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[philosophyguy]

It's apparent that Goko Dominion games play a lot slower than Isotropic games. Since fast play is important to this community, I'd like to work collectively to identify a) specific elements of the Goko experience that are slowing down the game, and b) propose solutions to speed up gameplay.

One area that I noticed is that anything requiring dragging cards to a specific location is slow. Watchtower, for example, requires either dragging the gained card to the deck or trash. Can buttons be added for these options (and for anything else that requires choosing where to put a card)? The Pearl Diver interface is a good way to handle that.

[Polk5440]

Part of this is lack of familiarity with the interface and new cards (at least for me).

Not having a button option for Watchtower is noticeable, though, especially since there are other cards where you can either drag or click/use buttons. The option would be nice.

Whatever slow down there was a few months ago due to excessively sparkly/slow animations has seemed to have disappeared, so that's good.

Another area is the inconvenience of the log. If I miss what another player has purchased, it takes time to open the log and find out what happened. The fact that the log entry for the last play is in hard-to-read white text above the play area and disappears after a few seconds even if you have not done anything yet is also a problem for me. I would like that text to be a different color (yellow?) and remain showing until an action is taken. Also, it would be nice if the log could be kept permanently open in a pop-out window or something.

[werothegreat]

I've had a number of Goko games run under 10 minutes, so I don't think it's necessarily the platform itself.  Goko also has Dark Ages, which slows games down either by making it take more turns through its Attacks, or by making your turns take longer because of taking more time to think about whether or not you actually want to play a card, and how you want to play it if you do.

[DG]

Unfortunately the animations are slow but if you watch a turn it can still be confusing and details are lost. This can be a particular problem in multiplayer and I generally give up trying to track what is in each deck. In that respect, I think the areas of confusion should be resolved first and the game log improved. Elegant design could of course solve both problems at once (something more elegant than suddenly throwing your cards in the air and dropping them down again to inform that your hand is revealed).

[pinkymadigan]

My biggest problem with the speed is that either the important things are not slow enough when playing at the only acceptable speed (very fast) or the lack of perma-log.

If they are set in their ways that the log has to be pulled up and down and cannot be open all the time or integrated like a normal person would expect, then the amount of time cards pause as they are gained/trashed/etc when they are magnified needs a floor, no matter what speed you play at (like the Ascension app).

Sometime you see a green flash at the end of an opponents turn, check the numbers of the piles and realize you've just lost count of the VPs somehow and have no idea what was bought despite having a firm grasp on it a few seconds ago.

[Polk5440]

My biggest problem with the speed is that either the important things are not slow enough when playing at the only acceptable speed (very fast) or the lack of perma-log.

Wow. I've been playing on normal (which I think was the old fast?). I can't think any faster than that....

[Donald X.]

My biggest problem with the speed is that either the important things are not slow enough when playing at the only acceptable speed (very fast) or the lack of perma-log.

If they are set in their ways that the log has to be pulled up and down and cannot be open all the time or integrated like a normal person would expect, then the amount of time cards pause as they are gained/trashed/etc when they are magnified needs a floor, no matter what speed you play at (like the Ascension app).

Sometime you see a green flash at the end of an opponents turn, check the numbers of the piles and realize you've just lost count of the VPs somehow and have no idea what was bought despite having a firm grasp on it a few seconds ago.

I play on fast, switching to very fast only when there are 2-3 bots. On fast the speed for gaining Ruins etc., is a little slower than I'd like. On very fast you can't really tell what's going on, but I'm not sure I'd change it. Maybe card gains and Knights etc. could be slightly slower.

They just answered a question about the log, it sounded like they'd someday have one on the same screen for people playing on PC's.

With 2 players, if you count how many Provinces you have, you can figure out how many they have.

[Jacob marley]

Greetings all, I'm finally joining after much lurking.

While I agree with the OP that speed is valued by the Iso community, I don't feel that Goko particularly needs to prioritize speeding up the game.  It already moves about as fast as I can think/read, adn I would not want it accelerated just for the sake of speed. 

I do agree that more buttons would be nice, but this is more of an ease of play/idiot proofing measure than a speed one.

Having watched a number of WW's (and others) vids I find myself thinking that thinking at that speed just is not me. 

That's in fact one of the main reasons that I never got involved in Iso.  I tried it once, and (owning only Base and Prosperity at the time) while trying to figure out what the cards in the kingdom did, started getting snarky comments about how slow I was being after less than 30 seconds or so.  I just quit and never went back.

I have no problem with the pace of the game on Goko, and it seems that by and large other people don't complain unless there is a clear delay.  I've only ever had complaints when there is a legitimate lag/freezing problem with the server.

I'd hate for Goko to move in the direction of players valuing speed to the point of being rude to a player who may have many fewer games experience just because they are taking more time.

[pinkymadigan]

With 2 players, if you count how many Provinces you have, you can figure out how many they have.

My problem comes when I see green, but don't notice the numbers change. Then I have to figure out if something bad just happened, open the log, figure out what that green flash was, then I lose my flow.

[Donald X.]

With 2 players, if you count how many Provinces you have, you can figure out how many they have.

My problem comes when I see green, but don't notice the numbers change. Then I have to figure out if something bad just happened, open the log, figure out what that green flash was, then I lose my flow.

You don't need to see the numbers change. Anything you don't have, they must have, barring games where VP cards are getting Swindled or what have you.

[werothegreat]

With 2 players, if you count how many Provinces you have, you can figure out how many they have.

My problem comes when I see green, but don't notice the numbers change. Then I have to figure out if something bad just happened, open the log, figure out what that green flash was, then I lose my flow.

See, this is where I find it helpful talking to myself in my commentary videos - I find myself keeping track of all the Victory cards bought better - you may have noticed some of my Bishop games involve me trying to figure exactly how ahead I am.

[Donald X.]

See, this is where I find it helpful talking to myself in my commentary videos - I find myself keeping track of all the Victory cards bought better - you may have noticed some of my Bishop games involve me trying to figure exactly how ahead I am.

Yes, when I want to remember the score in a Goko game, I say it out loud.

[Drab Emordnilap]

You don't need to see the numbers change. Anything you don't have, they must have, barring games where VP cards are getting Swindled or what have you.

Well, some players like to play games with more than one opponent, after all. 

[Donald X.]

You don't need to see the numbers change. Anything you don't have, they must have, barring games where VP cards are getting Swindled or what have you.

Well, some players like to play games with more than one opponent, after all. 

In games with 4-5 players, I don't bother tracking the score; I'm not passing up on the last Province even if I know I'm losing, because man it's not getting any better. In a 3-player game I usually don't track the score but might. However we are specifically talking about games on Goko. In a 3-player bot game on Goko I am for sure not tracking the scores of individual bots, and with non-bots I'll play on fast and have plenty of time to see what everyone buys.