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26

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A Completely Unreasonable Proposal To Save Isotropic

« on: August 23, 2012, 09:47:20 am »

I know that decisions have been made and all, but I would personally enjoy a solitaire-only version of Isotropic, because that is really one of two reasons why I am any good at this game at all. Not sure if anyone else feels the same about this.

I would like an offline solitaire version, maybe with a bot (rudimentary, advanced, whatever).  I play Androminion way more than I should.

By the way, congrats on your new blue star.

Dunno what dougz is going to do with the code, but if he removes the card names I can totally see you/us playing solitaire isotropic on a local server in a few months, or see GendoIkari playing with his wife in a local network.

If he could be convinced to remove all the card-names from the game and release the code, you'd be 100% laughing.  Unfortunately, I think he is tied in some way to the developers (Donald et al) and the distributors (Jay et al), so I doubt he will do that. 

The mechanics of games are not protectable by copyright, so the game could simply be brought back to life with a new name, and all new card names.   Oh, how sweet that would be. 

Except I don't really feel like doing something so sticking-it-to Donald.

I'd be fine with it. Kick him some money if you really feel bad.

27

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Isotropic down?

« on: August 23, 2012, 08:00:21 am »

Ugh, this was announced months in advance with 8/22 as the final day.
That you seem surprised and hopeful for an alternate reality seems remiss.

We would be hopeful because on another thread, DougZ said that Isotropic would stay up for a week after Goko was launched.

Goko launched on 8/16, a week is 7 days. It adds up. Thanks for reinforcing my point.

Quit being an ass. I'll bet you $20 this is technical problems, not iso going down forever.

28

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Could one structure Dominion as a serious tournament game (for serious money)?

« on: August 22, 2012, 07:03:42 pm »

Aside from the fact that the "100-0 and could have gone either way" bit is a rather edge case, let me elaborate a bit.

It's not as though we're adding up the raw scores for each board and going from there.  Each setup (let's say we play 10 kingdoms for this) would make up 10% of each player's total score.  Let's say there are 22 total players, and thus 11 matchups.  You'd get 1 matchpoint for each person playing your direction that you beat, and 1/2 point for each that you tied, for a maximum on each kingdom of 10 matchpoints.  If you lose 1000-0, well, guess what, the worst that you can do is get 0/10 on that kingdom.

The bad part about this is when you get into KC/Goons setups where someone has the incentive to not end the game even though they're up 500-20.  I'm not sure of the best way to resolve that, but it's not any more luck based than whether you're sitting 1st or 4th when the Sea Hag with no trashers comes up.

This encourages collusion between opponents to rack up large scores. Doesn't even need to be blatant either: curser on the board? Why don't we ignore that, it'll be better for both of us.

Edit: Also, 100-0 is not an edge case at all. KC-Bridge available with enablers? Neither player will buy any VP until they hit KC-KC-Bridge-Bridge-Bridge, and you will get a final score of 57-3 or thereabouts, even if the other player could have won next turn.

I believe that this type of collusion actually did happen at a past tournament which took into account relative scores.
Anyone remember the details?

29

Goko Dominion Online / Re: FunSockets Live Q&A Thursday, 3PM PST

« on: August 22, 2012, 07:01:25 pm »

Post it where?

Presumably here.

It was scheduled to start nearly an hour ago.

Um.. pretty sure it's still Wednesday.

30

Goko Dominion Online / Another article on Goko Launch Problems

« on: August 22, 2012, 01:07:07 pm »

http://pockettactics.com/2012/08/18/dominion-online-makers-goko-un-launch-retreat-back-into-beta/

Interesting comment therein:

othiym23 Member
August 18 Posts: 6
Speaking as someone with a fair amount of experience with the Bay Area startup scene, it only took a little reading to recognize what Goko did: get a fat Series A and then use that venture capital to buy traction by going after the biggest brands in their target market. Rather than concentrating on starting small and getting the fundamentals right ("HTML5" games will never be truly platform-native, but a skilled team could make them good enough to satisfy even the most finicky BGG poster, including things like async play and AIs), they went for a broad land grab by locking down as many partnership deals as they could (Goko has separate VPs for business development, marketing, developer relations, *and* monetization).

