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There really needs to be a way to chat with your friends in the game without being at the same table. It would make this workaround actually viable.

1. Make it easier to understand what's happening during my opponent's turn. 99% of this can be done by making any card gained during my opponent's turn dance in front of me before going wherever else it goes. The other 1% can be done by printing the money and buys that each player has in the log at the start of each buy phase.

2. Put some time and thought into the "new player experience." I don't feel like typing everything out, but the philosophy of having to come to these forums (which are hard to find from the actual game page) and complain, just to have someone tell you a workaround for many of this, is not a sustainable thing. If you're not going to fix these things promptly, then at least make a tutorial or something to show people how to use this thing.

How many reports of stuff like this is it going to take before the devs realize that the default settings are completely inappropriate? And for every report we see here like this, how many other people just never play the game again and never bother saying anything? I should probably start harping on this again, since it's been long enough that the devs don't appear to want to do anything about it.

One of many default settings could be changed to make this experience better. It only takes one! Until then, the new-user experience, which is by far the most important and most neglected component of this software, is suffering drastically (not to mention all of the "experienced" people who play with new players that repeatedly suffer because of this). Fixing this one thing would have been more progress than the past month of updates we've seen, it's not even close, and this would take 10 minutes to do.

It could be fixed by any of the following:

- A splash screen upon first login that directs the user to the familiar cards page and explains that they'll have to change it in order to see any kingdoms with variety.
- Changing the default settings to make any purchased expansion "familiar" to a user, then making them change it if they want to mark cards as unfamiliar.
- Changing the default settings for creating tables or matching players to allow more than just two familiar cards (pointing out the checkbox for respecting familiar cards is NOT a fix here because it's also on by default, but also because Familiar cards is currently a workaround for other features that are not yet implemented.)

It's been months, you are losing money and customers because of this, and it's extremely easy to fix. I don't want this to fail, and fixing this will help you not fail. Please make this a higher priority.

All I have is what my friend texted me. I'll quote it here and get more details if needed


weird bug to report with the client
if young witch is out and the bane is caravan guard, "revealing" the bane appears to play the caravan guard instead
giving the ACTIVE player plus one card and plus one action
the one who played the young witch to begin with

In some sense this isn't a big deal either way because it's something someone will figure out when they make the mistake one time. It's literally a 50/50 guess up until then. I think changing it over and over just makes it more confusing; they picked a way to make it work and should stick with that. I do see the point that it needs to reflect the text on the card, but as far as the online implementation goes, whatever is more intuitive is probably better.

With that said, I do like Rabid's color suggestion, though I can't say if it's color-blindness friendly or not.

It doesn't work, though. Just because the IRL game might have a problem with things being unclear is not an excuse for the online version to have a similar problem. At least IRL you can define it whichever way you like and be consistent with it -- the online version forces you to do it their way.

Getting used to it is a thing that can happen, but as you mentioned, this is not colorblind-friendly and also could just be made better by text. I'm not saying that text is the best solution but right now it's way better than the current implementation and anything else that has been suggested here because there will be no question what it does to anyone if they just read the card and look at the display.

And for any solution to be functional at all, it needs to do at least this much. If it can be made clear by a picture to everyone (even colorblind people) with no ambiguity at all, then sure that's cool. You could even make it exactly the same as the board game and that would be something (at least you can say it's a problem with the board game and shift the blame, but I don't think that's a good solution. Just saying it's better than what we currently have).

I just don't understand why anyone thinks it's OK to say "just give it a chance and get used to it" when there's a very easy way to do it that is just clear to everyone without any acclimation period. Every single thing that doesn't "just work right" the first time for a new player is a source of frustration and this is a very easy way to eliminate one of them. Arguing that it should stay when it simply doesn't have to just doesn't make any sense.

There are many cases on here where there is an argument to be made for what the interface "should" be. It can be difficult to determine what is going to be more intuitive for more people, what the audience should be for catering this stuff towards, etc.

This is not one of those cases.

What's happening is not what the card does. There is no clear way to tell when the journey token is "face up" or "face down" when that's the one thing that absolutely needs to be made clear. Literally, that's the only thing that matters and the current interface fails at doing it.

I'm not suggesting that I know what the best thing is, but I can tell you that if there is any doubt in anyone's mind over what state your token is in, or what's going to happen when you play a card that uses the journey token, then the interface is not good enough.

This is different because it's trivial to just have some text that says "Journey token face down" or "Journey token face up" and then the problem is solved. With a picture there and no label and no actual tie to what the card is supposed to do, the current interface fails to do the only thing that it actually has to do.

And really, I'm surprised that anyone out there is willing to defend what's out there right now. Maybe it's clear to you but there are people who it's not clear to: so it's not good enough. There really isn't anything else to it.

The card says there is a face up side and a face down side. It's the responsibility of the UI to make it clear which side of the token is face up and face down and for it to do what the card is saying. The fact that this discussion is taking place at all means that it needs to be changed.

"give it a chance" and "you'll get used to it" are not acceptable things to tell people. There is a way to implement this so that it's clear to everyone what's going on, you should just do it that way.

This latest release is pretty distressing, with this issue and also the sound that you can't turn off in the client. Seems to me that the best thing to do at this very moment is to revert this newest release and maybe actually make sure that what you're doing isn't making your software worse before pushing that release out for the public. Doing this makes the developers seem really out-of-touch with that the people using their product want.

This is a huge disappointment for me.

