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2326

Dominion League / Re: Collecting feedback for providing commentary on Dominion matches

« on: June 30, 2015, 05:09:50 pm »

The commentary yesterday was good. Adam + WW are a fantastic pair and I liked how Stef and Mic came on to talk at the end.

We can certainly have 3 commentators if we want.

Almost every professional sport/game broadcast I've seen has had 1-2 commentators, and I can only assume that 3 isn't good. If you have lots of people wanting to commentate then it's probably better to switch-off between games.

Specifically, professional sports almost always have dedicated play-by-play and color commentators. How much sense this format makes for Dominion is up for debate, but I could see a lot of merit to one announcer talking about what literally happens + skin-deep strategy (Stef buys his fifth Village! Now his deck has just as many terminal actions as Villages, which will help with collision!) versus a more strategy oriented color commentator (Stef's buy this turn was less about getting his deck to a better place and more about winning the split in order to cut off the engine potential of his opponent. The tradeoff is that he's not going to have [power card] in his deck for at least another shuffle, which may cost him). (Dumb examples I know)

2327

Game Reports / Tried a silly Expand combo for fun.

« on: June 28, 2015, 10:20:38 am »

First I do want to note that I played this game on the Dominion beta, which means (1) no pretty log and (2) no accurate deck count throughout the game - so that information didn't inform my choices.

Full Game Log

Code: [Select]

Candlestick Maker, Native Village, Stonemason, Loan, Cutpurse, Wandering Minstrel, Band of Misfits, Treasury, Farmland, Expand
Sometimes I play Dominion to win games, other times I play to try out something odd just to see if it kind of works as a strategy. This was one of the latter times. I guess I wasn't really feeling a more basic strategy here. I didn't see a lot to do on this board. A lot of mediocre to decent engine components but nothing to tie it all together, yet nothing to really support a Big Money strategy much either.

I decided the most interesting thing I could try would be a sort of Treasury / Expand engine. The idea being that every turn I could use Treasury to buy up $5 or $6 cost cards, and if my deck was thin enough I could consistently Expand them into victory cards, getting me points without breaking the Treasury chain. It's probably too slow to work on any reasonable board, but maybe it would be okay on this one. The rest of the cards worked well to support the strategy. Wandering Minstrel would sift Expands to the top of my deck and help make up for the limited draw. Candlestick Maker gives extra +Buy. Loan and Stonemason would help clear out Coppers, while Expand would make the Estates into something useful. Finally, Band of Misfits came in handy as a 5 cost version of anything i wanted, almost always Wandering Minstrel.

Opened Silver / Cutpurse and started building. Managed a turn 3 Treasury and a turn 5 Expand, which really helped get my deck from "impossibly slow" to "maybe it will barely work" territory.  A Loan on turn 6 helped thin things out, then I just stockpiled Treasuries, WMs, and Band of Misfits as long as I could. I got pretty far behind, and with two provinces left I was forced to buy two Duchy and break my chain, but I managed to squeak out a win by one point on the final turn.

2328

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Latest Release

« on: June 25, 2015, 06:42:08 am »

Something I haven't seen mentioned is that this game looks just gorgeous at high resolutions. 2880x1620 is so mesmerizing....

Game has been getting progressively more stable for me, and right now I don't mind playing it over the old version so much. Still some time before I would say it's okay to take the old version down, but progress is pretty rapid so far.

But there's *still* the deck size counting bug. How can that possibly be so hard to fix???

2329

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Dominion Online Open Beta coming up shortly!

« on: June 19, 2015, 03:06:59 pm »

Honestly, the last update has worked pretty well for me. Playing at ultra hi res (2880) looks just stunning, animations are much better, and random input lag seems to be gone. Haven't had an issue with card text either. I'm beginning to find confidence that they'll squish all the bugs within a month and start working on features we need like the sidebar. Game works fine on my 1280 monitor too. I did get a cards left in deck bug once, but it was apparent from the very beginning of the game so it's not a game breaker for me (yet). Gotta fix that for next update though.

I just wish it weren't marketed as an "almost ready" version when it clearly wasn't, and the price hike should have happened when the game was feature complete and not before.

2330

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Online game log display

« on: June 16, 2015, 07:57:16 pm »

Here's why I don't like this argument for a full log - it implicitly says "Nobody can stop me from cheating, so why not help me cheat?"

It's not cheating, though. It's certainly not a rule in the physical copy of Dominion, and it's obviously not a rule online either. Just because it's not something you are (or I am) willing to do / feel like doing, doesn't mean it's cheating to do it. What's the fundamental difference between trying to remember something in your head and writing it down?

2331

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Breakdown of new expansion costs

« on: June 16, 2015, 07:43:00 pm »

The weird thing to me is that I remember the expansions being about $12 and $7 before, but the sum wasn't $85?

Also, the whole thing where you have to buy a virtual currency to buy cards was annoying enough with Gokoins, but that there's no even exchange rate annoys me even more.

2332

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Dominion Online Open Beta coming up shortly!