On the one hand, this fiasco is at least as much the fault of Rio Grande and the other games companies involved as it is Goko. It's really important to sit down and think through the opportunity costs of signing exclusive, long-term content deals. If things go awry and the company holding the deals gets bought out by a company like Zynga, the companies and the designers are going to find themselves confronting a lot of hard-to-counter legal chicanery from people who have spent their whole lives figuring out how to maximize revenue from marginal properties. It seems totally irresponsible for Rio Grande and the rest to have signed so many deals with an unproven company, regardless of how shiny their pitch was.

On the other hand, the distribution and traction a company like Goko can offer has to sound totally preposterous to small companies that, in turn, get most of their revenue from small specialty retailers. Who wouldn't want the possibility of getting their work in front of several orders of magnitude more people than would see them if they were only in physical form or released as niche apps? The Playdek games are some of the best-designed apps on the App Store (except for Nightfall, which still completely baffles me), and gamers sing their praises, but I'd be interested to see how their sales compare to something like Plants vs Zombies or Angry Birds. Contrast that with Zynga, which doesn't have a lot going with gameplay in most of their games, but does get them front of the sizable fraction of humanity on Facebook.

For those hoping for a quick and punishing failure for Goko, the flip side of them being VC funded is that there are now concerned parties at Alsop Louie Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and the other investors in the Series A working to ensure their investment gets made good. I wouldn't want to be working at Goko right now – not only do they have to recover from an embarrassingly poor launch, but I'm sure there was already a lot of pressure on them to prove out what seems like a pretty risky revenue model (ad-supported freemium: pretty well-tested; subscription service: pretty well-tested; freemium based on hella-expensive expansions: not so well-tested).

Speaking for myself, the whole thing is irritating. Battle of Gundabad is a pretty joyless clone, the unauthorized iOS version was painfully stark but more or less cut the mustard while being totally illegal (I haven't had a chance to play Androminion), and Isotropic and BSW were probably at least violating trademarks and copyrights. Donald X has said some pretty jerkish things about people disappointed with Goko, but he deserves a lot of credit for leaving the clones alone. It was exciting to hear that Dominion was getting an official iOS version, and it would be great if BGG favorites like Race for the Galaxy were to get high-quality implementations that could be played on the go. But the lack of offline multiplayer excludes a good chunk of my game-playing time (commuting to and from work on the train, which involves going through Mt Sutro, where the coverage isn't so great), and I already paid too much for the Dominion expansions once. Doing it again, only this time for the privilege of using the cards in a virtual environment that could vanish pretty much whenever, is a no-go for me.

Also, as a professional software developer, reading about all the corners cut to get the beta out the door just offends me. Plaintext passwords? Pushing the whole game state of games based on hidden information to all clients? Not validating client input? That says louder than anything else that they're not really trying to build a high-quality platform, because that is stupidly bad software engineering.
[\quote]

31

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Interesting article on Goko launch

« on: August 21, 2012, 05:07:09 pm »

"...provided it was something that couldn't be done irl."

To me, that is the very exciting. There is bookkeeping you just cant efficiently do in a physical game. Take cares like Pirate Ship, what if cards like that were more powerful but the counters were tied to each unique instance of that card. Lots of cool possibilities...

Nonono.. don't you know it's cheating if you can't keep track in your head?

32

Game Reports / Re: Torturer vs. Minion

« on: August 21, 2012, 05:05:18 pm »

Not sure about the ideal strategy on this board, but I'd say your opponent was playing like an idiot here.
He does nothing to build his economy and gets stuck at <= $4 until turn 10!

33

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Staying up or what?

« on: August 21, 2012, 04:04:55 pm »

"I expect that..."

Not definitive at all.  I suppose for now, no news is good news.  If goko forces isotropic down before they're actually ready for a launch, they're gonna have even more of a PR shitstorm on their hands.

Well, yeah, they would, but I am aware of nothing that indicates that will happen. In fact, most evidence points towards it not happening. I'll gladly fault Goko where they deserve it, but this is not one of those times. At all.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

34

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Dark Ages on Iso a Possibility?

