I've been trying to decide whether or not to start a thread listing the things I would need done in order to pay money for Goko, but this seems like the perfect thread for my post.
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So I've been playing on Goko over the last week. Multiplayer games; not owning any sets. I've toyed with the idea of going ahead and buying all the sets; it almost seems good enough for me to do so. But there's a list of things stopping me; things that must be in place before I'm willing to do so. Roughly ranked by importance.
1. Automatch. I know that they've already said that this is one of their top priorities. But I am completely confused as to why the current system would ever exist at all. The whole idea of hosting a game vs finding a game to join doesn't seem like it would be any easier to have implemented than automatch, and I can't think of any advantages to it. It makes a large portion of the play experience quite unenjoyable; it's as if you have to be the host if you want to actually have fun playing.
Let me explain... if I'm looking for a game to join, and not hosting one, then this is what happens. I sit around in a lobby for a couple minutes waiting until a new game pops up. At this point, I have no idea if it's a game with all the sets, or just the base set, or what. Some people put "all cards" in the game name.. great. But no everyone does; and heck, nothing's stopping people from saying that even if it's not true!
If it's a casual game, I can look at the list of cards being used... of course, by the time I click the button to see that list, and see that it's a game I want to play, more than half the time someone else has already taken the spot; so much for that game. And then if it's a pro game, I basically just have to join it in hopes that it's not base set only... and more than half the games I've joined this way so far were base set only. So now I'm stuck playing a game that frankly I find quite boring.*
So it would seem that the obvious solution to all these problems is to buy all the sets, and host my own game. I'm not cheap; I'm not wanting something for free... I'm fine with paying money for it to play that way. But then, who am I playing against? People like my current self... after all, it's just been shown that the only way to get a good game is to host it yourself. So most likely I'm playing against people who don't own all the sets... otherwise they would most likely be hosting themselves. So all Dominion players are broken into 2 groups of people; the hosters and the joiners. And ironically, this would be perfect; if hosters mainly played other hosters and joiners mainly played other joiners... because they're more likely to be similar types of players. But instead, it's forced that a hoster can only play a joiner; the exact opposite of ideal.
Ok, that was a really long rant; hopefully the rest of the issues will be more succinct.
2. It needs to run on the iPad. By which I mean my iPad; as mentioned in another thread, I can't play it at all without it crashing. Sure it's 1st generation. Sure maybe almost 3 years is a really long time in the world of fast-moving technology; especially Apple technology. But on the other hand, it's less than 3 years old. It's not exactly a legacy dinosaur here... it's pretty new. And the entire reason and philosophy behind Goko is supposed to be mobile support. I need to be able to play on my iPad.
3. Refreshing window / disconnects. There are just so many reasons I can think of that you might get kicked out of a game... your browser crashed (especially an issue on the iPad); you accidentally closed the tab while trying to click or close something else; your internet connection flickered off; your computer crashed and you restarted; you accidentally hit F5 or the refresh button... You need to be able to continue your game where you left off if any of those things happen.
4. The in-game log currently shows the entire game. After pages and pages of debate about whether the PCE was cheating; whether taking notes by hand in a IRL game was cheating; etc, etc... all of which, in my opinion, was clearly concluded by Donald X himself repeatedly stating that note-taking was cheating, unless agreed upon, then it's a variant... after all that, the official implementation keeps a full-game log of everything that happens. To me this is a big variant on the game; much more so than just a point-counter. It completely removes all memory aspect of the game; which is an important skill-set that Dominion includes.
5. They need to get rid the remaining places where you are forced to drag a card to a specific location to tell the system what you want to do. This is a strange one, because they actually fixed this problem for several cards already! I can't remember a full list of either the things they already changed, or the ones they still need to change... but I do know that the other day, when I played Oracle, I ended up putting my Grand Market in the discard pile because it's this tiny little icon that's directly next to this other tiny little icon for the draw pile. To drag a card into the right spot is just way too easy to make a mistake on. Plus it simply adds to the play time and physical effort involved... I know it's only an extra couple of seconds, but it adds up. Just let me click a button instead!
6. They need to fix other pointless things that they make you click, or watch, when stuff happens. Again I don't have a full list, but just a few that come to mind that bother me enough to take away my enjoyment of the game: When I play a Moneylender, why do I have to choose a Copper to trash? When I play a Beggar, why do I have to sit there and watch and 1 Copper gets added to my hand, then another Copper gets added to my hand, then another Copper gets added to my hand? Just add 3 Coppers to my hand! Yes, I know that if you have Trader or Watchtower or Royal Seal around that the events need to be resolved 1 at a time. You can deal with the edge cases without making it tedious the other 95% of the time. When I buy a Mandarin with my opening $5, why do I have to choose the order in which my 5 Coppers go back on top of my deck? Also, apparently if I try to click farthest left one during this time, it doesn't put it back, rather it opens the larger view of the card. Clicking the other ones puts them back.
7. I need to see all the Supply cards at once. They want to keep Spoils, Prizes, Madmen, and Mercenaries separate; fine. Back to that 95% things; it's so rare that anyone cares how many of those are left. But Ruins, and more importantly the 11th Kingdom card when there's Young Witch absolutely need to be on the same screen. I shouldn't have to page through things to find the card I want to buy. Some say that if you see Young Witch in the Kingdom, you should just be used to a second page. Not good enough for me. Also, though it would be very rare... what if Young Witch ends up being the next-page card? You see 10 non-Young Witch Kingdom cards... in a game without any other special cards... would you ever bother checking the second page? The fact is that the current UI design is simply completely short-sighted and poorly done for a game that can have more than 10 cards out at once. Having Estates go with the Treasures in a Colony game is similar. It may not be as much of a big deal, but it's terrible design.
I think that's actually it. With all that in place, I would be annoyed at the fact that a game still takes about twice as long as a game of Iso... but I would enjoy playing it enough to pay money for it and wouldn't care to compare it to a product that no longer exists.
Is that too much to ask?
*Man, when Dominion first came out I thought it was the greatest thing ever, even with only base cards. I played dozens and dozens of games without ever getting bored or thinking it was repetitive. So I'm not trying to knock base Dominion as a bad game. It just that after playing with all expansions; and spending over a year learning intricate strategy details; base Dominion is no longer fun at all.
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Topic: Goko still not ready imo (Read 5263 times)