« on: June 15, 2015, 09:59:19 am »

Now I'm no security expert either, but I'm interested in the topic and may even pursue a master in information security in the near future. Does anyone know how Unity apps communicate with the server?  If it's some sort of SSH connection then sending unencrypted information like passwords is bad but not a catastrophe, so long as password information is still hashed server-side.

Looking at strace output: everything is being sent through SSL, just as expected. This is good and correct.

If it's some sort of SSH connection then sending unencrypted information like passwords is bad but not a catastrophe, so long as password information is still hashed server-side.

If it's sent through SSH (or SSL) then it wouldn't be "unencrypted information"...

Again, so we don't have MF's word on anything yet, so can we please stop spreading all this FUD?

Ah, sorry for the misunderstanding and any doubt I could have caused. I didn't know it was standard practice to let SSL handle the encryption of the plaintext password when sending it to the server. I figured there would still be an intermediate step where the client encrypts the password with the public key or something before the message passing process for the password.

Everyone should be glad to know that MakingFun definitely does not send passwords in plaintext.  I ran a packet sniffer on Dominion v2.0.  It uses SSL and doesn't submit anything other than DNS requests in plain text.

While it's possible I jumped the gun on criticism here, I was more worried about whether or not the client log was sent over SSL as it apparently contains the user password.

2333

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Payment models

« on: June 15, 2015, 07:18:21 am »

Why not both? $10 a month to play all the expansions, or $90 to buy all the expansions. Let people try out the "full" game without having to fork over so much money, *and* let people own the game without a recurring monthly fee. Who loses here?

2334

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Gear or Dungeon?

« on: June 14, 2015, 07:12:56 pm »

Without seeing the board, in the general case, I'm MUCH happier with Gear than with Dungeon. Gear is phenomenal, especially for Big Money.

You know how Courtyard BM is good, letting you smooth out draws and keep dead terminals in play? Gear is almost strictly better than Courtyard, and it's just so versatile. Got your dream hand, set aside nothing. Got terminals, set them aside for next turn. Too much money, stockpile the excess for next turn. Shuffle coming up? Set aside those Victory cards then and watch them miss the shuffle.

Dungeon isn't too bad, but I've never, ever regretted picking up a Gear.

2335

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Dominion Online Open Beta coming up shortly!

« on: June 13, 2015, 02:18:07 pm »

When I played the beta yesterday morning, it seemed... okay. It was a fair bit slower than Salvager, but I never found the deck size bug, the high resolution interface was a big improvement, and I could largely play Dominion in the same manner I could before. Sidebar would be nice, but I could make do. I was beginning to think the complaints were overstated. I was upset with how much they seemed to be rushing to close the old Dominion app, but if they fixed things then whatever I guess.

Then I tried to play again yesterday evening, and every move had a good 10-15 seconds of delay between the click and the action. I know this wasn't just me either; others playing at the same time, against bots no less, had the same problem. And now this morning I can't even complete a log in sequence (it doesn't say I can't log in, it just doesn't DO anything when I hit the button except crash sometimes).

On top of this, storing a password in plain text anywhere is completely indefensible. It's not, there's no argument here. That's appallingly insecure. I don't have anything to add, honestly - it's that simple.

I wanted to give them so much slack. It's a beta, things aren't going to work right for awhile at all. I really wanted to be patient and give them time to get everything right... but with the password thing, with how the closed beta testers were treated, I just don't really know what to think anymore. The thing that gets me is that we had a very simple and robust simulator in Isotropic years ago. We had Goko, with all of its flaws, but they had gotten it to a reasonably stable place. And now somehow we're worse off now than we were years ago. I really like this game a lot. I'm putting up with all of this shit because I'm obsessed and I love Dominion and all that. But it's really starting to not look so worth it anymore. Why is this so hard?

2336

Dominion League / Re: Season 8 - Results

« on: June 12, 2015, 10:24:23 pm »

D3: Ghacob 4 Chrisisme 2

2337

Dominion League / Re: Season 8 - Results

« on: June 12, 2015, 08:49:21 pm »

D3: Malmerung 4 - Chris is me 2

2338

Dominion League / Re: Season 8 - Announcing Livestreams

« on: June 12, 2015, 07:02:59 pm »

Will be streaming within the next 15 minutes my set against malmerung:

http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

2339

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How do you feel about Champion?

« on: June 10, 2015, 09:20:15 pm »

I think Champion is pretty underwhelming for how hyped it is, and I think a lot of us would all be on the same page if we could play on a simulator.

Infinite actions barely even matters. You're getting Champion usually at least turn 10, then you have to shuffle and play it. You can't exactly have a deck full of terminal actions with no villages before that point just waiting for Champion either, so you either have to build an engine with Villages that you later don't need or you have to wait to significantly build up until your Champion is nearly in play. In both cases, you're taking a significant opportunity cost in set-up time, which isn't always made up for.

