chosen order is annoying.  In offline dominion, both are about equal.
The part where this breaks down is to extend it to any arbitrary rule.  Isotropic does include a point counter, but does not include a deck tracker.  The Tournament rules explicitly discussed the point counter and did not mention the deck tracking extension(since it is not a part of isotropic).  Claiming that the kinds of changes(such as above) authorize using any extension is dubious logic.  In the first case, it is officially supported by the site.  In the PCE case, it is not officially supported by the site, and the only mention was to the closest thing to it(the official point counter), in which it was explicitly mentioned that it(the PC) would be used.  The obvious takeaway is that a point counter, deck tracker, etc cannot be used in a tournament setting unless explicitly allowed by the rules.
But that's not even what we're discussing.  That line of argument is about whether point trackers and deck trackers should be used for online tournament play in general.  In this specific case, the organizer explicitly said not to use it.  The rules said not to use it.  Seems pretty clear cut to me.
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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #415 on: July 04, 2012, 10:45:25 pm »
+1

Unfortunately, you can't expect everyone to have read Donald X's posts in this forum. Thus, it seems rules like "you can/can't take notes in a spreadsheet" need to be spelled out at the beginning of a tournament.

Can we get off of the topic of how Personman interpreted theory's unfortunate e-mail? However he interpreted it, it wasn't theory's final decision and thus didn't matter much at all. And once theory came down hard on deciding against the point counter but allowing the spreadsheet, Personman accepted it and played accordingly. So yes, when theory said not to use it, Personman didn't use it.

A more interesting question is what the skills needed for online Dominion are. In that quoted conversation, Donald X. backs up his ruling that note-taking is illegal in real-life Dominion by saying that memorization is part of the game. My question is, should memorization be part of online Dominion? If we say that no, it should not be a part, then the deck tracker should be allowed, and more widely accepted. If we say that yes, it should be part of the game, then the point counter probably should be disabled for important play like this. If we come up with some kind of compromise, we're going to have to be super clear about what has to be memorized and what doesn't have to. And the best argument I can see for drawing the line at the point counter is that it's simply the way that most people are used to and answers most of the questions you might have.
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popsofctown

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #416 on: July 04, 2012, 10:49:12 pm »
0

Try asking someone to turn their discard pile faceup in isotropic dominion, see if they oblige because the offline rules obligate them to.

  Furthermore, Isotropic Dominion rules are the offline rules by default.
Ok, this is an interesting idea and is linked to Personman's argument.  The argument goes like this.  There are certain things you have to do in real life dominion that translate poorly to a computer version.  One example is viewing the top card of the discard pile.  In real life it's trivial to decide what you want on top of the discard pile.  If you discard cards from your hand during cleanup phase, you can gain an advantage by choosing which cards to discard - ie, I drew both of my moats, played one, and my opponent has a witch, but doesn't want to play it if I have a moat in hand.  I can discard my unplayed moat under an estate to hide that information from him.  In the computer version, that implies you need to control the order of every discard.  That would suck, so the solution is to not show the discard pile.  This is a concession made to the online format, because in online, discarding in an arbitrary order is easy, discarding in a chosen order is annoying.  In offline dominion, both are about equal.
The part where this breaks down is to extend it to any arbitrary rule.  Isotropic does include a point counter, but does not include a deck tracker.  The Tournament rules explicitly discussed the point counter and did not mention the deck tracking extension(since it is not a part of isotropic).  Claiming that the kinds of changes(such as above) authorize using any extension is dubious logic.  In the first case, it is officially supported by the site.  In the PCE case, it is not officially supported by the site, and the only mention was to the closest thing to it(the official point counter), in which it was explicitly mentioned that it(the PC) would be used.  The obvious takeaway is that a point counter, deck tracker, etc cannot be used in a tournament setting unless explicitly allowed by the rules.
But that's not even what we're discussing.  That line of argument is about whether point trackers and deck trackers should be used for online tournament play in general.  In this specific case, the organizer explicitly said not to use it.  The rules said not to use it.  Seems pretty clear cut to me.

I am only defeating the particular argument I quoted, and am not trying to settle the whole thing with the discard comparison.

Just that "Isotropic dominion uses the exact same rules as IRL dominion, and all players already know, at all times, to constantly preserve that" is not right.  If I ask you what's on top of your discard pile, for us to replicate offline dominion you need to tell me at least one card that could be there.  If you denied me access to that information IRL you would be cheating.  If you deny me access to that information on isotropic, you are not cheating.  Because it's a different variant of Dominion, one where you discard Trader and Watchtower to a Militia, and I still have no clue whether I should buy an IGG or not.

