Topics

Just like how when I hover over my name it reveals the Reserve/Duration Cards.  That way, when I have a Forager and want to see if there's already a Coin of the Realm in the trash, it's just a quick peek instead of two clicks.  Clicking would still set the trash to replace the log.

Kind regards,
HD

Hertz Doughnut:  here's a question... why isn't debt in the middle next to "1 action, 2 Buys, $6"
Seprix:  Because you don't pay with debt
Hertz Doughnut:  so easy to miss it in the lower left corner
Seprix:  But yeah it could be on the very rght corner
Seprix:  of the bar
Hertz Doughnut:  yeah
Seprix:  good idea, post it in suggestions
Hertz Doughnut:  also, coin tokens... same thing

[edit: I think it should be in the middle bar during your turn... and the lower left corner during their turn]

Log says embargos.

Google says embargoes.

Kind regards,
HD

Here are some thoughts on a game clock.

- In chess, when you run out of time, you lose.  However Dominion is not like chess in one a fundamental aspect: players MUST take a turn in chess for the game to progress.  One cannot simply "pass".  But in Dominion, a player can "pass"... they have the option of doing nothing (i.e. playing 0 actions, making 0 buys).  For this reason, let's think about creating a game clock around the concept that a player has X amount of time to take his turn, otherwise his turn abruptly ends... but he isn't forced to resign.  In essence, we're replacing the "Force Opponent To Resign" button with "Force Opponent To End Their Turn" button.

- The current timer is crude.  It just checks for a user response every 4 minutes.  This is easily abused.  I think a better system would be to start each user with, say, 1 minute per turn, but then to add, say, 10 seconds each time they make a decision.  (But build in a cap of, say, 4 minutes.)  This way, the more complicated turns accrue time to deal with their deck's complexity.

- Allow more time for the players' first turns, say, 5 minutes, so that they can get acquainted with the kingdom.

- The third time during a game that a player uses up all their time, the opponent now gets the "Force Opponent To Resign" button (in addition to the "Force Opponent To End Their Turn" button).

- Make the clock visible to all players and spectators.

- Timing for reactionary events (e.g. Playing Moat vs Witch or choosing which cards to discard vs Militia) would get, let's say, 30 seconds.  If time runs out, the prompt allows the opponent to make the decision for them.


Keep up the great work, SI!

Kind regards,
HD

The undo functionality is awesome, as is.  Just to make it a tad awesomer would be some kind of notice of what kind of "undo" your opponent is requesting.  A "big" undo is a request when new information has been revealed.  (e.g. "I want to undo my Sea Hag, because he played a Moat".)  A "small undo" is when no new information has been revealed.  (e.g. "I want to undo my Sea Hag, because I didn't notice that he had a Lighthouse/Champion in play.")

We definitely want to keep the functionality of big undos available.  It would just be nice to have the game automatically tell me if information was revealed or not (rather than trying to figure it out from the log).  I'm thinking that the dialog box that could turn red if your opponent is requesting a big undo.  Just doing that would probably create a cultural norm that we grant small slip-ups, but require you to justify yourself if new information was revealed.

Even better... it could become a game option to automatically grant smalls, and only require permission for bigs.  That's how I'd prefer to play.  I hate it when I hit Borrow before playing my treasures, and then hope to get permission to make my buys.  IRL, that situation would never happen.

Keep up the great work, SI!

Kind regards,
HD

Here's a crazy idea... I was thinking about Dominion simulators... specifically how they play thousands of games and aggregate the results, when I wondered:

What if we had an option where two human players could play an "aggregated" game with each other for the purposes of studying strategies? An aggregated game is the same as a normal game except for one thing... whenever a deck needs to be shuffled, shuffle it, say, 10,000 times, keeping a tally of the deck sequence for each one. Then, continue the game using whichever sequence was the most common.

I think this would be a useful tool for doing the postmortem of a game. Does the money strategy always beat the engine here? Or did it just get lucky?


Keep up the great work!

Kind regards,
HD

I taught my 4-year-old to play Dominion with a forked version of Goko Salvager that was basically a "kid mode" which limited the game as follows:

- Removed the scary cards:
var JackIsASweetInnocentBoy = " /witch /youngwitch /harem /thief /torturer /seahag /alchemy /fortuneteller /cultist /urchin /deathcart /mystic /altar /graverobber /rogue /soothsayer /cutpurse"

- Forced all games to be against Serf Bot

He loved it.  A fun way to teach basic math and logic skills. (Which the world needs more of!)

Keep up the great work!

