I spent ten minutes playing some test games and encountered the following issues. Holy cow.
- You can't hide the chat or the play log. It clutters the screen and makes everything else smaller.
- You can only read a card's text by right clicking it. I'm total shit at right clicking on my Surface touchpad, so I accidentally left click like 1/4 of the time. Not only slightly irritating, but also leads to accidentally buying/selecting cards.
- The computer plays treasures one at a time. I'm the guy who will just surrender if his opponent keeps doing this, so super irritating for me.
- Half of your opponent's hand is displayed (only the top half of the cards) and it's shown upside down. I guess the designers thought it was REALLY important to simulate an actual tabletop perspective? It looks really stupid and distracting, though.
- The game gives the option to rearrange how you want the cards displayed...but it doesn't rearrange everything, so there is a big text overlay on top of the supply cards. Hard to explain, so here you go: http://i.imgur.com/niuvjKK.jpg
- The game requires unnecessary confirmations. I haven't experienced every card, but if someone plays militia against you, you need to click the two cards you want to discard, then it asks you to confirm you want to discard the cards you just clicked to discard.
- Animations are janky and laggy.
- I think there's no sound. I like hearing the shuffling cards and the fwip when a card is played.
- There is zero graphics work done. The only images are ripped straight from the cards. In MakingFun's client, they used attractive buttons..but in this new version, everything is text in a black box. Sometimes that text even extends outside the box for some reason.
- In games with a lot of players, you can't see their discard piles.
- The screen is so crowded, you have to hover your cursor over a player's name to learn the following:
1. If he has anything on his Native Village mat
2. If he has played any duration cards (e.g., Lighthouse), and what they are
3. If he has played any islands, and what he has played with them
4. If he's put anything on his Tavern mat, and what cards they are (e.g., Distant Lands, coppers from Miser, etc.)
- Duration attack effects are not displayed (e.g., if I play Bridge Troll, it does not show me who gets -1 coin).
- It is not possible to view which prizes are still available/have been claimed.
- It is not possible to look through the trash, except when playing a card that lets you do it.
- A lot of effects happen instantaneously, which can be extremely disorienting. For example, in a three player game I play a knight. Instead of an animation that shows the other two players revealing the two top cards from their decks, trashing one between 3 and 6 and discarding the other (or discarding both if neither is between 3 and 6), the cards just immediately change and you see the end result. In order to make any sense of what happened, you need to read the game log. Why even have visuals at all then??? This is true for any "reveal" effect (e.g., Herald).
- The journey token and its status aren't displayed either to you or the other players.
- There's a glitch where if I set required cards, then play a game, then set new required cards, for some reason the old required cards continue to be selected.
I do like the ability to undo and choose which cards to play with, but holy cow there are so many things wrong here. Seriously, guys?
Quote- It is not possible to look through the trash, except when playing a card that lets you do it.
Correction: You can see what's in the trash if you scroll all the way to the top of the game log.
This client is a love child between the previous Dominion client and an old DOS text game from the 90s.
There was a lot of playtesting done by experienced Dominion players, and I believe everything you listed has already been pointed out by them. The developers just ran out of time to get everything fixed before the release date. I think you will see the interface improve pretty quickly over the next couple of weeks.
Yes, I totally agree with everything you said, and more. Its the worst interface imaginable. I hope the developers are truly going to improve/overhaul this.
Quote from: TwoWhiteBears on 01 January 2017, 04:32:50 AM
- The game requires unnecessary confirmations. I haven't experienced every card, but if someone plays militia against you, you need to click the two cards you want to discard, then it asks you to confirm you want to discard the cards you just clicked to discard.
I actually quite like this feature, and I tried to get the previous developer to implement it. Luckily for you, if you go into the Options menu, you can at least turn off the two-step process for single card trashing and discarding. As for multi-card trashing/discarding, not only do I think it's better to have to confirm your trashing/discarding so that you can change your mind in between, but it's also how trashing and discarding works within the rules of Dominion. If you're trashing multiple cards, such as through Chapel, you don't trash them one at a time, you trash them all at once.
please take all this into consideration guys. he was on point with every single one of his critiques.
If you switch off "Move kingdom and play area" under "Options", the actions/buys/coins status bar doesn't overlap with the supply.
In addition, you can click that bar to make it disappear (until something changes).
