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Author Topic: Interview with Donald X.  (Read 2249665 times)

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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5750 on: August 23, 2024, 01:52:05 pm »
+2

To me it's disappointing that e.g. Courtyard and Wishing Well, or Armory and Vagrant, or Lookout and Sea Chart, don't interact with each other. "Seems like they interact and they don't" ("nombo") isn't a fun feeling. Anyway, thank you for answering, no questions in this post
I don't disagree; but I can't have it all. It's a question for each card, what matters more.
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MatthewTaranto

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5751 on: August 23, 2024, 02:27:16 pm »
0

Thanks for answering. I've preordered (physical) Rising Sun and have enjoyed the games I've played with it digitally, but was Ninja making players discard every turn a concern? And unrelated but which kingdom card in Empires is your favorite?
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GendoIkari

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5752 on: August 23, 2024, 04:20:41 pm »
+1

To me it's disappointing that e.g. Courtyard and Wishing Well, or Armory and Vagrant, or Lookout and Sea Chart, don't interact with each other. "Seems like they interact and they don't" ("nombo") isn't a fun feeling. Anyway, thank you for answering, no questions in this post

Aside from Wishing Well wanting to have the simplest wording, it also seems like the version that does interact with e.g. Courtyard is just stronger, and maybe too strong.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5753 on: August 24, 2024, 03:05:06 am »
+3

Thanks for answering. I've preordered (physical) Rising Sun and have enjoyed the games I've played with it digitally, but was Ninja making players discard every turn a concern? And unrelated but which kingdom card in Empires is your favorite?
Since 2006, most of my playtesting has been IRL, with 3+ players. In those games, Militia hits you every turn, starting turn 3. Even if there's no draw. So, Ninja wasn't a concern there; it's business as usual. I recognize that it's better at attacking every turn earlier in 2-player games than Militia is.

Maybe Villa; it was a crazy novel thing in its day. Enchantress is also a star.
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Will(ow|iam)

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5754 on: August 25, 2024, 10:18:55 am »
+3

Have your thoughts on the design space for Alt-VP effects changed since this post from 2013?
https://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=8559.0

Alt-VP (by which I mean, scoring points without depleting basic supply piles) is making up a smaller portion of the cardpool over time. There was at least one alt-VP effect in every set up to Nocturne, but there weren't any in Renaissance, Menagerie, Plunder, or Rising Sun, and the 2es added as many as they removed (aside from Marchland).
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5755 on: August 25, 2024, 02:38:56 pm »
+3

Have your thoughts on the design space for Alt-VP effects changed since this post from 2013?
https://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=8559.0

Alt-VP (by which I mean, scoring points without depleting basic supply piles) is making up a smaller portion of the cardpool over time. There was at least one alt-VP effect in every set up to Nocturne, but there weren't any in Renaissance, Menagerie, Plunder, or Rising Sun, and the 2es added as many as they removed (aside from Marchland).
I don't want to study the post, but it's going to be basically true. I linked someone to it recently on the discord.

- Allies tried a Victory card theme at the start. The one that counted treasures lasted the longest. As you know in the end there are split pile Victory cards, where there's less pressure on the card to be worth a pile. And still only one of those isn't "don't care about anything." And it's not like people adore Territory.
- Renaissance and Rising Sun especially didn't want Victory cards, since the sets had fewer cards and wanted the landscape slots.
- The 2E's were just stuck due to space in the update packs.
- Future sets can certainly get "don't care about anything" Victory cards; Menagerie tried one that came with horses. I don't try to make sure sets get them though.
- And VP tokens could still come back again. Allies flirted with revisiting VP tokens. There are more things to do there, including things that resemble Victory cards, ala Triumph.
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MatthewTaranto

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5756 on: August 26, 2024, 10:26:54 am »
+2

Is there an official term for the game's currency? Like Peddler gives you +1 Card, +1 Action, +1...coin? Dollar? My own group tends to refer to it as simply "coin" (i.e. "I've got 2 Buys and 6 Coin..."). Early on I called it Gold but that didn't work for obvious reasons.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5757 on: August 26, 2024, 01:57:03 pm »
+6

