"Speed" Dominon

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LincLinc

The ShuffleIt developers are Dominion enthusiasts, and it really comes out in the design choices made for the game.  Everything is geared towards people like themselves:  Serious hard-core Dominion gamers who strive to decimate their opponents in every confrontation.

The problem is... you have completely FORGOTTEN about the most important group in your would-be customer base:  casual gamers

Everything about the structure of this system favors tournament-style play where winning and losing matter, a lot.  There's no consideration given to times when folks just want to log in, play 3 hands in 20 to 25 minutes, and then walk away.

Solution:  Make "unrated" games played as Speed Dominion (similar to Speed Chess).

Speed Dominion would be exactly like regular Dominion, except that any time it is "your turn" a timer will be rolling on-screen, displaying the number of seconds which you have been in control of the board and other players are simply staring at the screen waiting for you to take action.  Every 100 or 120 seconds, that counter resets to 0... and you gain a Curse card.

Alternately, you could just measure the Player A time and Player B time.  Once one player has accumulated 2x the amount of play time as the other, the games ends and the player who used 1/3 of the time wins and the player who used 2/3 of the time loses.  This would require a caveat that no game would ever time-out until at least 5 minutes of total play had occurred (game total, not per-player).

Just like Speed Chess is a totally different kind of game from Tournament Chess, Speed Dominion is not Dominion.  Speed games should be limited to unrated games where statistics are not recorded, or a 3rd class of game should be created where only the results of Speed games are computed in the overall score.  Leave the tournament play as-is.

Of course, the "serious" Dominion players on the system would just change their matching preferences to refuse Speed games.  That's fine; let them have their 3-minutes-per-turn hands where they calculate all the mathematical possibilities and go through the painstaking process to draw all 35 cards of their deck into play every single hand.

That's fine, but I don't want to sit at my screen staring at someone else playing their hand for 80% of the experience.

Give us this way to avoid dealing with slow-rollers, whether they are rookies or hacksters just trying to mess with us, or 53.00+ ranked players who want to slow down and do everything PERFECTLY.

I, personally, don't want to play with either of those classes of opponent, and this is a way to make sure I don't have to.

ubk

 "Every 100 or 120 seconds, that counter resets to 0... and you gain a Curse card."

  Could give some new ways to 3 pile win.

bananny

I'm interested in the idea.  I play bots 99% of the time because n00bs and slow players make me insane.  I do like getting to the point of having a ridiculous amount of combos and pulling my entire deck in one turn, but I'm fast ;)  Putting a clock on turns sounds like a winner to me.  Curse cards welcome if I have trash cards.  Curses = good stuff to trash for advantages with the right cards.

markus

I like playing competitive games with a bit more of thinking but I'd also enjoy speed games relying more on intuition.
My suggested mode would have been to get a bit of time for each turn and each decision.

Using the 1/3-2/3 method, I'd suggest having 30-60 seconds at the game start and then record a minimum 5-10 seconds for each player's turn. That way, you don't have to wait for some minutes in the beginning if the opponent doesn't show up, but you can't win by just instantaneously ending your turns.

Also I think that matched speed games should be rated for sure. First, this allows for equal matches and it prevents people from just leaving games. You can easily have a separate "Speed Leaderboard". And you could also have unifying leaderboard using all games.

mutagen

I don't know about gaining curses, as pointed out above that isn't always a bad thing.

What about a total play timer that if you run out of this resource you lose the game? Start the total time for each player at 4-5 mins. You could scale to the length of the game by adding some fixed amount to their pot every turn (maybe 15/30 seconds)

WhiteRabbit1981

My two cents:
I understand the idea, but this is "just another" variant. The important thing was said in post one:
Speed Dominion is not Dominion
In other threads, other variants have been discussed. To name a few:
- start with same hands (both 4/3 or both 5/2)
- Handicap the better player by a starting deck of CCCCCCEEEE
- veto cards out of the kingdom
All this variants have one thing in common: they are not dominion, thus there is no big need to add them to the online game.

Lets make a case and a variant: I dont like ppl playing token engines with goons or bishop. So here is my variation: Every time a player gets more than 7 VP in a single turn, the player has do finish a shot of vodka. This way, the player can still play his engine but I will always have a real chance to catch up with buying only provinces.

LincLinc

Fair point about the Curse cards and 3-pile game endings.

How about a Curse TOKEN that cannot be trashed?  -1 VP token after each expired interval.

:o :o :o

markus

You don't need any cursing or so - you just lose the game, when you're too slow.

I wouldn't consider having a time limit a variant. People have different preferences and that is a way to match players that both want to play fast.