Are Dislike / Banned List diminishing the fun?

[katie_mi]

After plaing some days with the new feature I notice there  are some cards, plans, events that are banned or disliked more often by players, so they don't appear anymore in an automatic match, limiting the pool of available cards.
I see the problem that I won't get to play some cards anymore because my opponent has banned them and my next opponent too. Where is the fun in an automatic setup if your opponent can veto all the cards he doesn't like though they may be your favorites? The challenge of playing Dominion is playing with a given set and developing the best strategy for this set. I'm limited in my experience because the top most hated cards are no longer in play.
I believe there should be a feature to switch off these banned list or the option to play with all Dominion cards and still have automatch.

[Ingix]

The main point of making a banned list is that each individual user need not play with cards they personally have banned. You wrote:

> I'm limited in my experience because the top most hated cards are no longer in play.

Yes, that's true. I agree that being able to enter the automatch queue with an option ("Don't respect card lists: ...") would be nice. Of course, then your opponent would also need to be able to enter the automatch queue with the exact same lists. Instead of being able to play against players that have maybe banned 5 cards, you might not find an suitable opponent at all.

Remember that you can always make a table and disable banned cards or other lists.

After some some time it might be interesting to see which cards are actually mass-banned.

[markus]

Another solution would be to make cards more likely to appear in a kingdom if you haven't played with them in a while. So if card X is banned by a lot of players, but you're not banning it and your current opponent isn't either, it would be more likely to make it into the kingdom.

[katie_mi]

I don't see the reason why these new list are the basis for the general matching. Why can't they be part of setting up the tables? Those who want to play with limited cards can do this comfortably now at a table.

If I want to play these cards I have to set up a table but I have no control or even information who joins my table concerning level. I still miss that feature from Groko where you could set up rules for joining your table. So either I play with a player and a list of banned cards or with a player who does not match my level. Where's the chance to play all cards with a player of my level as I had before?

[tufftaeh]

You could open a table and set the min/max level difference in the advanced options.

[LibraryAdventurer]

First, out of several games, I think I've only once been matched with someone who has set any banned or disliked cards (unless their lists were exactly the same as mine which I doubt).
Second, I highly doubt that that many people have lists which are similar enough to actually keep you from playing certain cards (unless you play the same opponent(s) over and over).

I am very grateful for this feature. This is one of the features I've been wanting. If you get matched with me, we'll play a fun game. Without this feature, if you got matched with me and one of my most hated cards was on the board, I would probably resign turn 1 anyway. What's the fun in that?

[RTT]

I don't see the reason why these new list are the basis for the general matching. Why can't they be part of setting up the tables? Those who want to play with limited cards can do this comfortably now at a table.

If I want to play these cards I have to set up a table but I have no control or even information who joins my table concerning level. I still miss that feature from Groko where you could set up rules for joining your table. So either I play with a player and a list of banned cards or with a player who does not match my level. Where's the chance to play all cards with a player of my level as I had before?

so everyone should set up tables so that you can use automatch again. why dont you just make the table yourself and let the majority enjoy not playing with their hate cards.

let me remind you that the goko "feature" you are talking about was just nameing the table 5000+ or something and people could join no matter what. it was your own duty to kick them if they were underleveled. eventually someone made a plugin where the opponent gets auto kicked when to low ranked.

[jeebus]

Another solution would be to make cards more likely to appear in a kingdom if you haven't played with them in a while. So if card X is banned by a lot of players, but you're not banning it and your current opponent isn't either, it would be more likely to make it into the kingdom.

This is a great solution. Depending in the sophistication of the code, it would totally eliminate the problem people are talking about in this thread. And I don't think the code needs to be very advanced to reduce the problem to the level that people mostly don't notice it.

[Accatitippi]

I was actually very surprised at the variety of the banned cards.
I'm very happy to see some cards slightly less often in order to avoid some highly annoying games with cards I dislike.
Consider that the human brain is very good at detecting pattern even when they aren't there. With 314 possible Kingdom cards there is a 4% chance for each of them that you won't see it in your next 100 games, so there are about 12 cards that you won't see in quite a while, and this has never bothered you - you probably didn't even notice steaks of absence. Suddenly the absence of some cards is very conspicuous thanks to the ban lists being declared at game start, and your brain feels like "they don't appear in automatch anymore", when they would have likely not appeared anyway!

[Morrison]

I love this new feature. If there is a card you are worried wont come up randomly then create a table with the card and wait for an opponent to join.

