Username: Nicholas Galauxy
Regarding the posted list:
1. An offline client, allowing you to play campaigns against bots
Not sure that I would ever play campaigns, unless I was *really* bored. Vanilla offline play against bots would be much more likely to be used, but only in a mobile setting, as the only time I would want to play against bots is when my play is going to be too asynchronous to play against a real person.
I have Androminion still installed on my phone for when I'm on the train or in meetings at work and want to play but at any time might have to set my phone down and stop playing for 5-30 minutes.
2. A bot with a setting for different play styles
3. A strong bot.
These are sort of one and the same to me - if it was possible to have different skill levels of bots, that might be nice for players to sort of "level up" their skill. Personally, I basically only play against Ratty when developing my chrome extension for the site, because the play style simple isn't especially interesting against the bots right now.
That having been said, I'd still likely prefer to play against humans in nearly all cases except with offline/asynchronous play, so I'm not sure how high a priority for me this would be.
4. Options for timed games
I would never do this and would want the ability to actively turn this off for matched games. The current turn delay timer is the most I would want for a timed game.
5. Options for undo settings
This would likely be a low-priority nice-to-have for me, similar to the autoplay that was recently released, ie: I'd never prioritize it, but once I have it I'd probably appreciate and enjoy it.
6. Online mini-tournaments; the option to easily create one for you & your friends.
Kinda indifferent towards this. I might participate if they were advertised, but it wouldn't personally influence me either way.
7. Option to invite specific players to your table
100% want this, in addition to other ways of communicating with logged in players. I have ~100 people on my friends list, and maybe 0.1% to 1% of my games ever are me seeing them logged in and then joining a game with them, especially because right now to do so, you effectively have to join an in-progress game and then say "hey, want to get rid of whoever this other loser I don't know is and play with me?"
And that both feels rude and is kinda awkward. So, I like this, but would also strongly pair this with some other friend-list related features, like "random pair with someone else on my list who wants to play with friend-people" and "friend-list broadcast" and "other out of game chat" and the like. I can see ways that could go badly, but a lot more ways it can go well.
8. More translations (to what language?)
Nicer to have a wider player base to play against, but my primary language is English so this won't directly affect me.
9. Better animations when cards are gained/bought/played/...
If this can be disabled, then maybe. It does feel like this would need to be a priority for a stronger focus on single-player/bot games, since Ratty's turns currently happen instantaneously, but the quick pace that the lack of animations currently provides is a strong positive for me.
10. Better visualization of split piles, Archive/Crypt contents, Prince targets, ...
Given that I've explicitly worked on a Chrome extension to help with this, I think this would be a major quality of life improvement. There are several things that could help with this (making the split pile randomizer cards available, the same way that Castles/Knights' randomizers are, utilizing the mini-reveal area like is being done with Druid, updating the card models to track which piles/zones they originated from, etc) both from a third-party developer perspective as well as from a first-party development perspective.
(Also, 100% of my dominion-related code is open-source, so feel free to borrow/reuse any of it that might be useful, if you're at all interested.)
10. Option to hide the log
I would never use this option.
11. Android app (or just improved compatibility?)
I would use this all the time. Androminion feels like a major step backwards every time I boot it up, but it's the only way for me to Dominion on-the-go, so it stays around. One feature that should almost certainly be included would be integration with randomizer apps (specifically, Jack of All Dominions) if kingdom randomizer settings aren't added.
12. iPhone app (or just improved compatibility?)
I would never use this.
13. Downloadable game logs
I would love to work on a game analytics platform based on log parsing. If at all possible, it might be nice to include an explicitly machine-readable set of a logs in addition to the more commonly useful human-readable logs.
14. Improved moderation (dealing with chat abuse, slowplayers, ...)
I haven't personally encountered much issue with this thus far, with the existing blacklist functionality. If it improves the community overall, then yay?
15. Tutorial on how to play Dominion
16. Tutorial on how to play dominion online.
I would never use this, but I suppose getting new players in is good.
---
Other suggestions:
- Sticky table rules
When I change a setting on a table I've created, such as marking a game as ranked, or deselecting random start, those should stay the same the next time I create a table.
- Additional Kingdom Randomizer Options
This is definitely more of a casual player request, but the wide availability of randomizer apps on mobile for things like "I want a kingdom with at least one source of +buy, and at least two non-standard treasure cards" would imply that many people would like this.
Additionally, I remember one particular setting that I used extremely frequently on Iso, which was generating a kingdom with 10+[number of players] cards and letting each player veto one kingdom card.
- Non-standard Variant Rules
Allowing (for non-rated games) things like "stack your starting hands" or "always have identical start hands". (I'm aware that DXV is against this so it's unlikely to happen, but this is a place for feedback, not things I necessarily think will happen.
