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This is a problem with Possession, and when I realized it could lead to games like this, I also realized that the card is actually kind of broken. There have been discussions about it on the strategy forum.

Of course it only happens when both players are skilled, so for casual players playing Dominion IRL (or even online) the card is fine. But when both players are at a certain level, it will sometimes lead to this kind of game. It doesn't even have to be with debt; even if you could buy a card, you don't want to.

IRL it's not a problem per se, because you can just say, ok this game is fucked, let's play another (or just not play with Possession). But online one player has to resign, which is not good because of the rating. I fear the only solution is to drop Possession, but I don't think Donald will ever agree to that. It could be a setting for including Possession among the possible cards, and it's only included if both/all players have enabled it.

Hooray, it's now fixed to how it is in the real game. Thanks!

Sorry for your bad experience Jeebus. I would not enjoy playing a game with anyone displaying the shady ethics you describe here.

However, I don't think the solution is the interface disabling certain requests (undo or any other). No matter what we do, you'll never have a good time playing this person. The solution is coming up with some kind of a reputation system which should result in the two of you not being matched in the first place.

Thanks for replying. The thing is, I get matched with this player quite often, and he's always nice and the games are enjoyable. Just because a person tries to take advantage of this weak spot in the interface, doesn't mean it's a player whose ethics are so shady that I would want to blacklist them or otherwise avoid all games with them.

It's kind of like being under-charged in the store by some amount. Some people won't tell the cashier. It might not even be consistent, one day they would tell, another day not. Does that mean they have shady ethics? Sure. Does that  mean I won't play Dominion with them? No.

And also the reputation system won't be a good solution for the kind of discussion I described, because I would give a bad rating to a player who argues with me because I didn't grant their undo, but they would give me a bad rating for not granting it. And it happens every now and then. The core problem is the availabilty of the undo itself in those situations, because as I said, it fosters this.

Thanks for planning the new undo mode. I do think that auto-granting requests after no new information shouldn't be a mode that can be turned off. It should always be possible. Then all other undo requests can also be always possible, since denying them won't mean that you will have a no-new-info request denied later.

There are complications in implimenting this separation of course. One I thought of is that with alt-VP, even making a choice to buy/gain a card will give you information because of the VP counter. Strictly speaking it's not "new" information, since you could remember all players' cards*, but it does remove the memory element to certain extent, which of course the VP counter already does.

*(The exeption is Masquerade in multiplayer. This made me realize that the VP counter could actually reveal information you're not supposed to have, but that's another topic.)

It's getting annoying to have to argue with people when I deny their undo request. I mentioned it before. Quoting myself:

Undo should never even be allowed when you've gotten new information, such as after drawing a card. Maybe it could be a setting that both players have to agree on before the game, but having this is as the default setting is crazy. I have players getting annoyed at me because I don't grant them undo in these cases. Add to that the fact that the log is missing some performed actions, so that sometimes it looks like they want to undo a card draw, but it's actually a legitimate undo request.

I just had a game where my opponent played Avanto, drew 3 cards, and then requested undo. Of course I denied it. Playing Avanto without a Sauna in hand is a gamble, it's part of the game. If people expect to be able to undo that, it breaks the game. He was annoyed of course, and I had to explain my position.

Later I clicked "play all treasures" by mistake, I wanted to play Silver first to be able to trash. This is the situation where Undo is needed. But he denied it to make us "even". We then argued about this. He claimed that he had had Avanto and Sauna in hand earlier and it was a simple misclick. I said I was sorry, but I couldn't know that. I did believe him, but granting that undo would be harmful to the game.

After the game, I looked in the log, and he had actually lied during our discussion. He did not have a Sauna. He wanted to undo because he had taken a gamble that didn't pay off. This is what the current undo functionality fosters.

Fixing this is not the highest priority, but I think it's something that should be fixed pretty soon, certainly before any new functionality. (Of course the developers won't agree with that. They want to develop nice-to-have stuff like language support before stuff that breaks the game.)

Whatever problems people have with etiquette on resigning are not fixed by restricting when/how people can resign, because they can just pull the plug and leave, which causes all the same issues we had with resigning, only now you have to wait 4 minutes because you took away the opponent's ability to tell you they're not coming back.

I understand that this is a legitimate concern. But I don't remember it being a problem on Isotropic, even after the influx of new players caused some forum participants to wonder about the "loss of civility" in the game chat.

And as I stated above, the player who pulls the plug also has to wait the full 4 minutes to start another game, so I can't believe that in almost all cases, the player wouldn't just rather wait until their turn to resign.

This whole thread is absurd. If I screw up the opening in chess and put myself in a losing position against a competent opponent, I'm not going to sit around for 30 minutes waiting for my inevitable loss.

This whole thread is not about removing the option to resign, as you for some weird (and absurd) reason seem to think.

Nobody, including me, would keep inviting a player in real life when they consistently stop playing early, for whatever reason. The investment in time and effort is just too much.

Great, then you do agree with my original point.

