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Messages - AdamH

#316
This and a lot of similar problems would be taken care of if the option to disable card stacking in the play area was present.

Or at least if card stacking was applied in a more consistent way so that cards that were played as a result of different things weren't stacked. Like, if a card directs you to play another card (Throne Room, Golem, Prince, start-of-turn rules, etc.) then it appears obviously different in the display.
#317
Support / Re: Redeem a key
16 June 2017, 05:12:43 AM
?
#318
Support / Re: Redeem a key
15 June 2017, 05:23:09 PM
In my IRL copies of Dark Ages and Guilds there were cards that told you that you could go online and redeem them for like, Hoard, Nobles, and something else?

In any case, if that's what you're talking about, Shuffleit doesn't honor those.
#319
Card Bugs / 6P game supply card piles
12 June 2017, 03:02:56 AM
From the Intrigue Rulebook:

Quote
To set up for 5 or 6 players, combine the Treasure cards from Dominion and Dominion: Intrigue. Use 15 Provinces in the Supply for a 5-player game and 18 Provinces in the Supply for a 6-player game. All other Victory card piles (Estates, Duchies, and Victory Kingdom cards) remain at 12 cards per pile.

I was spectating a 6P game and noticed there were 16 Provinces, Duchies, and Estates, and the regular 30/40/60-starting_decks treasures instead of what the rulebook states.
#320
General Discussion / Re: Undoing
11 June 2017, 07:24:49 PM
Quote from: Donald X. on 11 June 2017, 06:15:08 PM
The generous more-programming version is the same except you track how many known cards there are for each player on each deck, and accessing those doesn't count against you.

I'm playing an Apothecary/Wishing Well deck, and I forget the order I'm putting my cards back. If I name the wrong card to my Wishing Well even though it's "known" what that card is, I would prefer if I could deny that undo while allowing all other undos that didn't actually reveal new information to my opponent.

I think I'm probably one of the most generous people I know when it comes to undos, but I wouldn't think of allowing anyone that particular undo.
#321
Quote from: Donald X. on 07 June 2017, 05:30:52 PM
Quote from: AdamH on 07 June 2017, 04:46:59 PM
1. The matchup is completely discarded (this is what I think should happen)
I would record it as a win for each remaining player over the resigning player, and for the two remaining players, not record a result.

OK it seems like we agree on everything. I had some doubt at some point but not anymore.

Quote from: Stef on 07 June 2017, 06:32:32 PM
The original game only produces 2 results instead of the planned 3. The difference is that I count these wins for a bit more then just a regular win. Normal wins are counted as (1 0), ties counted as (0.5 0.5), and the plan now is to count these 3P-resignation-wins as (1.5 -0.5).

That will imply that in 3P resigning is worse for your ranking then losing, which is fine with me, and the two remaining players are both a bit compensated because they were deprived of the opportunity to score 2 wins in that game.

I don't mind punishing people for resigning 3P games, but how do you plan to punish people for resigning 3P games without also punishing people with a spotty internet connection, or people who get disconnected from games due to bugs in the software?

And giving 1.5 points to people is effectively the same thing as option (2) in my previous post (counting the remaining result as a tie for the players who didn't resign), unless I'm misunderstanding. I won't go into the list of reasons that I think that's not a good idea.
#322
Quote from: Donald X. on 07 June 2017, 06:05:51 AM
Quote from: Polk5440 on 06 June 2017, 08:16:32 PM
Regarding ratings, I can absolutely see an argument for allowing the complete game outcome after replacement with a bot count. Currently, the bot is very likely to buy Provinces/points when able pushing the game to a conclusion. It's not unreasonable to expect far behind players in multiplayer games to do this to speed things along, too. Would ignoring the final outcome of games with resignations that are finished with a bot give better rankings than not counting it? I don't think that's an obvious "yes", at all.
The idea isn't to do the best job of ranking the players in this situation; it's to make the players the happiest they can be.

I think the players should have the option to continue the game with a bot player, or to maybe start the game over as a 2P game in this case. Give them all the options, I don't think anyone disagrees on that.

After reading your posts, though, I'm actually unclear now on what your stance is with regard to the leaderboard. I think everyone agrees that the guy who resigned should lose his matchups against the other two players who didn't resign, but what about the matchup between the two remaining players? What leaderboard result should be recorded for that matchup? Some options I've seen suggested are:

1. The matchup is completely discarded (this is what I think should happen)
2. The matchup is counted as a draw
3. A game with a bot will determine the result of the matchup, with the bot's score/placement ignored
4. Same as (3), only the bot passes all of its turns and never buys/gains/plays anything
5. A new 2P game with the same kingdom is started and the result from that is used.
6. Players will have the option of continuing the game with a bot or (5). If they all choose the bot option, then (3) or (4). If there is no agreement, then (1) or (2). (or maybe only some of these options are presented to the players)

...Or maybe some variation on these.

