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51

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 19, 2012, 09:46:49 am »

Ehhh.  I think having to stop and think "do I really wanna spend a quarter for this" would kill a lot of the appeal of "oh man I have a few minutes time for DOMINION " for me.  This payment model is not my favorite ever but I still vastly prefer it to per-game or per-month, and haven't come up with a better alternative.

Well, you would probably pay in Gokoins or whatever, and buy a bucket equivalent to a bunch of games only occasionally.
Also under my proposed model it would only be $0.25 per game if you always lost, and with a 10% rake you would only need a win rate of 1.2 to break even.
Obviously these numbers would need to be tuned, but I think it has potential.

But that's not all... beyond the amazing bonuses of having to deal with online gambling
you get

A community that goes to hell because, hey, money is on the line.

[citation needed] Remember you can't convert your winnings back to real money.
You also get added excitement of having some "tangible" reward for winning.

A strong incentive to play weaker players because hey then you're earning money rather than losing it.

That seems like a good thing to me.. promote healthy competition rather than an elite which only play among themselves.

A beginner unfriendly scenario where people (relatively) new to the game hemorrhage money.

So you offer beginners a one-time Gokoin bundle purchase at a very discounted rate.
Besides if they play other beginners it should average out.

and much much more... All for the low, low price of 25 cents a game!

As I said, the actual price is only 2.5 cents/game for a player with a 1.0 win rate.
And all the numbers can be tuned.

52

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 19, 2012, 09:30:53 am »

Ehhh.  I think having to stop and think "do I really wanna spend a quarter for this" would kill a lot of the appeal of "oh man I have a few minutes time for DOMINION " for me.  This payment model is not my favorite ever but I still vastly prefer it to per-game or per-month, and haven't come up with a better alternative.

Well, you would probably pay in Gokoins or whatever, and buy a bucket equivalent to a bunch of games only occasionally.
Also under my proposed model it would only be $0.25 per game if you always lost, and with a 10% rake you would only need a win rate of 1.2 to break even.
Obviously these numbers would need to be tuned, but I think it has potential.

53

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 19, 2012, 09:14:00 am »

Casual players are much less likely to care about always playing with every expansion, so I don't agree they're being priced out of the game.  It's hard to be priced out of a game you can play for free.

That's such a stupid argument though.
This service will live or die on word of mouth, and it's only gonna really take off if it can convert casual players and get them to advertise to their friends.
I don't think anyone can argue that the base set is kinda terrible compared to the full game, so why do you want the people you should be impressing to have a worse impression than they need to?

The more I think about it the more I'm convinced the best way is a small per-game fee which goes to the winner, with Goko skimming a little off the top.
I think this would be fine legally as long as you can't convert your winnings back to real money.
Then you can offer people a small number of free games to get them hooked, you can offer free games for getting their friends to play (social monetization!)
It's even got something for the hardcore with the prospect of free play given a high enough win rate.

54

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 19, 2012, 02:01:58 am »

Remember:  That price is for seven games.  Not one, seven.  Ten bucks a game really isn't that terrible.

If you want to claim this, you have to remember that one of those games (base) is pretty lame and boring, and many of the others are completely unplayable taken alone.

55

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 18, 2012, 06:00:34 pm »

Given it's renaissance of wisdom, perhaps Goko will get the bright idea of offering a discounted "all the expansions" price.  Offering a monthly fee version as well as "buy it permanently" could be an interesting way to go, but would make things a bit more complicated, so seems less likely (but might still be possible).

Yeah a monthly fee in the neighborhood of $5 would be more palatable to me, even though I'd probably end up paying more in the end that way.

Probably could not fly with gambling laws in the US, but I would love to see something where each player kicks in say $0.15 per game, Goko take $0.05 and the winner gets $0.25

56

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 18, 2012, 05:34:27 pm »

You're paying for X combinations of kingdom cards for Dominion.  I'm guessing for a lot of people, X will be sufficiently large after an expansion or two, and they'll occasionally play with other expansions when the host has them.  This will lead to a pretty fractured player base

I don't get your "fractured player base". Everyone can play with everyone. There've been plenty of computer games where those without out an expansion can't join in with those that have, but this isn't one of them.

