Some nice words and a simple thank you

[Martin plays Piano]

Hi guys,
I only want to say THANK YOU for your initiative to sustain Dominion online for the gaming community. Otherwise, that must be stated clearly, we only had a dark screen and we couldn't continue playing since 1st Jan.

I feel ashamed of people shouting out load missing everything they had before - instead of shitstorming around with accusations, offences and excessive demands we should be grateful for all that idealism and enthusiasm your team has started with to offer a one-year platform for free.

It is really ridiculous to claim Shuffle IT for a payback of the purchases made with MF – this would be like punishing the firefighters support for the blaze in your own house someone else has caused. Ok, the garden is a little bit in disorder now, and the house needs some repair, but you can still live in your loved house.

In other words, the new release still has its bugs and needs future improvement to become more attractive for 2018, which is feedbacked some hundred times now in this forum. But I'd like to have this thread reserved for all those players wanting to say some nice words to you.

@ Stef, Philip, LaLight, Watno and many others sitting there day and night to answer again and again the same questions and being confronted with inappropriate requests from impatient users. Cheer up! – you will know best what to do next, carry on – I am convinced, that the vast majority of the community is sympathizing with you.

[Lotoreo]

Well said!

Maybe one thing you forgot to mention is the various great new features that the flamers all ignore: Undo, quickbuy, using the new card design, friendslist (I was promised a friendslist by both goko and makingfun, but now for the first time I can see who of my friends is online!), familiar cards setting,....
The new client already shows so much more potential than the other one ever did!

[LaLight]

Thank you very much, guys! I hope in some time this client will become the ideal one for everybody who will come here. 'Cause the key difference between old clients and new one is that this client is being made by people who love Dominion, who can play it really well (I don't remember all the Stef's champion titles) and who care about the community opinion. We will always make it only better and better.

[Ingix]

I think for both sides (players and developers) it is important to understand the other side. Of course Shuffle iT is not legally responsible for what happened at Making Fun and they were under no obligation to honor the purchases made there. On the other side, players on Making Fun who made purchases were making it in good faith, knowing that any number of circumstances could mean the end of Dominion at Making Fun.

That this end came not through some problem at Making Fun, but the hands of the licensor Rio Grande Games make it a 3-party problem: Claiming that Shuffle iT are the savior and otherwise we would have a black screen since Jan 1st is backwards: If there was not a prototype shown to Rio Grande, which seems to have convinced them that Shuffle iT have the ability to create a better version than what was currently available, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have cancelled/ not prolonged the agreement with Makign Fun (disclaimer: I have no idea what the licensing agreement between Rio Grande Games and Making Fun was and how it ended/was terminated).

From a costumer/player side, they were denied to use what they had previously (Dedicated clients for Windows, iOS, Android AFAIK) and can now only use a browser implementation. For me (Windows desktop user) this is not a problem, for tablet users it seems to be a mayor problem, considering that 'right-click' is not well supported there.

It seems also (from reading comments here and at the forum of Making Fun) that there are many differernt user types for Dominion online: casual types like me that play on the desktop primarily with bots, competitive types that are used to isotropic (and old text-only based implementation), mobile users that play during commutes and couples that use it to play with each other without the hassle to get the physical cards, a.s.o. For some the bot AI is if no or small interest, for  them the match making and finding players is much more important, for others it is the reverse.

What I think happened is that Shuffle iT set out to make a great client-server implementation of a Dominion game and I think they have succeeded at that, with all the teething problems that are to be expected. What they underestimated (or simply did not have time to do) was that

a) different clients need different implementations, as they represent different restrictions for UI and screen space, and
b) all the infrastructure needed to get players to a game: preference options, general and relating to cards, and matchmaking, and
c) things like tournaments, ladders, scores a.s.o that players expect around an online game in 2017.

Especially good matchmaking among strangers is notoriously hard to do (witness all the complaints about it even for AAA games that have the time and budget to do it).

To summarize, Shuffle iT are in the unenviable position now that they have to follow up on an implementation that was working well on many platforms and had to suddenly stop. The around 1 month beta test was obviously to short (maybe to limited, too) to catch all the UI problems for tablets that were there at the start.

I owned all expansions on Making Fun, transfered my account without a problem to dominion.games, played for a day and bought the Gold subscription for a year (read: I just paid for Empires). I hope that dominion.games will continue to develop and get rid of the mayor problems that plague players, then refine clients, AIs and the infrastructure around that.

[Jacob Marley]

You are right about the decision to change to ShuffleIt was made by Rio Grande Games.  What I think is lost in all this discussion about whether ShuffleIt has a better or worse product, is that from a business standpoint for RGG and Donald, the agreement signed with Goko was terrible.  Donald X has stated several times that both he and RGG saw almost no revenue from Goko/MF, and that Goko sold the rights to online Dominion to MF without consulting RGG.  Regardless of the quality of the product MK had at the end, I believe (and I'm only going on second hand information and personal impressions) that RGG wanted out of the deal because it was not good for them financially.  So for the people mad that MF is gone and their one-time payment no longer entitles them to play with all the cards, they should express this directly to RGG and not ShuffleIt.

You guys are doing a great job.  Keep it up.

[Stef]

You are right about the decision to change to ShuffleIt was made by Rio Grande Games.  What I think is lost in all this discussion about whether ShuffleIt has a better or worse product, is that from a business standpoint for RGG and Donald, the agreement signed with Goko was terrible.  Donald X has stated several times that both he and RGG saw almost no revenue from Goko/MF, and that Goko sold the rights to online Dominion to MF without consulting RGG.  Regardless of the quality of the product MK had at the end, I believe (and I'm only going on second hand information and personal impressions) that RGG wanted out of the deal because it was not good for them financially.  So for the people mad that MF is gone and their one-time payment no longer entitles them to play with all the cards, they should express this directly to RGG and not ShuffleIt.

You guys are doing a great job.  Keep it up.

While I should note I'm not speaking on behalf of them, I can tell you this:

The fact that RGG/Donald barely got any money from MF certainly didn't help, but the main problem was lack of progress and speed. The fact that it took them way over a year to release Adventures hurt them a lot.

The decision to stop with MF was made before we ever came into the picture (or even existed).

[Jacob Marley]

I'm glad that more people are popping up with positive feedback.  This makes me think of a customer relations training I did with my old firm.  One of the points presented was research that shows the satisfied customers on average tell 3 people about their experience, whereas unsatisfied customers tell on average 7 people.  That should give some indication that the tone of the majority of posts here may not be reflective of the overall population of users.