Undo request at any time possible as default

[jeebus]

It's getting annoying to have to argue with people when I deny their undo request. I mentioned it before. Quoting myself:

Undo should never even be allowed when you've gotten new information, such as after drawing a card. Maybe it could be a setting that both players have to agree on before the game, but having this is as the default setting is crazy. I have players getting annoyed at me because I don't grant them undo in these cases. Add to that the fact that the log is missing some performed actions, so that sometimes it looks like they want to undo a card draw, but it's actually a legitimate undo request.

I just had a game where my opponent played Avanto, drew 3 cards, and then requested undo. Of course I denied it. Playing Avanto without a Sauna in hand is a gamble, it's part of the game. If people expect to be able to undo that, it breaks the game. He was annoyed of course, and I had to explain my position.

Later I clicked "play all treasures" by mistake, I wanted to play Silver first to be able to trash. This is the situation where Undo is needed. But he denied it to make us "even". We then argued about this. He claimed that he had had Avanto and Sauna in hand earlier and it was a simple misclick. I said I was sorry, but I couldn't know that. I did believe him, but granting that undo would be harmful to the game.

After the game, I looked in the log, and he had actually lied during our discussion. He did not have a Sauna. He wanted to undo because he had taken a gamble that didn't pay off. This is what the current undo functionality fosters.

Fixing this is not the highest priority, but I think it's something that should be fixed pretty soon, certainly before any new functionality. (Of course the developers won't agree with that. They want to develop nice-to-have stuff like language support before stuff that breaks the game.)

[tufftaeh]

I imagine not having a Russian/Japanese/German interface breaks the game more for non English speaking players.

[Stef]

Sorry for your bad experience Jeebus. I would not enjoy playing a game with anyone displaying the shady ethics you describe here.

However, I don't think the solution is the interface disabling certain requests (undo or any other). No matter what we do, you'll never have a good time playing this person. The solution is coming up with some kind of a reputation system which should result in the two of you not being matched in the first place.

--

I already planned to add a new undo mode, which will auto-grant requests when you don't have new information. It does require going through every step of the gameserver though, adding the new-info-boolean to everything that happens. It's not something I consider worth doing just for its own merit, but will be added to the next time I revisit the gameserver anyway.

These priorities are almost completely unrelated to language support. Language support is simply already there, the thing that is happening now is translators finishing up their work, and us adding that bundle to the live version. I don't actually speak any Russian or Japanese, and I wouldn't want the client to contain any of my written German.

[SkyHard]

Sorry for your bad experience Jeebus. I would not enjoy playing a game with anyone displaying the shady ethics you describe here.

What is shady about Jeebus' ethics?! I think it is more than reasonable to refuse the undo. In fact, I usually don't like undos at all (but that is another thing...)

[Jacob Marley]

I think he was referring to the shady ethics of Jeebus' opponent.  There is a fine line to draw in deciding legitimate vs questionable undo requests.  In a recent game, my opponent played a fortress then requested an undo.  I denied it on the basis of new information (one card drawn) but I suspect that it may have been a legitimate request, since I cannot really think why he would want to undo based on the card drawn in that situation.  That being said, I could conceive of a situation where he plays fortress with another cantrip in hand and draws a TfB card that he would want to use on fortress, so anytime new information is revealed, there is possibility for abuse.

My basic attitude is that no player is ever obligated to grant an undo request but it is nice when one player lets another undo a misclick.  One thing that should happen is that the requesting player should send a chat explaining why they want an undo upfront, then it can be discussed proactively.

There will still be players that take offense when undo's are not granted, but that is their problem, not yours.

[SkyHard]

Ah ok. Yes, that makes sense.

The discussion part can be difficult for those playing on tablet though..

[jeebus]

Sorry for your bad experience Jeebus. I would not enjoy playing a game with anyone displaying the shady ethics you describe here.

However, I don't think the solution is the interface disabling certain requests (undo or any other). No matter what we do, you'll never have a good time playing this person. The solution is coming up with some kind of a reputation system which should result in the two of you not being matched in the first place.

Thanks for replying. The thing is, I get matched with this player quite often, and he's always nice and the games are enjoyable. Just because a person tries to take advantage of this weak spot in the interface, doesn't mean it's a player whose ethics are so shady that I would want to blacklist them or otherwise avoid all games with them.

It's kind of like being under-charged in the store by some amount. Some people won't tell the cashier. It might not even be consistent, one day they would tell, another day not. Does that mean they have shady ethics? Sure. Does that  mean I won't play Dominion with them? No.

And also the reputation system won't be a good solution for the kind of discussion I described, because I would give a bad rating to a player who argues with me because I didn't grant their undo, but they would give me a bad rating for not granting it. And it happens every now and then. The core problem is the availabilty of the undo itself in those situations, because as I said, it fosters this.

Thanks for planning the new undo mode. I do think that auto-granting requests after no new information shouldn't be a mode that can be turned off. It should always be possible. Then all other undo requests can also be always possible, since denying them won't mean that you will have a no-new-info request denied later.

