Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Online at Shuffle iT => Dominion General Discussion => Goko Dominion Online => Topic started by: Davio on July 03, 2013, 03:29:58 am
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Okay, I've played a fairly decent amount of games on Goko at this point, so time to reflect on its UI.
Let me start by saying: It's not thát bad and the issues I have can be fixed quite simply.
The problems I have resolve around a couple of key issues:
1. It doesn't protect against accidental double clicks.
This is by far the biggest problem.
Let's say Swindler is your last action card, you play it and you're opponent trashes a Copper, hooray! Excited, you click on Curse, but you accidentally double clicked, entered the buy phase and bought yourself a Curse as well. This is bad, horrible even, maybe you had $8 for a Province!
The positioning of the buttons is also very awkward. The "End Turn" button appears in the same place as "End Actions". So let's say you had an action card you didn't want to play, click End Actions, accidental double click and you bought nothing!
There are some other buttons awkwardly placed like that.
Accidental single clicking is also an issue, especially when you use a touchpad instead of a mouse, but I don't have that much problems with it. Usually I pick the right cards.
2. Dragging and dropping is finicky
Choosing between putting something on your deck and discarding it is a real hassle. The positions of the decks are so small and you have to watch for little green arrows to appear to make sure you've got the right one. With Watchtower you have to move your mouse all the way to the trash. Why not have a couple of buttons "Discard, Put On Top, Trash" or something?
3. It doesn't prevent stupidity, because it wasn't clear what was resolving
Okay, this might be more of a human problem since you just have to pay attention, but I can recall a couple of times where I've thought I wasn't trashing anymore and ended up trashing some good cards. Or when I thought I clicked "Done Discarding" when I hadn't. Hamlet and Storeroom are notable culprits as you get to discard twice. I've also had turns where I thought it was my turn and there was still an opponent's Bishop waiting for me to trash something.
4. It moves cards in your hand after you've revealed them
This is more of an annoyance, but say you're Moat is to the left or in the middle, after you revealed it once, it's shuffled over to the right. So you can't click the same location to reveal it the second time.
5. The chat window
I hate how this thing keeps popping up all the time, just have a "+1" icon or something similar layed over the button to open the chat. And I hate how it's over the Continue button at the end of the game.
How to fix these issues? Well, most can be fixed by providing some sort of undo option when that's possible and doesn't have any strategic impact. Like, you never want to allow undo-ing playing actions, but you might allow a player to undo playing his treasures for Mint and Grand Market etc.
Another is to just add little improvements to the positioning of some elements to make it less accident-prone. Having the End Actions/End Turn buttons in the same place is a bad idea. Or when you're doing something to a lot of cards at once (trashing, discarding), add them to a little box (like the "Reveal" box) first, click "Done" and only then discard or trash them.
What do you guys think?
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6. It doesn't show how much money you got in hand.
When playing engines you often end with many cards in your hand but it's not displayed how much your money cards are worth. It's a waste of time that you have to count them on your own.
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The cards dance around the screen too much when showing information and once the cards have stopped dancing the information is gone. This means that the user has to actively watch for information rather than read it as required. The dancing cards can be wearing on the eyes, especially when the focus of your attention is getting moved around. It becomes very difficult to track multiplayer events since you lose track of who's cards are being dragged left, right, and center.
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Well, I'm using the extension so I can just read back the log.
Of course, they could have thought of such a thing themselves.
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Good list. I'd add that there's too much back-and-forth. When discarding cards, trashing cards, putting cards back, etc., the resulting change to game state is simultaneous, so the choice should be too. Instead I click one, there's a round trip to the server, the cards move around, and only then do I get to click the next one, etc. Gets annoying in some games.
One time #3 hit me: I once had $8 in hand and clicked End Actions... only to discover I didn't have actions in hand and had clicked End Turn. Rage-resign ensued. :)
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6. It doesn't show how much money you got in hand.
When playing engines you often end with many cards in your hand but it's not displayed how much your money cards are worth. It's a waste of time that you have to count them on your own.
It's almost like you're playing with real cards! Oh no! ::)
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I think that, since the update, the continue button has been moved to the side. Or at least, it has o the iPad.
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6. It doesn't show how much money you got in hand.