Also, you can play with cards available to to any of the players, not just those of the host. (With the caveat that it's how it's supposed to work, and I don't know if it actually does)

I'm perhaps rather more relaxed about this than some folks here as that mirrors real life; I own a base set and some expansions, my friend owns a base set and some (so far distinct) expansions, and when playing together we may or may not mix as mood and/or availability demands. We don't think we need every dominion card in existence to have a complete game. The ex-isotropic player (and the completionist real life card owners), on the other hand, may well feel they're missing out by not having everything in the way they used to.

Well if all you know is base and intrigue, going into a game with someone who has prosperity and cornucopia you are going to get your ass kicked. So you'd probably rather only play with people with the same sets as you.

And if you are familiar with all the cards, like most people by the time they've played on isotropic for a while, then playing with just a few sets is going to feel ridiculously limited.

Then of course there is the "purity" argument of playing with the full game as designed, which we won't really know the scope of till Guilds comes out.

57

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 18, 2012, 04:28:03 pm »

If you think something is overpriced, don't buy it.

Or bitch about it until they lower the price.
Or both simultaneously.

58

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Dougz - I would like to send you money

« on: August 18, 2012, 11:15:18 am »

Like.. Zombinion?

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/586115/dominion-seaside?size=large

 

Not a fan of the art style but that is awesome.

59

Dominion Articles / Re: Throne Room

« on: August 18, 2012, 10:58:34 am »

It really only breaks down when the card has a 'while in play' requirement.

Hey guys, you all look pretty confident about this (said in the article and many times in discussion), BUT:
it doesn´t matter how many times Haggler is in play, but how many time it was played - you played it through TR, so when you buy a card:
you check whether Haggler is in play ...it is ...and gain a card
you check for the second time whether Haggler is in play ...it is  ...and gain a second card

Jfrisch: and by the way, you wrote:
Works with:
Talisman (gain extra cheap actions)

SO, TR either wors with neither of it, or with both (which I believe and hope  )

Sorry, you're thinking about it too logically.

60

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 18, 2012, 08:46:15 am »

No $85 is absolutely insane.
No one who is not already an insanely addicted board gamer will pay that much.

Of course no one who isn't addicted will buy everything they can at once. People will buy one expansion. Then maybe later they will buy another, etc.

/Captain Obvious

Actually just about anyone who has played on isotropic (and I don't consider us all addicts) would probably prefer to buy them all in one chunk.

61

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 18, 2012, 08:21:36 am »

I guess compared to $325 ($355 with guilds?) it seems reasonable to me...you don't have to buy all the expansions.  I'll probably split the costs with the friends I usually play with.  Casual players may only buy one or two expansions.

($1 per expansion strikes me as ridiculous in the opposite direction.)

People were honestly expecting to pay $15-20 total for *all* the expansions?

No $85 is absolutely insane.
No one who is not already an insanely addicted board gamer will pay that much.

Yes, polonkus, we know -- virtually all your posts to this forum have been criticisms of Goko.  But who other than addicted gamers are going to need to buy all the expansions anyway?

Yeah, $325 is absolutely ridiculous for one board game also.
Here's a question for you: why did this game have to be split into a bajillion expansions?
Do there really need to be so many cards? I find it really hard to believe that the game as conceived actually contained all these and it's not just a money grab.
Honestly I get less and less excited with each new release, it's starting to feel like the power creep and endless grind that made me drop MtG.

If they're gonna be published though, everyone should have them all otherwise you start segmenting your player base into those who own / know the cards from one expansion vs. another. This harms competition and community.

(BTW if you go by number of posts I'd say WanderingWinder probably still gets the brunt of my criticism, not Goko. Certainly if you go by post volume. But the tide is turning yudantaiteki, you won't be able to dismiss Cassandra as a troll much longer.)

62

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Dougz - I would like to send you money

« on: August 18, 2012, 07:16:42 am »

Some part of me wants to make this a kickstarter just to see how much money we can send to Doug altogether.

How about a kickstarter for DougZ to publish Isotropic server code with the copyright-infringing elements removed?
Then someone can put up fan-iso using cards from the variants forum.

63

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bonfire

« on: August 18, 2012, 07:10:38 am »

Honestly, $85 for 8 expansions seems very reasonable to me, especially since you can buy them in pieces and you can apparently play expansions you don't own depending on your opponents.

(Of course, Goko right now is not worth $85 but that price for a fully functional implementation is not  overpriced.)

