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[blueblimp]

However, one thing I always have a hard time understanding is why some people prefer not to have point counters even in a pure online setting. I guess I just don't understand what part of memory game is fun, especially comparing to other aspects of Dominion.

One reason could be that having a memory game forces you to choose what to spend your memory on. You can't remember full deck contents, so you need to identify key splits and counts and remember only those. That's definitely a skill.

Another reason is that it can be interesting for a game to require a mixture of skills. Lots of people like Starcraft because it requires a mix of thinking and fast clicking. I'm not a fan of the clicking part myself, but I can see where these people are coming from.

[Kirian]

All I want are the following few things:

1. For my position to be respected, as I respect those who prefer memory-intensive Dominion.

You want us to respect what some consider to be unethical or cheating.  Gotcha.

2. To educate those who have misconceptions about why people like me enjoy extension-Dominion.

Please go post it in the Variants subforum.  It's there for a reason.

3. To find and/or help create like minded players, via my forum posts and commentary videos, so that I have a larger pool of like-minded players to compete with.

And I sincerely hope that doesn't happen.

I wish everyone didn't have to get so mad...

I didn't start the cheating.

[Personman]

Once again, though I'm getting a bit tired of it: you can always avoid playing a game with the extension, either by disabling it or choosing not to play with players who have the ""Auto▼Count" status. No one is trying to deceive you. We are just trying to play the game we love. Please stop calling us cheaters.

3. To find and/or help create like minded players, via my forum posts and commentary videos, so that I have a larger pool of like-minded players to compete with.

And I sincerely hope that doesn't happen.

... are there so few Dominion players in the world that you are concerned that I will steal them all from you? Your position is already the majority. Why must you maliciously wish me to be unable to find opponents I will enjoy playing against? Live and let live...

Oh, and re your earlier contention that the extension provides 5 free isotropic levels: I challenge you to two sets of ten dominion games, one in which neither of us uses the counter, and one in which only you do. Dominion is variant enough that I don't want to make a claim about the actual difference in games won, but I believe strongly that after playing those games you will revise your estimate to perhaps 1/10 of a level, if that. I don't play with it because it's an advantage, I play with it because it's more fun.

[Donald X.]

With all due respect, I was not asking you to talk sense into me.

And I didn't ask you to ask me! I get to reply to posts, I am registered in the forums and everything.

I worry that I am slipping into a persecution complex here, but I am really reading this as "HEY EVERYONE I MADE THIS GAME SO MY OPINION IS THE BEST, THIS OTHER GUY IS CRAZY AND WRONG LOL". I want to believe that you are above that, so I hope you can explain to me what I was meant to take away from your post, other than being made the target of a witchhunt by the most high-profile member of the community. I really am not attempting to force my opinions on anyone else. All I want are the following few things:

If people think I am just posting to throw my weight around, that's just them being who they are; it's not going to convince me not to post in forums to save them from feeling oppressed. Man I would link you to some BGN article comments where this lunatic tried to argue that game designers should be separated from reality so that no-one would be affected by anything they might say about their games (man maybe you could look it up on the wayback machine). Anyway whatever, you reading it that way just backs up my read on you, which I'll get to in a minute.

What you were meant to take away from my post was, that you, Personman, should go to the website we refer to as BGG, and post about this issue there, and then people would show up and tell you how foolish you were, and this would save me lots of time, whether you were swayed by them or not.

What other people were meant to take away from my post - I didn't send you a private message, and wasn't just posting for you - was, that there are people who see that your argument was clearly nonsense. I do not like to see nonsense just sitting there, I feel like someone might see it and think "oh, no-one protested, I guess people believe this?"

1. For my position to be respected, as I respect those who prefer memory-intensive Dominion.

2. To educate those who have misconceptions about why people like me enjoy extension-Dominion.

3. To find and/or help create like minded players, via my forum posts and commentary videos, so that I have a larger pool of like-minded players to compete with.

But these have nothing to do with your post, which was about using awful reasoning to justify whatever you were going to believe anyway. It had zilch to do with "I like using a point-counter, is that so wrong." Liking point-counters is fine.

If I were trying to argue about this with you, I would start by explaining the cognitive biases. That is what I think of your argument.

[Personman]

Thanks for your levelheaded reply. Sorry I was a bit accusatory, I really was feeling a bit set-upon from all sides.