When playing engines you often end with many cards in your hand but it's not displayed how much your money cards are worth. It's a waste of time that you have to count them on your own.
It's almost like you're playing with real cards! Oh no! ::)
Wouldn't it be cool if you had to shuffle your deck manually, with a mouse gesture or some button smashing or something?
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The biggest thing that bothers me is dragging to piles. Dragging with Watchtower is just annoying.. and I think there is some card that gives you the option to drag to either your discard pile or the top of the deck. That's really obnoxious since it can be hard to control with, say, a touch pad.
That and I *consistently* discard the cards I want to keep with Cartographer. But that's mostly me being stupid.
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The biggest thing that bothers me is dragging to piles. Dragging with Watchtower is just annoying.. and I think there is some card that gives you the option to drag to either your discard pile or the top of the deck. That's really obnoxious since it can be hard to control with, say, a touch pad.
That's Navigator. It also has a "Discard" button to trick you into thinking that you can't drag them to your discard pile.
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I think that, since the update, the continue button has been moved to the side. Or at least, it has o the iPad.
Yes, it has!
Let's party!
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6. It doesn't show how much money you got in hand.
When playing engines you often end with many cards in your hand but it's not displayed how much your money cards are worth. It's a waste of time that you have to count them on your own.
It's almost like you're playing with real cards! Oh no! ::)
Wouldn't it be cool if you had to shuffle your deck manually, with a mouse gesture or some button smashing or something?
No. No it would not.
(This will probably happen on iOS...shake your device to shuffle! Argh.)
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6. It doesn't show how much money you got in hand.
When playing engines you often end with many cards in your hand but it's not displayed how much your money cards are worth. It's a waste of time that you have to count them on your own.
It's almost like you're playing with real cards! Oh no! ::)
Wouldn't it be cool if you had to shuffle your deck manually, with a mouse gesture or some button smashing or something?
Hopefully they'll eventually update it with the following features to make it feel more like real-life play:
1. You can only play against opponents who are in the same room as you.
2. When starting a game, you must wait 5 minutes to simulate each pile of cards being found from the collection of cards you own, and put out to be available this game. Of course, if you play multiple games in a row, subsequent games will only take 3 minutes instead of 5 because the basic supply cards will already be out.
3. At the end of a game, before starting a new game, you must wait a few minutes to simulate cards being put away.
4. There should be no text log whatsoever, but your opponent should be expected to use the chat window to explain what he's doing as he does it.
5. At the end of a game, it won't display who is the winner and how many points each player had. Rather, it will present the contents of your deck to you, and you can sift through and add up the victory points yourself.
6. It won't display the number of actions/coins/buys you have available during your turn.
7. It will let you click on any card to be purchased no matter how much money you have available. If you try to purchase a card that you cannot afford, it is up to your opponent to remind you that you made a mistake.
Yes, simulating real-life play should be Goko's top priority for making a good online product.
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I was just saying that not saying how much money you have in hand is not that big of a deal.
Jeez.
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I was just saying that not saying how much money you have in hand is not that big of a deal.
Jeez.
Hope you didn't take offense; all in good fun! :)
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6. It doesn't show how much money you got in hand.
When playing engines you often end with many cards in your hand but it's not displayed how much your money cards are worth. It's a waste of time that you have to count them on your own.
It's almost like you're playing with real cards! Oh no! ::)
Wouldn't it be cool if you had to shuffle your deck manually, with a mouse gesture or some button smashing or something?
Hopefully they'll eventually update it with the following features to make it feel more like real-life play:
1. You can only play against opponents who are in the same room as you.
2. When starting a game, you must wait 5 minutes to simulate each pile of cards being found from the collection of cards you own, and put out to be available this game. Of course, if you play multiple games in a row, subsequent games will only take 3 minutes instead of 5 because the basic supply cards will already be out.
3. At the end of a game, before starting a new game, you must wait a few minutes to simulate cards being put away.
4. There should be no text log whatsoever, but your opponent should be expected to use the chat window to explain what he's doing as he does it.
5. At the end of a game, it won't display who is the winner and how many points each player had. Rather, it will present the contents of your deck to you, and you can sift through and add up the victory points yourself.
