No lobbies
No lobbies. When you want to play a particular person it's easier to use that players name than to agree on meeting in "secret chamber III" or something like that.
Normally you want to play a game when you've entered the site, and then you press one of two big buttons: "Play against robots" or "Play against other players".
Next choice will be the number of players.
These will match you against suitable opponents. Of course you can finetune these automatch settings, but there should be fine defaults for new players.
Tables and chat
Matching gets you a table which is something more than a game. You can play several games after each other on the same table without having to get up and sit down again. The table has a chat, so you can chat before the game begins. When a multiplayer game can't be found at once some players may be seated beforehand. So when you are two players waiting for a third you can still chat while waiting, discussing whether you'd like to play on two instead, if anyone knows someone who might want to join, or just about the weather.
After a game there's an big button "play again against the same opponents". If everyone does, that happens. Others at the table can see when you press that.
A not as prominent option is to try the same board again, which is something players want to do sometimes. The same thing here, if everyone switches that on it happens, and you can see if others do.
You can still try to find a match outside the table while still sitting at it. You aren't leaving the table until you are moving to a new one (since there are no lobbies). That will lead to more chatting about the game afterwards while you are waiting for your next game, instead of people quitting as fast as they can to get back to searching the lobbies.
Two players waiting for a third should be able to play a two-player game instead, but no one of them should be forced into a two-player game if they only wanted to play three-player. So have such a switch "willing to play with what we have now" available for all players, starting the game if all or on, and resetting them off when someone joins the table.
Other matching
You can mark your opponents with "like to play with" and "don't like to play with", and matching will consider that next time. When you mark that you don't want to play with someone they don't get to know that. They aren't put on a list of players to avoid for anyone. It's just your decision, and could be for any reason. There are some drawbacks with this, but it needs to be done. You shouldn't be forced to play games you don't like. Maybe it is because they are rude, or too slow for you, or maybe it's your ex-boyfriend that you don't want to interact with. It doesn't matter if it's fair or not.
You can have friends, and see what other friends are logged in and challenge them to a game.
Rating
Just one rating, with the primary aim to aid automatch. So make sure that most games are played rated, and don't make it sound like it's something special. (No "Are you a real professional now so that you are ready to play with the 'pro' rating?", but rather the unratedness is just something that happens when playing with a fixed deck, like repeat games with the same kingdom.
That's the primary aim, but of course making top lists of top players is an important secondary aim as well.
Cards
There is not one player hosting a game. The table you get after matching is "neutral". When a game starts at the table the cards available are the cards anyone brought to the table (like it would do if they met afk and combined what they had). A basic card like Smithy that everyone "has" doesn't get a higher probability of appearing than a card that only one player at the table has – every possible card gets the same probability.
This way there is better reason to start buying cards even if you're not ready to buy them all. With the current setup there is not much reason to buy a single set if you don't play robots, because with few cards you will often play against someone with more cards anyway, so your cards won't be used. But with this scheme there is better reason to buy your favourite set to make sure that cards from it can appear in all games you play.
You wouldn't have to bring all your cards to the game. If you hate that Possession, move it to the cards-I-keep-at-home pile. (This avoid people not buying a particular set because there's one card there they don't want to get in their games as often.) You're not safe though – someone else might have brought it to the table. Probably only few players will bother taking away cards they've bought like that, but it can be very useful for some.
[some of the above is reused from a posting a made in 2013]