I certainly don't think you should refrain from posting in the forums! I think it is lovely that you post in the forums. I just wish you would do it with more substance and tact than your first post contained (and which your second demonstrates you are more than capable of).

I already indicated in my own post that I was aware of the potential cognitive bias, and asked for external input aside from "Really?" and "That's cuckoo", which is all I've heard so far. I am not asking you to argue with me, and I do not think that it is my responsibility to post elsewhere in order to "save you time". I am asking you not to insult my intelligence publicly without backing yourself up at all.

I've put forward what still seems to me like a pretty well-reasoned defense of the initial post you took issue with. A primary point of divergence for people seems to be that they are more trusting of internet strangers than I am. If that is the same reason you think I am "cuckoo", then at least I will understand where you are coming from. I don't think anyone can convince me that all isotropic players are somehow immune to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, but at least I can understand why other people might believe they are, and we can have a polite agreement to disagree.

I'm not aware of any other counterpoints to the arguments I made. If there are some, I would like to know about them. But again, I am in no way demanding your or anyone else's time or energy. Anyone who feels like trying to change my mind or help me see it their way is welcome to, and I am eager to listen... at least once we move past insults & incredulity.

[Young Nick]

So a few quick notes seeing as I have internet at home for the first time in a while...

I started using the add-on after learning about the April 1 update. You can see me asking "for this magical extension" in the thread that ultimately got locked about verification failed (refer to blueblimp's summary). I started using it only because I thought it would make the game less stressful for me. In fact it did, though because I paid so much attention to who had how much of what, I kind of forget about what was left in the supply. I firmly believe that I have played several games with the add-on worse than had I never gotten it. I now use it, but don't care one way or the other.

I firmly believe that if one player is using it, s/he has a definite advantage over an opponent who is not, even if said opponent types !details at the start of every turn. The information is just so much easier to process when you run the add-on.

Though, I disagree with Persoman's line of logic about it turning us into cheaters if we outlaw it, I still do not agree with the likes of Kirian. Calling someone a cheater is a very dangerous accusation, one that I think is unjustified. And while I respect that he runs his own tournaments and thus can establish his own rules, I think if all agree to use it...I can't see why it should be banned.

Saying that one will not play with others who use the add-on seems unfairly harsh. I now am afraid to use it knowing that I may miss out on games because of it.

I mean, we are all playing to have a good time, and typing !disable doesn't seem too harsh, even if you don't ask permission beforehand.

More than anything else, I, a long-time non-add-on player, do not want others to view add-on users as cheaters. This seems wrong.

[Kirian]

Why must you maliciously wish me to be unable to find opponents I will enjoy playing against? Live and let live...

I guess I only wish that so long as you make it clear to those opponents that you are no longer playing Dominion.

Oh, and re your earlier contention that the extension provides 5 free isotropic levels: I challenge you to two sets of ten dominion games, one in which neither of us uses the counter, and one in which only you do. Dominion is variant enough that I don't want to make a claim about the actual difference in games won, but I believe strongly that after playing those games you will revise your estimate to perhaps 1/10 of a level, if that. I don't play with it because it's an advantage, I play with it because it's more fun.

That would require me to install that script on my machine.  Not going to happen.

[Personman]

Though, I disagree with Persoman's line of logic about it turning us into cheaters if we outlaw it

Hmm. I was trying to be very technical and formal, and I think I overstated that part of my case. I don't really think it will "turn us into cheaters". Though it is unquestionably a pressure in that direction, most honest people remain honest even under mild pressure. I think really the more likely case is that there are some people who will use it whether it is legal or not, and it's sad to give them an advantage.

I guess I only wish that so long as you make it clear to those opponents that you are no longer playing Dominion.

Thanks for backtracking on that, but seriously: I think this makes four times that I have talked about how no one is being deceived...

That would require me to install that script on my machine.  Not going to happen.

lol. It doesn't bite.

[blueblimp]

More than anything else, I, a long-time non-add-on player, do not want others to view add-on users as cheaters. This seems wrong.

Yeah, and actually I'm a bit surprised at the general reaction. I figured that, since people don't type "!details" very often, and since the point counter extension has been freely available for ages and announces its URL when the game starts, that most people not using it just didn't care, except for those who would decline auto-match when seeing the status message.

