Messages

On a somewhat related note I'd like to see an option like 'prefer friends' (and possibly even a 'wait for friends' option) available in Automatch so that if a friend also happened to be attempting an automatch at the same time, we'd get matched.

When I first started using Dominion Online, I accepted numerous Friend requests from strangers that I'd enjoyed playing against.  Eventually I realised this was a completely pointless exercise, given that I use automatch to find opponents.

Alas I have no real friends using Dominion Online even though I have quite a few that I have played against ftf.  I can only assume that for them a game of Dominion isn't complete unless they get to waste time shuffling the deck every turn or two (or even multiple times in a turn with some engines). ☹

My advice is general too. The point is, that even with the VP tracker shoved in our face, some people choose not to use it and sometimes that's not enough to know the actual VP totals at the end of the game. So the situation where you "know" the final score just isn't a thing unless you want people to brainstorm every possible way that they might get screwed over on the final turn of the game, which probably takes longer than just buying some more VP.

I tend to agree with this.  I've lost count of the number of games in which I've forgotten that my opponent was going to have a Fleet turn.  I don't think I've ever lost such a game because I failed to maximise my VPs on my final turn, but I treat such games as a dire warning that such a thing could happen.  Sometimes I'm confident enough of the situation to curtail my final turn, but much of the time I consider it quicker to play my turn out naturally rather than pause to work out whether I need to do so or not.

My guess is that you are getting those comments from players with a very low rating.  The existence of the 3-pile ending adds a lot to the richness of Dominion, for example because it sometimes allows an engine to be beaten before it can start firing.

I had one particularly crazy game that involved Advance, Border Village and something that gave +Buy.  The game didn't last very long.  My opponent was quicker to spot what was going to happen, so he won.

I've seen disconnects where it has taken my opponent a long time to reconnect, though as I wasn't timing them, I've no idea if they exceeded 2 minutes or not.  I've also had one instance when I've needed more than two minutes (I must have come very close to exceeding the four minutes) to reconnect after my PC crashed.  It's 13 years old, so takes an age to reboot.

I've only very occasionally encountered instances of players appearing to disconnect because they are losing, while on one occasion a player disconnected and never returned despite being in a very strong position (so strong that when offered the option of forcing them to resign, I resigned), so some disconnects are definitely innocent.

I have the impression that playing etiquette is rather better at the rankings I now meet than those I used to meet early on when playing here, so it's possible that newcomers in particular might be more exposed to bad behaviour.  If an opponent appears to have disconnected because they are losing, blacklist them.  If they make a habit of it, they'll get blacklisted by multiple players and come to the attention of the site moderators.

I've had players prematurely congratulate me on a win.  I certainly didn't consider it bad behaviour by them, merely a failure to understand how much rubbish there was in my deck and hence just how many cards I had to draw to be able to afford the last province!  I've possibly made the same mistake myself once or twice myself, though usually once I've typed 'wp' or 'gg' I wait until the player really has won before I send the comment.

I can't speak for msp0425, but I can give some reasons why I'd like to delete names from my list:

• When I first started playing here, I accepted various friend requests from other players.  Subsequently some of those players seem to have stopped playing here, so they just clutter up the list even though I've unfriended them.
• Eventually I came to realise that being someone's friend was a pointless exercise for me, given that I always start games through Matching.  If there were a 'Prefer friends' or 'Wait for friends' options there, I'd have a use for my list of friends, but there isn't, so I don't.  Therefore I no longer accept any befriend requests, so have 25 or so requests that I've ignored.  If at some stage in the future any change to Matching were to be made that provided useful friend functionality, I'd like to be able to clear all these requests from the list so that I could spot any new requests and decide whether to accept them.
• In such a situation I would want to be able to eliminate from the list anyone whose request that I didn't want to accept.

Why don't you just give people the option to not display opponents' usernames when using automatch? Just have it display "Your Opponent" or something. Sounds like everyone can find something that makes them happy here.

Sounds like a good idea, though some thought might be needed to come up with appropriate fake usernames for multiplayer games so that it's easy to see which opponent is being referred to in the log.

