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Messages - AdamH

#406
Then it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a list of these "edge cases" and then not bother asking when none of those are in the kingdom. When I just play an Action card, RC it, and it asks me to decline calling another RC multiple times there's something wrong with that interface. It's not clear to me how it's implemented based on the behavior I've seen, but the way it is now, compounded with the fact that it's unclear at times what exactly my click is going to do, results in an interface that's confusing for the default case, which is never acceptable.

I understand there will be times when I'm in a KC chain with RCs on my mat where I'm going to have to click a lot and there's no way around that. That's not a reason to make the interface bad the other 99% of the time. It needs to be improved.
#407
Feature Requests / Re: Idea for a game clock
12 March 2017, 03:12:28 PM
So yeah this seems pretty good. You're being more generous than the current implementation in almost every case so I will not complain about a lot of it. I can probably make decent arguments for a couple of things, though.

Why should there be a Max time? If the system works properly, this is just going to take away time from people that they otherwise would have had if they had acted slower. The existence of a max time can only encourage people to slowplay easier decisions if they're going to run into their max time, so they can front-load their thinking. I really think any working timing scheme would not have a max time to discourage this type of behavior. Yes, the intent is to reduce the amount of abuse that can happen but I think it just shifts the type of abuse possible to something else.

As for tweaking the numbers, well I feel like all kinds of people are going to disagree on what the appropriate numbers are because people prefer different paces of play. I imagine there being lots of sets of numbers for different styles of play. Blitz mode which nearly guarantees that most games are over within 5 or 10 minutes or something, then "normal" mode, then "slow" mode.

I'm not going to pretend that I can argue one way or the other on what these numbers should be without actually playing several games (probably on the order of 55 games or so). In order to be happy with a set of numbers, I think a variety of people would have to play with a variety of timing configurations on a variety of kingdoms and they would gradually hone in on what's desired.

I still think that until that kind of testing is performed, it's best to err on the side of being too generous. The system as it is, with a blacklist, is probably fine. The most important feature is that when I'm playing with my friends and chatting with them on Skype or in the game chat, they can choose to not kick me when I'm taking a while on a certain decision.
#408
Interface Issues / Royal Carriage "Done Reacting"
12 March 2017, 02:46:48 PM
I play an Action card, I call a Royal Carriage on it (sometimes this happens when I don't call a RC also but I haven't quite figured out exactly when), and I still have one or more RCs left on my mat.

I have to click a button that says "Done Reacting" to continue with my turn, sometimes more than once. I realize there are situations where this is necessary in order to allow for all legal options, but I believe it's happening all of the time.

Unless there's something that I could do in between calling Royal Carriages that has to be done right then, I should be able to just continue on with my turn without clicking a "done" button. Even if you have it so that it always asks until the logic is there to figure out when you need to ask, there's no reason ever that I should have to click that button more than once.
#409
Quote from: Stef on 10 March 2017, 11:54:18 AM
* sending in-game messages to players
   (mostly to get rid of the misery surrounding familiar cards)

Wait, what? Sending in-game messages to players is your intended fix for the familiar cards problem? That's just unreal. See this post: http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=1593.msg5328#msg5328

Any of those things would actually solve the problem. In-game messages is extremely important but it's not going to solve the familiar cards problem. Please just take 5 minutes and fix one of the things I mentioned in that post.
#410
Ethics or not, option 2 is not viable for the reasons I stated above. People will leave the game whenever they want, and if they can't click a resign button, they will just close the window. Any restrictions on when people are allowed to resign will just make things worse.
#411
I also wish this forum had a way of giving thumbs-ups. Some great comments being made by Cave-O-Sapien!

And he even did it on reply #55. Could it get better?

:-P
#412
Sure, I feel you. I wasn't weighing in on that part of the debate. I'll never get mad at anyone for resigning and in most cases I'll ask for permission before I resign. But that's just me.
#413
Put me in the category of not sure why this debate is even taking place.

The comparison to IRL board games is something I don't think applies to the online game. In tabletop games people don't just disappear in the middle of something, but if someone's power/internet goes out that's basically what happens online. There has to be a graceful way of handling it that doesn't involve the player who did nothing wrong waiting around forever in hopes of their opponent coming back.

Providing the opponent a graceful way of telling the client that they are peacing out and not returning to the game is a really obvious thing that needs to exist. If there are any restrictions placed on this, the opponent is just going to pull the plug if they want out, so there should be no restrictions on this. That graceful thing is called the resign button.

Whatever problems people have with etiquette on resigning are not fixed by restricting when/how people can resign, because they can just pull the plug and leave, which causes all the same issues we had with resigning, only now you have to wait 4 minutes because you took away the opponent's ability to tell you they're not coming back.
#414
Feature Requests / Re: Idea for a game clock
09 March 2017, 06:24:35 PM
So I agree with pretty much everything you're saying. I've seen absolute time limits suggested elsewhere as well, and I've already made my opinion on that clear. The one thing I wouldn't agree with is your claim that your suggestion is better than the current way of doing things.