The first time the card counts appeared next to the supply, I actually found it annoying. I liked the extension because it shows up-to-date scores, instead of just what you had at the beginning of the turn. The card counts seemed not nearly as helpful as knowing whether I can safely 3-pile. In fact, I still believe this is true for most kingdoms.

So to conclude, if I have been cheating by openly using the point counter extension, then I only wish I had been cheating in a way that would actually improve my leaderboard rank, Paralyzed-style.

[Mazwa]

It does seem like the least Kirian could do is install the addon and see for himself what type of advantage it provides before labeling 20% of the community cheaters with such strong language.  I'm saying 20% because the addon has 1500 users and there's 8000 on the leaderboard.  Wouldn't shock me if that 1500 skewed towards the higher end of rankings and towards those players who played more games, so the game-weighted average might even be higher than 20%.

The add-on just doesn't matter in the majority of everyday (2 player) dominion.  I sometimes sign in on firefox by mistake, and might not notice for a full game that I don't have the addon available.  If you play a lot of dominion, you are going to remember all your important cards, and as tim said earlier in the thread, by subtraction, you know what your opponent holds.

I suppose how much it really matters varies from person to person, but for me personally, it really only helps with vineyards, silk roads, sabateur, or swindler on the board.

The recent 4 person qualifier is a different story, however.  I found it extremely helpful, because I cannot remember what 4 different people are buying, particularly when people are playing slowly and the game drags out and approaches 30 minutes in length.  So I can understand the opposition to using it in that format.

And to agree with what blueblimp just said, its baffling to see such surprised indignation at the use of the addon, considering that if you play a lot, you see the link to the addon spammed in your chat window several times a day.  The reaction we're seeing suggests that all this cheating was going on behind everyone's back, when in fact we link the addon at the start of every match and its only a 1-click install.

[Donald X.]

I am not asking you to argue with me, and I do not think that it is my responsibility to post elsewhere in order to "save you time".

It is not your responsibility. It is my advice that you do it though, if you really want to know how nonsensical that post was. Of course people in general do not wish to know such things. There are all sorts of advantages to believing false things. And who knows, maybe people wouldn't spend time on you at BGG, or maybe someone will here.

I have to stick to not arguing out that thing line by line, because it will take hours over days and not get anywhere, and it's not worth it to me. You not being satisfied with that can't dissuade me; man I have been down that road. I once participated in a thread that went hundreds of pages arguing about whether or not point nine repeating decimal is equal to one. You can tell yourself how crazy and unlike you that is, but your post is more of that crazy. So, the important thing to me is for people to see, immediately following your awful reasoning, someone calling it out. And the people who don't have anything invested in your conclusion will work out the problems with your argument to the degree that they want to.

[Kirian]

It does seem like the least Kirian could do is install the addon and see for himself what type of advantage it provides before labeling 20% of the community cheaters with such strong language.

Again, on principle, I will not install the addon.  I can see what it does from screenshots now; I really don't need anything else.

And to agree with what blueblimp just said, its baffling to see such surprised indignation at the use of the addon-on, considering that if you play a lot, you see the link to the add-on spammed in your chat window several times a day.  The reaction we're seeing suggests that all this cheating was going on behind everyone's back, when in fact we link the add-on at the start of every match and its only a 1-click install.

The indignation was because most of us didn't realize what the addon user could actually see.  We assumed you needed to type !details to see, well, all of the details.  No one except users had any idea that those users could see basically everything about another player's deck.

As for it being a one-click install, not everyone uses Chrome.

As for it being cheating, it gave players using it an advantage that non-users didn't even know about until recently--a couple of weeks ago.  Blueblimp's screenshot and Personman's videos made everything suddenly a lot clearer to us non-users.

[blueblimp]

The extension in the Chrome web store. The screenshots haven't been updated with the new UI (and they actually date from before even "!details" existed), so maybe that is the issue. Apparently I was wrong about which version introduced the card count UI:

== v5.0 ==
- Added UI for displaying all cards owned by all players.
- Several bug fixes.

The github commit for v5.0 was on Feb 16th, 2012, so that's a while ago now.