Kind regards,
HD

- Use Apothecary
- Reveals 4 cards
- 1 copper goes to hand
- Prompts to choose order for remaining 3 cards on top of the deck

On my tablet, I cannot change the order of these 3 cards. Something's bugged with the touch-and-drag interface here. Cannot move any of the three cards to any other position.  I have to accept the original order to continue playing.

Chrome browser // Samsung SM-P900 (Android tablet // 1.9GHz Exynos® 5 Octa // 12.2 in screen // 2560 x 1600)
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-tab/SM-P9000ZKFXAR-specs


Keep up the great work, SI!

Kind regards,
HD

Edit: I originally said Alchemist instead of Apothecary

It would be nice if an icon was displayed next to the players' names indicating if they are playing via tablet, PC, etc. It's difficult to chat from a mobile device, so when I play from my tablet, I'd like it if the other player knew I'm on a mobile device and hence unresponsive to their glhf.

Keep up the great work SI!

Kind regards,
HD

In my last game, my deck centered around Heralds and Secret Passages.  I had about 8 of each. Playing on a tablet, whenever I played a Secret Passage with about 30 cards in my deck, it was very difficult to move the slider to the Second-From-Top position using my finger. How about some buttons for the most typical Secret Passage selections? In games with Herald or Wishing Well, a "Second-From-Top" button would be very convenient.

Also, it would be nice to have an Undo button available after selecting the card for secret passage, but before placing it in the deck. One time when my Herald revealed a Secret Passage, I didn't notice and selected Outpost as my next action to play... but instead it was selected to be returned to my deck, and prompted me for where to place it. I couldn't just back up and choose another card... I had to have an undo granted from my opponent, which is unnecessary.

Keep up the great work SI!

Kind regards,
HD

Just played a game on my tablet. When I had more than 30 cards in the discard pile when I bought an Inn. I wanted all the actions. It took far too long to individually select each action card by trying to touch the 2mm area available with my 20mm wide finger.

I bought 3 such Inns that way. A Select All Actions button would have saved me and my opponent about 20 minutes tonight.

Keep up the great work SI!

Kind regards,
HD

It would be great to have a checkbox when hosting a table for "First 2 turns blind-reveal". 

Here's the story.  My brother and I play with identical starting hands, and then we both secretly write down what our purchases will be for the first two turns.  Once we've both chosen our purchases, we simultaneously reveal and then are committed to making those purchases.  We do this so that second player isn't swayed by the purchases of the first player, which, for us, often turns the game into a mirror match.  (Oh, he bought potion, I better get one, too!)

Here's how we could implement it:
- All players have their discard pile obscured until Player 1 starts turn #3
- All your opponent's turns in the Game Log simply have "??" until Player 1 starts turn #3 (at which point they turn from ?? to the actions they actually took)
- All supply pile counts stay at 10 (or are ??) until Player 1 starts turn #3 (at which point they update to their proper number)
- Landmarks that dish out VP chips (like Battlefield) would be ?? until Player 1 starts turn #3
- The VP Counter next to the players' names would be ?? until Player 1 starts turn #3 (otherwise if they bought a Silver with Bandit Fort in play, it could be deduced)
- The VP Chips, Coin Tokens, Debt Tokens, -1 Card token, -1 Coin token, etc. for each player is ?? until Player 1 starts turn #3 (you wouldn't know if they spent their Baker coin or used a Borrow or played Ball/Ferry/Plan/Seaway/Lost Arts/Training)
- Trade route tokens would stay on the victory cards with a ? until Player 1 starts turn #3
- The trash would be ?? until Player 1 starts turn #3 (e.g. if a Mint was purchased turn 1, you wouldn't see 5 coppers in the trash, also, Doctor w overpay, Bonfire)

Some things that wouldn't be blinded:
- Tax - when Tax is in the kingdom, there's no getting around seeing what Player 1 purchased
- Lost City - if a player buys a Lost City, the opponents draw a card, which is a giveaway of what they purchased
- Noble Brigand - if a player buys NB, it does it's on-buy attack, which is a giveaway
- Embassy/IGG - when a player buys Embassy/IGG, the others get a Silver/Curse, and that's a giveaway
- Messenger - when a player buys Messenger, the others get something, and that's a giveaway
- Knights/Castles/Ruins/Death Cart - when a player buys a Knight, it changes which knight is on top, and that's a giveaway (same for Castles and Death Cart via the Ruins pile)
- Raid - gives opponents a -1 card, and that's a giveaway
- Summon - If an interactive card, like Sea Hag, is purchased with Summon on Turn 1, it would have to affect Player 2, and thus it wouldn't be a secret

Maybe tournaments and league would also like this option...?

