Now this is an avenue I'd be interested in hearing more about, and hell, perhaps Goko would too. Can we define "quality product for competitive Dominion play" in any readily-agreeable terms?
i can think of a bunch pretty quick, and others can probably add to this.
- speed. isotropic appears to be faster in just about every aspect. matchmaking and game play stand out, but you could lump the animations and disconnect/login problems to this as well.
- cost structure. the cost for all expansions has been argued to death in other threads. personally, it sounds high for the quality of the product i am receiving, but i have some disposable income so that is not a huge issue. i think that a subscription service would be better suited for competitive play though, as it would allow anyone with an account to then have full unrestricted access to all cards.
- expansion ownership. this builds directly off the last point. not everyone is going to have all of the expansions, so you are going to get a lopsided mix of games. we can of course start a side debate over whether fully randomized kingdoms are the way to play or not, but i think most would agree that competitive play limited to as few as 1-2 expansions isn't any better. nevermind the inherent advantages found when people can bias towards certain kingdoms, such as Obi Wan Bonogi and others biasing to Colony boards.
- interface. many have called for a more bare bones or text interface. something simpler, faster, and less distracting. it would be hard for me to picture gary kasparov honing his skills on battle chess for windows 3.0. you could arguably lump things like point/deck counters into this as well
- odds and ends. last i heard there was still no structure for determining 1P. last i heard goko planned to count disconnects differently when calculating levels. near impossibility of player organized tournaments with any consistency. colonies and shelters don't seem to be appearing appropriately, and i can only imagine what they are going to then cook up for black market.
The main advantages of Iso at this time, in my opinion, are speed of play and matchmaking. The latter didn't exist on Iso for its first year at least. And if we didn't have Iso to compare with, no one would call Goko slow.
of course, and the easy response to this is that iso was free so it is easier to put up with a lack of features. but it goes far beyond that. the existence of isotropic (and this community) was essentially a boatload of free market research, dos and don'ts, and design ideas. seriously. from isotropic and this community goko had free access to:
- a lowball estimate of their market size from forum member totals and isotropic users
- games played totals and lobby volumes for properly setting up their servers
- thoughts and opinions on pricing, both value and structure
- elements of isotropic that were liked and disliked, as well as oft-requested new features
- things the community desired enough to work and do on their own - point counter extensions, council room type data implementations, player pages, various achievements, modified logs, tournament structure and frequency, etc.
i am sure i could cook up a few more things but it's late so i will leave it at that. long story short, goko had free access to a host of information that loads of other startup companies would probably have to spend quite a bit of time and money on. they really had a chance to absolutely blow us away. instead, they have been working for 7 months past when they thought it was good enough for release and what they have to show for it is a product that many feel is still inferior to isotropic. and i'd bet all my upvotes that if isotropic had dark ages and the option of card art that this imbalance wouldn't even be close.
so what i'm getting at with all of this is that i find all of these arguments comparing goko to isotropic to be nonsensical. they had the benefit of a full staff and the option to learn from the existing product and to date they have failed to take advantage of it.
Out of interest, does anyone have thoughts on what other ways Iso is better?
price, speed, and matchmaking are the obvious ones, just as card art and Dark Ages are the easy ways Goko has the edge. i would also toss out: chat format, ease of alternate accounts, blinking tabs/audio cues for turn and interaction cues, built in point counter, veto mode option, lobby formatting, better response to disconnects, better response to timeouts, and text mode option.