See all Kingdom Cards

[d.thomas0193]

Hi, I'd like to make a feature request to be able to have a button to see the descriptions of all of the kingdom cards at once. Or, rather, the main 10 (excluding Victory and Treasures, etc).

This was in the previous client, and it was especially helpful for newer players who are trying to learn cards, and for people who like to take a moment to think about their strategy before they start playing. They can see everything and be able to think about their strategy without clicking on each individual card and taking more time.

[JW]

This is a great suggestion, and this feature should also show what all of the Kingdom cards are, even if they are on the bottom of split piles. Like Knights, Castles, Gladiator/Fortune, and so on. But like AdamH says, the main screen should just be the kingdom cards / events / landmarks.

[AdamH]

So many people have tried this and failed to get it right. Please don't make the same mistakes they did.

All Kingdom cards, events, and landmarks need to be visible on one screen. In the case of split piles, Castles, Knights, etc. don't display all of those options on the one screen unless everything fits. It should be very clear what the 10/11 kingdom cards are from looking at this main screen. You can have other pages or windows or whatever but being able to see that stuff on the first screen is the most important thing. If you don't have that, there's no point to implementing this feature.

[Martin plays Piano]

Hi,

to have a quick overview of all kingdom cards in play please feel free to install the Google Chrome extension "King's Courtier" from Icehawk - it helps me a lot.
You will find some more information in the link below.

http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=1380.msg

Have fun
Rachmaninoff

[AdamH]

I do use that extension, but it doesn't show events on that display page, and it still has the same issues with Knights/Castles/Ruins, etc. that I described.

[Martin plays Piano]

Adam, Icehawk's approach is at least much more than nothing.

The initial post was from d.Thomas as a newbie - who made his first post here - so I can assume that he never heard before from the King's courtier plug-in - so I am sure it might help him a lot more rather than waiting for the perfect solution.

[AdamH]

The initial post was from d.Thomas as a newbie - who made his first post here - so I can assume that he never heard before from the King's courtier plug-in - so I am sure it might help him a lot more rather than waiting for the perfect solution.

Sure, and I'm just making sure the devs don't look at the plugin and think that's the best way to go.

[Ingix]

If we are talking about an extra screen, then it may not be the big help for a new player who stares down at 8 cards he's never seen before, plus Village and Smithy. Because most people cannot keep 8 new cards in their memory. I really remember my first games of IRL Dominion and that I initially had big problems to remember what all the cards do, even though they were in front of me to read.

Maybe it's possible, in the normal view, to replace the card picture with the card text in the supply piles for some cards, maybe the ones marked as non-familiar. This way the important information for a new player (card text) is immediately and always in front of them. Once they know what Masquerade and Forge do, they can mark them as familiar, and now they see the picture (as it is now). They still have the name to connect them with the text they have learned. The skill to recognize a card upside down from the picture that is necessary in IRL is not needed in online play, so (as a first learning step) it can be replaced with the much more important text.

Of course, I have no idea how hard that is to implement.

[Jacob Marley]

Notwithstanding programming complexity (which I cannot speak to) the main difficulty I see is readability.  For Smithy, not a problem.  For Possession, potentially difficult to do meaningfully.

[AdamH]

If we are talking about an extra screen, then it may not be the big help for a new player who stares down at 8 cards he's never seen before, plus Village and Smithy. Because most people cannot keep 8 new cards in their memory. I really remember my first games of IRL Dominion and that I initially had big problems to remember what all the cards do, even though they were in front of me to read.

There are plenty of uses for this screen; the biggest one for me is that it's really nice to have this screen up while I'm talking about kingdoms on stream. But also if someone wants to check the interactions between multiple cards in the kingdoms without clicking back and forth.

Debating the usefulness of this feature by saying all of the times it isn't useful doesn't seem to make much sense to me; not everyone will use it, but I can see a lot of people getting a big benefit out of it.

[Ingix]

The problem is: Not everybody will get his dream solution. We need to find a solution that is doable and has the most "bang for the buck", where the buck is the limited amount of time that can be spent on this feature.

You see your feature as good for many players, I see my feature as better for many new players. Of course we should discuss that and hopefully get a solution that is even better that what we individually proposed. You wrote:

All Kingdom cards, events, and landmarks need to be visible on one screen.

I assume that this means that their text should be visible, as the current screen has their names and (with the exception of the non-supply piles) their pictures visible. My suggestion would show that *at all times*, if you so choose (the proposal was deliberately vague on the options how to invoke that feature, as I wanted to concentrate on the feature first). I see however that this would exclude the non-supply piles in my proposal. I'll have to think some more about this.

We both agree that non-uniform piles, like Castles, Knights, Ruins, etc. need some special handling.

[Donald X.]

The problem is: Not everybody will get his dream solution. We need to find a solution that is doable and has the most "bang for the buck", where the buck is the limited amount of time that can be spent on this feature.