The argument, "theory forbid the use of the point tracker in this particular tournament" is not covered by my discard pile counterexample.  Only the argument "All offline rules apply online, and thus players in the online tournament need to preserve all the offline rules".

EDIT: btw, I'm confused as to why the topic is so hot if the extension never actually got used?  Is it only because WW withdrew?
« Last Edit: July 04, 2012, 10:56:50 pm by popsofctown »
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Donald X.

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #417 on: July 04, 2012, 11:00:36 pm »
+12

Isotropic Dominion and Offline Dominion are utterly different games, and their rules cannot and do not affect each other.
For example, when offline Dominion got Hinterland's when-gain cards, Isotropic got a tower defense game.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #418 on: July 04, 2012, 11:02:51 pm »
+2

This thread does have the potential to be insightful for anyone willing to read all the way through it. But yeah, now that I have, there are so many things to say...

I think I've had enough of the theory-bashing. Theory was under a lot of time pressure to get this tournament to happen, and also clearly hoped that the general friendly play of people on isotropic would prevail, rather than having to sit down and think through a foolproof ruleset. And as we're discovering, foolproof rulesets are hard to come up with. Enforceability is a big issue, but as Personman has discovered (re: collusion), it's rather tough to actually have in an online tournament. Still, theory tried to enforce it by encouraging people to record the finals and reserving the right to DQ afterwards from those videos. And so in the end, even if it was only half an hour before the finals, theory arrived at at least a pretty decent ruling.
I understand the ruling theory came up with in the end. Personman has some pretty legit concerns about inequity. I of course strongly disagree with how he handled stuff pretty much every step of the way. I can point to several decisions I think he made which were wrong, mostly in not sticking to the original rules. And I don't believe he has the authority to change them afterwards, though I do think he has the authority to DQ someone for breaking them, which he said he 'couldn't' do at some point. But you know, I can sympathize with not wanting to. I wouldn't want to have to DQ anybody. Indeed, this is part of why I withdrew - seemed clear to me that neither Personman nor I was going to budge, so one almost has to go - and I'm pretty sure Personman cares about it more than I do, so I bowed out. So I think theory made a lot of wrong decisions, but you know, I wouldn't call that bashing him. I will freely admit to you that I can't count the number of wrong decisions I've made in the past week - there are too many. Anyway, so there's that.

Quote
One thing I'm still a little confused about is why WW decided to ultimately withdraw, after theory's final ruling. I can offer some possibilities:
1) He was unhappy that theory was changing the rules. First, it's at least a little ambiguous that spreadsheets are disallowed in the rules. If you have to dig up a post by Donald X on the forum to get the official ruling that's further than most players will go. It's certainly more ambiguous than "identical starting hands" for those who want to argue that theory arbitrarily ruling "okay, so in the finals you guys don't get identical starting hands" would be unfair. So a clarification was certainly in order. Second, the rules never said, "Any changes to the rules must be approved by all players"; that clause is pretty clear about only applying to use or not of the official point counter. But most importantly, we all know how little time theory had to plan this tournament out, and as such, should cut him some slack with clarifying or redefining rules.
2) He expected Personman to cheat and use the PCE anyways. I think this is very unfair to both what Personman's words explicitly said and to WW's own arguments themselves. Personman was not actually planning on cheating; he was just giving the usual unenforceability argument he's repeated several times in this thread. And what do you know, in the real match he didn't cheat at all. I don't see a reason to suspect he would have with WW playing.
3) He objected to playing a game with someone who used Personman's style of reasoning, whether you want to call it relativist, or consequentialist, or what have you. Well, all I can say is that that would be like not playing with atheists. It doesn't actually affect the game and seems a bit non-sequitur. He'd certainly have the right to do that, like anyone has the right to be racist in who they live near, but I'd at least be disappointed if that was his final reason.
4) He didn't think through everything as clearly as he can now (happens to all of us) and would have re-entered had he had more time to think it through.
5) He was away from the computer for the half hour between theory's ruling and the start of the match.
I don't really have evidence against 4 or 5, except for the lack of WW complaining about the timing or apologizing and saying he would have re-entered on second thought.

Of course, WW doesn't have to respond to this if he wants to keep his reasons private. But he's entered the conversation so far, so if he's willing, I'm curious what he has to say to this.