Keep up the great work!

Kind regards,
HD

It would be great to have a checkbox when hosting a table for "Identical starting hands": all players begin the game with the same starting hand.

When my brother and I play, we always play that way so someone doesn't get that lucky 5/2 and buys a Cultist.  Currently we do it manually, passing turn after turn until we both have, say, a 4/3 copper split.  In one game today, Baths was a landmark, and the VPs ended up being dished out while we were getting compatible starting hands.

Shouldn't be too hard.  Maybe tournaments and league would also like this option...?

Keep up the great work!

Kind regards,
HD

See pic

After reading the AI bug thread, it's obvious that writing a good AI is hard. But there are a lot of coders here among the Dominion Online community, so maybe we can harness that intellectual capital by making a game out of making a good bot...

- Devise a way for players to upload their own bot-scripts and have them compete against each other (something like Geronimoo's scripts?)

- Hold a bot tournament

- The winner is crowned Lord Rattingham for a month until the next bot tournament


Chime in if you'd be interested in submitting an entry to the bot tournament. I'd do it.


Keep up the good work, SI!

Great job guys.  This is really sweet.  Haven't run into any bugs yet. :)  Awesome job with all the hard work... getting the backend built, connecting users, and the graphics look fantastic on my 4K monitor.  Take my money!  I'm in!

Having made an independent videogame myself, the thing that I failed at the most was getting input from players about the interface and trying to make it feel natural to them.  Sure, the interface felt 100% natural to me... it was designed around my own habits and preferences.  But when demo-ing it to others, it became obvious that they had different habits/expectations of simple things like where-to-click for x, y, and z.  When they ran into two things that felt unnatural, they left.  No sale.  It only takes seconds to turn an ideal prospect off the game entirely.

The goal is to make the interface feel natural to everyone who tries it... and it's perfectly fine to have more than one way to do function x, if method 1 feels natural for half the players and method 2 feels natural for the other half.

Here are some things that feel unnatural to me on my first day...

1) Right-clicking to read the text of a card.  That wasn't my first impulse.  I eventually found it, but it would be more natural IMO if there was a little magnifying glass icon in the top-right corner of the card.

2) I right-click a card to read the text.  Then I right-click again expecting the big version to go away, but it doesn't go away.  I have to left-click an empty area

3) When drawing a card, it doesn't fly into my hand, so when I drew a copper (and already had 2) it felt like I didn't draw anything, (I didn't notice the 2 incrementing to 3)

4) When I play Herald and it reveals a treasure, the only way to know what happened is to look at the log.  I would prefer that a copper flew into the middle of the screen for a second, and then back to the top of my deck.  (With Ironmonger, the card shows up in the middle of the screen.  I'd like to see that for Herald.)

5) Lord Rattington's discard pile obscures his VP score and the play area obscures mine (see screenshot).  How about putting it at the top of the log?  (stickied above the scrollbar portion)

6) If I click the red 3 in the top-left corner of my coppers in my hand, I thought it would play all 3 coppers, not just one

7) It would be nice to see the card types in the kingdom.  e.g. currently, I have to right-click Scrying Pool to see that it's an attack.  If there isn't room for "Action - Attack - Knight - Victory" maybe we could use icons?

8) Playing a Vault-Tactician deck... When I play Vault it asks me for discards (really like how you handled this!) and I clicked all 7 of my coppers.  Then I realized that I need to keep one back to be discarded with my other Tactician... so I right-clicked the copper.  I wanted it to decrement to 6 coppers, but it didn't.  Also tried shift-clicking, alt-clicking, and ctrl-clicking... like in Windows Explorer, if you have 10 files selected you can ctrl-click to unselect one of them.  Fortunately, I can hit the big UNDO button and just reselect all my discards... that's just mildly inconvenient in this case. :)

9) It would be nice for the color of the numbers to change when a supply is <= 3

10) When my cursor hovers over the rounded-rectangle containing my name, VP chips, coin/debt tokens it turns into a hand... which makes me think something will happen when I left-click.  Left-clicking does nothing.

11) Potion is at the top of the treasures... due to its cost, I expect to see it between Silver and Gold

12) When I trash a card and have Market Square in my hand it says "(Click Below The Log)"... I think it would make more sense if it said "You May Reveal A Reaction"


Again, great job.  I love it.  Just trying to give some helpful feedback.

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