[MusicalRose]

I also dislike the ability for players to ban cards in automatch, but it seems I'm either in a minority or a relatively quiet majority, so the folks who have pet peeves win the day here. 

Personally, I think that skill at the game requires knowledge of all the cards, especially if you're going to be playing in ranked games.  If you want to resign turn 1 because you can't deal with a particular card, that's your prerogative and you can take the rank hit (and I can block you).   

I think banned lists are much better off in folks creating their own tables. 

Best of all worlds might be for those of us who want the full game to have the option to not auto-match to folks who have anything banned.  They can do their thing and I can do mine with other folks who want to play the whole game.

[Accatitippi]

I also dislike the ability for players to ban cards in automatch, but it seems I'm either in a minority or a relatively quiet majority, so the folks who have pet peeves win the day here. 

Personally, I think that skill at the game requires knowledge of all the cards, especially if you're going to be playing in ranked games.  If you want to resign turn 1 because you can't deal with a particular card, that's your prerogative and you can take the rank hit (and I can block you).   

I think banned lists are much better off in folks creating their own tables. 

Best of all worlds might be for those of us who want the full game to have the option to not auto-match to folks who have anything banned.  They can do their thing and I can do mine with other folks who want to play the whole game.

It's not a matter of skill, it's a matter of fun, really. There are essentially no downsides here. You still get the full game, your opponent still gets to ban whatever, they're not robbing you of anything. Their gain in fun is pretty big over many games, while you wouldn't even notice the slight skew in the card distribution, if the interface wasn't so in-your-face about it.
You probably wouldn't notice even the bigger skew that would result from always playing the same opponent: let's say Alice and Bob play Dominion together. Bob says "I have banned one card, but I'm not telling you which."
They then proceed to play 30 games in a row. At the end, Alice still has no way to be sure about which card has been banned.
Actually, Bob might have banned 5 cards without telling her anything, and Alice wouldn't even suspect that.

[MusicalRose]

It's a matter of both, and in rankings, skill should take precedence.  Fun can happen very easily in non-ranked games, and that's what I thought those were always for.

No this isn't enough to make me quit.  I just think a lot of people were TBH being really gross about pet cards.  I have cards I really hate too, usually because I lose when an opponent knows how to use them and I don't.  I place more value here on being able to interact and strategize around the game in full. 

As I said before, pet peeve folks have won the day here.  I'm not going to take up arms to get it changed, but I do dislike it.  Justifications from pet peevers aren't going to make me like it any more.

[Accatitippi]

It's a matter of both, and in rankings, skill should take precedence.  Fun can happen very easily in non-ranked games, and that's what I thought those were always for.

No this isn't enough to make me quit.  I just think a lot of people were TBH being really gross about pet cards.  I have cards I really hate too, usually because I lose when an opponent knows how to use them and I don't.  I place more value here on being able to interact and strategize around the game in full. 

As I said before, pet peeve folks have won the day here.  I'm not going to take up arms to get it changed, but I do dislike it.  Justifications from pet peevers aren't going to make me like it any more.

Looking at the banned lists, I think people ban/dislike cards due to "fun" reasons rather than "skill" reasons, so there is that. Also, I haven't run any maths, but the effect on the leaderboard is probably negligible - if you are really bad at one card, you probably aren't very good with the rest either, and anyway that card is affecting at most one game out of 30 or so.

Do you feel personally damaged by this change? How?

[Donald X.]

For me "the full game" just doesn't mean what it does to you guys. Possession got published, e.g. Enchant didn't (it's some random outtake from Alchemy). It's not somehow an incomplete game without Enchant, and it wouldn't be without Possession. Possession shouldn't have been published, Enchant didn't seem to have enough merit and wasn't. But it could have been vice-versa; Possession had rules issues and wouldn't have made the set if there'd been more time, and I can imagine deciding at the last minute to do Enchant instead. For me there's just no sense in which Possession should be forced on serious players in a way that Enchant shouldn't be. The argument is that Possession did actually get published, but that was a mistake, why enshrine mistakes. Chancellor etc. got published and you aren't playing with those online; I got to fix some mistakes.

I pushed for the banned list feature and am a fan. I didn't push for liked/disliked lists but they're fine. IRL people use banned lists constantly - you deal out the cards, your friend says "oh let's not play with Witch" or "oh we should have a village" and I mean they're your friend, so you're friendly. People leave out cards they don't like because they want to have more fun. People playing online also want to have more fun.

