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Your variant is not. Additionally, there are several cards which would severely impact this practice. Summon, Villa,  Port, and Lost City (just to name four), can greatly impact how your turns go, and by not allowing the second player to react to the first player buying one of these cards, you're reducing their ability to play (especially in the case of Lost City, since they might have a different amount of money).

I'm not sure you read the OP all the way through... My suggestion for SI was better than the "write down & simultaneous reveal".  Write-Down is what I currently play with my brother, and it has it's own limitations, of which you mentioned a couple.

But my focus in this thread is Blind-Reveal... which is essentially like playing your first 2 turns normally, other than that most of the information about what you do is obscured from your opponent.  In Blind-Reveal, all cards would behave normally.  It's the information that is hidden, to the extent that that's possible.  I tried to list all the cards in my OP that functionally couldn't be kept secret, and I'll address the cards you brought up in that context:

Summon - If an interactive card, like Sea Hag, is purchased with Summon on Turn 1, it would have to affect Player 2, and thus it wouldn't be a secret.  Thanks for mentioning it.  I missed that one in my list in the OP.

Villa - No problem playing this one with Blind-Reveal.  You buy it and bounce back to your action phase, but it doesn't affect your opponents any.  They find out on turn 3 what you did.

Port - No problem playing this one with Blind-Reveal.  You get 2 ports.  They find out on turn 3.

Lost City - Mentioned in the OP as one of the cards that gives itself away with Blind-Reveal.  When you buy a Lost City, I draw a card, and thus can deduce what you purchased.

I like how your reason for wanting this is that your games are too often mirror matches without it. You know what else would reduce mirror matches? NOT INSISTING ON IDENTICAL STARTING HANDS.

You're right: it does increase the variety when my opponent gets to open with Witch, Cultist, or Rebuild, and I'm stuck with Silver/Silver.

But is that the kind of variety you enjoy?  Dead on turn 1?  A waste of 15 minutes of my day?

Sure, it's not a 100% chance of losing if they get a turn-1 Cultist, but it's > 90%.  I'd prefer to spend my time on games that are in the 40-60% range for both players.

But I strongly disagree to implement anything into the game thats not official.

This is too much of a variant. Overall I don't support adding variants into the official implementation.

Using the VP Counter is also a variant, and that's already supported.  Not just supported in the programming, but also socially supported among serious Dominion players.  Now a game of Dominion is substantially different with VP Counter turned on... especially with cards like Fairground, Feodum, Gardens, Silk Road, Vineyard, Bandit Fort, Wolf Den, Museum, or Orchard.

"First 2 turns Blind-Reveal" is a minor variant compared to "VP Counter".  Making two purchases without knowing what your opponent(s) is doing doesn't affect the game that much.  It forces Player 2 to define their opening on their own, rather than aping Player 1.  That's it.

Using a VP Counter instantly tells you every single turn if you should be trying to make the game end sooner or later.  It tells you if you have enough Silvers for your Feoda to win right now.  It tells you when you buy an estate if it made all your Silk Roads pop to the next VP level.  It tells you when you buy an action, if you instantly got Orchard VPs, then that was your third one.

It turns out that many people like playing the VP Counter variant (me included).  It's even a standard setting for Dominion league and tournaments.  We won't know how many people like Blind-Reveal until it's programmed.  I can play it IRL, and I can play it online with my brother, because we share an office and know when the other's written their choices down.  If I'm playing random people on the internet, I can't play Blind-Reveal.  Not easily, anyway.

Nobody has suggested yet that Blind-Reveal hurts the game of Dominion in any way.  I've yet to hear someone say that it makes the game worse or less fun.  My experience is that it improves the game, and I think it has a possibility of becoming an accepted standard for the serious-minded Dominion players, like VP Counter.

Keep up the great work, SI!

Kind regards,
HD

Your "passing turns" system is weird. You shouldn't get Bath points before the real game even begins.

When I've played this way IRL, we just both play with whatever starting hand the first player got.

Exactly.  Same for us IRL.

Since we don't have a baked-in option for identical starting hands online, the only options we have to get a game like that are (a) quit and start over repeatedly or (b) pass turns repeatedly.  Passing turns is the easier of the two.  (And doesn't affect player ratings... we were playing this way on Making Fun.)  The only time passing turns did something weird was with Baths, and once we noticed that, I was inspired to write this feature request. :)

It would be great to have a checkbox when hosting a table for "First 2 turns blind-reveal". 

Here's the story.  My brother and I play with identical starting hands, and then we both secretly write down what our purchases will be for the first two turns.  Once we've both chosen our purchases, we simultaneously reveal and then are committed to making those purchases.  We do this so that second player isn't swayed by the purchases of the first player, which, for us, often turns the game into a mirror match.  (Oh, he bought potion, I better get one, too!)

Here's how we could implement it:
- All players have their discard pile obscured until Player 1 starts turn #3
- All your opponent's turns in the Game Log simply have "??" until Player 1 starts turn #3 (at which point they turn from ?? to the actions they actually took)
- All supply pile counts stay at 10 (or are ??) until Player 1 starts turn #3 (at which point they update to their proper number)
- Landmarks that dish out VP chips (like Battlefield) would be ?? until Player 1 starts turn #3
- The VP Counter next to the players' names would be ?? until Player 1 starts turn #3 (otherwise if they bought a Silver with Bandit Fort in play, it could be deduced)
- The VP Chips, Coin Tokens, Debt Tokens, -1 Card token, -1 Coin token, etc. for each player is ?? until Player 1 starts turn #3 (you wouldn't know if they spent their Baker coin or used a Borrow or played Ball/Ferry/Plan/Seaway/Lost Arts/Training)
- Trade route tokens would stay on the victory cards with a ? until Player 1 starts turn #3
- The trash would be ?? until Player 1 starts turn #3 (e.g. if a Mint was purchased turn 1, you wouldn't see 5 coppers in the trash, also, Doctor w overpay, Bonfire)

