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Instead of slowplaying, the trolls are now just going to hit the report button on anyone they feel like.

This usually isn't too much of an issue with reporting.  The people who get looked at will be those who get reported multiple times.  Trolls will get reported lots of times.  They may report lots of people because they are trolls, but their reports will be spread out across a large population which usually doesn't result in one person getting reported many times by trolls alone.  In short, ya you will get reported by trolls, but not enough to warrant looking into your activities.

You may be right, but that's not a reason to design a system that's open to abuse (what's to stop someone from making 55 accounts and reporting me on all of them whenever they want to?) A human being should look into it before a decision is made, which is even the case in your scenario.

Sure, and a human being needs to look at that, plus chat logs, plus undo requests, plus anything else in the software that's open to abuse, and evaluate these things on a case-by-case basis, which includes whatever punishment is deemed appropriate.

Messing with their automatch doesn't seem appropriate, though.

Great, now we are on track again.

Implement a pairing routine that keeps pairing known slowplayers to each other.

Heh.  If only that were something that could be easily implemented.

I guess it might not be extraordinarily difficult. Build a credit system, where people lose credit if they get reported too often and do not pair people with a credit difference of more than (lets say) 50%.

But I am not implying that it should be implemented quickly. There might be other tasks to tend to.

I don't think this is a good idea.

Aside from the discussion of how pairings need to be made in a way that maximizes the integrity of the leaderboard, this kind of thing is open to abuse.

Instead of slowplaying, the trolls are now just going to hit the report button on anyone they feel like. Decisions about players who deserve disciplinary action can be made with input from users, but they need to be up to the moderators and probably need to be evaluated on an individual basis.

If I'm going to pay money to use this service and the service is specifically trying to make my experience worse, there better be good reasons and evidence for this, otherwise the service has issues. Opening this kind of thing up to trolls who have any capability at all to abuse ths system is not a good enough reason.

It seems pretty simple: if you want less people to slowplay, then don't make it good for them to slowplay.

Gain a reputation for having very little tolerance for slowplayers -- make it visible to them when they've been reported and keep them on an extremely short leash with harsh consequences. Put a very easy-to-access button on the screen when a player resigns that reports their opponent and more people will use it. Reset offenders on the leaderboard and make sure they are very aware that it's being done to them.

People will do what is easiest for them: if you want more people to be reported, make it easy to report people. If you want people to not slowplay, make it really hard and disadvantageous for them to slowplay and make sure they're very aware of it.

http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=1793.msg6504#msg6504

Edit: posts like these that mention names really should be removed from these forums. There needs to be a way to easily report these people and it needs to be private.

This is an issue with game design and allowing too much time per turn.  5 minutes +5 seconds per action taken would drastically improve the slow-playing situation.

Relevant: http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=1616.0

I think the answer is the blacklist feature. Restricting the time people have to act in any way is pretty dangerous; a lot of thought should go into it before any change is made.

Let's be clear: The duration attacks not being shown when they are out is a mayor PITA and a source of confusion (that's why the Enchantress had a smiley in my posting: It is taken care of by the game, but not being shown has caused lot's of confusion).

But if in a ranked game you don't realize that a curse giver is in the supply, you didn't realize that your opponent bought one, didn't realize that he played one, then, yes, again, it would have been nice if we had some indication that it is currently affecting game play, but *please* pay some attention to what happens when it is your opponent's turn. The advantage of the online game, not needing to physically shuffle cards etc. has the disadvantage that some things, like curses being handed out, happen without your 'help'.

This seems to be the main place where we disagree. I can go on and on about why I feel the way I do but what you've said doesn't change my mind. I already pay attention to what's happening on my opponent's turn.

Unless I'm mistaken, hovering over a player's name is not documented or shown to the user in any way (the only people who can be expected to know about it are people who come to these forums and find places that tell you to hover over the names for this info -- is that a skill you want tested on the leaderboard?), so really the only reliable indication I have that a duration attack is by reading the game log.

That being the expectation just doesn't fly for me. The UI needs to be better (and it will be better, I believe the devs have said they're going to change this), and until it is, I'm not convinced. I mean, I used duration attacks as examples because to me, they are the cards that are clearly the most broken and unplayable by far.