I was really looking forward to the new version, as the Making Fun App wasn't perfect. But MF was glorious compared to this PRE-BETA software. I am willing to pay for your work, but I am not willing to do frustrating softwaretesting.
agree with all these points. I am willing to pay to play Dominion online, I want this to be a viable business for someone who will support it. But this interface is ugly, clunky, disfunctional and slow. It's a huge disappointment.
Agreed! I hope the developers will take all of these comments into consideration. I am an avid Dominion player, and this version needs major work.
It's funny, I just remarked to one of my first opponents that it's obvious to me that the people who developed this have played A LOT of Dominion.
(Maybe too much ;) )
What I think the original post makes obvious is that everybody has a different set of "things" that he wants optimzed in computer play and other things that he wants to be shown graphically in order to "understand what happended":
Original poster mentioned that the current implementation is doing it "to slow":
- The computer plays treasures one at a time. I'm the guy who will just surrender if his opponent keeps doing this, so super irritating for me.
- The game requires unnecessary confirmations. I haven't experienced every card, but if someone plays militia against you, you need to click the two cards you want to discard, then it asks you to confirm you want to discard the cards you just clicked to discard.
Original poster mentioned that the current implementation is doing it "to fast":
- A lot of effects happen instantaneously, which can be extremely disorienting. For example, in a three player game I play a knight. Instead of an animation that shows the other two players revealing the two top cards from their decks, trashing one between 3 and 6 and discarding the other (or discarding both if neither is between 3 and 6), the cards just immediately change and you see the end result. In order to make any sense of what happened, you need to read the game log. Why even have visuals at all then??? This is true for any "reveal" effect (e.g., Herald).
+++
This is something that will be very hard to effectively solve, as there are just so many effects it can apply to. For example at making fun, I set the "delay" to some middle value so I could reasonably see what happened when computer opponent played a card chain, but then I got to wait "for an eternity" if he used a Trader to get 5 silvers and the game client would show me each silver seperately 5 times.
Quote from: Ingix on 06 January 2017, 07:08:08 AM
This is something that will be very hard to effectively solve, as there are just so many effects it can apply to. For example at making fun, I set the "delay" to some middle value so I could reasonably see what happened when computer opponent played a card chain, but then I got to wait "for an eternity" if he used a Trader to get 5 silvers and the game client would show me each silver seperately 5 times.
I think the "too slow vs too fast" thing is actually pretty simple to solve in most cases. First, they need an animation to show everything that happens. Especially things like revealing a card with Herald or trashing with Rebuild. Then they need an option to turn animations off or control their speed.
Finally, they can customize some of the specific animations -- if you gain 5 silvers, that should be one animation that flashes up 5 silvers, not 5 animations of 1 silver each (and if you didn't catch exactly how many silvers they gained, you can always just reference the log). Technically you didn't gain them all at once, but in many cases, they can be displayed that way (if you have a duplicate, it would have to show the first gain and then ask you).
Luckily the developers have said they're going to add all the missing animations.
Quote from: allanfieldhouse on 06 January 2017, 09:37:59 PM
Quote from: Ingix on 06 January 2017, 07:08:08 AM
This is something that will be very hard to effectively solve, as there are just so many effects it can apply to. For example at making fun, I set the "delay" to some middle value so I could reasonably see what happened when computer opponent played a card chain, but then I got to wait "for an eternity" if he used a Trader to get 5 silvers and the game client would show me each silver seperately 5 times.
I think the "too slow vs too fast" thing is actually pretty simple to solve in most cases. First, they need an animation to show everything that happens. Especially things like revealing a card with Herald or trashing with Rebuild. Then they need an option to turn animations off or control their speed.
Finally, they can customize some of the specific animations -- if you gain 5 silvers, that should be one animation that flashes up 5 silvers, not 5 animations of 1 silver each (and if you didn't catch exactly how many silvers they gained, you can always just reference the log). Technically you didn't gain them all at once, but in many cases, they can be displayed that way (if you have a duplicate, it would have to show the first gain and then ask you).
Luckily the developers have said they're going to add all the missing animations.
I feel that a lot of the design choices for the game where made with the intention to account for all possible edge cases, or at least as many edge cases as possible. In the case of gaining 5 Silvers, MF may have been annoying with showing the Silver in your face 5 times, but it also let you react individually to each Silver gain this way with say Watchtower. I'm not sure how Watchtower works in the new client, but the use of the log as part of the UI (for example when callign a Reserve card) I feel has stemmed from making sure all legal actions are doable and non-ambiguous at the expense of consistency across all cards. I think is a tradeoff somewhere between fast flow speed and low chance of user errors (which I think is a strength of the new client after you see each effect the first time).