Normally in this case I name Bulbasaur.

Say I'm typing a message to my opponent in the chat. I'm in the middle of typing and let's say something happens: it's my turn now, or an undo request is going through, or the game ends. I can keep on typing and nothing goes into the chat. In some cases text will continue to appear in the box as the screen is fading away but when the screen comes back, my text has been cut off.

I feel like nothing should ever take my cursor away from the chat no matter what.

There is 1 Farmland left in the supply, I have a $4 card in hand. I choose to buy the Farmland and trash the $4 card. Of the options I have, gaining that last Farmland is one of them. If I choose that option, I just get one Farmland and nothing else.

I couldn't find the definitive ruling on this, should I be allowed to choose that Farmland as a choice? I would think once I buy it, it's not in the supply anymore. Anyways, if it's a legal choice, all behavior is correct.

EDIT: this has been confirmed to not be a bug, but it's correct behavior.

@ffejselur "Revenge Witch" is an inside joke referencing a certain spam post on the Dominion strategy forums. Anyway, in the setting of a middle ages / fantasy themed game, I don't see how it would be offensive (or sexist). Eventually, there should be more bots to choose from.

Seems like it would be smart to change the name if someone using the client is actually offended by it. Certainly seems better than telling them they shouldn't be offended.

when you reveal the top card of your deck, obviously that card is on top of your deck and therefore in your deck. I think cards in your deck should be shown to be in your deck rather than in magical-reveal-land.

I'm not 100% positive on this, only like 95.55%, so forgive me if I'm wrong.

I believe "magical-reveal-land" is where the card is while you're playing Ironmonger, which is different from your deck.

I have several friends who ended up buying cards on Making Fun, and for one reason or another didn't get any E-mails about the transfer. They contacted me one day to ask me why Dominion wasn't working anymore. If I point them to dominion.games they are really confused: how do I get my cards? Why does my old login not work?

The only thing there for them is a tiny link in the bottom right that says "ShuffleiT Forum" -- it doesn't say help, or tech support. There's no splashscreen that's more visible to point them to where they need to go to get help. If you want to get help, there's no support E-mail or anything, you have to make an account on either these forums or Discord to actually contact the admins, which is separate from the account you make to actually play the game.

This is the new player experience before getting your account set up.

Once you get into the software, there are tons of default options that need changed. I've gotten to be OK at it now but a lot of the time we've tried to make a table, accidentally started a couple of games against a bot because they couldn't sit down because the default rating settings don't allow first-time players to sit at the same table as me (plus joining a table doesn't automatically sit you down to play). Once that's resolved, we start a game and it's the same base set kingdom I've seen a million times, so we stop playing that and I help them get to where they need to change their settings -- btw I have to do this on Skype or via text because I can't communicate this to them using the client itself unless they're sitting at the table with me -- then hopefully we don't have a game with Crown, or anything that uses a Tavern mat or Journey Token, or anything that requires you to name a card, etc.

Who knows what they would do if I wasn't there to tell them to look in the game log for what to do, or to hover over someone's name if they need to know more information, or to tell them "sorry that's not implemented yet." Who knows what they would do if they didn't have me to tell them where they could contact the devs for help setting up their account -- they didn't find it themselves.

I think it's a loud minority who are having issues here, but in fairness there is no way to know this. I'm not saying Shuffleit doesn't have a long road ahead, but the anger expressed in threads like this feels hyperbolic to me relative to the improved experience I've been having with the new client.

I'm glad you've been having an improved experience. I really am.

I've gone through this about 15 times with people. I've been very careful to only tell them "it's still under development, there are more features and interface changes coming" and not bias them with my own opinions. I've stayed as optimistic as possible (I want to play this game with my friends! I actually have an indirect financial interest in the success of this client now that I'm a YouTube partner!) and done my best to sell them on continuing to play on the client.

About half of them either just didn't bother to play online anymore based on this first-time experience, or they told me to call them back when it was as good as MF was when it left. The other half play somewhat regularly.

Every single person, though, told me that the new client as it is right now is significantly worse than Making Fun was. And yes I agree with them, this thing has a long way to go.

This is the new-player experience, and even though this is a small sample size, it's larger than your sample size. None of my friends have posted on this forum (well IceHawk is an IRL friend of mine but he's not posting here because of me, I didn't bring him to the new client). I feel like there is a HUGE silent majority out there who never make it to these forums and are turned off from the client because it's too hard to just play a game with all of their cards.

In a perfect world, they would have a completely implemented, properly tested product at release, and they could completely focus on the new player experience. That would set them up the best for financial success in the long term. Unfortunately, here we are, the developers are (rightly) very busy with improving their product and there's nobody left to make their support more visible to the people who need it most.

As I was watching yet another person attempt to Crown a Silver, then play a Copper, with no Actions in hand, and watch them end up with only $3 (sigh) I noticed something in the game log:

... plays a Silver, a Crown and a Copper.

It seems that the game log just lumps all of the treasures played together. There is nothing to tell me which treasure got doubled, or that none of them got doubled in this case.

Counterfeit seems to be handled OK, with indents and such, and Crown in the Action phase seems to do OK too. Crown in the buy phase should be the same I think.

There are many reasons why online Dominion isn't very newbie-friendly, which I won't get into, but I will say that anyone who does this:

every "Pro" only says "play faster" when he was confronted with a kingdom of 10 unknown cards.

isn't a "pro", they are just a jerk.