Communication about releases & future plans

[RosieGirl]

I don't have a dog in this fight except for the fact that I am a player with a lot of tech problems and have no clear method to report or resolve the issues. I'm a new and casual player. Let's call it like it is. The communication and support with the everyday "customers" is nonexistent. Maybe the elite players may have more ways to get answers but I don't. I suspect that the way new Dominion is operating the casual players like me will fall to the wayside over the coming year. This could have serious long term financial implications for the company. We are the bread and butter. I spent maybe $100 on Making Fun purchasing expansions. I recall having a problem related to purchasing an expansion with MF. I emailed them, received a prompt response and the issue was resolved. With ShuffleiT I am completely out in the cold.  As much as I love playing Dominion online, I don't see investing that amount again for this quality of software. My husband is a software engineer and sometimes I show him what I am dealing with and we shake our heads. He tells me this is supposed to be fun, not a form of aggravation. I see there are many loyal supporters of the new developers that will put up with anything and harshly criticize anyone who says anything negative. For example, I thought what Adam H. said was very productive and people lashed out at him claiming he was bashing the poor developers. I read it exactly the opposite. The comments in bold by the developer was very unprofessional. I think they signed up for way more than they can handle and the company owners need to step up a bit more rather than let these developers flounder. Ultimately it is their product. OK, I said my mind.

[LastFootnote]

Well said, RosieGirl! I think you hit the nail right on the head.

[jsh]

I don't think it's well-stated at all; there is no specific problem mentioned in the post and it looks like an observation rather than an experience. What was the problem encountered? What steps did the poster take to contact support? What was the response? There are no details there. For all we know this person is just mad they didn't get a free thing, complained verbally, got nothing because nobody heard them, and is now posting here about it. How are they "out in the cold?" There is this forum and a support Discord. Sending private messages to the admins is trivial. I've sent several already and gotten responses. Sure, my one experience means nothing and could be an outlier, but at least I can confirm I made contact and got something out of it. This person is just making vague claims.

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.

[Icehawk78]

I think they signed up for way more than they can handle and the company owners need to step up a bit more rather than let these developers flounder.

Just fyi, not responding to the rest of your post, but the developers are the company owners, there's not a separate entity other than them or anything.

[ThetaSigma12]

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 agree with this, I personally love ShuffleIT and think it's an improvement from MF (browser based, empires, undo, cheaper subscriptions, better implementation for choices). I understand that many people are unhappy, and as I never really used the app (which was kinda trashy anyways) and didn't have any expansions that I have less reason to be unhappy. Still, it seems like only 5% of the users here seem to be voicing fervent complaints while the other 90-93% are fine with it.

[AdamH]

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.

[allanfieldhouse]

I think Adam's new player description is pretty accurate (and troubling).

I think the "loud minority" idea is completely backwards. Most people don't even know this forum exists. Judging from the initial impressions threads on here, f.ds, reddit, and bgg, the response to the new client was mixed, but mostly negative. The average player thinks the new version is worse than what it replaced. A lot of serious players like it better.



The idea behind this thread is that people want to like the new version, but we need some reassurance from the developers rather than blind trust. Just a little communication.

The last release was ~2 weeks ago. They could've said "we're working on X, it's going to take a while", but they didn't. Instead, all we see is no progress for 2 weeks and counting.

[Lotoreo]

Edit: while I meant every word of it, I probably should not have posted it.. Deleted.

[LastFootnote]

You can mock and marginalize people all you want, Lotereo. It certainly won't help Shuffle iT succeed.

[ElisabetK]

AdamH is making good points here. I wrote a long post about my experience as a newbie here and I'll vouch for the fact that it was hard to find where to go, what to do, and so on. I wasn't trying to bring over an MF subscription or play a live game with friends (or anyone) and I'll tell you the interface is mystifying.

Honestly I can't imagine anyone who isn't already familiar with Dominion bothering with the current set up here. I know it's a great game, so it's worth waiting for the developers to figure this out, but then I also thought there'd be a nicer welcome for new folks by this time. Meanwhile I'm figuring out various quirks and have even played some live games.

My fear is that the developers are designing this for themselves and their friends, who know the game and know what that other help forum is and already have accounts they use here and wherever. I'm all for implementing all the arcane game features of various Dominion expansions, but I think it's way more important to make the game fun and usable and *intuitive* for newcomers. If the game is great (it is) and the interface great too (the possibility is there) there's a huge number of people who will try it out and stay, and who will want to pay for subscriptions.