As for actual mechanical/gameplay bugs, I don't really see the point in discussing the impact on the total games played without actually having a list of these bugs in the current release and crunching the numbers on it. Without that list, we can guess at the impact, and obviously my guess is higher than yours, but it's all just a guess and I won't be convinced of anything by anything other than numbers at this point.

I think that these users should be reported, yes. I do not think that the method of reporting these players should be public.

I personally don't like the idea of group blacklists (though I understand some people do and there's nothing to stop them from making and using those blacklists), but I especially don't like the idea of a group blacklist that's supported officially in any way. Posting about it on these forums seems over the line to me.

This topic has been discussed many times in many places. I'm not gonna take the time to look it up right now but if desired I can do that (I also can't promise that I'll be quick about it, sorry :-( )

Where can I report people that are rude and slow play on purpose when losing.  I'm spending an hour on a game with user Garicup.  He was mad because I would not allow him to undo a move.  Undo is optional.  He is being very rude as well.

Sending a PM Stef on these forums is the preferred method of reporting stuff like this (I think).

While I agree that there are many rules bugs that still exist, I don't think it has any significant impact on games, because they are on the fringes of what usually happens during play.

About a week ago I decided that I was going to remove all of the cards with visual or gameplay-related bugs from my familiar cards list so that I wouldn't have to play with them until the bugs were fixed. I was just so tired of drawing a Curse, not understanding why I had a Curse in my deck, then going back in the game log to 3 turns ago when my opponent had a Swamp Hag out and I was given no indication of it at all.

I realized two problems with this while attempting to do it:

1. The only lists of bugs that exist for the public to view (that I am aware of) are the pinned threads at the top of the Bug Reports boards on these forums. There is no indication of how up-to-date they are (these forums don't show if/when posts have been edited for reasons I don't understand) and I know that they haven't been updated in quite some time.

2. Just by the bugs that are currently posted in those threads, I realized that I'd be taking away such a large chunk of the kingdom cards (it was over 55) that it made me feel *really* bad. I'm not going to give a precise number here because who actually knows what the current outstanding bugs are and how much the affect play, but suffice it to say that if this number was calculated for-realsies, I would guess that at least 55% of games are affected by this in some way.

So saying that it's on the fringes of what happens during play? Man I just don't buy that. If it comes up in 1% of games then it's not good enough, and if one kingdom card has a problem, it shows up in 2.5% of all games. Sure, maybe the bug won't enter play in every game but, there are three cards (the duration attacks) that will ruin every game they are in IMHO (more on that below) and over 9% of all games will have at least one of them in it. So yeah I'm just not convinced that card bugs and visual bugs don't have an effect on the leaderboard.

The big takeaway from this, which I'll kind of gloss over because I don't want to go too far off topic, is:

There is no indication anymore that the devs are even keeping a backlog of the issues remaining with their software and/or that it's up-to-date. This would go a long way towards making their community feel like they're being heard at the very least, but also towards letting people know which cards they can feel confident playing with and not running into bugs. In fact, due to the lack of any kind of formal tutorial being present in the software, the Dominion rulebooks are the closest thing people have to a guide on how to use the software, so a readily-available list of how the online version deviates from the rulebooks should definitely be a thing. This includes stuff like how the Black Market deck is constructed; wording changes for reprintings that haven't been reprinted, but are present on the online client, which affect gameplay (I'm thinking of Scheme but I know there are more); and obviously known bugs.

and Enchantresses are not forgotten  :)

I think you're kidding here, right? I mean, there is no visual indicator to show that your opponent has an Enchantress out other than hovering on their name. I have never once forgotten about an Enchantress IRL and I'm struggling to remember a single time online when I played an Enchanted card knowing it was going to be Enchanted before I saw that it didn't do what I expected.

Yes, what happened here is correct by the game rules, but the game rules also state that when playing an Action card, you're supposed to give some indication to your opponent of what you're doing, which is not happening in a good enough way on the online version. Visual bugs like this are more than enough to take away from the legitimacy of what happens in a game of Dominion, which contributes to making the leaderboard less legitimate.