Okay, so it's actually a really complicated multi-pronged thing. One is that it just does not mean that much to me. I mean, I guess going to Chicago would be nice, but... eh. It's sorta meh. I'm much more interested in actually playing, so it's not a huge huge deal for me to miss. And as I've explained, I agreed to the set of rules that were in place at sign-up, I'm not going to cheat and break my word by breaking those rules, and I'm not going to cooperate with someone else breaking them either. At the same time, I don't believe theory has the authority to post facto change the rules. All of which goes without mentioning the lack of a trusting atmosphere that was built up, and well, it's just too much stress for something that's so unimportant. And with so little benefit. I mean, I have other things to do. I just heard from my dearest friend for the first time in over 6 months, what the heck am I still doing here?
(Note, I actually did take a several hour break in the middle of writing this). So basically, I have principled reasons not to compete, and very little reason to compete. And my ethical advisor concurred.

Donald X.

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #419 on: July 04, 2012, 11:05:21 pm »
+1

This issue is sort of tangential though. The entire point of separating life from games was to make a point about why a certain school of thought is appropriate when writing rulesets for tournaments that is blatantly not appropriate when evaluating real life situations. My argument was never "this is just a game, so I can cheat", which seems to be what Donald is refuting here.
So when you say "real life is different from games" you mean "we should expect people to be cheaters if they can't be caught in games but not in real life?" I am not seeing so far how "real life is different from games" is trying to communicate a true thing in an understandable way.
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Donald X.

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #420 on: July 04, 2012, 11:09:09 pm »
+1

1. Some communities (for instance A) think that the default state of things is that note taking in games is legal.
2. Some communities (for instance B) think the opposite.
3. Dominion, and in particular this tournament, does not specify.
No, by not explicitly making note-taking legal it makes note-taking illegal. All else is madness, and I have covered this at length elsewhere.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #421 on: July 04, 2012, 11:16:26 pm »
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Quote
Notes being illegal is obviously not universally held either, as I've just demonstrated. So I don't really follow your logic here at all.
This is my point precisely. It is not clear. In situations where it is in fact not clear, that's where you go to the rulebook. The rulebook does not say you can do it, so you can't do it. You don't have the right to assume that you CAN do it, because that is not something which you can just generally assume, because it's not uniform across the board.
Follow that?

I need to step away from this thread for the night; I intend to respond to your full post tomorrow. But I want to pick out this section because I think it's an amazingly clear example of you using strictly faulty logic.

1. Some communities (for instance A) think that the default state of things is that note taking in games is legal.
2. Some communities (for instance B) think the opposite.
3. Dominion, and in particular this tournament, does not specify.
4. People from A and people from B may have different starting beliefs about the rules of this tournament for this reason.
5. When this discrepancy is discovered, resorting to the rules does not satisfy: people from A will say "It's not mentioned here, so it goes to the default: notes are legal!" People from B will say the obvious similar thing.

You have said "You don't have the right to assume that you CAN do it, because that is not something which you can just generally assume, because it's not uniform across the board." but this is nonsense; I can recast it from my perspective and has the same logical content, ie, none: "You don't have the right to assume that you CAN'T do it, because that is not something which you can just generally assume, because it's not uniform across the board."

You can quote me Donald's quote about things not permitted being illegal, but it's just totally false as we've already covered.
Uh, no, he's right there. You make rules which define what IS allowable behaviour in the context of the game, because you can't possibly outlaw everything that needs to be illegal. It is not false, we did not cover it being false, and I most certainly did not agree to that.
Quote
He himself has said you can say the score out loud as you play; that's not obvious to everyone and it's not in the rules. Nor are all manner of benign things like turning duration cards sideways to note that they are old, etc. etc. It's just that for some people from communities like B, note taking is "obviously" not in the same class as those things, so they find this argument silly. But for people like me, from a community like A, the reverse is just as true.
The reason why the speaking is fine, is because there is no particular difference, gameplay-wise, between thinking it and saying it. And of course it is fine to think it. They don't need to have a rule saying you can think, because it is absolutely absurd - you can't force yourself to not think - and entirely self-defeating. Now you're going to tell me that the no point counter rule is just as absurd, but man, if you can't see the difference there... I'm sorry. There's no convincing you, so there's not much point. I can tell you you're wrong, but if you won't accept that p and not p computes to false, well, I can't PROVE that. You are right.