As an aside, the '+' sign on the bottom corner of the cards that are available for gaining/purchasing feels like an artifact from MF given that, in the new client, clicking anywhere on the card gives it to you. Maybe gainable cards can get a bright border instead or something if that behaviour doesn't end up changing down the line?
Quote from: allanfieldhouse on 06 January 2017, 09:37:59 PM
Quote from: Ingix on 06 January 2017, 07:08:08 AM
This is something that will be very hard to effectively solve, as there are just so many effects it can apply to. For example at making fun, I set the "delay" to some middle value so I could reasonably see what happened when computer opponent played a card chain, but then I got to wait "for an eternity" if he used a Trader to get 5 silvers and the game client would show me each silver seperately 5 times.
I think the "too slow vs too fast" thing is actually pretty simple to solve in most cases. First, they need an animation to show everything that happens. Especially things like revealing a card with Herald or trashing with Rebuild. Then they need an option to turn animations off or control their speed.
The problem is that there are just too many cards that have these kinds of effects, and as I tried to explain initially, there are some effects that a player wants to have "slow", other effects that he wants to have "fast", this choice may depend on other cards in the Kingdom, and this disctinction "slow" vs. "fast" is different for each player. I don't think an option screen that lists 50 cards and asks "Do you want Trader gains fast or slow?", "Do you want Rebuild trashes fast or slow?", "Do you want cards revealed by Herald fast or slow?" a.s.o. is a good idea.
Quote from: markusin on 07 January 2017, 01:39:35 AM
Quote from: allanfieldhouse on 06 January 2017, 09:37:59 PM
Finally, they can customize some of the specific animations -- if you gain 5 silvers, that should be one animation that flashes up 5 silvers, not 5 animations of 1 silver each.
In the case of gaining 5 Silvers, MF may have been annoying with showing the Silver in your face 5 times, but it also let you react individually to each Silver gain this way with say Watchtower.
Here's where the system just needs to be smart. If you're gaining 5 Silvers, the default should be to show 5 Silvers and have them go into your discard. Reactions and Reserves are just a case where you can't use the default. If you have a Watchtower in hand, the interface would have to ask you about what to do with each Silver.
I like the sentinels of the multiverse app's solution: they have an animation speed up button.
I was going to start a thread, but this one addresses a lot of the things I wanted to rant about, so I'll just reply here and agree with what has been said.
I have been playing Dominion online since about when the Goko version started, and though the MakingFun implementation wasn't perfect, it was pretty darn good. When I look at the new client, I see an implementation devised by people who have forgotten what it means to be new to Dominion. They seem to have spent too much time on certain advanced features while all but ignoring many basic ones. The GUI is shockingly cluttered and counter-intuitive, in both the game screen and the menus. I've watched tournament games between the ultra-masters (on Twitch), including the guys behind Shuffle iT, and the new game GUI is reflective of the way those guys play: the game log is always on, and they keep one eye on it constantly. I think that's why things like reveal/discard animations have been overlooked. The information is there in the log, so why bother? What really blows my mind is that the trash pile and Tavern/NV/Island/VP token/Coin token mats are all excluded from the GUI. The features for customizing kingdoms are so robust, them seem specifically geared toward tournament play. There's nothing wrong with that, but the menus are confusing to me. I can't imagine a brand-new player being anything but hopelessly lost.
The AIs were smarter in the MakingFun version, too.
I used to play Dominion Online every day, and now I must admit that my enthusiasm for doing so has been largely destroyed. I feel bad saying that, because obviously a lot of hard work has gone into this. I got a partial subscription for free because of my MF purchases, but there is no way I will pay money for this unless a serious overhaul happens. I guess the upside is that I'll end up making new friends when trying to find people to play the physical game with.
If I had been developing a new version of online Dominion with limited resources (which actually I was - I miss Isotropic), I would have focused on making it work well for experienced players first too. In fact, I'd have put retaining the core player-base at the centre of everything, as players who move onto other online card games now may never return.
It would be nice to launch with a raft of beginner focused features like animations and tutorial, along with a massive publicity blitz about the relaunch, but let's face it - Shuffle IT is not Blizzard and does not have that kind of resource. Those things can come later, and then it'll be up to us to spread the word and get Dominion the recognition it deserves online as well.