The three big offenders here (the duration attacks: Haunted Woods, Swampy, and Enchantress) together are represented in over 9% of all games of Dominion -- this is what I was talking about before.

------------------

In any case, all that was just to support the argument that card bugs and visual bugs do have an effect on the legitimacy of the leaderboard. In spite of that, I don't think that ultimate integrity of the leaderboard is worth what would have to be sacrificed in order to achieve it, mainly because there's little upside to having a leaderboard with that kind of integrity.

I don't think anyone takes the leaderboard seriously enough that sacrificing this much fun is worth it.

I don't see how separating custom tournament games and rematches from the leaderboard rating sacrifices fun.  Could you elaborate?

It's mostly rematches I'm talking about. Now people who want all of their games to count towards the leaderboard are forced with the choice of playing against their friends or having their games count. They can't have both.

I've never really cared about the leaderboard. I think that implementing all of the cards correctly, without bugs, and displaying all of the relevant information to the user, and all of the other stuff I constantly complain about, would have a more significant impact on how legitimate the leaderboard is than what's being discussed here.

Since all players are affected the same way I don't see how this can have a significant impact on the leaderboard.

But all players are not affected in the same way. The bugs are not well-documented and there is nothing on the client to let players know which cards don't work properly and how they don't work properly. Players that have a deeper knowledge of the shortcomings of this software have an in-game advantage because they can more effectively play around them.

And this doesn't take into account at all any of the games that just crash and one player is forced to resign a game they might have won due to something other than skill.

I'm just gonna weigh in here and say that the leaderboard would be far more legitimate if only automatch games counted towards it -- and any kind of blacklist wasn't taken into account. I agree pretty strongly with this statement:

I would also argue that the more control you give the player as to who they play against, the less meaningful the leaderboard becomes in general.

On the other hand, I don't think that means the best solution is to make the pro leaderboard this way. If there was money on the line for leaderboard position then maybe I'd say it was worth it, but I don't think anyone takes the leaderboard seriously enough that sacrificing this much fun is worth it.

I've never really cared about the leaderboard. I think that implementing all of the cards correctly, without bugs, and displaying all of the relevant information to the user, and all of the other stuff I constantly complain about, would have a more significant impact on how legitimate the leaderboard is than what's being discussed here.

The little red box that appears on top of a pile to show me that my +$1 token is on that pile is great for all of the other tokens, but this particular token just says "+1" -- in a game with Peasant it can be confusing to see that box since there are four tokens that give you +1 of something.

I think it should say +$1, or maybe +(coin symbol).

Game 3123998

I play a Replace, I trash a thing, I gain an action card. The log tells me what I gain, but then the next line says that I topdeck "a card"

It's public knowledge what that card is, the log should display it.

The visual indicator really should be in that box in the middle of the screen -- the one that always displays how much money you have. Maybe it can be elsewhere, but it should definitely be there. I think debt should also be there BTW.

I tried putting these tokens in other places when playing IRL and quickly found that it's very easy to forget that these exist, so I put them right in front of me in the middle of the play area so that they annoy me the most. With duration attacks it can kind of work for the opponent who played the attack to have to help enforce their own attack, but with these types of tokens it's much harder.

Having something that isn't kept up to date is arguably worse than nothing -- if there's nothing there, at least people can look at the long list of things left to do and assume that it's coming some day. With something that's out of date, the question can be asked: "if this isn't being kept up, how can I assume the software itself is being kept up?" -- also, there really needs to be something of higher quality than this (I posted in this thread earlier about this) so the fact that this exists begs the question of whether or not that will ever exist.

Despite the fact that this FAQ is labeled as unofficial, it's still being linked to from the software itself, so it is official in at least some capacity. I feel like this middle ground is the worst possible thing in terms of the current state of the documentation: either there needs to be just a placeholder that says more is coming soon, or maybe more people should be given the ability to update the FAQ so that it's less likely to lag behind.

I realize I have sort of a minority opinion on this, but my professional opinion is that software is only as good as its documentation; meaning that unless there is a good-looking, useful FAQ that's kept up-to-date with each release, the software really doesn't hold up to anything. And I also feel pretty strongly that non-technical people should have a huge hand in writing this documentation.