Is there an official term for the game's currency? Like Peddler gives you +1 Card, +1 Action, +1...coin? Dollar? My own group tends to refer to it as simply "coin" (i.e. "I've got 2 Buys and 6 Coin..."). Early on I called it Gold but that didn't work for obvious reasons.
There isn't any kind of official glossary, but I call it coins.
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MatthewTaranto

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5758 on: August 29, 2024, 11:51:37 am »
0

Thanks for the answers, it's been fascinating! I'm probably running low on things I'm wondering about now, but would you ever consider a "Promos" box expansion once there are enough of them? What about a "1st edition cards" expansion? Or is the game better without bringing back those cards (as they were cut for a reason such as newer cards making them outdated)?
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5759 on: August 29, 2024, 02:26:00 pm »
+4

Thanks for the answers, it's been fascinating! I'm probably running low on things I'm wondering about now, but would you ever consider a "Promos" box expansion once there are enough of them? What about a "1st edition cards" expansion? Or is the game better without bringing back those cards (as they were cut for a reason such as newer cards making them outdated)?
For other languages, we let the publishers use the promos how they want to; same with online. For physical English, Jay uses the promos to support BoardGameGeek - he gives them promos for free, and they sell them to support the site. So as long as that's going on, he's not interested in publishing the promos otherwise.

I'm against reprinting the 1E cards; cutting those cards was even better than adding the replacements.
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soudek01

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5760 on: August 29, 2024, 06:00:37 pm »
+1

What’s your best guess on the number of man hours that went into designing/playtesting rising sun cards?

Has this number increased or decreased as expansions continue to be published?
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5761 on: August 30, 2024, 02:45:38 am »
+3

What’s your best guess on the number of man hours that went into designing/playtesting rising sun cards?

Has this number increased or decreased as expansions continue to be published?
I so cannot put the work in to have a reasonable guess there. Work on the set started in May 2023 and the last card change was February 2024. The set kept getting playtested after that though, it just didn't get more changes. Normally I play two days a week irl, but I could test Rising Sun on the computer too, and well, again, I am not putting in the work to try to guess how many hours were spent that way, for me or for anyone else.

Designing the cards takes very little time next to everything else. Playtesting takes the most time. Then there's all the other work. Rising Sun continues to generate work; I'll need to eventually come up with achievements for it, and there will be campaign stuff for it. There will someday be a reprinting and it will get fixes from a list and they will be proofread repeatedly and so on.

Then there's, how do you count some things. Prophecies were around years ago, in a form that wasn't good enough. Arguably that counts as part of the work on Rising Sun.

Being able to test online means way more playtesting. That applies especially to the isotropic years, and then the last few years. For the early sets, well in some sense the later the set was the more time it got, because they were all being worked on the whole time, but some came out and then stopped being worked on. So Hinterlands got more testing than Intrigue due to being worked on all through that early run of sets. The later sets, I'm usually just making one set at a time, though the 2E's overlapped with other sets.
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Tid

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5762 on: September 03, 2024, 01:15:02 am »
0

When you were designing Dark Ages, how differently designed were the 2 attacking Looters trying to be compared to regular Curser cards? In your mind, could they have fit well enough into a set that didn't contain ruins and just given curses instead?
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5763 on: September 03, 2024, 01:58:01 pm »
+4

When you were designing Dark Ages, how differently designed were the 2 attacking Looters trying to be compared to regular Curser cards? In your mind, could they have fit well enough into a set that didn't contain ruins and just given curses instead?
It looks like Ruinses became a thing in April 2010. Of course Dominion at the start had Confusion, a blank card you could give out instead of Curses; that's 2006. It's 2024 now. It's going to be hard to remember what was going through my head when making those cards.

The first card was Marauder: Gain a Silver, each other player gains a Rubble. On the next page they were Ruinses instead of Rubbles. And there's a second card: Barbarian. It's called Barbarian, but it's also the card that eventually came out with that name, except it doesn't have the +$2 and it costs $4 and also it uses Ruinses instead of Curses.

So sure, you could do these cards with Curses - and Barbarian is just such a card.

My guess is, I was happy with "it gives out Ruinses instead of Curses" being different enough from cards that give out Curses, and wasn't doing any specific other things to distinguish them from Curse-givers. They gave out Ruinses, those aren't as bad as Curses but are still pretty bad, and you go from there.

