Ban n Cards in Rated Games

Previous topic - Next topic

Stef

This is my proposal:


We all get to make a list of disliked cards in the client. You can make it as long as you want.

Tables get a new setting. Respected number of disliked cards. By default it's 3.

Players also get a new setting: preferred number of respected disliked cards.
If one player has >3 and the other <3, it will stay at 3.
If both have it set to some number >3, the lowest one becomes the table setting.
If both have it set to some number <3, the highest one becomes the table setting.

JW

#16
What about: List one: Indicate up to three of your most disliked cards.
List two: Indicate any other disliked cards

Cards in any players' three most disliked cards never get used for filling in random kingdom events/cards. In addition, cards that are in all players' set of disliked cards never get used.

There is a table option to turn off this feature for tournaments and the like, but games found through any kind of matching always have the feature on.

Accatitippi

Quote from: Stef on 03 June 2017, 02:08:33 AM
This is my proposal:


We all get to make a list of disliked cards in the client. You can make it as long as you want.

Tables get a new setting. Respected number of disliked cards. By default it's 3.

Players also get a new setting: preferred number of respected disliked cards.
If one player has >3 and the other <3, it will stay at 3.
If both have it set to some number >3, the lowest one becomes the table setting.
If both have it set to some number <3, the highest one becomes the table setting.

I see what you're getting at, but it seems very complex - the sort of thing that you need a faq about somewhere.
I think the main concern that needs to be addressed is that you want to be able to turn it off for some tournament matchups. But that can be as simple as a checkbox in the table setup page.

And maybe also as a player preference: "I'm fine playing with my disliked cards". If both players have checked that, dislikes are ignored.

WhiteRabbit1981

About sounding selfish: That was intended. I did even put "me" in bold letters  8)

Stef, why make it that complex? There is already a point "banned cards" in the table. Just make an "add card" button there. That way, if I enter a table and see possession is banned, I can just leave - or vice versa.
Of course that would not work with automatch, but only with new tables. Imho thats a good compromise between the "whole game or nothing" and the "only fun cards" players.

I see the point that you should not force ppl to play scrabble if they dont like the game. But then, when two ppl commit to have fun with a game together they can as good stay in the rules of the game. One example, and that did seriously happen to me: One of my opponents got really pissed at me when I played a swindler and changed one of his coppers into a curse. I explained him in the chat that this was totally in the rules and is the intention of the swindler card. He got even more angry and explained me in all seriousness that I did not understand the social aspect of playing together and having fun together, that giving out curses with any card other than a witch is totally anti-social and that I did not get the true meaning of the swindler card.
This mindset given, do we need an option "allow swindled curses yes/no" ? Donald, how many ppl have to ask about that option before you consider it?

Donald X.

Quote from: Stef on 03 June 2017, 02:08:33 AM
This is my proposal:
This seems really confusing for what you get. I am not sure what you get actually, that you don't get from just letting everyone ban N cards.

Anyone who doesn't want to ban cards doesn't need to ban any. Then the number of banned cards in their games will be the number their opponent picked, up to the limit. So, that functionality is already there?

Donald X.

Quote from: WhiteRabbit1981 on 03 June 2017, 12:16:07 PM
About sounding selfish: That was intended. I did even put "me" in bold letters  8)
I don't know why you wanted to sound selfish, but okay. I still don't pander to it.

Quote from: WhiteRabbit1981 on 03 June 2017, 12:16:07 PM
This mindset given, do we need an option "allow swindled curses yes/no" ? Donald, how many ppl have to ask about that option before you consider it?
In fact I care so much about people getting to have the fun they want to have that with enough anti-Swindler sentiment I would be banning Swindler there for them. I wouldn't change the functionality because that's confusing, though I could make some new card that did Swindler's thing without Cursing, for those fans, if they were ubiquitous and everything else came together for it. And I mean. Did you like Saboteur? I'm sure someone out there liked Saboteur. It isn't there though; I replaced it (it would have been with a variation on Saboteur, but I didn't come up with a good one). So we have already run this experiment. I did take out the hated card. Look at that.

