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I appreciate the post and that steps are being taken to address a serious issue.  (I guess I have been very lucky...never encountered a slow player, while others seem to run into them quite often, which would be very frustrating indeed.)

What I did NOT like was the thought that using the lightning bolt is being used as a signal to your guys to investigate the other person.  Up till now, I have been using the lightning bolt to merely prevent the game from matching me up with that player in the future.  That is Not the same as me saying, "Hey, investigate this player for doing something that might get her/him banned."

For instance; my own personal rule for Undo's is:  I'll give you 3 freebies per game, with no questions asked.  I'll probably even grant an Undo after you have received new information, if the game context makes it clear that your mistake was due to playing on the computer and hitting the wrong key."  (E.g., you had extra actions left, but did not play 2 Goons still in your hand, when there was no Event that would reward unplayed actions.)

But, if someone keeps asking for Undo after Undo, I will finish the game, congratulate the other player on her victory--or on her game play if I win--and then hit the lightning bolt, so that I do not have to deal with that situation again.

Or maybe I play 10% slower than you, because you are a more experienced player, or because you simply think faster than I do.  You may want to finish the game, but then "ban" me so that you will not be matched against me in future matches.  I would like for you to have the ability to not play against slower players (using the lightning bolt) without feeling bad that you are simultaneously reporting me to moderators.

In other words; would it really be so difficult to add a specific "Report to Moderator" button to the main screen?  I'd like such a button to give a small drop-down menu with a list of choices ("profanity used" 'slow play' "other"), and then some sort of "confirm" second button.  If someone did this, the game info would automatically be saved in a link, to make it easy for a moderator to go directly to the game in question.  Oh yeah, maybe also have a 100 character screen as well, so the reporting person can add a few sentences, to specify which turn(s) to look at or give additional details.

Okay, that was a lot more than I expect to write in this thread!  :-)

So let me be clear that I understand your (and Jeebus's) concerns. You don't need to worry about the problem you bring up in your post, though I agree it could have been clearer in the announcement (unfortunately, we only have so much time to prepare stuff like this and get feedback and every detail isn't always ironed out from every angle). People are not going to be banned from somebody getting mad or not wanting to play a person unless there is a reason that violates TOS. Generally, it's quite clear to a moderator from looking at blacklist data which ones are abusing the system and which aren't. I don't want to say much more about this lest we reveal everything. :) The system we have is not perfect, but I don't think anything is. The ultimate solution (just my opinion, not SI's) is to modify how timing and chat work in the client, but for now we have a quick fix.

To be clear, "we" here refers to a group of volunteers working on text stuff like the faq; volunteers include translators and play testers as well. Anybody who actually works for shuffle it will likely have admin status on these forums.

umm, because the game rules don't allow it? Why is the online client supporting this variant and not any of the other million variants that some people use?

Didn't Donald X himself already say he was okay with point counters in the online version? This seems like a really pointless argument. There should just be an option to play with or without and that's the end of it. Everyone can choose which one they want and everyone's happy.

This whole discussion has gotten way off topic too.

We are actually working on #2 now.

I think no point counter should be an option, but if I had to play that way again I'd probably stop playing.

When activating the Stonemason mechanic where you overpay to gain two action cards of the value overpaid, the card SOMETIMES allows potion card purchases.  Here's what happened:

Set had Stonemason and Apothecary.  My opponent purchased a potion, I did not.  When he purchased the Stonemason with 4 treasure and 1 potion, he was able to overpay and get two Apothecaries.  Later, I purchased a Stonemason with 4 treasure and 0 potion, and the Apothecary was not listed as an option for me to gain from the Stonemason.

As the card text says nothing about "purchasing" the bonus card, I don't think that whether or not you have a potion in play should matter.  I don't know if the official dominion rules allow you to gain a potion-costing card from Stonemason or not; typically those special gaining abilities EXCLUDE potion costs, but I don't know for sure in this particular case.  Either way, the treatment of the Stonemason card should be consistent:  Either "gain a card costing more than this" always includes potion cards or it always excludes potion cards, regardless of whether or not you have a potion in play.

You are just incorrect, sorry. You do need the Potion to be in play in order to purchase cards with a Potion cost with Stonemason. Stonemason gains cards with the EXACT cost that you overpay, meaning 2+Potion for Apothecary. There is no ambiguity to that. It's true that Dominion has a variety of different wordings that affect this case (Forge vs. Upgrade for instance) but in this case the text is very clear.

For example, if the curses are all used up, and I just want to play a witch for the +2 cards, is there a reason I have to wait for my opponent to counter with a moat?  It would speed gameplay up significantly during the end.

There is a feature planned ("autoplay") that will address this problem eventually. It's written on an old roadmap thread here: http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=512.0. If you played on the last client and tried the Making More Fun extension, I imagine it will work similarly: a checkbox you can tick if you always want to reveal Moat or whatever.

http://dominion.lauxnet.com/scavenger/?user=IceHot&num_results=10

Please go here and tell us which game the 'cheating' happened in so we can figure out what happened. Odds are, the player had duration coin from the previous turn or coin tokens.

Edit: Found it. Game 5299852

Your opponent had 5 coin tokens saved from Candlestick Maker. No cheating there!