6. It won't display the number of actions/coins/buys you have available during your turn.
7. It will let you click on any card to be purchased no matter how much money you have available. If you try to purchase a card that you cannot afford, it is up to your opponent to remind you that you made a mistake.
Yes, simulating real-life play should be Goko's top priority for making a good online product.
I don't really think it would be possible for Goko to introduce more delays in playing.
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6. It doesn't show how much money you got in hand.
When playing engines you often end with many cards in your hand but it's not displayed how much your money cards are worth. It's a waste of time that you have to count them on your own.
It's almost like you're playing with real cards! Oh no! ::)
Wouldn't it be cool if you had to shuffle your deck manually, with a mouse gesture or some button smashing or something?
Hopefully they'll eventually update it with the following features to make it feel more like real-life play:
1. You can only play against opponents who are in the same room as you.
2. When starting a game, you must wait 5 minutes to simulate each pile of cards being found from the collection of cards you own, and put out to be available this game. Of course, if you play multiple games in a row, subsequent games will only take 3 minutes instead of 5 because the basic supply cards will already be out.
3. At the end of a game, before starting a new game, you must wait a few minutes to simulate cards being put away.
4. There should be no text log whatsoever, but your opponent should be expected to use the chat window to explain what he's doing as he does it.
5. At the end of a game, it won't display who is the winner and how many points each player had. Rather, it will present the contents of your deck to you, and you can sift through and add up the victory points yourself.
6. It won't display the number of actions/coins/buys you have available during your turn.
7. It will let you click on any card to be purchased no matter how much money you have available. If you try to purchase a card that you cannot afford, it is up to your opponent to remind you that you made a mistake.
Yes, simulating real-life play should be Goko's top priority for making a good online product.
I don't really think it would be possible for Goko to introduce more delays in playing.
It's certainly possible - I'd hate to see them try.
Wait, Goko would be the ones trying? Please, try! ;)
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For me, one of the biggest culprits is Jack of All Trades. I don't know how many times I've played a village, played JoaT, and then clicked my next action, only to realize that I've just trashed it. One of the most stupid and infuriating things that happens to me, and completely avoidable with good UI
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Obviously Goko's UI exhibits a bias to Jack-BM.
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With Counterfeit, I don't know if this is a good idea any longer. Prior to Dark Ages, I can't imagine a practical reason to not play non-HoP treasure cards aside from the Grand Market limitation. Should you play Bank first or last? It's safe to assume last.
But now with Counterfeit, you can't just assume that the player is going to play it and get the money. And if he does play it, what will be trash?
That being said, I could see a running total of basic treasures. Let the player figure out in his head how much more he has if he plays that Hoard, Diadem, and Bank. Probably not something worth fixing—not when there are other things to work on.
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With Counterfeit, I don't know if this is a good idea any longer. Prior to Dark Ages, I can't imagine a practical reason to not play non-HoP treasure cards aside from the Grand Market limitation. Should you play Bank first or last? It's safe to assume last.
But now with Counterfeit, you can't just assume that the player is going to play it and get the money. And if he does play it, what will be trash?
I'm not sure I follow you. What "this" are you talking about?
And Counterfeit is not a big issue in my oppinion since the TR-ing/trashing isn't mandatory.
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5. The chat window
I hate how this thing keeps popping up all the time, just have a "+1" icon or something similar layed over the button to open the chat. And I hate how it's over the Continue button at the end of the game.
This one is probably my biggest peeve. Why would they put the chat window right over the cards you're trying to play? I hate it when I'm trying to consider my options for a big hand, and then my opponent says something - great, now I have to click to even see my hand again, because apparently seeing someone say "OMFG d00d ru still there??" is more important than the cards.
Also, for times you need to pull stuff out of the discard or trash, is there any way to actually see the faces of those cards? When the pile you're looking through gets big, it's pretty difficult to tell one card from another given only a tiny left-hand slice of the picture.
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5. The chat window
I hate how this thing keeps popping up all the time, just have a "+1" icon or something similar layed over the button to open the chat. And I hate how it's over the Continue button at the end of the game.