I'm only talking about what the leaderboard shows for rated games, hopefully what I'm saying makes sense. I'm beginning to think that what's being discussed here is what players should do after someone resigns, independent of what is recorded on the leaderboard, which is why I'm asking this.

I remain convinced that to preserve the integrity of the leaderboard, only option (1) is acceptable. With the current bot, any options that involve a bot are pretty clearly awful to me. Granted, there are still bugs in the cards so the integrity of the leaderboard is already gone, but that's not an excuse to do the wrong thing here.
#323
General Discussion / Re: Real money game
05 June 2017, 12:57:01 PM
I run IRL tournaments with an entry free, and with a prize pool for the top finishers. I'm hosting one in Cincinnati at the end of July. It may not be exactly what you're looking for, but I think in the Dominion world it's the closest thing we have.
#324
Quote from: kumarpr228 on 02 June 2017, 01:52:40 AM
Not a fan of the dominion tournament.

It requires you to have 2 hours free to play 6 games.  Part of the fun of the online version of the game is the speed, Just a pain for me to arrange a 2 hour block a week to play and being in China time zone differences don't help.

This is one of the most common complaints of the league (although I can come up with several others, but I won't do that here). It's one of the biggest reasons I organized my own tournament last summer -- a low-commitment tournament. I'm really hoping I can do another one this summer.


As for the seasons discussion, I think most of the reason that other games like Hearthstone have seasons is because they hand out rewards at the end of each season based on your rank or whatever. It also reflects the idea that certain cards rotate out of the "standard format" and so you really are playing a different game between seasons sometimes. It seems neither of these apply to Dominion, though one day maybe online rewards will come up (doubtful, but I can dream) and this discussion might be worth having at that time.

Sadly, there isn't that much money to be made by professionally playing Dominion. Although I believe there is still a $1000 cash reward for winning the Dominion World National tournament at GenCon each year. You can totally qualify for that tournament by winning the IRL tournament I'm hosting at the end of July in Cincinnati! /shamelessplug
#325
Feature Requests / Re: Ban n Cards in Rated Games
02 June 2017, 06:42:13 PM
I think banning cards you don't like is great for fun. I also think that the entire reason we have the pro leaderboard is because you can already do this in casual games. Adding this feature would completely defeat the purpose of rated games.

Even allowing one card to be banned in rated games would leave the pro leaderboard open to abuse, and I think this is largely due to the fact that so few people are playing at the moment: if I'm playing lots of rated games, there's a high chance I'll match against the same person over and over, so in between games I can go ban a card that I know they're good with (or much better than me with).

The pro leaderboard already has enough problems, and I think this exacerbates it for next to no benefit, since you can already play without the cards you dislike in unrated games.
#326
Interface Issues / Pilgrimage gains in progress
02 June 2017, 06:22:26 PM
I click on Pilgrimage and it's time to gain three cards I have in play! Woohoo! I click on two of them and let's say I forget what I clicked on. There's nothing in the game log yet when I'm in the middle of picking what to gain, and the only way I can tell what I've already gained is the tiny green outlines around the cards I'm legally allowed to gain.

These are really tough to see, it would be nice if maybe the entire card was highlight instead of just the green outline around the ends. Or maybe also the cards I've already gained could appear in the game log?
#327
Quote from: markus on 02 June 2017, 12:48:54 AM
3) Remove them from the standard settings automatch after the third resignation. Delete one such strike after say 20 finished games or 2 weeks.

I think this is entering into dangerous territory, especially when so many people are having trouble with the client and being forced to resign games. This kind of thing should really be evaluated on a case-by-case basis IMO.
#328
"tl;dr": We don't include bot games on the 2P leaderboard -- what are the reasons for that, and why should they be different than 3P games?

I think what you want is to have it be so that the strategy for winning 3P games will not be affected by the possibility of someone resigning and a bot replacing them, and you're saying that with a sufficiently good bot, this is theoretically possible.

My stance is that I don't think it's even theoretically possible, but I also think it's impractical. I also believe that even if you had a bot that you claim would do this, the burden of proof is on the person arguing for the bot. Dominion is a game meant to be played with people, the leaderboard is meant to reflect the skill of a player against other players, not against bots. The only real difference between your stance and mine is that you want to try and extract this extra result between the two players who didn't resign based on a 3P game, partially against a bot, and what I'm saying is that that result can't be legitimate unless you show me that it is.