[Robz888]

See, I just didn't know that your opponent could know deck details without hitting !status. That's the big reason to me why it's such a huge revelation and deception. Because, I don't keep track of that stuff very well (I'm no mental math guy), and the !status directions are sort of hard to read. So I always assumed that we both just didn't know deck details for sure if no one had done !status.

Seeing those numbers next to the piles of who bought what is absolutely infuriating.

[timchen]

Donald, I have to disagree on you here.

if it takes you hours over days and not get anywhere, it is probably not that obvious. For your example of whether .99999 equals 1, you can have a 2-3 line proof for it. Whether people take it is another issue, but you can have it written there, instead of saying "I don't want to waste my time here because while my argument is simple and clear you won't accept it."

Really, if you do think what he said is ridiculous and crazy (as I said I think it is exaggerated but not unreasonable), just point it out. Whether he takes it or not is another issue.

[Davio]

This discussion reminds me of the discussion about the use of tracking software for poker rooms. I believe the consensus was that tracking software was allowed, but exchanging hand histories with other players is illegal or highly unethical (they can't enforce this of course).

For this discussion to have any meaning, we must firstly accept this fact: Online Dominion is not the same as offline Dominion. Trying to make the online version a perfect copy of the offline version is an effort in futility. Tools like the Point Counter Extension will always exist and they will always be used.

I believe that banning such tools will not stop them from being used, in fact they would be driven underground and would not give any notice to the other players anymore in the form of: "Hey, I'm using the point counter." They would just be silent.

It's important to note that these extensions only use information that's available to yourself and takes information from other players that's publicly available. I would consider it cheating if it somehow knew what everyone passed with Masquerade.

So banning the extension doesn't really do anything. If you're so concerned about how many cards each player has, you could just write it down and waste everyone's time. This means we kind of have to accept the point counter extension and moreover I believe that it should be included in Isotropic and turned on if one player opts in.

I know this is kind of a bold statement, but again, we're talking about online Dominion here, not offline. There's nothing stopping your from secretly writing everything down behind your computer so you'll know where everyone is at. You could go even further and write down which cards you have seen your opponents play so you can guess what's left in their decks with a higher degree of certainty. I believe this is something the extension doesn't yet offer.

The only thing the extension does is make it easier for a player to gather all the info he would otherwise have to write down. And I think this is a good thing, as it keeps the game going.


Now let me just address the boo yellers by saying that I do not condone pen and paper during a live game. Again, because it slows the game down and because I believe that keeping all the points and cards in your head is a skill that should be tested during a high level live game.

You simply can't enforce this during online play, so we might as well accept it and regulate it.

[timchen]

See, I just didn't know that your opponent could know deck details without hitting !status. That's the big reason to me why it's such a huge revelation and deception. Because, I don't keep track of that stuff very well (I'm no mental math guy), and the !status directions are sort of hard to read. So I always assumed that we both just didn't know deck details for sure if no one had done !status.

Seeing those numbers next to the piles of who bought what is absolutely infuriating.

This is quite interesting. My guess is that you will find point counter users usually track those relatively well even without point counter (in a 2p game anyway) whereas it is people who have more problem tracking those themselves are complaining.

[Robz888]

See, I just didn't know that your opponent could know deck details without hitting !status. That's the big reason to me why it's such a huge revelation and deception. Because, I don't keep track of that stuff very well (I'm no mental math guy), and the !status directions are sort of hard to read. So I always assumed that we both just didn't know deck details for sure if no one had done !status.

Seeing those numbers next to the piles of who bought what is absolutely infuriating.

This is quite interesting. My guess is that you will find point counter users usually track those relatively well even without point counter (in a 2p game anyway) whereas it is people who have more problem tracking those themselves are complaining.

Both players need the numbers next to the supply piles for the game to be fair. The info needs to presented to the 2 people in the same fashion, or else it's simply not a fair game. If you get to keep track of the score on pen and paper, and I have to chisel the score into a stone tablet, you have an advantage, don't you?

[Davio]

See, I just didn't know that your opponent could know deck details without hitting !status. That's the big reason to me why it's such a huge revelation and deception. Because, I don't keep track of that stuff very well (I'm no mental math guy), and the !status directions are sort of hard to read. So I always assumed that we both just didn't know deck details for sure if no one had done !status.

Seeing those numbers next to the piles of who bought what is absolutely infuriating.