This one is probably my biggest peeve. Why would they put the chat window right over the cards you're trying to play? I hate it when I'm trying to consider my options for a big hand, and then my opponent says something - great, now I have to click to even see my hand again, because apparently seeing someone say "OMFG d00d ru still there??" is more important than the cards.
Also, for times you need to pull stuff out of the discard or trash, is there any way to actually see the faces of those cards? When the pile you're looking through gets big, it's pretty difficult to tell one card from another given only a tiny left-hand slice of the picture.
To go along with that, it can be pretty difficult to pick what you are top-decking with Schemes if you played a lot of actions. I've often found myself just guessing based on the order I think I played them in because I can't see artwork or anything on the cards. Would be nice to be able to stretch the pile or something.
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With Counterfeit, I don't know if this is a good idea any longer. Prior to Dark Ages, I can't imagine a practical reason to not play non-HoP treasure cards aside from the Grand Market limitation. Should you play Bank first or last? It's safe to assume last.
But now with Counterfeit, you can't just assume that the player is going to play it and get the money. And if he does play it, what will be trash?
I'm not sure I follow you. What "this" are you talking about?
And Counterfeit is not a big issue in my oppinion since the TR-ing/trashing isn't mandatory.
Sorry, forgot to include quote. I was referring to contention #6.
I forgot that Counterfeit's trashing is not mandatory. Never mind.
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re: the trash/discard/play stuff: am I the only one who's noticed the different glowing edges? Red = if you click, you'll trash this card, orange = discard, blue = play. There's text above your hand, too.
The UI really isn't that bad. I'd only move the "End Your Turn" thing over to the left side of the play area to prevent misclicks, and use buttons instead of dragging for trash/discard/top deck for certain cards. Dragging is impossible with a touchpad.
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re: the trash/discard/play stuff: am I the only one who's noticed the different glowing edges? Red = if you click, you'll trash this card, orange = discard, blue = play. There's text above your hand, too.
No, I'm pretty sure everyone has noticed them. It's something you notice on your opponent's turn, but having a Mountebank in hand and still having an action left after playing a JoaT is so exciting it's easy to miss.
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re: the trash/discard/play stuff: am I the only one who's noticed the different glowing edges? Red = if you click, you'll trash this card, orange = discard, blue = play. There's text above your hand, too.
"When the orange LED light is illuminated, your universal remote is in TV mode. The blue light means DVD mode. The red light means Grenade mode."
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I've brought this up before (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=7432.msg211319#msg211319) and nobody seemed to care then. I didn't get a response from Goko saying they didn't care, they just... didn't care.
Yeah I've gotten much better about it, but it still happens, and it happens ALL THE TIME to people who are new to Goko. I maintain that my idea is amazing and wouldn't be that hard to implement. Someone, please give me some evidence that there's any reason at all to think this is a bad idea. Clicking on a card in your hand can only mean that you're playing it.
"You'll get used to it" is not an excuse for designing a bad UI.
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I thought about this recently as well.
Btw, I'm really annoyed with Goko ignoring threads on getsatisfaction. It's bad enough they take ages to fix stuff, but they could at least drop down a quick comment like "We are now aware of the problem and will fix it when we get to. Thank you"
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Thank you for your support. +1 for you, sir. ;D
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I'm guessing it would be possible for them to change the cursor/pointer to a dustbin or something when you are trashing cards?
If you were to create a deliberately confusing interface you would have a mouse click on the same item do different things at different times. I'm not expecting any changes from Goko though since I suspect they think that Dominion is nearly complete and needs no extra work. The community probably feels differently.
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Prior to Dark Ages, I can't imagine a practical reason to not play non-HoP treasure cards aside from the Grand Market limitation.
1) Contraband.
2) You don't want to reveal information about cards in your hand that you don't need to use.
3) You want to remodel one of them with a Farmland buy.
4) You want to save some particular treasures for next turn with a Mandarin buy.
5) You want to trash some particular treasures with a Mint buy.
6) You want to save some particular treasures from being topdecked by HoP gaining a Mandarin, so that you can trash them with a Mint buy.
7) You don't want to trigger a reshuffle, or skip past some good cards, with Venture or Loan.
8) You are worried about three-piling with Talisman or Hoard, so you don't want the extra gain.