Regarding the posted list:
1. An offline client, allowing you to play campaigns against bots
Not sure that I would ever play campaigns, unless I was *really* bored. Vanilla offline play against bots would be much more likely to be used, but only in a mobile setting, as the only time I would want to play against bots is when my play is going to be too asynchronous to play against a real person.
I have Androminion still installed on my phone for when I'm on the train or in meetings at work and want to play but at any time might have to set my phone down and stop playing for 5-30 minutes.
2. A bot with a setting for different play styles
3. A strong bot.
These are sort of one and the same to me - if it was possible to have different skill levels of bots, that might be nice for players to sort of "level up" their skill. Personally, I basically only play against Ratty when developing my chrome extension for the site, because the play style simple isn't especially interesting against the bots right now.
That having been said, I'd still likely prefer to play against humans in nearly all cases except with offline/asynchronous play, so I'm not sure how high a priority for me this would be.
4. Options for timed games
I would never do this and would want the ability to actively turn this off for matched games. The current turn delay timer is the most I would want for a timed game.
5. Options for undo settings
This would likely be a low-priority nice-to-have for me, similar to the autoplay that was recently released, ie: I'd never prioritize it, but once I have it I'd probably appreciate and enjoy it.
6. Online mini-tournaments; the option to easily create one for you & your friends.
Kinda indifferent towards this. I might participate if they were advertised, but it wouldn't personally influence me either way.
7. Option to invite specific players to your table
100% want this, in addition to other ways of communicating with logged in players. I have ~100 people on my friends list, and maybe 0.1% to 1% of my games ever are me seeing them logged in and then joining a game with them, especially because right now to do so, you effectively have to join an in-progress game and then say "hey, want to get rid of whoever this other loser I don't know is and play with me?"
And that both feels rude and is kinda awkward. So, I like this, but would also strongly pair this with some other friend-list related features, like "random pair with someone else on my list who wants to play with friend-people" and "friend-list broadcast" and "other out of game chat" and the like. I can see ways that could go badly, but a lot more ways it can go well.
8. More translations (to what language?)
Nicer to have a wider player base to play against, but my primary language is English so this won't directly affect me.
9. Better animations when cards are gained/bought/played/...
If this can be disabled, then maybe. It does feel like this would need to be a priority for a stronger focus on single-player/bot games, since Ratty's turns currently happen instantaneously, but the quick pace that the lack of animations currently provides is a strong positive for me.
10. Better visualization of split piles, Archive/Crypt contents, Prince targets, ...
Given that I've explicitly worked on a Chrome extension to help with this, I think this would be a major quality of life improvement. There are several things that could help with this (making the split pile randomizer cards available, the same way that Castles/Knights' randomizers are, utilizing the mini-reveal area like is being done with Druid, updating the card models to track which piles/zones they originated from, etc) both from a third-party developer perspective as well as from a first-party development perspective.
(Also, 100% of my dominion-related code is open-source, so feel free to borrow/reuse any of it that might be useful, if you're at all interested.)
10. Option to hide the log
I would never use this option.
11. Android app (or just improved compatibility?)
I would use this all the time. Androminion feels like a major step backwards every time I boot it up, but it's the only way for me to Dominion on-the-go, so it stays around. One feature that should almost certainly be included would be integration with randomizer apps (specifically, Jack of All Dominions) if kingdom randomizer settings aren't added.
12. iPhone app (or just improved compatibility?)
I would never use this.
13. Downloadable game logs
I would love to work on a game analytics platform based on log parsing. If at all possible, it might be nice to include an explicitly machine-readable set of a logs in addition to the more commonly useful human-readable logs.
14. Improved moderation (dealing with chat abuse, slowplayers, ...)
I haven't personally encountered much issue with this thus far, with the existing blacklist functionality. If it improves the community overall, then yay?
15. Tutorial on how to play Dominion
16. Tutorial on how to play dominion online.
I would never use this, but I suppose getting new players in is good.
---
Other suggestions:
- Sticky table rules
When I change a setting on a table I've created, such as marking a game as ranked, or deselecting random start, those should stay the same the next time I create a table.
- Additional Kingdom Randomizer Options
This is definitely more of a casual player request, but the wide availability of randomizer apps on mobile for things like "I want a kingdom with at least one source of +buy, and at least two non-standard treasure cards" would imply that many people would like this.
Additionally, I remember one particular setting that I used extremely frequently on Iso, which was generating a kingdom with 10+[number of players] cards and letting each player veto one kingdom card.
- Non-standard Variant Rules
Allowing (for non-rated games) things like "stack your starting hands" or "always have identical start hands". (I'm aware that DXV is against this so it's unlikely to happen, but this is a place for feedback, not things I necessarily think will happen.