This is quite interesting. My guess is that you will find point counter users usually track those relatively well even without point counter (in a 2p game anyway) whereas it is people who have more problem tracking those themselves are complaining.

Both players need the numbers next to the supply piles for the game to be fair. The info needs to presented to the 2 people in the same fashion, or else it's simply not a fair game. If you get to keep track of the score on pen and paper, and I have to chisel the score into a stone tablet, you have an advantage, don't you?

Not if he's not stopping you from grabbing pen and paper or stopping your from programming an off-line counter on your computer as I have done in the past.

[Young Nick]

Both players need the numbers next to the supply piles for the game to be fair. The info needs to presented to the 2 people in the same fashion, or else it's simply not a fair game. If you get to keep track of the score on pen and paper, and I have to chisel the score into a stone tablet, you have an advantage, don't you?

I agree with this, but it's hard to argue that people are cheating when they use the add-on. Is anyone really using the add-on maliciously? I was in your same boat, Robz888, until just a week or two ago. It doesn't make that big of a difference, let me tell you. It is helpful, undeniably so, but nothing like some are making it out to be.

[Robz888]

See, I just didn't know that your opponent could know deck details without hitting !status. That's the big reason to me why it's such a huge revelation and deception. Because, I don't keep track of that stuff very well (I'm no mental math guy), and the !status directions are sort of hard to read. So I always assumed that we both just didn't know deck details for sure if no one had done !status.

Seeing those numbers next to the piles of who bought what is absolutely infuriating.

This is quite interesting. My guess is that you will find point counter users usually track those relatively well even without point counter (in a 2p game anyway) whereas it is people who have more problem tracking those themselves are complaining.

Both players need the numbers next to the supply piles for the game to be fair. The info needs to presented to the 2 people in the same fashion, or else it's simply not a fair game. If you get to keep track of the score on pen and paper, and I have to chisel the score into a stone tablet, you have an advantage, don't you?

Not if he's not stopping you from grabbing pen and paper or stopping your from programming an off-line counter on your computer as I have done in the past.

Well, up until now, I thought we were both using stone tablet and chisel.

[Robz888]

Both players need the numbers next to the supply piles for the game to be fair. The info needs to presented to the 2 people in the same fashion, or else it's simply not a fair game. If you get to keep track of the score on pen and paper, and I have to chisel the score into a stone tablet, you have an advantage, don't you?

I agree with this, but it's hard to argue that people are cheating when they use the add-on. Is anyone really using the add-on maliciously? I was in your same boat, Robz888, until just a week or two ago. It doesn't make that big of a difference, let me tell you. It is helpful, undeniably so, but nothing like some are making it out to be.

I don't think it's an enormous benefit, nor do I think most people using it were trying to purposefully malicious or deceitful. But it's a non-negligible advantage, I would say.

[DStu]

See, I just didn't know that your opponent could know deck details without hitting !status. That's the big reason to me why it's such a huge revelation and deception. Because, I don't keep track of that stuff very well (I'm no mental math guy), and the !status directions are sort of hard to read. So I always assumed that we both just didn't know deck details for sure if no one had done !status.

Seeing those numbers next to the piles of who bought what is absolutely infuriating.

This is quite interesting. My guess is that you will find point counter users usually track those relatively well even without point counter (in a 2p game anyway) whereas it is people who have more problem tracking those themselves are complaining.

Both players need the numbers next to the supply piles for the game to be fair. The info needs to presented to the 2 people in the same fashion, or else it's simply not a fair game. If you get to keep track of the score on pen and paper, and I have to chisel the score into a stone tablet, you have an advantage, don't you?

I think it's more important for me that other peoples browser addons can't mess with my computer than this...

[timchen]

Yes I think it's fair to say it is an advantage. So I understand people's surprise and anger when discovering this. However, toward the end, I think once you know, you can disable them if you don't like them, choose not to play with players that do not allow you to disable it, and finally if you don't care about the memory aspect of the game so much you can get it yourself. Don't see a major problem anywhere.

[Personman]

A really excellent resolution to the interface-based fairness concern would be for isotropic to offer this feature natively. As isotropic is no longer under active development given its impending replacement with the FunSockets client, this is unlikely. And as I said in the other thread, I'm quite willing to put my money where my mouth is with respect to FunSockets implementing this!