And you agree about the social contract. Actually, it even exists online, even with the resign button. If I resign 50% of the time on turn 6 when we play, no explanation given, you would pretty soon want to blacklist me. So even online, even though some of us don't expect an explanation, we do expect that there is a legitimate reason.

I think we really think about this differently.

No my opponent doesn't need my permission for what is already allowed. I cannot think of any reasonable grounds for refusing permission. Even if the other player should just walk away and not want to continue playing, it is their choice and I have no choice but to abide by it. I may be disappointed, but that is besides the point.

In a real life game, and often online, a game can end early because of a resignation and the players can play another. Or they don't.

Yes, we think about it differently, but you are not really addressing what I'm saying. Now you're talking about refusing permission to resign. If you go back and read what I wrote, I actually said the opposite of what you think I'm saying - that I would not refuse permission. The disappointment is exactly what I'm talking about. As I keep saying and you never reply to, you would not like it if your opponent walked away from the table without saying a word. In fact, how much you liked it would very much depend on exactly what they said as an explanation/excuse for resigning. And that would directly influence how much you'd elect to play with that person in the future. If for instance that person usually quits half-way through the game without saying a word and you have no idea why, you would stop playing with them. And the reason you would do that, is because they keep breaking this loosely defined social contract, which different people view differently and which depends on the game group and the circumstances, but which nevertheless is there, governing exactly how okay it is to resign in a given situation and the way it's okay to act at that moment.

In a 2 player game IRL, I still don't have a problem with resignation. We can proceed to a next game and possibly play more games in the time we have available. I do think it makes a difference with more than 2 players though and players can decide beforehand how to deal with it.

I still don't think you would be okay with your opponent just walking away without a word, like you said. I even think you would expect them to ask if it's okay if they resign, at least in most cases. (Most games are not Chess.)

I think resignation is beneficial to the online game, since the other options are to stop playing until your opponent can force you to resign or to close the browser window. That 4 minute wait feels like punishment. :-)

Again: I have never advocated for removing the resign button.

Completely removing the resign button would be a very bad idea (especially, since an infinite game is possible and who has that much time?).

Yeah, isn't it great that this thread isn't about that at all?

Zeruf: You make some good points. Just a minor note: In parts of your post you argue against eliminating the resign button or "forcing yourself to play for another hour". That's a bit beside the topic of this thread, since I definitely did not argue for eliminating it, and only talked about waiting for one more turn (or less).

And similarly, to Twasa: You quoted me a bit out of context there. It looks like I'm saying that whenever you enter into a game you agree to a binding contract to finish it. I was only trying to say that resigning a game is something outside of the actual game, a "house rule", that is up to everybody to agree on. That was a response to Philip. As I said, if a Resign button is present at the outcome, resigning is part of the agreed-upon rules. (I'm sure you don't expect your opponent or yourself to "resign at any time for whatever reason at all, no explanation, forewarning or apology required" when sitting down to play a game IRL for instance. So I don't think you necessarily disagree with what I was saying in that post if you re-read it.)

It already works this way.

Great, then that explains why this isn't already a bigger problem.

I actually don't think it's a big problem the way it is now. There are many other interface problems that I would put ahead of this.

In your idea, it must always be possible to click all the cards in your hand if you have less than 6, and then if you do, the "Discard, but gain no Gold" displays. It seems like this would be very complicated to implement correctly. There are many scenarios to consider. I'm not even sure the appearing and disappearing buttons would make this clearer for the user than it is now.

Yes, there seems to be no reason for the "Discard" button, because when you click a Treasure to discard, you have to confirm first (and get to undo), right? So if you undo, of course the "Don't discard" button should show up again.

But maybe a resign button is a relatively healthy way to "ragequit". Take away that resign button and some people will just close their browser instead, which could lead to you waiting for a reconnect/timeout.

This is a good point. Especially now that people have been taught that you shouldn't have to wait for your opponent to finish their last turn and/or give them that satisfaction, it sounds like this could be a problem. People will just close their browser instead. It seems like it's a good idea to prevent this kind of behavior anyway, because of course it's already possible to do this.

So I was thinking that if you exit a game (either because you closed the browser or you had a technical problem), and log back in within the 5(?) minute window, you will always get prompted to continue the current game, correct? Is it possible to decline and instead start a new game? The solution is that it shouldn't be. You should actually be immediately put back into the current game. Only after the time window is finished should you be able to start a new game. This is totally fair, because if you were thrown out through no fault of your own, you would want to continue that game. If you did it just to make your opponent wait, you have to wait too. Seems like a no-brainer. (Maybe it already works this way?)

Undo should never even be allowed when you've gotten new information, such as after drawing a card. Maybe it could be a setting that both players have to agree on before the game, but having this is as the default setting is crazy. I have players getting annoyed at me because I don't grant them undo in these cases. Add to that the fact that the log is missing some performed actions, so that sometimes it looks like they want to undo a card draw, but it's actually a legitimate undo request.