« on: August 21, 2012, 03:04:06 pm »

Again, this thread is about the possiblity of DA on isotropic UNTIL THE ACTUAL GOKO LAUNCH.

Which has been stated isn't going to happen.

You had your free lunch. That's great. Want dessert? That's not free. We must accept it and move on if we are to avoid going crazy.

Someone posted an appropriate quote elsewhere recently.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man."

35

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Interesting article on Goko launch

« on: August 21, 2012, 02:50:48 pm »

The article also says "special individual cards exclusive to Goko are planned", which I believe DXV has elsewhere confirmed to be false.

There are zero exclusive cards planned at this time.

Oh god how I hate this. The MMO I played constantly said "we will never ever do micro-transactions" and then they said "there are no micro-transactions planned at this time" and then there were micro-transactions.

The problem is that there are absolutely zero consequences to them for lying through their teeth. Realistically pretty much no one is actually going to boycott them, and they're aiming for the casual market anyway.
We've already seen it during the aborted launch: on twitter they continually promised updates on the situation, but every actual bit of news about server status was posted here first.

36

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Dark Ages on Iso a Possibility?

« on: August 21, 2012, 02:45:12 pm »

Completely broken? That's the phrase you choose to describe Goko's product?

With such hyperbole being slung around, it's no wonder there are people out there who are terrified of trying Goko.

From my experience with the beta version, I can say that the game is not completely broken. Even when I first joined the beta, the game was not completely broken.

I wouldn't even say it's badly broken, but that can be in the eye of the beholder.

Can you log in and play? No? Then it's broken, end of story.

Again, this thread is about the possiblity of DA on isotropic UNTIL THE ACTUAL GOKO LAUNCH.

37

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Interesting article on Goko launch

« on: August 21, 2012, 02:10:41 pm »

A nice quote from that thread:

lancemoody wrote:
Yes, the site is back in beta and there is a sort of apology now when you first visit.

The Goko people miss the point.

This isn't just about their shockingly bad technical skills.

It's about the fact that they don't understand the core fans of these games. Indeed every facet of Goko appears to be woefully out of touch. One really has to wonder who they are imagining was going to sign on for their idea. It appears that they actually think that these hobby games might go full mainstream. It appears that they fantasize about a huge base and they have alienated the real base by not attempting to understand it in any way.

Goko is on the outside trying to figure out how to monetize us. They aren't part of the gaming community and, from the looks of it, they don't want to be part of it.

Unfortunately now it appears that several wonderful games are now in their clutches. This is a shame.

From my perspective, the only salvation for Goko is to completely rethink every aspect of their "concept". I don't think that is going to happen.

So, yes I actually do hope that the end of Goko happens sooner rather than later. I can't see how anything else might be good for those of us who love these games and want to play them and pay for them without resorting to Gokubucks or any other of Goko's tone deaf schemes.

38

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Dark Ages on Iso a Possibility?

« on: August 21, 2012, 02:05:44 pm »

Besides, you say that you want to judge it for free before spending a nickel. You can. It's already part of the pricing model. If you play the free game and like it, then spend money on the expansions. If you don't like it, then don't play online Dominion. The solution is already in place. There's no need for such finality before the product is even released.

Except you can't, because it's completely broken, and no one has any idea when it is going to work.
Remember the context of this discussion is the possibility of having Dark Ages go live on Isotropic until Goko is actually released.

39

Advertisements / Re: ultimate game storage solution on Kickstarter?

« on: August 21, 2012, 10:36:57 am »

Tempting... but $170?  That's a bit much, especially sight-unseen.  Actually, that's more than a bit much.

I understand that molds are expensive and all that, but there's no way they are raising 750,000.

Yeah people have gone absolutely kickstarter crazy after some of these high-profile success stories.
They really need to scale back their enthusiasm and redesign so this can be made without molding, maybe with laser cut or routed plastic/wood.

40

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Ask FunSockets anything!

« on: August 21, 2012, 09:20:16 am »

Will there ever be a pay to play option?  Like X per month or year.  I know people have said it but I prefer that (getting all cards) then always feeling like I am playing someone that only knows certain cards and has mastered them  And YES I have bought ALL physical copies (another reason I don't really wANT TO buy them again).