No $85 is absolutely insane.
No one who is not already an insanely addicted board gamer will pay that much.
That's quite a bit more than a AAA PC title like Diablo or Skyrim.
This is a game that at its best should be compared to indie release which might go for $15-20.

Its possibly that I MIGHT spend that much on cards, because there I have a physical product I can use for the rest of my life.
But I absolutely will not pay that for an online only experience that I have no confidence will still exist 12 months from now.

64

Council Room Feedback / Re: CouncilRoom and FunSockets

« on: August 17, 2012, 07:43:14 pm »

Now that there's logs to scrape from FunSockets, will CouncilRoom be integrating with FunSockets? I know I'd love it if that happened.

CouncilRoom could carry over its analysis aids and keep track of the new Dark Ages cards too!

Someone is gonna have to complete a game on Goko first....

65

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko email update

« on: August 17, 2012, 05:50:25 pm »

But of course the people paying me want to know exactly how long it's going to take so they know how much it's going to cost. Unfortunately I am not a painter who can just multiply the number of square feet by the time it takes him to paint a square foot.

And the flip-side is, if there is a specific date you want to meet, you may need to sacrifice something to make it. If it's not features, then it's quality.

I feel like Goko had more ambition for this launch than they could actually manage. There are a lot of non-essential features that could have been delayed until after launch, including some things requested here. Text logs, for example, maybe should have been left for later; what good are they if people can't play at all?

Well, text logs are pretty trivial and also a pretty useful debugging tool, I don't see any reason not to put them in.
This ridiculous adventure mode could certainly have been scrapped though.

66

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

« on: August 17, 2012, 05:42:11 pm »

Oh - and I forgot #4 - which is the conspiracy theory at all MMO launches - they knew it was going to fail - but they launched it anyway - because paying for the hardware to support peak launch is stupid when traffic inevitably dies down after a week.

This is why you use virtual instances on a cloud hosting site like Rackspace or EC2. Just make more instances when demand is high and kill them when traffic slows. Just having it completely fail is a terrible solution.

I gotta be honest, everything I've been hearing about the game on these forums make me think it's complete amateur hour over at Goko (and also that they're going for a Zynga-like cash grab). When I heard there was gonna be an official website/app I got really excited because I was expecting something along the lines of the Ticket to Ride iPad app quality-wise, but what I've seen and heard so far is hugely disappointing.

Yeah, my guess is that they were trying to do something like that, but are completely incompetent at network engineering and various parts of  their systems are not communicating / activating properly.
I really don't think this is a simple load issue.

67

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

« on: August 17, 2012, 05:39:46 pm »

Oh - and I forgot #4 - which is the conspiracy theory at all MMO launches - they knew it was going to fail - but they launched it anyway - because paying for the hardware to support peak launch is stupid when traffic inevitably dies down after a week.

I really don't think it's a load issue.
It was dog slow within a minute of the "It's up!" post this morning.
Even at peak yesterday there were only a couple hundred people watching the forum, and I doubt there are hordes of non F.DSers out there constantly refreshing.

68

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko email update

« on: August 17, 2012, 05:29:23 pm »

What is it about this game that attracts so many programmers?

It superficially resembles a logically designed, extensible play system which can easily be analogized to a computer program.
Of course if you look a little closer you see a hodgepodge of ad-hoc behaviors. (Again like a computer program?)

69

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Zaps

« on: August 17, 2012, 12:56:31 pm »

From the How To Play pop-up, under Dominion Adventures:

"In preparation for each Dominion Adventures battle, Goko gives you an opportunity to tip the scales in your favor: the option to Boost yourself or Downgrade your opponent through zaps. You're shown your hand and that of your opponent, a mix of treasure cards, victory cards, and maybe even curse cards. Want to change one of your coppers into a silver? No problem. Want to give your opponent a little knock? Maybe his Estate should be a Curse. You'll automatically earn Zaps as you progress throughout the game, you can purchase more Zaps with Dominion Coins you've earned during gameplay, or with real-life currency at the Dominion Store."

yuck. Do not like.

I would love to see a statement from Donald on this Adventures mode.
Seems like a huge perversion of the game to me.

70

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why is Curse a base card?