How do we report someone or PM a moderator? The slow person is striking again, now under the name "StefAllowsSlowPlay". I blocked him so I won't have to encounter him under that name again but I'd like to know how to report/PM a moderator.

Thanks!

Simply blacklist the player. Stef is monitoring the blacklists several times a day, and so far it's been quite simple to find these users. You can report them with a private message if you wish, but it's not necessary.

How about simplifying it even further?  There must be a few cards that are widely disliked.  Donald is probably in the best position to determine which ones - have him pick 3 of them.  Then in the matching screen add a criteria of "play with banned cards" so that people who really want to play with them will get matched with others that want them also, and no one else will have to see them again.

I doubt this would affect ratings because we would all have the same choice to make: a simple yes or no to a fixed set of cards.

I suggest banning Possession and Rebuild.  Those are the only two I really dislike, but I'd be happy with the above proposal whether it banned those cards or not.

Why do this when people could just select the ones they don't like? The mechanism is already partway there with Familiar Cards. It seems simpler and more player-friendly. I don't think anyone could "game" this feature in any meaningful way.

I thought the primary argument against allowing people to ban cards was that the rankings would lose some of their accuracy.  By only allowing a single, common set of cards to be banned you greatly reduce that possibility.  If it turns out that there is a significant advantage to playing with the banned cards, or without them, then we'll all know it and those that care can play with the better option.

On the other hand, maybe choosing which cards to ban will become a meta-strategy that deserves to be part of the ranking system.

If it's only 4 or 5 cards (as has been suggested) they can block, any inaccuracy is likely negligible, as the game has hundreds of cards. Like, what advantage are they gaining? Making it hard for a certain strategy to come up? There are just so few cards that have no analogues, and even if something unique is getting the shaft, is there really any harm? After all, Possession is the most hated card. At worst, someone could block, for instance, all coin token cards and remove that element from their games, but I doubt every single person would ban all of those cards.

I can see the argument "everyone should be playing by the same rules down to the letter" if the competition is super serious, but I feel like we are here strictly to have fun at the moment, and this feature would make the game more fun for people. Even if that becomes an issue, serious tournaments could always be run without the banlist. At any rate, I feel like I'm basically just repeating Donald's posts, and I generally trust him, so if it's good enough for him it's good enough for me. (that's just my 2 cents)

How about simplifying it even further?  There must be a few cards that are widely disliked.  Donald is probably in the best position to determine which ones - have him pick 3 of them.  Then in the matching screen add a criteria of "play with banned cards" so that people who really want to play with them will get matched with others that want them also, and no one else will have to see them again.

I doubt this would affect ratings because we would all have the same choice to make: a simple yes or no to a fixed set of cards.

I suggest banning Possession and Rebuild.  Those are the only two I really dislike, but I'd be happy with the above proposal whether it banned those cards or not.

Why do this when people could just select the ones they don't like? The mechanism is already partway there with Familiar Cards. It seems simpler and more player-friendly. I don't think anyone could "game" this feature in any meaningful way.

His language was bad, but I don't blame him for being upset by your arbitrary undo rules.

I find it pathetic when players request multiple undos to change strategy, especially when those players are around level 60. I was quite perplexed that a player first forged 2 bishops to get a province, then played 2 cards, only to request multiple undos, to use bishop on the forge.
Maybe there should be a limit on what undos can do.

I think it's okay to request multiple undos in a row as long as new information hasn't been revealed. To be fair, the interface is not ideal for undos that involve multiple-click cards. Not everyone knows how to use /undo x either. The plan is probably to make some undos allowed and some require confirmation. Stuff like what you're mentioning would then still be possible without annoying the other player.

With that said, you can always blacklist those players.

I think you might have misunderstood.

When a player starts a new account they are rank 20 correct?

So if someone is ranked 60 and then start a new account they will start at rank 20 and be playing other low ranked players for a while till they get their personal rank back up to 60.

This is a twink player.

I don't know enough of how the ranking system works so I don't know how fast or how many games this person would have to play to get back to their old rank of 60.

There is no incentive to do this, and to be honest it isn't even actually a problem. So what if there are smurf accounts? Nobody is earning anything. The only function of rankings at the moment is better matchmaking, so people restarting at Level 20 are just setting themselves up to play with all the slow players at the low levels and wasting their time. Not to mention if they subscribed they are just wasting money. That is on them, not the system.

I checked out the top 50 to see if your fear of smurf accounts is founded. 41 of the people there I recognize either from the MF/Goko days or even as far back as isotropic. It's pretty natural for players who have been playing online that long to be good at the game. 1 is a confirmed smurf account (surprise, it has over 400 games, so your fixation on that number is meaningless) which doesn't even show up on the official leaderboard, so it doesn't seem like an issue. The rest, sure, I don't know them, but I have no reason to believe they are smurf accounts. Not saying I'm the best judge, but considering I recognize 41/50 users and I'm just one guy, it seems like we're okay here at the moment.


Out of the top 50, the only account I'm actually skeptical about besides the known smurf is aaaasn, who only has 4 games, but maybe he's just luser's good friend.

You might be interested in the currently running Dominion League:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?board=60.0