Making things easier for Dominion Newcomers

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Stef

Quote from: JW on 15 December 2016, 04:48:50 PM
When I play Ambassador with only Copper in hand, the client automatically reveals Copper for me, but doesn't give any indication that it has done so. It's confusing when it goes straight to "how many to return."

The same principle applies to other cards where choices are made automatically - that the choice is being made automatically needs to be displayed prominently.

It certainly should. This will happen when we get the card animations straightened out.

ravi

I may not be in the majority here, but I actually would go one step further than just showing all automatic decisions. I would recommend turning off almost all automatic decisions by default. I think clicking through even the most trivial decisions (clicking estate when you swindle your opponent's estate and there are no other 2-cost cards for example) is important when learning the game. It gets you to really understand what the cards do. Sure, have an option to automatically do these things for more advanced users, but not by default.

scottc

QuoteI would recommend turning off almost all automatic decisions by default.

I agree.  A very easy way to make this work from the users' point of view is that the message they have to click on would also have a checkbox saying "don't ask me to confirm these decisions in the future".  That way the most experienced players would have everything configured to their liking within a few plays, and the newbies can turn them off gradually as they learn the game.  It would be easier than going through a list of options in your profile and trying to imagine whether a confirmation is useful or not.

That might not be easy to program though.

Bbl

Quote from: allanfieldhouse on 13 December 2016, 01:49:44 AM
I've been thinking about the left vs right click thing, and now that auto-playing treasures is off by default, I think the left vs right is fine how it is.
Having played a bit more with the new client, I still disagree. Even though auto-purchase is disabled by now, the new debt cards from Empires are still real traps for newcomers. You click on them to see what they do, and wham, you're knee deep in debt.

One could argue, that Empires is hidden behind the Gold Subscription anyway, but there might be future deals like a 1-month All-In trial or the like and I would make sure that dominion works even with these advanced addons as smoothly as with the base set.

As mentioned above, I also totally agree with 'Show everything' which to me also means turning off all automatic decisions by default. Handling it with a 'Never as me again' might be an option for this (though it might feel confusing for newcomers again)

Donald X.

I think right-click makes sense for "Get information," that seems more in line with how mouse buttons are used in general in the world of computers in 2016. Left is "do the thing," right gets information and options and things.

For example, here, at these forums, using Chrome, I will post this by clicking on Post. It's a left-click. Right-click brings up options.

Polliwop