« on: August 17, 2012, 12:54:09 pm »

Thanks for the reply, but it's obvious to everyone that's played more than a couple of games of dominion that Thief was never intended to be anything more than a trick. You admitted in your post that "copper isn't too hot", so why would a card with the primary function of trashing your opponents copper (and allowing you to gain it) ever have any chance of being a good card? Is this what you wanted to design? A card for experienced players to secretly laugh at new players who'd dare think it was a powerful card? It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that Thief, despite being weak, is a trashing attack, which is the most hateful kind of play, and I can't imagine people getting any delight out of it being played other than the aforementioned in joke that comes with understanding how the game works.

You've created a wonderful game here, and one with potential far beyond what any single person could imagine. The fact that it's been limited to a small number of mostly arbitrarily themed expansions is inevitably going to be frustrating because of this, and cards like Thief just make it worse.

I dunno, I get a fair amount of enjoyment out of going Thief on boards where TR/KC are out.
Sure it doesn't work out most of the time, but against an unwary or unlucky opponent it can be hilarious.

71

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Counterfeit/Horn of Plenty

« on: August 17, 2012, 12:32:45 pm »

Be careful, though. Say you have Caravan, Spy, Village, Copper, Silver, Gold in play and you play Counterfeit. You choose to play Horn of Plenty with Counterfeit. You gain a Province because you have 8 differently-named cards in play. Then you trash Horn of Plenty. When you play Horn of Plenty the second time (via Counterfeit), you can only gain a card costing up to $7.

You play it twice BEFORE trashing it.

But if you gain a Victory card when playing Horn of Plenty the first time, Horn of Plenty trashes ITSELF immediately.

I'm sure this is explained somewhere - but it seems very weird to me that you can "play again" a card without it being "in play" when played.

It's the same idea as TR/KC a Feast or Mining Village.

I suppose. It seems like it would be much cleaner if "play again" just took the card back from the trash and into the play area again.

72

Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Counterfeit/Horn of Plenty

« on: August 17, 2012, 12:25:34 pm »

Be careful, though. Say you have Caravan, Spy, Village, Copper, Silver, Gold in play and you play Counterfeit. You choose to play Horn of Plenty with Counterfeit. You gain a Province because you have 8 differently-named cards in play. Then you trash Horn of Plenty. When you play Horn of Plenty the second time (via Counterfeit), you can only gain a card costing up to $7.

You play it twice BEFORE trashing it.

But if you gain a Victory card when playing Horn of Plenty the first time, Horn of Plenty trashes ITSELF immediately.

I'm sure this is explained somewhere - but it seems very weird to me that you can "play again" a card without it being "in play" when played.

73

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

« on: August 17, 2012, 12:02:36 pm »

Chess is the greatest game of all?

The concept is amazing, but to me a great game has some sort of randomness.

I'm not actually trying to argue that it's the best game ever (though hey, it's great). I'm saying that if you're going based on number of people who play, then chess far out-does the named games, etc. etc., and that THAT is not a great metric.

It's not a metric of how good a game is. But I didn't think it was an issue of how good it is, but how BIG is it. MTG has long running tournaments and WAY bigger player-base.

Also I think for these purposes you need to distinguish between copyright-encumbered games like Dominion and MTG and ones that anyone is free to implement like chess.

74

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

« on: August 17, 2012, 11:40:41 am »

Magic Online was also pretty disastrous at first and people were complaining about bugs and having to pay hard cash for virtual cards. Goko seems to experience an even rougher start, but since Dominion is in the same league as Magic (to me at least) it should eventually be a success.

I think (don't have numbers) they're in completely different leagues, based on how many players are playing MTG and Dominion

Chess is the greatest game of all?

Yes but how will you monetize it with micropayments?
Maybe for $0.1 you can make your pawn into a bishop for one turn.

There are a number of financially successful chess sites, based on, largely, educational content, event coverage, etc.

Wow, making money while respecting the game, what an (apparently) novel idea.

75

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

« on: August 17, 2012, 11:36:06 am »

Magic Online was also pretty disastrous at first and people were complaining about bugs and having to pay hard cash for virtual cards. Goko seems to experience an even rougher start, but since Dominion is in the same league as Magic (to me at least) it should eventually be a success.

I think (don't have numbers) they're in completely different leagues, based on how many players are playing MTG and Dominion

Chess is the greatest game of all?

Yes but how will you monetize it with micropayments?
Maybe for $0.1 you can make your pawn into a bishop for one turn.