I'm curious for other peoples' perspectives on this:

If you are about to lose a game (i.e. one province remaining, and it becomes apparent that during the ongoing turn, your opponent will have enough to purchase that province, which will win them the game), is it acceptable to resign or is that rude?  This has happened to me a number of times, and I often feel a little twinge of annoyance; however, conversely when I am the one losing, I may feel a little bit of an attitude of "get it over with" if the person isn't ending it immediately. 

So, thoughts?

I adopt the policy of resigning only on my own turn, given that I do sometimes get irritated by another player's resignation in the middle of my own turn.  The ones that really irritate me are the resignations that occur between my clicking on 'Autoplay treasures' and being able to click on the Province.  I'm not irritated if someone resigns because I now have a dozen cards in hand.  There has been at least one occasion when such a resignation occurred while I was thinking "Why am I drawing all the dross in my deck?  Where's my treasure?" ☺

Aha!  My cut & paste of the game number was faulty.  Thanks for looking at the game.  I'll take another look at it myself to see if I get any clues to what I might have done wrong.

This is not a bug anyone is going to be able to investigate – the game in question (6902095) gives an internal error if one tries to load it – but I thought I'd report it anyway.

I used Procession on a 3-cost action card (I can't remember which one) and gained a Nomad Camp when that card was trashed.  After doing so (and with both no Actions left and no Action cards in hand) I wasn't offered the option to autoplay the 3 Silvers that I had.  Although I can't remember whether I tried playing them individually, I'm fairly sure that it wouldn't have been possible.  I had a Night card (Ghost, I think) in hand.  I was being asked which Night to play, which suggests that my Buy phase had been skipped completely.

Sorry for the vagueness of this report.  I had expected to be able to go back and look at the game in more detail, e.g. to confirm that I hadn't somehow clicked on 'End buys' accidentally.  Alas the internal error when trying to load the game precludes that.

The log lists the  content of the starting decks already, and in addition the 10 cards the deck is made of are shown when the "Start Game" button is shown.

Something which inevitably I spotted the very next time I played a game.  Previously I'd only ever paid attention to what is shown at the 'Start Game' stage.

Cons:

Mainly, the animation. Would love an option to minimize (preferably) or turn them off altogether. Great at first (look great, and see, bullet 3, above), but very busy, and slow the game waaaay down at times.

I haven't tried the alternative client, but I'm sure I'd second this if I had: I already disliked the amount of animation in the current client!

I'm another player that studies the kingdom at the start, but I have a message that I cut and paste into chat to let my opponent(s) know that I am doing so.  Originally I didn't click to start the game until after I'd finished looking at the kingdom, but one or two players pointed out to me that it would better to do so before studying (they were right), so that's what I now do.

The only justification I can see for showing players their deck initially is that it ensures that someone with a $5 start knows whether they are playing a Shelters or an Estates game (if I recall correctly the presence of Heirlooms, but not of Shelters, is obvious if one studies the kingdom).  That same information could, however, be presented in the log by stating the content of the deck.  If that were done, then I'd agree that there is absolutely no need for the delay before seeing one's initial hand.

Is there a way we could set the game to require more than one Alchemy card when Alchemy is included?  Otherwise, Alchemy just seems like a waste.

If you are always playing against the same people, you might well be suffering from group think.  In my ftf sessions with friends we always forced Alchemy to be either 0 or 3-4 cards because we thought that just one was pointless.  Then I started playing online here against strangers.  I soon discovered that over half the potion-cost cards (University, Alchemist, Scrying Pool, Familiar, Apothecary, Golem) were often bought even if they were the only one, though just how popular they are can depend on other features of the kingdom.  For example Familiar is less attractive in a kingdom with good trashing.

I'm usually inactive for 5-6 months because I go away on frequent holidays each winter (but not this year - I wonder why), which makes buying a subscription for the 1-2 weeks between each trip unattractive.  That's enough for my rating to drop by about 3 (or maybe even a bit more) if I recall correctly, so I suspect the current rate at which ratings decay is adequate to clear inactive players from the leaderboard within a reasonable period.  It would, however, be interesting to be able to see stats for just active players, though no doubt there would be disagreement as to what constitutes an active player.