Quote
I'm not lying when I say it still fundamentally baffles me that people can't see why note taking (up to a time limit) is beneficial and not cheating in any relevant game.
Every played memory? that is the whole point of the game. The point of the game is defeated if you can take notes. So the question is, is Dominion a game where having a good memory is relevant - obviously it is - and should we seek to keep that as part of the game or not? Well, I think yes, Donald thinks yes, you think no. Well, that's fine, we have different opinions. But the point is, the game Dominion, as constituted, keeps that.
Quote
...just like I grudgingly accept that some people legitimately believe in God, or the Republican Party's platform
Yeah, you're the one who is trying to not get into a kerfluffle here. Right.
It is highly apparent that you struggle with accepting that there are people not like you. You need to be able to do a better job of that, for life in general.

Quote
Perhaps, instead of assuming duplicity on my part, you should try making a similar effort to believe that I actually sincerely hold the views that I have expressed in this thread, no matter how outlandish they initially seem.
The claims of duplicity actually arise from me dong that, as much as possible, but not being able to fully, as what you are saying seems to contradict itself. Which is... the whole point of duplicity? I mean, I actually think you have tricked yourself into thinking you are being consistent. But it is evident to me, and to several others it seems, that you are not. And I know you're not going to see that. Don't know what else to tell you.

WanderingWinder

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #422 on: July 04, 2012, 11:21:06 pm »
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Quote
I've been trying as hard as I possibly can to engage fairly and usefully with the criticisms directed at me and my beliefs. If you could point out some places where you think I've failed at that, I would appreciate it.
I would appreciate if you confirm the following:

I did read, just not sure this is exactly what you meant. But it still sounds too crazy for me, so just let me reconfirm:
so you think it is actually better to play paper-scissors-stone to qualify for the nationals, because it is fairer?

No, of course it's not. I can't really believe I have to write this out, but people are on such different planes of understanding that I suppose I do. Isotropic Dominion and Offline Dominion are utterly different games, and their rules cannot and do not affect each other. They are undeniably similar, and our community concerns itself with both, so it was decided to allow a tournament of one to feed into a tournament of the other, even though (I thought) it was clear to absolutely everyone involved that they would be playing under different conditions, and believe that those conditions are different enough to classify it as a different game (though a reasonable one to mix into a Dominion tournament). We could use different language, like "different variant" or "different rules" or whatever, but the fact remains that there is a conceptual divide between them, and that arguments of the form "X is illegal in Offline Dominion so it is clearly illegal in Isotropic Dominion" and "X is not what Nationals will be testing for, so it's not what we should be testing for either" are 100% invalid, and myriad counterexamples abound that no one is complaining about.

Just want to point out that Isotropic Dominion is not equivalent to Online Dominion. Also though, from the very beginning of the Isotropic FAQ: "This is my implementation of the game Dominion" - dougz thinks it's dominion. DonaldX thinks it's Dominion. The vast majority of people in this thread think it's dominion. So you, and maybe Davio, and mostly no one else (I might be missing a couple, I grant), think that it is not Dominion.
I certainly don't think it is a *ridiculous* thing to say that it is dominion.

sjelkjd

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #423 on: July 04, 2012, 11:24:33 pm »
+1

I am only defeating the particular argument I quoted, and am not trying to settle the whole thing with the discard comparison.

Just that "Isotropic dominion uses the exact same rules as IRL dominion, and all players already know, at all times, to constantly preserve that" is not right.  If I ask you what's on top of your discard pile, for us to replicate offline dominion you need to tell me at least one card that could be there.  If you denied me access to that information IRL you would be cheating.  If you deny me access to that information on isotropic, you are not cheating.  Because it's a different variant of Dominion, one where you discard Trader and Watchtower to a Militia, and I still have no clue whether I should buy an IGG or not.

The argument, "theory forbid the use of the point tracker in this particular tournament" is not covered by my discard pile counterexample.  Only the argument "All offline rules apply online, and thus players in the online tournament need to preserve all the offline rules".
Well, I said "by default," as in, if the experience with that rule is significantly poorer(ie, the discard thing), then we should consider changing it, otherwise not.  I'm not saying preserve all the offline rules.  I'm saying do so if there is no good reason not to.  The idea that people can more easily cheat online does not strike me as a good reason to change the rules to allow the cheating.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]
« Reply #424 on: July 04, 2012, 11:28:40 pm »
+3

The idea that people can more easily cheat online does not strike me as a good reason to change the rules to allow the cheating.

This.  This, over and over again.
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