This is a game where you can gain an edge by deeply thinking every turn, counting cards in your deck, figuring out what is still in your draw pile etc. Being able to do these things fast is a skill, just like in chess where lower rated players can also figure out better moves if they are given more itme. But it is not fun to play if you want a quick game but your opponent is taking very long every turn. Sometimes you also just have 10 minutes of free time but there is no telling if your game will last 5 minutes or 40.
I think it would be a great idea to add some time controls to the game, similar to chess, each with their own rating/leaderboard. This gives players more control over how long a game will last if they have limited time, as well as make things more fair in general. Something like a total game time, with an increase to it every time its your turn, and an increase for every time you play a card (ie 1 minute starting time, +10 seconds per turn, +2 seconds per action card played for a quicker game, and 3 minutes, +15s/turn and +5 seconds per action for a slower game, and a much slower, or just untimed, just to give some ideas).
It would be terrible to force this on people. But I think you are only asking for this to be added as an option, right? If so; I think that's a great idea. Probably not terribly difficult to program. And, once done, that option would be available forever, into the future.
It probably wouldn't work very well with the undo feature in effect. However if there's no do-overs, like in tournament chess, it might work.
It has been mentioned in the past that there may be a no-undo option available in the future. Still waiting for that.
Yeah just as option. When searching for a game, just like you can set 2 player, 3 player, unrated, min and max level difference, etc, you can also choose which time controls you're willing to play, with "no time control" obviously being an option too :)
This has been suggested before, but that doesn't make it any less of a good suggestion. Hearthstone, Magic, and pretty much all online card games I'm aware of, have some sort of player action timer. I see no problem with forcing it on people, to be honest, but if you want the option to turn it off for casual games, ok.
I have friends who refuse to play online Dominion when I tell them it has no timer.
Good lord is this needed. The most important thing is that there needs to be a way to set time constraints as part of the automatch process. I want to play with time controls something on the order of 30-60 seconds + 2 seconds per move (i.e., per decision point, not per turn). It kills me to play these games where people spend 5 seconds on every decision. If some people want to play that way, that's cool, but there should be a way to automatch around them. As it is, I just wind up blocking dozens and dozens of players because they play too slowly for my tastes.
Just coming in to add my support for this idea as an option. Being able to click "fast play" and limit the amount of time people can spend making decisions would be super useful for me as well if I want to get a quick game in or don't have the patience to play with a "thinker."
Not that that isn't a valid gaming strategy, as said above, but sometimes it'd be nice to be matched with folks who have a compatible play style.
I personally have no issues with people taking their time. It gives me time to get things done. A lot of the time I am working remotely on someone's PC and am thankful for the 2 minutes between turns.
As an option I can see it but not on by default.
It might be nice as an option. The one problem is that sometimes the delay in a player's turns are caused by connection issues. It's not as if players have control of the sequence of routers handling their internet connection to the dominion.games server, and it would be maddening to have a connection glitch count against your time.
The connection issue could maybe be handled with a periodic keepalive to check that the connection is still active.
I find the lack of this feature more and more frustrating. If someone wants to think for 10 seconds about a play, that is fine for them, but I don't want to play with those people, and it is really irritating that the game doesn't provide a way to set any kind of time parameters. I want to be able to force-resign people if they ever take longer than 10 seconds on a decision.
Also, the default timeout is ridiculously long, as evidenced by various posts on here describing how troll players "slow play". One would think the default timeout should be set so that if a player took the maximum amount of time on every single play, the game would still be at least marginally playable. Right now it's not even close to that. (Alternatively, use a chess-style system with a starting time pool and small increment for each play, so that players who take a long time on one decision must irrevocably "use up" some of their total allotted time and thus can't do that over and over again in the same game.)
I would support this as an option as well.
Please do something. After playing Online for less than a week. my son, who is an avid Dominion player, has sworn never to play online again and wants to burn his cards in protest. The stalling tactics are maddening.