You don't need Swindler to exist for the game to be Dominion. You don't need whatever card for it to be Dominion. This is a point that may be a lot more visible to me than to other people, given my vantage point; Possession is just like all these other cards that some people hated that weren't published, except that it got published. Not having Possession just doesn't mean much to me; it's like not having that Village that Spied every time you played an attack, or whatever other thing you don't actually have. Possession made it to cardboard, but not because it had some magical amount of deserving to exist that the other cards didn't. The data has piled up since Alchemy came out; I wouldn't make Possession today, but have stopped short of dropping it from Alchemy, because to be friendly we would need to sell the replacement separately for people who already bought Alchemy.

Stef

I think the problem here is that I didn't explain my proposal properly.
I'll try again with words and examples instead of formulas.

I get to make a list, my list would be 1. Possession 2. Swindler 3. Kings Court
I don't do anything else.

The effect would be that on every table I play I force the table setting to be "respect 3 cards", because I didn't change the default. Every game I play will have these 3 cards banned. If my opponent also cared to make a list, the top 3 of that list would also be banned.

That's all there is to it to people that don't like to read on.

---

Some people may want to say "3 is not enough" or "3 is too many". Well, they are free to express that opinion in their personal settings. If they get to play an opponent who agrees with them, we will use the shorter/longer list.

Donald X.

Quote from: Stef on 03 June 2017, 04:17:19 PM
Some people may want to say "3 is not enough" or "3 is too many". Well, they are free to express that opinion in their personal settings. If they get to play an opponent who agrees with them, we will use the shorter/longer list.
To me "preferred number of respected disliked cards" just seems like extra complexity that isn't getting us much. People who think N is too many can just not ban cards; they are getting the same experience without the extra setting, since their opponent can still ban N. People who think N is not enough, well I disagree with them, I think if you ban more cards eventually you are gaming the system and we want to avoid people feeling like the system is being gamed, even in games they aren't playing. You know, two other people think sure ban 30 cards, and play against each other, and you are missing out because you didn't do that, and you don't want to do it because it's less fun and yet hate that their games count as fair games. And it's not like anyone actually hates 30 cards and yet still plays Dominion.

So I would make N say 5, and then it's so simple, you can ban 5 cards. We can always see, do people say "I hate that I can't ban 10 cards" or what. And this is just to make rated games more fun, there is always whatever you want in unrated games.

markus

I like Stef's suggestion. The complexity would only show up for users of advanced settings.

LibraryAdventurer

I would be very happy and play the game more if we could ban 3-5 cards in rated games.

This could seriously make a difference in whether I re-subscribe for next year. It can be very hard to find another player who wants to play unrated. When I do, I don't know if they're anywhere near my skill level.

I thought the point of a rating was so a player could be matched with another player who is close to their skill level. I don't see how banning a few cards would be a problem.


Rast

How about this:

* On the first of each month, ban a small (3-10) list of cards from all rated games.
* The size of the list and the particular cards banned would change each month.
* The ban list would be chosen by DonaldX each month based on whatever criteria or theme he favors at the time.  If some months he's too busy to make a list, Stef would do it.
* As a matter of policy, no card would be banned in consecutive months.
* The ban list could be hard (card never appears) or soft (card only appears 20% as often as normal cards.

Donald X.

Quote from: Rast on 24 June 2017, 09:07:00 PM
How about this:

* On the first of each month, ban a small (3-10) list of cards from all rated games.
* The size of the list and the particular cards banned would change each month.
* The ban list would be chosen by DonaldX each month based on whatever criteria or theme he favors at the time.  If some months he's too busy to make a list, Stef would do it.
* As a matter of policy, no card would be banned in consecutive months.
* The ban list could be hard (card never appears) or soft (card only appears 20% as often as normal cards.
I am not seeing the beauty of this plan. If someone hates Possession, they don't magically unhate it for alternating month-long periods. They'd be happier never seeing it.

scottc

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.

jsh

Quote from: scottc on 26 June 2017, 05:11:51 AM
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.

scottc

Quote from: jsh on 26 June 2017, 05:25:35 AM
Quote from: scottc on 26 June 2017, 05:11:51 AM
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.