- Is the plan for TGG and ShuffleIT to both continue to exist as independent products indefinitely?
Some of your questions are way too much "predict the future for me." No-one knows the future. I can't predict the future. Even saying what I expect, I have to heavily qualify it with "this is what I expect, to the best of my poor knowledge," to try to avoid people screaming at me that I lied to them.
You cleverly phrased this one though as just asking what the plan is.
ShuffleIT was doing a subscription-based web-based Dominion. TGG popped up and asked to do an app. This was negotiated and now, I think, to the best of my knowledge and I'm not looking up the contracts, that it's divided exactly this way, that ShuffleIT does web-based and TGG does app.
Either side could go bankrupt or die or turn supervillain or who knows what. No-one knows the future. But currently ShuffleIT does a web-based version and TGG does an app.
ShuffleIT's version doesn't let you subscribe for longer than they have the license (which has been repeatedly renewed). That doesn't mean Stef won't somehow quit ahead of that; it also doesn't mean that RGG will fail to renew with him when the time comes. But well it means that you don't have a subscription for longer than he has the license.
TGG's version has no such deadline to worry about; if they don't have the license they just can't keep selling it (I should clarify, that's just my understanding of things, which is necessarily imperfect in this crazy world). You could reasonably expect them to keep their servers running to support what I imagine is their agreement-of-some-kind with customers. That doesn't mean all servers won't be killed by solar flares though. You can just play the game against the bot without an online connection; no amount of TGG vanishing from the earth stops me from getting in those games (possibly useless to you, but great for me). Of course that doesn't mean you can play for forever either; I have bought lots of games over the years that I could no longer play even if I still had the disks, because I don't have a drive those disks would fit in, and backwards compatibility only goes so far back.
There is no plan on my part as of March 5 2024 to get rid of either version. That's actually relevant because in the long run I could kill them both, since I'm the ultimate rights-holder.
- How do the interfaces compare? What are the pros and cons of each?
ShuffleIT's was made by a serious player for serious players. TGG's was made by casual players for casual players. Both are trying not to be so narrow but they have a certain initial perspective. TGG also was made to be an app, on tablets and phones, not just on computers; ShuffleIT's was made for computer screens.
Mic Qsenoch, a serious player, recently posted his thoughts on the interfaces, man let's have them. This is someone else's opinions, not mine, and only as of when they posted them, and all that. But I mean, seems interesting.
I spend basically 100% of my Dominion time nowadays on TGG, but it's just because of Hard AI / Daily Dominion. If those didn't exist, I would probably never use it outside of mobile maybe. I think both TGG and ShuffleIT are ugly (TGG has your basic generic polished look, but it doesn't do anything for me). But TGG is ugly and busy, while at least ShuffleIT mostly gets out of your eyes. The desktop TGG client is constrained by being identical to the mobile versions, and it suffers for it. There will be reveal window situations to manage that have you clicking on buttons about as far away as possible on the screen in succession just to check things. It's still not possible on TGG to turn the animations off so you don't have to sit and wait through chains of HP or Wandering Minstrel reveals or whatever where dozens of cards are flying around meaninglessly and some of them become giant on your screen. The side log on TGG truncates many lines so that it reads like "X buys a Y and a ...", you have to click to learn what Z is. There's a bunch of contexts where you have to make additional clicks in the log just to get information that you should be able to just read. The TGG UI is quite a bit worse in terms of seeing cards in play / set aside card information and other things like that. Navigating those interfaces generally just takes a lot more screen searching and mouse movement / clicking than on ShuffleIT. At the moment, I would never want to play a game I cared about the result of on TGG, finding relevant information is just way more annoying than it should be. I'm not actually sure there's any card play interface that I think is better on TGG, as far as I can remember. There are of course UI problems in both clients. The TGG hint icons are mostly nice. I think ShuffleIT autoplays are a bit better / less buggy at this point.
TGG's big advantage is just that someone is actually working on TGG, so it has a chance to get better. ShuffleIT will just be what it is indefinitely.
For contrast my experience is, I play 100% on TGG, because I want to play against a bot and it actually has one (also because I can pretend I'm playtesting, and also because I can playtest). The bot is a real opponent; JNails played 8 playtest games against it yesterday and only won 3 of them. Presumably he could have tried harder but you know. I don't have any issues with the TGG interface, which also keeps getting better. It has certain nice touches. Meanwhile I use the ShuffleIT version for spectating. There's no chat on TGG, and the whole point of spectating for me is chatting with other spectators. The chat is bugged, like sometimes it doesn't scroll, and I mean it's been like that for... years? Huh, why is this bug still there? But well, it's still fun.
I guess it's reasonable to mention, that dominion.games is just not Stef's life, while TGG are 100% working on card game apps. The only thing to distract them from Dominion is other games. Hence Mic's last comment.
- Are there general trends for who tends to play on each platform? What is the quality of competition? Are people migrating to TGG for the most part or staying on dominion.games or some of both?
This we'll say is a question for someone else; I don't have any data at all here. Vocal people on the discord are on dominion.games; the league is on dominion.games. I can't find the leaderboard on TGG, I guess because I haven't played any rated games. Someone could post it.
- Is it worth continuing to pay for a ShuffleIT subscription, and also paying for sets on TGG?
That's a question for you really. Money isn't linear, for starters.
- Will TGG ever use a subscription model or can I expect to play indefinitely if I shell out for each set?
Those two questions appear unrelated to me. The first is unknowable. The second, well if they switch to a subscription model and somehow say "that means you no longer have the stuff we sold you," probably there will be a class-action lawsuit against them? Unless their user agreement or whatever that is, is extremely tricky and evil. That's my best guess. But I don't actually know any law or anything about the future or anything relevant to any topic in any situation.
- Will TGG ever run in a browser or on MacOS?
Unknowable future.
Nah, I'm good.