When you have a banned list, of course there will be cards you like that don't show up so much - you like Swindler, lots of people don't, only sometimes are you up against someone who didn't ban it and then it still may not show up. The suffering you experience from not getting to play with Swindler as much is just so overshadowed by the suffering of the other people if you got to force it on them. The joy someone might get from forcing their opponents to play with Possession is nothing next to the joy of people not having to play with Possession.

So, I am not sympathetic to anti-banned-list sentiments. Imagine your opponent is a friend; man, making them play with whatever card they hate is no way to be friendly.

[santamonica811]

Donald,
Thoughtful and reasonable points.  Thanks for contributing to this thread.  People can agree or disagree with your conclusions.  But no one can say, "Man, he didn't even give this any thought!" . . . it's obviously something that you carefully did consider.

[MusicalRose]

It's a matter of both, and in rankings, skill should take precedence.  Fun can happen very easily in non-ranked games, and that's what I thought those were always for.

No this isn't enough to make me quit.  I just think a lot of people were TBH being really gross about pet cards.  I have cards I really hate too, usually because I lose when an opponent knows how to use them and I don't.  I place more value here on being able to interact and strategize around the game in full. 

As I said before, pet peeve folks have won the day here.  I'm not going to take up arms to get it changed, but I do dislike it.  Justifications from pet peevers aren't going to make me like it any more.

Looking at the banned lists, I think people ban/dislike cards due to "fun" reasons rather than "skill" reasons, so there is that. Also, I haven't run any maths, but the effect on the leaderboard is probably negligible - if you are really bad at one card, you probably aren't very good with the rest either, and anyway that card is affecting at most one game out of 30 or so.

Do you feel personally damaged by this change? How?

Ah, yes.  I can't dislike or express an opinion about a change without being interrogated about how I'm "personally damaged" by this thing I dislike.  I've already explained why I don't like it.  Is there something you're having trouble understanding about that or?

[Accatitippi]

I'm sorry if that came through a bit aggressive, but it is a legitimate question, especially since you are complaining about the rule satisfying people's pet peeves.

Those people would otherwise have to play with cards they don't like, so the changes improves their experience quite a lot.
In your case, on the other hand, I'm arguing that the change would be hardly noticeable (actually, impossible to notice before several hundreds games) if it weren't highlighted in the log.

So I was wondering, do you feel that that hardly noticeable change actually meaningfully degrades your experience of Dominion? Because personally I can't see how it could, unless you play a lot and really love, say, rebuild, which might be the case, hence my asking.

For the record, my ban list is Possession and Harvest, my dislike list is Rebuild, Cultist, and Save. So I'm personally more in the camp of wanting variety, but I still think the ban list was a great idea, even though I'm not fully in its target audience.

[MusicalRose]

And I legitimately feel like I've already answered that question.  I said I don't like it.  I also said it's not going to make me rage quit the game.  I suggested other alternatives that I personally find more appropriate.  And I acknowledged that my opinion doesn't seem to be the popular one around these parts.  If I had the choice to relegate card bans to unrated (read: fun) games, I would.  But that isn't my call and I was mostly just expressing some support for the OP because I feel similarly. 

Edit: Additional thoughts.

I get it.  I have some cards I despise (literally anything that will bog a game down into a slog involving curses or ruins, basically all attacks in general), but I am also strongly oriented toward completionism and principle.  To me, it's important that rankings be based on the complete game.  Not important enough to quit playing over this, but important enough that I want to be clear I dislike it in case others feel the same and/or if the game mods might eventually take stuff like that into consideration.

[Renarr]

Level 53 player here, and what I've been noticing a bit playing against players ranked higher than me -- and I totally get this -- is that the banned/disliked cards are typically cards that have significant swinginess based on shuffle luck and timing like Tournament.

You can't totally prevent swinginess: I lost a game against a chap 10 ranks below me who went first and got to open 5/2 with Cultist on board, and had two more Cultists by turn 5.  But there's some cards that are a lot more likely towards it.

I guess my point being, banning/disliking certain cards may not be about lack of skill, but rather wanting to make sure that the skill/luck ratio is more a 70/30 or 80/20 proposition in determining the winner rather than closer to 50/50.

[Yardbird]

I think that if there are cards that "shouldn't be published" or "represent a problem", they should be globally banned just as Possession and Stash were before the big update.  I don't think players should get personal ban lists when it comes to playing ranked for rating, and I see that as of course being able to game a massive amount of cards (between the lists, 13 cards!) to be removed or played down if they aren't to your personal taste or your decision-making skill.  The dislike list is bad enough, but the outright ban list should really be reserved for a global list done server side.