There are complications in implimenting this separation of course. One I thought of is that with alt-VP, even making a choice to buy/gain a card will give you information because of the VP counter. Strictly speaking it's not "new" information, since you could remember all players' cards*, but it does remove the memory element to certain extent, which of course the VP counter already does.

*(The exeption is Masquerade in multiplayer. This made me realize that the VP counter could actually reveal information you're not supposed to have, but that's another topic.)

[LastFootnote]

And also the reputation system won't be a good solution for the kind of discussion I described, because I would give a bad rating to a player who argues with me because I didn't grant their undo, but they would give me a bad rating for not granting it. And it happens every now and then. The core problem is the availabilty of the undo itself in those situations, because as I said, it fosters this.

Stef, if you and Philip are wise, you'll listen to jeebus, both here and in other threads. He knows what's what.

[Jacob Marley]

I agree that a public reputation system is not a good idea, at least if it depends on player ratings.  Such a system is too open for abuse, and I can see that some players would give others a bad reputation out of spite for losing a game, or for actions that that individual finds objectionable, which other players would not.  For example, in one game I played, there were several times I paused to consider my actions, and my opponent sent a message asking me to play faster.  In that case, he might well have dinged my reputation, which would affect my ability to get games with others who would not object to my pace of play. 

[Cave-O-Sapien]

I agree that a public reputation system is not a good idea, at least if it depends on player ratings.  Such a system is too open for abuse, and I can see that some players would give others a bad reputation out of spite for losing a game, or for actions that that individual finds objectionable, which other players would not.  For example, in one game I played, there were several times I paused to consider my actions, and my opponent sent a message asking me to play faster.  In that case, he might well have dinged my reputation, which would affect my ability to get games with others who would not object to my pace of play.

Pestering people to play faster is a form of abuse, one that I would report in a reputation system.

[Hertz Doughnut]

Maybe the reputation system can be based on concrete things. Like it goes down when you disconnect instead of resign.

Kind regards,
HD

[Stef]

If there is to be a reputation system, surely it has to be something subjective.
For example:

* Some people consider resignations very unsportsmanlike, others dislike it when you don't resign when a game is already decided.
* Some people love taking their time thinking stuff through, others hate it when they have to wait
* Some people really dislike the option to ask for undo after information was revealed, others would not want to play without it.

Ideally whatever this reputation system is to be would only match us with people that have playing preferences like our own, while still allowing the rest of the world to have their own kind of fun. It clearly can't be a single number for each player, I certainly never tried to suggest that.

[AdamH]

I feel pretty strongly that if any type of reputation system is going to exist, that it's not officially supported. There are all kinds of problems that can come of it and I think it's best for Shuffleit to not get involved. Their role is to take care of people who are clearly abusing their system, not to collect and organize the subjective thoughts of the people who use their software for a popularity contest.

There are a lot of other online games out there; none of the real, legitimate ones officially support this kind of thing.

I feel like maybe the number of friends someone has could be visible? *maybe* that's non-controversial enough to be OK officially supporting it? I feel like anything that is officially recorded has to be completely positive and have no negative connotation whatsoever -- you start a zero when you make a new account and it can only go up from there. Anything negative and you start getting into group blacklists which is a really ugly topic and one I feel like the official product should stay away from.

Even something as simple as disconnect-percentage potentially leads to problems. Let's say I buy a year's subscription, but I have crappy internet so I disconnect a lot. 6 months later I improve my internet subscription, but I have this high disconnect% so nobody wants to play with me. So I can either start a new account to get rid of my disconnect% and give up 6 months of my subscription, or deal with whatever consequences a high disconnect% has.

[Hertz Doughnut]

Maybe instead of trying to find good matches through a process of elimination (e.g. blacklist, reputation system), we could proactively try to match people by their own preferences.

Perhaps have each player fill out a profile. For example... 

How long should the average game of Dominion take? And then give players a slider between 5 minutes and 60 minutes.

How do you feel about resigning? I encourage it. I'm neutral. Please don't.

What languages do you understand?

Do you enjoy chatting while playing?

How strict are you on undos?



Maybe this info isn't even used for matching, but it shows up on the game screen next to the players' names (or pops up when you hover over their name). That would be a somewhat simple way of communicating one's preferences and hopefully preemptively avoiding hurt feelings.

Kind regards,
HD

[Jacob Marley]

I'm just flat out against an official reputation system, or for that matter creating too many preference based conditions for matching.  One problem is that every time you create a new set of preferences to determine who you are playing with, the pool of players the computer will match you with shrinks.  Already, we restrict who gets matched by card familiarity under good match.  This is necessary, of course, so people with subscriptions get to see all their cards, but adding preference restrictions based on play styles quickly shrinks the set of available players and will lead to long waits to start games.

The solution as I see it is to implement the personal blacklist.  Then each person can self-select for who they want to play against.