Bots can do any legal play, people can do any legal play; but the bot's behavior is deterministic while the person's play is not (otherwise I don't think you can possibly make an argument that the bot will preserve the integrity of the game). These are nowhere near the same thing, no matter how sophisticated you make that bot -- in order to convince me that a bot will serve this purpose, I'd have to see that the best strategy for winning on every single possible kingdom is unchanged by putting in this bot instead of a human player (by accounting for the possibility that either opponent could resign and be replaced with this deterministic bot). This is impossible to do in a practical sense, and if it were possible, I would probably stop playing Dominion.

What if the bot wins or gets second? What if the player who resigned wasn't far behind? Should only the relative result between the two human players be considered? Playing for first place and playing for second place are definitely not the same thing in all kingdoms, I don't think you can call that result legitimate in terms of the leaderboard no matter what the bot does, but any bot that continues play for a player not mathematically eliminated from coming in anything but last should have the possibility of this.
#329
Quote from: Accatitippi on 01 June 2017, 03:04:09 PM
as long as the bot is written fairly. What the bot does to hinder me could as easily be done by a player, and at least the bot is more transparent.

"as long as the bot is written fairly" is something that is almost impossible to define, and even less possible to enact or enforce. It's so easy to see a leaderboard result you don't like and feel really bad because the bot decided to pivot into a thing that totally screws you over -- and be totally justified in being upset about that. The result you get from the continuation of the game can in no way reflect the skill required to do well in 3P games of Dominion (it requires you to be familiar with the AI of the bot so that you can hedge against certain people resigning, etc. Yes, it's transparent but it has nothing to do with Dominion skill which is all that should be represented on the leaderboard).

Example: bots end games on a loss all of the time. You and I are playing a game and Joebob resigns, so now we're playing against a bot. Joebob was playing Big Money, but the bot suddenly starts buying the low pile cards until the game is over and the bot loses. Obviously this is an extreme example, and yes the bot was making legal plays that anyone could make, but I feel like assigning leaderboard results to this kind of thing requires that you have a bot that isn't going to do stuff like this, ever. "Stuff like this" is a huge slippery slope, and "ever" is basically impossible to accomplish. It's just a different thing in my mind to have a human player do this and to have a bot do this -- you can blacklist that human, or you can expect to climb high enough above them on the leaderboard to not have to play them anymore, but the bot will always be there.


Quote from: Ingix on 01 June 2017, 03:31:00 PM
Only Stef would know, but is it even possible to convert a 3P game to 2P for continuation?

If it is possible, what are the disadvantages? I know that the number of cards in the victory piles are now incorrect and certain cards shift in power, but is this considered a big problem? Or is it simply the fact that a 3P game is not zero-sum and that this is why people prefer it over 2P, and continuation as a zero-sum 2P is what they don't like about it.

In terms of what to do for-funsies after the game, there is no perfect way to continue the game as a 2P game when it started as a 3P game. Which option is less bad depends a lot on the kingdom and the state of the game.

The best general option, meaning the one that I would argue should be the default, is to have the resigned player skip all of their turns for the rest of the game. They still gain Purples and other junks, but they don't play any cards or buy/gain anything. You have to worry about corner cases like skipping them for naming cards for Envoy/Contraband/etc. but this is certainly doable from a software perspective. Why do I think this is best? Because it does resemble a component of skill in 3P games -- in a few IRL tournaments I've played in, I'm in 3P games where one person is obviously very new to the game and it's clear early on that they're not going to accomplish much; I have to adjust my strategy (build more) to account for the fact that I can't expect them to get very many Provinces, and I have to be a lot more careful about piles since they can just randomly decide to start buying a card because they saw other people do it and poof, the game is over.

But maybe it's turn 1 of the game and that player disconnected, forcing them to be kicked -- in that case it's probably better to just adjust the number of cards in each victory-card-pile, VP tokens on Landmarks, etc. and just continue the game from there. Maybe it's worth it to offer this as an option to the remaining players if it's still T1 or T2, and have this happen only if all players agree. I guess this is nearly the same as restarting the game with a selected kingdom -- so I guess that shouldn't show up on the leaderboard if that's the way it ends up being implemented under the hood.

My opinion? I think it's a long time before there aren't more important things to do. If the players really want to play that kingdom as a 2P game, there's a chat box and people can just start a new table.
#330
Quote from: Accatitippi on 01 June 2017, 12:33:57 PM
Adam's solution has merit because it's simple, but I personally wouldn't enjoy it much. I play to win, but I mostly play to play, and being forced to end an open game with no clear winner would annoy me almost as much as ending it with a arbitrary one (as it is now).

I agree with you, the option to continue the game with a bot (or as a 2P game) should be offered to the remaining players in the interest of fun, but whatever happens there should have no effect on the leaderboard result for that game.