Some things that wouldn't be blinded:
- Tax - when Tax is in the kingdom, there's no getting around seeing what Player 1 purchased
- Lost City - if a player buys a Lost City, the opponents draw a card, which is a giveaway of what they purchased
- Noble Brigand - if a player buys NB, it does it's on-buy attack, which is a giveaway
- Embassy/IGG - when a player buys Embassy/IGG, the others get a Silver/Curse, and that's a giveaway
- Messenger - when a player buys Messenger, the others get something, and that's a giveaway
- Knights/Castles/Ruins/Death Cart - when a player buys a Knight, it changes which knight is on top, and that's a giveaway (same for Castles and Death Cart via the Ruins pile)
- Raid - gives opponents a -1 card, and that's a giveaway
- Summon - If an interactive card, like Sea Hag, is purchased with Summon on Turn 1, it would have to affect Player 2, and thus it wouldn't be a secret

Maybe tournaments and league would also like this option...?

Keep up the great work!

Kind regards,
HD

It would be great to have a checkbox when hosting a table for "Identical starting hands": all players begin the game with the same starting hand.

When my brother and I play, we always play that way so someone doesn't get that lucky 5/2 and buys a Cultist.  Currently we do it manually, passing turn after turn until we both have, say, a 4/3 copper split.  In one game today, Baths was a landmark, and the VPs ended up being dished out while we were getting compatible starting hands.

Shouldn't be too hard.  Maybe tournaments and league would also like this option...?

Keep up the great work!

Kind regards,
HD

Reading Emeric's log more carefully, I think my situation may have been like his...

I think I had my champion in play, but he didn't have his, yet.

Moat and Lighthouse were not in the kingdom. (And if they were, doesn't the log mention them when they block an attack?)

His deck had cards that should have been discarded/trashed.

Note: I did play a Page earlier in the turn, so it should have attacked 2 cards.

I didn't know when I posted this, that we don't have a way of retrieving the full log. I was in the middle of the aforementioned game and just quickly copied/pasted the one turn where the bug showed up, and then kept playing. Next time I'll copy/paste the full game log before starting a new game.

But please trust me that there is a glitch here. Hopefully SI can view/post the full game log.

My guess is that you missed a champion play

Nope.  His champion came out a couple turns later.

See pic

[H plays a Warrior.H draws a Copper and a Treasure Hunter.]

Game #520295 on frankfurt

Turn 10 - Hertz Doughnut
H plays an Alchemist.
H draws a Silver and a Potion.
H plays a Page.
H draws an Alchemist.
H plays an Alchemist.
H draws 2 Coppers.
H plays a Warrior.
H draws a Copper and a Treasure Hunter.  (no attack!)
H plays a Silver, a Potion and 3 Coppers.
H buys an Alchemist.
H topdecks a Treasure Hunter.
H gains an Alchemist.
H returns a Warrior.
H receives a Hero.
H returns a Page.
H receives a Treasure Hunter.
H topdecks 2 Alchemists.
H shuffles their deck.
H draws a Militia, 3 Alchemists and a Treasure Hunter.

So, I can choose to be "not familiar" with Rebuild, Possession, and Harvest... and thus soft-veto them in advance...?

Keep up the good work, SI!

After reading the AI bug thread, it's obvious that writing a good AI is hard. But there are a lot of coders here among the Dominion Online community, so maybe we can harness that intellectual capital by making a game out of making a good bot...

- Devise a way for players to upload their own bot-scripts and have them compete against each other (something like Geronimoo's scripts?)

- Hold a bot tournament

- The winner is crowned Lord Rattingham for a month until the next bot tournament


Chime in if you'd be interested in submitting an entry to the bot tournament. I'd do it.


Keep up the good work, SI!

You can't compare this with keyboard shortcuts because they can work at the same time.

If you have too much user preference options designing screens and reproducing and fixing bugs and becomes harder to do. The code is not as much more complicated, the stuff around it is.

Completely agree. User-preference-type interface options are relatively difficult. Keyboard-shortcut-type interface options (aka multiple-methods-for-doing-X) are relatively easy.

Overall the goal has to be to make the game feel natural to as many people as possible... and user-preference options are unavoidable for some things (e.g. sound level), but should be used as rarely as possible.

For the widget in question, it could be programmed both ways without a user preference. A dialog box pops up, and on the left side are the MF style checkboxes; on the right side the SI style buttons. The player can use either one. Is that more confusing for new players? Perhaps. Is it worth implementing a user preference? Probably not.

UI is hard. Making everyone happy is hard.

It is always harder for the developers to manage more options.

No, not "always".

Yes, I agree that it is cumbersome to add user preferences. Like keeping track of which background each user wants or whether they want the Auto-Buy functionality.

However, most interface options could simply be programmed as two or three ways to do X. These aren't too hard to program.  e.g. Four hypothetical ways to play treasures: (1) left-click each treasure, (2) left-click "Play Treasures", (3) press spacebar to play all treasures, (4) say "Play treasures" into a microphone.

Even if I never use (4), it doesn't hurt me that it's there. If it's natural to someone else, that's a win for the game. I mean think about all keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Excel or Adobe Photoshop that casual users don't know about. It doesn't inconvenience them one bit having those options there, and then when one day when they learn about shift-drag (in Excel) they are suddenly 20% more productive. :)