[werothegreat]

Communication is a good thing.  People much prefer to hear "this is what we're working on, give it a couple weeks" as opposed to just nothing.  I'm not saying it has to be Phillip or Stef - it could be Watno or Seprix or LaLight or anyone - just have someone dedicated to keeping players up to date, and just try to relieve some tension over when things are going to be implemented/fixed.  A community manager of sorts, I guess.  A PR person.

[RosieGirl]

Dear JSH - "For all we know this person is just mad they didn't get a free thing" That's really nice. I express my opinion and according to you I'm trying to get something.
"there is no specific problem mentioned in the post and it looks like an observation rather than an experience" I would have to write a book to explain the various problems not to mention the issues are not finite. They change from week to week. Some appear, some go away, etc. I play on three different devices. The issues are different depending on which I am using. I have reached out and was told to go to the forum. I am not a tech savvy gamer. I am a retiree. There might be more of us out there than you think. My post was not angry, just honest. It takes a certain type of personality to stick your neck out by posting on this forum. Not everyone has the guts. Like previously stated in other posts, there is a silent majority.They will lose interest if the problems are not resolved.

[jsh]

Dear JSH - "For all we know this person is just mad they didn't get a free thing" That's really nice. I express my opinion and according to you I'm trying to get something.
"there is no specific problem mentioned in the post and it looks like an observation rather than an experience" I would have to write a book to explain the various problems not to mention the issues are not finite. They change from week to week. Some appear, some go away, etc. I play on three different devices. The issues are different depending on which I am using. I have reached out and was told to go to the forum. I am not a tech savvy gamer. I am a retiree. There might be more of us out there than you think. My post was not angry, just honest. It takes a certain type of personality to stick your neck out by posting on this forum. Not everyone has the guts. Like previously stated in other posts, there is a silent majority.They will lose interest if the problems are not resolved.

I'm not saying you don't have a potential point or that your opinion doesn't matter, but your post did not mention the issues you had found, and neither did this one. You once again just claimed there were tons of issues, with is completely vague with regard to what actually needs to be fixed. This is why I don't see it as adding to any kind of conversation; my disagreement was entirely with LF's "well-stated!" claim, not your post necessarily. Venting about a general perception of there being issues is fine and all, but it certainly isn't productive.

I am a social misfit who can barely stand talking to people on the phone, so I can feel the pain of people not having the guts to reach out somewhere, but it's actually not worth exploring at this point how many of those people are out there. There being/not being a majority of them ultimately doesn't help the developers out as they are still developing the game. Maybe that will change in the future and they'll focus on marketing, but that's not where we are. In my opinion, it's much better for the developers to focus on adding new features than to spend time reading posts like these. After all, let's say they finish an ios port--that fixes the game for a bunch of people complaining and they didn't even have to trudge through a bunch of internet posts about feelings!

A post explaining specific issues/suggesting fixes is just better than acknowledging some people aren't happy to the wind. Plenty of posters here are being productive in the various bug report and feature suggestion threads; threads that become a bunch of blabbering like this aren't really. General complaining is just a smokescreen wasting time should the developers actually spend time reading it.

[Polk5440]

A post explaining specific issues/suggesting fixes is just better than acknowledging some people aren't happy to the wind. Plenty of posters here are being productive in the various bug report and feature suggestion threads; threads that become a bunch of blabbering like this aren't really. General complaining is just a smokescreen wasting time should the developers actually spend time reading it.

This forum is full of specific bugs, problems, and suggestions. Reporting one should not be a right of passage to be allowed to voice an opinion.

I'm a new and casual player....I recall having a problem related to purchasing an expansion with MF. I emailed them, received a prompt response and the issue was resolved. With ShuffleiT I am completely out in the cold.  As much as I love playing Dominion online, I don't see investing that amount again for this quality of software. My husband is a software engineer and sometimes I show him what I am dealing with and we shake our heads. He tells me this is supposed to be fun, not a form of aggravation.

I found RosieGirl's posts (especially the snippet above) expressed useful impressions from an important demographic that will be underrepresented on these forums by the vary nature of the method of feedback solicitation.

Those "specific" bugs and UI issues add up. And honestly, if the game is not at a point where small fixes would really change the opinion of the user, then the devs need to know that, too. Dominion Online was obviously incomplete at launch and remains so currently. It's important for various new people of different demographics to continually and repeatedly point that out. 

[Nyarpy]

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.

This describes me and my wife perfectly. I followed the forums so I knew all about the changes coming up, how to transfer our purchase, etc., so at least I didn't consider that a stumbling block. But then we were completely unable to get a game going on Kindle Fire vs. Kindle Fire (the way we had been playing nearly daily for months on MF), so we gave up. I now look at the forums every couple weeks, see that it looks like no major progress has been made, and lament that we're wasting our free year subscription.