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This seems like a good idea as long as there is someone actually taking feedback from people reporting bugs and stuff. As it currently stands, it doesn't seem like that is happening anyways.

I don't know how thorough the coverage is, but there are volunteers doing stuff. For example you will frequently see Ingix replying to a bug report, having tried to verify it.

There is obviously nothing mechanically broken about even a flat-out attack missing the attack type. Most games nothing will care about the type anyway, and Moat isn't obligated to stop all bad things from happening to you.

I understand if any particular person does not like the idea of an attack without the attack type; that's fine, we all have our preferences, and I try to cater to the common ones. What I am saying though is that there is simply zilch mechanically broken about it. Arguing that it's messed up is just like arguing that you don't like a particular card's art (and yes I care about that too).

Yes, deck contents is nice to have.
Yes, end-screen log is nice to have.

Being able to know what happens on your opponent's last turn is not nice to have, it's an essential part of the game. Because of a flaw in the implementation where this is not shown, we need the end-screen log as an inferior substitute. Now even that substitute is gone. That's the serious part. And Stef doesn't even bother to reply to this thread saying when this will be fixed.

I think it's reasonable to want this fixed, and unreasonable to get hysterical about it.

I am replying though to say that any time Stef spends reading the forums or reassuring people with posts is time not spent actually working on the program. In fact I propose that Stef only check in on the forums once a week, and only post announcements. Any emergency will I'm sure be communicated to him one way or another.

But a tournament is supposed to be about testing skills and putting the best dominion players against each other at the game of dominion.

And the game of dominion includes possession.

This argument just super doesn't work for Dominion. You play with a subset of the cards, automatically, and see a subset of the combinations. You never see everything. No particular kingdom card is essential for it to be Dominion; no particular combo is essential either. Any given tournament you might never see any particular card, and that doesn't mean we didn't adequately test player skill.

Possession can literally lead to stalemates and games that are impossible to finish.

Cards other than Possession can literally lead to stalemates. The tournament rules have to handle that situation, whether or not Possession is banned... and if they do, then those stalemates do not require you to ban Possession.

I am fine with cards being banned from whatever tournament. When I personally am asked to pick cards for a tournament, there are several cards I don't use, including Possession.

Ideally you would be able to ban oh say 5 cards from your games and still have them be rated, and then that could just apply to tournaments too.

I have a different view on the triviality of programming new cards. To me there are quite a few existing ones that are not yet fully implemented. As an example, when you can't see the contents of a split pile, I wouldn't call that card pile implemented. The same goes for tokens that are not shown. Then you can start getting into the card bugs, which show that they were not properly implemented.

For me, there's no program until you can play against reasonable bots. By this standard, currently nothing is implemented.

It turns out that's not relevant to this discussion. The people who currently aren't happy will not become happy if Nocturne is added; that's not news. The people who like the program will be happy to get Nocturne though. And the amount of programming needed to get them that happiness is not much programming, whether you personally would call those cards "implemented" or not.

Rather than making the higher rated player always go last, another option is that a player's chance to go last equals the predicted probability that they'll win. This way higher ranking players still get to go first sometimes, but less often the higher rated they are.  That method could also be used if the players haven't played before, and if they have played, whoever won most recently goes last. This tends to produce more interesting games, but even a player who almost always plays lower ranked opponents will go first a decent amount.

That's a nice idea.

It can lead to situations where I'm getting screwed over two or three games in a row and it feels a lot worse knowing that I'm doomed to go second in every game so I'll have this to overcome. So overall a less fun experience.

I can believe that some people would have that experience, though I personally have not. I have never minded going last, knowing that I was the favorite to win. Cutpurse doesn't change that for me.

But I'd be OK if the higher-rated player went second in the first of a series of games, but if these two people have played each other in the last, say, 24 hours, then you can go do the rule of the winner goes second in the next game. I feel like that captures the spirit of wanting to even things out while preserving fun for everyone involved.

Aha:

If none of the players have played today, highest ranked player goes last. If any have played, pick a random non-bot player who has played today, and if they won their last game they go last, otherwise first.

For two player games this works out as:
- if neither have played it's by rank, hooray, the most interesting game
- if just one has played, we go by their last game from today - they have the experience of going first if they lost or last if they won (and the other player can't have that experience, since they haven't played yet today)
- if both have played and they both won or both lost, it's random
- if both have played and one won and the other lost, the player who lost goes first and the player who won goes second, regardless of who we randomly picked. Both players feel like they are getting their deserved slot.

You could do that and it will give you the most interesting games.

But the rating system would have to reflect that and take the starting player into account. My guess is that the advantage is 3-4 levels. If you don't account for that, it will mess up the ratings.

I of course personally favor interesting games over leaderboard accuracy.

It's true that using ranking to determine start player would have an effect on ranking. I don't know how much it would be.

I imagine what you could do is, you have two more leaderboards, one for games going first and one for games going second (while using the existing combined one for deciding who goes first). Then after a bit you realize that the leaderboards aren't much different and why do we need three of them and you get rid of the two new ones.

Back in the isotropic days I was always a bit annoyed by this rule for exactly the reasons Markus is describing here. Iso was a little more advanced, but people could still influence their 1P/2P rating by playing on or not.

I also thought it could have a nice solution: instead of looking at the previous game this session (what you do IRL) you could look at the previous result between this exact set of players. Obviously IRL that would be a nightmare because of bookkeeping, but online there is this database.