The idea to Ruinses is, that an awful card that does something is more interesting than an awful card that doesn't. Curse has the benefit of simplicity, for a game that after all may not get any expansions if it's too complex; Ruinses have more interactions, and it's fun when well you play the Ruins and it does a little something for you. It's a different experience from "this card just does nothing." This premise didn't require anything more of the cards generating the Ruinses though. Since Curses are worse, I couldn't just make it e.g. "+2 Cards, hand out Ruinses" at $5 because it would look stupid next to Witch. They had to carve out their own shapes and so they did.
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Alekseyev

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5764 on: September 03, 2024, 07:16:53 pm »
0

Out of curiosity, regarding the expansions that have had a 2nd edition:

Are there any second-edition-removed cards you still play with?

Are there any second-edition-kept/added cards you never play with?
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Tid

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5765 on: September 03, 2024, 07:38:04 pm »
0

Thanks for breaking it down and going through the process, appreciate the answer!
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5766 on: September 04, 2024, 01:24:23 pm »
+3

Are there any second-edition-removed cards you still play with?
Not a one.

Are there any second-edition-kept/added cards you never play with?
I play with all of the new cards. There are a few not-removed cards that I don't play with as much IRL, just due to, I'm playtesting, these will warp the game so much around them. But I still play with them in computer games. For example, if we're playtesting a trasher, well we probably don't want to pit it against Chapel. Or, Stonemason empties piles so quickly that it makes it hard to learn as much from the game (the games IRL are multiplayer). But either of those might make it into a game IRL anyway sometimes.
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Will(ow|iam)

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5767 on: September 04, 2024, 08:11:42 pm »
0

Do you play with the alchemy cards that aren't apprentice?
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5768 on: September 05, 2024, 01:54:28 pm »
+2

Do you play with the alchemy cards that aren't apprentice?
Yes, some. I don't have them blocked in the digital version.
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infangthief

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5769 on: September 16, 2024, 12:02:20 pm »
0

Hi Donald,

Have you ever released a card without any playtesting, relying instead on your experience of previous cards?
Which card do you think had the least playtesting prior to release?

Do you ever design and start playtesting a card knowing full well that it is not in its final form (functionally)?
Have you ever tried a crazy-sounding idea and then been surprised to find that it actually works?
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5770 on: September 16, 2024, 01:36:35 pm »
+5

Have you ever released a card without any playtesting, relying instead on your experience of previous cards?
No. A few times an outtake went out as a promo, with no additional testing then, but they'd gotten testing earlier.

Which card do you think had the least playtesting prior to release?
It would be something new to a set, that was towards the end of the set, for an early set. There's always something that makes it in late; and early sets got less testing. Well less when they were the focus; some of the cards had been there since before Dominion was published. But you know. So in Prosperity, it would have been Bishop; that's last in the file. I'm not checking every set, and it's pointless anyway, as I won't know just how long each late card was playtested.

Do you ever design and start playtesting a card knowing full well that it is not in its final form (functionally)?
Yes; a big thing here is just, knowing that the wording isn't good enough, and not wanting to put time into that if the card actually isn't surviving. For example there were playtest cards with "Once during this turn, when nothing is happening..."

Have you ever tried a crazy-sounding idea and then been surprised to find that it actually works?
Sure; in general if it looks crazy now, it also looked crazy then. And yet I tried it. If you don't try that stuff, you never get crazy-looking stuff.
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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5771 on: September 16, 2024, 10:38:07 pm »
0

I know you never played Slay the Spire, but did any playtesters mention that Biding Time is similar to Runic Pyramid?

Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5772 on: September 17, 2024, 01:28:04 pm »
0

I know you never played Slay the Spire, but did any playtesters mention that Biding Time is similar to Runic Pyramid?
I don't think so, and that's enough of that. Why haven't I played this acclaimed game? It's to keep that nonsense away from me.
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MatthewTaranto

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5773 on: September 22, 2024, 09:09:49 pm »
0

What's your favorite token type?

The art for Werewolf is cool but not very werewolf-y. How come?
« Last Edit: September 22, 2024, 09:14:03 pm by MatthewTaranto »
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LibraryAdventurer

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #5774 on: September 23, 2024, 12:21:32 am »
0

What's your favorite token type?

The art for Werewolf is cool but not very werewolf-y. How come?

I do sometimes* wonder how the artist got away with submitting that art for "werewolf".

(*Whenever I look at the werewolf card.)
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