And that's not to say that I think you're wrong. I just think there are more steps to go through to show that it's better. A lot of them involve you just being more specific about your proposed solution, I think.

Mainly, something more concrete about how the time scales with respect to what's happening on your turns. When does the time increase? By how much? And then you have to show that it's not going to create situations under any circumstances that are going to cause people to choose strategies that they believe are suboptimal because of time constraints.

If that sounds impossible, umm, then I'd say it sounds about right. I don't think it's practical to show that. It may not even be possible.

It seems we both want the same things, but I'm much more skeptical on how to get them. I'm of the opinion that the real solution here is the blacklist. If someone doesn't like my pace (I'd say I'm a slower-than-average player, especially when I'm streaming) then they can blacklist me if they prefer faster games. If I'm getting slowrolled then I can blacklist that guy. Eventually most (close to all) of my matches will be with people who are OK with my pace and when I choose to stop and think. I feel like this is the best (only?) way to make everyone happy when peoples' preferences on game speed are so different.

And so I feel like any time constraint that exists should be as generous as possible to prevent the time constraint from affecting the game. In fact, I feel like the current implementation isn't generous enough! I wish there was a one-minute warning like MF had that told you that you need to do something or else the "make opponent resign?" window will appear for your opponent.

Maybe some day, far in the future, they can implement a timed variant of Dominion, but if that's what the pro leaderboard becomes then I'll be here to provide counterexamples for pretty much every timing scheme they can come up with that shows that a reasonable player would be restricted by it.

Anyways hopefully my position is more clear now :-)
#415
Feature Requests / Re: Idea for a game clock
08 March 2017, 09:41:56 PM
Absolute time per turn seems like a really bad idea. Absolute time per game also seems like a really bad idea. It's just going to make some kingdoms unplayable and all it does is shift the way timers are abused to something different.

Maybe the type of people who would prefer timed Dominion are the same type of people who wouldn't want to play those kingdoms made unplayable in the first place. That's cool. I think it's a reason that whatever ends up being "pro games" should not be timed this way.

I'm sure that some improvements could be made to the current timeout system, but right now the proposed solution involves blacklisting people who you don't want to play with, which is a somewhat elegant solution to the only form of abuse that exists on the current system (slowrolling). Improving on that is difficult.

The main reason I don't like absolute time per turn is because it encourages people to try and frontload their thinking when they think they'll run out of time for thinking on future turns. I don't think that's what you want -- ideally you'd want the thinking to happen whenever it's necessary so the total thinking time is minimized.

A perfect system for timing people should have no effect on the actual gameplay, it just encourages people to not take any longer than they have to to make decisions. Most systems that differ from the current one will favor rushy strategies that are easy to execute; and (IMHO) most people who like Dominion enough to play it online would prefer to play more intricate decks that involve more complex and difficult decisions.

I don't know what the right answer is, I'm just saying that a compelling argument would have to be made to convince me that anything is better than the current system. I don't think there is one answer that will make everyone happy, and in that case, preserving the integrity of the game should probably be more important. The tabletop game Dominion has no time limits so you don't want to mess with that if you can help it.
#416
I was unaware that this rules change was made. I also have apparently been playing with Stash incorrectly for some unknown amount of time.
#417
When I draw a hand of 5 cards, it shows me as shuffling my deck and then drawing all 5 cards in the game log. It should show me the cards I drew before shuffling, then say that I shuffled my deck, then show me the cards I drew afterward.
#418
sort of related, when I play a Ratcatcher, it doesn't stay in play. It goes off to the tavern mat like it's supposed to. However, when I call a Ratcatcher and then play some Ratcatchers right away, the play area shows a stack of Ratcatchers (it shows that they aren't moving to the Tavern mat like they should).

It seems the logic that tells the play area when to stack things in the play area is related to the card being played and not necessarily whether or not it's staying in play.
#419
Interface Issues / Farmers' Markets in play area
06 March 2017, 08:19:19 PM
I played a few Farmers' Markets in a row on my turn, I think it was 4 of them. One of them trashed itself so I could gain VP from it, but my play area showed all of the Farmers' Markets I had played, including the one that had been trashed. The game log and the contents of my deck appear to be correct, it's just the display of the play area.

In case it's relevant for reproducing this, I had played the Farmers' Markets all in a row so they were all stacked in the play area. Also, I believe the first one or two of them were Crowned. They were at the end of a Crown chain so the cards I was putting in my play area were consecutive Farmers' Markets.

It mattered because I was using the play area to count how many cards were in my deck, which mattered when I wanted to 3-pile on Gardens later that game.
#420
General Discussion / Re: Playing with friends only
06 March 2017, 03:07:07 PM
I'm not talking about a global chat. I'm talking about a way to send direct messages to people on your friends list through the client. If I see that my friend is logged in but not at a table, maybe I want to send them a message and see if they're at their computer and they want to play a game with me, for example.