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Prior to Dark Ages, I can't imagine a practical reason to not play non-HoP treasure cards aside from the Grand Market limitation.
1) Contraband.
2) You don't want to reveal information about cards in your hand that you don't need to use.
3) You want to remodel one of them with a Farmland buy.
4) You want to save some particular treasures for next turn with a Mandarin buy.
5) You want to trash some particular treasures with a Mint buy.
6) You want to save some particular treasures from being topdecked by HoP gaining a Mandarin, so that you can trash them with a Mint buy.
7) You don't want to trigger a reshuffle, or skip past some good cards, with Venture or Loan.
8) You are worried about three-piling with Talisman or Hoard, so you don't want the extra gain.
I join with Warfreak into the Edge-case-club :)
8) should be 8.) :)
9) You draw your whole deck and don't want to show how many silvers you have (feodum)
10) You don't want to decrease the price for actions from quarry because of farmland
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See, I don't need legitimate reasons. I just say that there are none, and people do my work for me. *grin*
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10 is a nice one! 9 is just an instance of 2, though, and I think 8) is the appropriate emoticon for piling out the Golds.
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There are reasons not to play out some treasure cards, such as hoard, but these can be handled manually. That's no different from wanting to trash a gold with a farmland. When the most common use of these cards is to play them with with basic treasures then this should be the default. Initially all basic treasures were played and all kingdom treasures were kept in hand, just because the programmers wanted to code it in the simplest way.
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6. It doesn't show how much money you got in hand.
When playing engines you often end with many cards in your hand but it's not displayed how much your money cards are worth. It's a waste of time that you have to count them on your own.
It's almost like you're playing with real cards! Oh no! ::)
It's not even like playing with real cards. This interface would only be like playing with real cards if you were a quadriplegic, moving cards around by hitting the buttons on a Radio Shack Armatron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armatron) with your face.
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There are reasons not to play out some treasure cards, such as hoard, but these can be handled manually. That's no different from wanting to trash a gold with a farmland. When the most common use of these cards is to play them with with basic treasures then this should be the default. Initially all basic treasures were played and all kingdom treasures were kept in hand, just because the programmers wanted to code it in the simplest way.
The issue wasn't about autoplaying treasures, though that is definitely something to consider. Suggestion #6 (which was actually not Davio's but someone else's) is to display how much money you have available to you based on what is in your hand. And I can't disagree in the handiness of such a feature. But it does raise some questions on how reliable this can be when you have variable treasures in your hand. If this was just the base set, then it'd be easy enough. With the additional treasures, I can see why this a bit more complicated.
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There are reasons not to play out some treasure cards, such as hoard, but these can be handled manually. That's no different from wanting to trash a gold with a farmland. When the most common use of these cards is to play them with with basic treasures then this should be the default. Initially all basic treasures were played and all kingdom treasures were kept in hand, just because the programmers wanted to code it in the simplest way.
The issue wasn't about autoplaying treasures, though that is definitely something to consider. Suggestion #6 (which was actually not Davio's but someone else's) is to display how much money you have available to you based on what is in your hand. And I can't disagree in the handiness of such a feature. But it does raise some questions on how reliable this can be when you have variable treasures in your hand. If this was just the base set, then it'd be easy enough. With the additional treasures, I can see why this a bit more complicated.
The answer is simple though. On Iso, it showed the current amount of basic treasure available. Bam, solved.
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re: the trash/discard/play stuff: am I the only one who's noticed the different glowing edges? Red = if you click, you'll trash this card, orange = discard, blue = play. There's text above your hand, too.
"When the orange led lights (http://www.niceledlights.com) illuminated, your universal remote is in TV mode. The blue light means DVD mode. The red light means Grenade mode."
Thanks for explanation..I was not aware about modes..
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Urgh I also dislike the discard or put back on deck in any order, given the discard and deck are tiny (ish) cards right above each other. I can only imagine how annoying a procedure it would be using a trackpad or on a small touchscreen.
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Urgh I also dislike the discard or put back on deck in any order, given the discard and deck are tiny (ish) cards right above each other. I can only imagine how annoying a procedure it would be using a trackpad or on a small touchscreen.
Especially when there's a "Discard" button that makes you think that it's the only way to discard those cards.