I moved over seas and would love to play with my parents (they introduced me and other friends but I know they aren't going to want to buy it all again)....Still sad about iso........plus it is weird it still seems all speculation and that scares me....I would think more would be know....

But thanks to everyone for everything!

How long do you intend to play Dominion online?  Let's say a monthly fee would be $10.  Reasonable, no?  But if you're intending on playing Dominion online for 9 months or more, then it would have been cheaper to just buy 2 expansions a month.

This reminds me of an idea Terry Pratchett came upon - the rich stay rich because they can afford to spend less.

Alternatively, if you think Goko is gonna be bankrupt in less than 9 months, you'd prefer to pay a monthly fee.

41

Advertisements / Re: ultimate game storage solution on Kickstarter?

« on: August 20, 2012, 10:07:25 pm »

"First run will be capped at 10,000..."

Gotta give these guys props for optimism.

42

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Interesting article on Goko launch

« on: August 20, 2012, 03:48:47 pm »

One tidbit I hadn't seen yet: DXV confirmed Goko has a 5-year exclusive contract to Dominion.

That doesn't sound like me. I like to be specific, and that would be some noticeable rounding there.

Yeah I guess I should have put that in quotes, not presented it as a statement of fact.
Here's the paragraph from the article:

"Dominion creator Donald X. Vaccarino has confirmed that Goko's licence to his game is a five-year exclusive deal. One of the most commonly-cited fears on Board Game Geek and other forums is that many or most of Goko's vast portfolio of licences might be similarly exclusive. Just as the smartphone and tablet explosion is speeding the move of board games into digital formats, many cherished brands might be tied to Goko for an uncertain length of time."

43

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Interesting article on Goko launch

« on: August 20, 2012, 03:23:00 pm »

I like being called a fanatical global following.

If BGG is a fanatical following, I wonder what that makes us? Crazy stalkers?

44

Goko Dominion Online / Interesting article on Goko launch

« on: August 20, 2012, 02:38:24 pm »

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/20/goko-launch-problems

One tidbit I hadn't seen yet: DXV confirmed Goko has a 5-year exclusive contract to Dominion.

45

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Do we know when exactly it's going up?

« on: August 20, 2012, 12:27:48 pm »

As far as I understand it the following are concerns:

1. [...]
3. the game server doesn't validate messages from the client - so you can do things like play bridges from the supply that you don't own - or just buy colonies without enough money for them.

Just to put things into perspective, here is a post from dougz from april 2012, proving that isotropic (even recently!) had also quite severe bugs (similar to 3. above):

Turns out that (until last night) the server didn't actually check to see if you had enough money to buy the card you asked to buy.  Normally it's not a problem because the interface only makes cards clickable if you can afford them, but if you hack the javascript, or insert a proxy that modifies the request on the way to the server (as bdhcompany did) it would happily sell you any card in the supply whether you had the money for it or not.  Whoops!

Yeah but as I understand it dougz started iso as a private testing tool / hobby project, so he can be forgiven for trusting the client a bit more than is wise.
Funsockets on the other hand is purporting to create an entire ecosystem for online gaming, so you'd expect them to know the rules of Online Game Dev 101.

46

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 19, 2012, 11:35:06 pm »

I would call isotropic cross platform because you can use it on any computer.  I would even call something which ran on only windows and Macintosh cross platform, even though I use LInux.  I guess it might be reasonable to say this is not a standard definition now.

Since Wikipedia is the ultimate judge of truth, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-platform agrees with me.

I agree that they are using a weird meaning of cross-platform. But isn't it obvious that they mean "both runs on desktop browsers and is optimized for mobile browsers"? That isn't a completely ridiculous thing to mean by "cross-platform".

Yeah but you can actually play isotropic right now on mobile devices, whereas everything I've seen and heard points to Goko being unbearably slow/awkward on a phone.

47

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A Completely Unreasonable Proposal To Save Isotropic

« on: August 19, 2012, 06:44:37 pm »

This ship has sailed, iso is going away, stop making threads like this.  Seriously.  Donald X has signed with Goko, there's nothing that really can be done about that, even if he wanted to.

So let's move on.