Of course there are many games where Champion is phenomenal, but it's certainly not a must-play card and it's not "whomever goes with Champion wins" or even "whomever plays Champion first wins" on a lot of boards.

2340

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion's Tragic Flaw?

« on: June 10, 2015, 09:15:18 pm »

Does anyone else feel like the percentage of games that are decided by luck before the Turn 4 shuffle or the Turn 7 shuffle is just too high?  I feel like it's a little more than 50% of all games where the players are of reasonably equal skill, and this just seems like a flaw.

Advantages are given, but the game is really rarely decided at that point. Defeated players are more likely to play into confirmation bias and go "oh, I knew it was over as soon as (unfavorable luck) happened" when they lose, and ignoring that when they win.

Dominion like many other good probability managment competitive games is not something where a single game's outcome should be a judge of how good of a game is. That's like judging the merits of poker based on a single hand. It's the long game that matters - that's why the Salvager leaderboard is what it is and why even tournaments are 6 game matches.

2341

Dominion Articles / Re: Farming Village

« on: June 08, 2015, 06:36:14 pm »

I don't think this is a really helpful article. It seems less like an informational guide on how to best use and evaluate Farming Village, and more like a manifesto on how overrated you think the card is. You might as well have written "I Hate Farming Village" over and over again.

Yes, Villages aren't great buys when you don't need a Village, and no, Farming Village's effect isn't particularly good. But other than for clarification purposes, shouldn't articles talk more about when you *do* want the card and how to use it?

2342

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Dominion Live Streams

« on: June 07, 2015, 10:12:45 am »

I'll be streaming some random matches this morning, testing out a new mic that's less awful. If I find someone in Dominion League, I'll play them. Stream will be up momentarily at http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

2343

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Discussing/Playing Designed Kingdoms

« on: June 05, 2015, 10:41:57 am »

I think the posted kingdom is "obvious" in that you're going to want to build an engine if you can, Farming Village is gonna pile out, etc. but aside from that there's some variance in how you accomplish that, and what works well with what.

The Rabble attack is somewhat offset by Baron making use of topdecked Estates, Mystic getting a free card draw, Horse Traders getting a card to discard, or Farming Village sifting past junk. There aren't a ton of good ways to get those starting Estates out - Hermit makes you gain Silvers or more Hermit, neither of which are necessarily bad but both require some thought. However Journeyman can skip right over them if you aren't using Baron for some reason. Bureaucrat against a non-Baron player might actually not be absolutely terrible if you have Counterfeit and Mystic in your hand... yeah, probably still bad.

All that said, I think the differences in engine strategies might be a bit too subtle and irrelevant for this to be a super fantastic kingdom, but it's certainly a good start. In general, I seem to enjoy designed kingdoms that give you most of what you need to make a few strategies work, but each strategy needs a little bit more than is given to them in order to be overwhelmingly dominant. I'll have to post some of my (badly designed) kingdoms at some point.

2344

Dominion League / Re: Season 8 - Results

« on: June 03, 2015, 09:26:06 pm »

D3:

Chris is me 3-3 Jeb

2345

Dominion League / Re: Season 8 - Announcing Livestreams

« on: June 03, 2015, 08:04:11 pm »

http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

streaming match v iguana iguana now

Now streaming a match vs Jeb

2346

Dominion League / Re: Season 8 - Announcing Livestreams

« on: June 02, 2015, 08:29:07 pm »

http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

streaming match v iguana iguana now

2347

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Open beta in May 2015?

« on: May 26, 2015, 11:46:56 am »

Honestly, a delay of a few weeks from closed to open beta isn't a bad thing - it means they identified problems in closed beta and they are *trying to fix them*. I would much rather have a polished release than a rushed one; wouldn't we all?

That said, more than anything else, not *knowing* is what bothers me.

2348

Dominion League / Re: Season 8 - Announcing Livestreams

« on: May 23, 2015, 10:22:59 pm »

Last 3 games against gregsucks starting imminently:

www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

2349

Dominion League / Re: Season 8 - Announcing Livestreams

« on: May 23, 2015, 07:07:17 pm »

Stream is FINALLY up.

www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

Edit: Going on dinner break, gonna stream regular Goko matches in an hour. Will make one last post for that too to bump it.

2350

Dominion League / Re: Season 8 - Announcing Livestreams

« on: May 23, 2015, 02:57:05 pm »

In about a half hour (maybe sooner?), I'm going to be playing some of my match against Gregsucks on the stream. What makes this unique and cool is that we're going to try to play these games with actual cards (including Adventures), so that will be fun albeit slow. We expect to do two sets of three games, with a break in the middle to go do other stuff. We'll play it by ear. Point being, Dominion on my stream soon.

www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

EDIT: This is now delayed until at least 5:00 PM Eastern (90 minutes from now) due to the camera we are using being locked in a room we can't get to.

Edit 2: Current estimate is 6 PM, I'll make a new post when it's up. This is a really frustrating problem.

Latest Edit That No One Is Reading: Once we figure out how to frame the shot and get everything set up, we'll get the stream going.