You see your feature as good for many players, I see my feature as better for many new players. Of course we should discuss that and hopefully get a solution that is even better that what we individually proposed.

I can break this tie.

There should be a thing to click on to see all of the cards being used in the game - full card images with both art and text. This seems straightforward, like a trivial task.

You should also be able to click on an individual pile to see a full version of that card. If that pile is two different cards, or 8 or 10, you should instead see all however many - you click on the pile, instead of showing you 1 card, oops it was Patrician / Emporium so it shows you both. If the pile has a card paired with it that isn't in the pile - the Bane (even though it's a kingdom card also), Madman, Spoils, Prizes, etc. - it should show the main card and also that other card or sets of cards.

I do not think you have to be able to see all kingdom cards and also all Castles etc. on the same one screen.

[Ingix]

There should be a thing to click on to see all of the cards being used in the game - full card images with both art and text. This seems straightforward, like a trivial task.

Do you think this is doable with Travelers/Castles/Knights in the same Kingdom? In this case this would be 23 different cards from 3 Kingdom supply pile alone.

You should also be able to click on an individual pile to see a full version of that card. If that pile is two different cards, or 8 or 10, you should instead see all however many - you click on the pile, instead of showing you 1 card, oops it was Patrician / Emporium so it shows you both. If the pile has a card paired with it that isn't in the pile - the Bane (even though it's a kingdom card also), Madman, Spoils, Prizes, etc. - it should show the main card and also that other card or sets of cards.

Very good suggestion for the links between cards!

[AdamH]

Maybe it's not clear what I was saying -- I wasn't really ever disagreeing with anything anyone said here. My main concern is that if a button was implemented whose intent was to show all of the kingdom cards, that all of the kingdom cards and events/landmarks be displayed on a main page. Like, don't have split piles, Knights, etc. screw that up.

As for the other suggestions, I really don't have strong opinions. Just give the user the option to display whatever they want.

[Donald X.]

There should be a thing to click on to see all of the cards being used in the game - full card images with both art and text. This seems straightforward, like a trivial task.

Do you think this is doable with Travelers/Castles/Knights in the same Kingdom? In this case this would be 23 different cards from 3 Kingdom supply pile alone.

No, I meant the 10-11 kingdom cards currently buyable. The other cards can be seen by clicking on the piles as in the other part of what I said. "I do not think you have to be able to see all kingdom cards and also all Castles etc. on the same one screen."

[Cave-O-Sapien]

I suggest a small card browser that is roughly the same size as the current card preview:

a) Clicking on a card/name brings up the browser centered on the clicked on card.

b) horizontal arrows let you move between card piles; vertical arrows let you flip through different cards in that pile.

[santamonica811]

Donald,
1.  In a deck with Knights, it's great for a beginning player to be able to see all the various knights, since each one has a unique effect. That's pretty obvious, and no one would argue with you.  As you envision this; would a player be able to merely see all 8 cards, or, all 8 cards IN THE ORDER THEY HAPPEN TO BE in this particular game?  Obviously a huge difference in strategy if you know in advance the order...not sure if one is inherently "better" than the other.

2.  Same sort of question re Black Market.  In IRL games, I guess the rules call for players to know in advance which 'extra' cards with be in the mix, if a Black Market is played, right?  So far, the online game does not do this, which was a conscious decision of the website developers. (I'm not sure if this decision was due to programming difficulties, or due to a determination that the game just plays better if players are left in the dark.)   So...do you envision an online game where the Black Market supply cards will be visible to players?  And if the answer to that is 'yes,' then will/should we also know the order of the cards?   

[JW]

Donald,
1.  In a deck with Knights, it's great for a beginning player to be able to see all the various knights, since each one has a unique effect. That's pretty obvious, and no one would argue with you.  As you envision this; would a player be able to merely see all 8 cards, or, all 8 cards IN THE ORDER THEY HAPPEN TO BE in this particular game?  Obviously a huge difference in strategy if you know in advance the order...not sure if one is inherently "better" than the other.

You don't get to see the order of the Knights pile, see the Dark Ages rulebook. But seems fine to remind yourself what they do during the game, though unfortunately the Dark Ages rulebook doesn't show that so for in-person games you'd need to use some other source like the Dominion Wiki.

2.  Same sort of question re Black Market.  In IRL games, I guess the rules call for players to know in advance which 'extra' cards with be in the mix, if a Black Market is played, right?  So far, the online game does not do this, which was a conscious decision of the website developers. (I'm not sure if this decision was due to programming difficulties, or due to a determination that the game just plays better if players are left in the dark.)   So...do you envision an online game where the Black Market supply cards will be visible to players?  And if the answer to that is 'yes,' then will/should we also know the order of the cards?

The developers asked Donald about the current implementation of Black Market and he was fine with it. I recall that he even requested that cards with "setup" instructions like Baker aren't in the Black Market, which I assume the developers were planning to do anyway (because it avoids confusion).

[santamonica811]

JW,
Sure.  That makes a lot of logical sense.