And Goko is really not as bad as everyone is making them out to be.  Sure, they flubbed the launch.  That happens sometimes.  They're a new company, and they weren't ready for that kind of traffic.  Instead of belittling them, we should instead be giving constructive criticism.  Do you really think Trisha and co. really enjoy reading about how much we hate their product?  Can the vitriol.

And they have listened.  We wanted logs, they gave us logs.  We wanted a better way to deal with large hands, they gave us iso-style stacking.  They are doing the best they can.

When they make mistakes, let them know, and they will try to fix them - they've been doing a pretty good job of that so far.  But if all you're going to do is continue to say "wah iso was so awesome, goko is terrible" just to get on that particular bandwagon, you really need to back off.

So yes, Goko is not perfect.  Yes, Goko is not iso.  But they're what we've got, and what we're going to have, so let's move forward, shall we?

You don't like it, go read another thread.

48

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A Completely Unreasonable Proposal To Save Isotropic

« on: August 19, 2012, 05:54:12 pm »

... or, like, could the Goko people be persuaded to buy Isotropic, or something? I just don't get it. There's this great online version already that everybody loves and would be more than willing to pay for...

Came to say this. They should just be Iso.

Seriously. There would be zero downside to them (except the embarrassment factor) to just buying iso, running it simultaneously and selling access for the same price as their system. I would pay at least $100 for this.

49

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 19, 2012, 01:34:23 pm »

one suspects that Isotropic was, on the whole, a big net win for RGG; at the very least, I don't see how someone can dismiss this possibility.

There will be people who played dominion on Isotropic who then went on to buy the real game. That's a possible win for RGG.
There will be people who played dominion on Isotropic who were satisfied with the the online version and thus had no need buy the real game (or some particular expansion) they otherwise would have. That's a possible loss for RGG.
There will be people who played dominion on Isotropic who were enjoyed the the online version of a particular expansion and thus went on to buy the real expansion they otherwise wouldn't have. That's a possible gain for RGG.
There will be people who played dominion on Isotropic who were dissatisfied with the the online version of a particular expansion and thus no longer wanted buy the real expansion they otherwise would have. That's a possible loss for RGG.
There will be people who played dominion on Isotropic who wouldn't have spent any money whatever the circumstances. These people will be sad, but are no loss (financially) to RGG.

Any other cases? Any evidence for overall gain or loss (I shouldn't think so).

Incidentally, I'm here without ever playing the game electronically in any form. I don't know "how many of us" there are.

Eh, I don't really think there are many people who discovered Dominion through isotropic that would have discovered it otherwise. If there's any loss to RGG, I think it'd be people who played Dominion IRL first, discovered isotropic, and then became too good at the game to enjoy playing it with their friends IRL anymore. I'm not sure I even believe that though (since I'm decently rated on isotropic and still enjoy playing with friends IRL).

Anecdotes FTW: I was introduced to Base by a friend who bought it in Germany when it had just won the SdJ.
Played it a couple times, liked it, was a staple in our group for a few months, moved on. Few years later, friend got me hooked on isotropic.
Since then I've played several thousand games, have hooked 3-4 friends (who hadn't played it before) to varying degrees.
Know of at least 3 physical sets which have been purchased as an indirect result.

50

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Dark Ages on Iso a Possibility?

« on: August 19, 2012, 10:24:17 am »

Is it suddenly possible we might be able to enjoy Dark Ages on Isotropic in the meantime? DXV, are you in a position to comment on this? I don't want to get my hopes up, but man, that would be great.

To some people - I'm not saying you have to agree with them, but only, look at this, turn it over in your mind - to some people, this question would seem a lot like: Sure you can see Batman: The Dark Ages Rise in theaters... but as long as it isn't available on DVD yet, can we all torrent it?

Ordinarily I follow you on this stuff but I don't agree with you're analogy. Torrenting basically implies against the wishes of the designers. To anyone who reads this forum it's fairly clear that Iso isn't about to actively disrespect your wishes. So asking whether something can go on Iso is more equivalent to asking whether we can have songs from DXV's great new album on an unofficial, but recognized, fan site (which has songs from his other albums).

But now DXV isn't the indie band, he's signed to the big label. And the Goko VP of monetization is def not going to be onboard with that.