Anyway, I haven't discussed it with Donald yet, unless of course I am doing that right now.

Hello hello.

I think it would be fine if you checked a database for games between the players, to see who should go first.

Another way to look at it is, the intention of the rule is to mitigate first player advantage by having the best player go last. IRL I go the extra mile there; for game one, I go last. With one group we are evenly matched enough that this isn't relevant so I don't always; if there's say one weaker player, they go first.

So, you could pursue the goal more accurately by having the higher ranked player always go second. I don't know if this has any unintended consequences. You can play against higher ranked players to go first, but then, they're higher ranked. If you're high ranked you will mostly go second. And win.

Online Dominion is many different things to many different players. Some play (almost) exclusively against humans they never met in real life. Others play (almost) exclusively against humans that sit 3 feet away from them. Still others just play game after game against a bot.

Hiding the bots will just anger the latter player base for no real gain.

I mostly play IRL. When I play online I just play vs. bots (so right now, I don't play online). So I mean I am one of those players you think would be angry if pretend-bots weren't there. The pretend-bots are a slap in the face to anyone who wanted to play against bots.

If somebody wants to open a Dominion Academy that teaches better Dominion play, I'll be the first to sign up, because I really need it. But most beginning players will not get better if they are being beaten by "Lord of the Engine" instead of "Lord of Big Money".

I'm not sure I follow you. I agree with LF's point that when you beat a player with money, they think "this game is stupid, it's broken, play something else." I have seen this come up endlessly on BGG from games IRL. They all buy too many actions, this game is fun but we are bad at it, then one player buys just money and wins, oops no game here. So beating up new players with Lord of the Engine is in fact better than beating them with Lord of This Game Sucks. It's way better. As LF notes though you can do even better by having Lord of the Not Bad But Buys Too Many Attacks and so on.

I think you misunderstand. I know that Lord Rattington doesn't know anything, and you know that, but the new players that are getting beaten consistently by Lord Rattington don't know that. They see themselves getting beaten by this terrible AI using a boring "strategy" and assume that it's a good AI and that the boring strategy is the correct one.

Okay. You meant "the player thinks that the game knows that the dull strategy is the best."

I saw the thread you're referring to. I don't disagree that it's bad. It's uh. I damn it with faint praise. It's just another bad thing about not having AI; not having AI was already so bad.

You could argue that the bots should just be disabled until they're real, rather than offer up a dull game that incidentally may convince you that Silver is the be-all end-all. They're useful for some things though. I guess, the bots could be renamed, Dummy Player #1. The option to play against bots could be hidden on a settings screen.

I see. I think this is the first time this ruling has been made public then (unless I missed it somewhere recently).

I don't see that this was a question according to published rules: You should be able to choose the order (since they happen at the same time - after this turn). So this ruling creates a special rule for extra turns - that they are always last. In effect it actually means there are now two distinct times after this turn: First you can order Donate and Mountain pass, then you can order extra turns.

It may not have been public; Stef has privately asked me some rules questions.

I see that the cards do not spell this out, and would leave it as, pick the order. It seems super weird to me though if another turn can happen before you resolve Donate / Mountain Pass.

See this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) for the origin of the 80/20 "rule", and of course it is a generalization that does not always work with those number.

I see, interesting. Do you know this one? I measure something - let's say how tall a mountain is. I use some units I pick - whatever units. I report the number. What's the first digit? 30% of the time, it's 1 (and it's 9 only 5% of the time).

My main point is: It is much easier (though still a very complicated task) to program a complex rule system (as Dominion is), when you already know all the parts, then to start with a subset and then get 'surprised' by new effects when a new expansion comes around.

That's totally true, but I have evidence there too.

I programmed a crude home version of Dominion back when (I stopped updating it when Doug Z. provided isotropic, which was way better). I did not know what all the cards would be ahead of time. Sometimes there were things I had not expected, that required changing stuff (like Fortress) or a novel interface (like Black Market).

A typical expansion nevertheless took a weekend to program, including time spent playtesting. Maybe there would be a bug we didn't notice for a week, but you know.

Doug Z. didn't know what was coming up either, and did not have such a crude program, and he was fast too.

A bye can't win games, which even the lowest ranked player can do in theory. If you just want to find out who the highest ranking player is, then look it up in the rankings. If you want to find out who wins a tournament, let the players play.

Obv. that would be great (for example if two players are tied after 7 games), but it turns out, we've got these byes to assign.

If for technical reasons some players advance the first round without needing to play, then either make players earn that (I think I remember one could earn byes for MtG Pro Tour Qualifiers 15 years back), or make it random. Of course, being highest ranked is a form of 'earn it'.

Magic does have ways to earn byes. It also assigns byes to the best players. The Magic people have put more work into this than I have (argument by authority), and my "we pair the best against the worst in round one" argument doesn't appear to have been demolished to me (argument by looking at your argument).

Any chance to have that changed to a (uniformely) random selection of players instead? Byes are (in this case) a technical necessity so I don't see why the better seeded players should have an advantage here,

I don't understand. Assume no byes. The highest ranked player is paired in the first round against the weakest player. Why is that? No don't tell me, just keep the reason in your head. Now: whatever the reason was, doesn't it then apply naturally to byes too? The bye is an even weaker player.