Deprecated Cards

[AthosNRW]

Can someone tell me how to get deprecated cards back into the general collection to create a random set? Before I have to renew my subscription on 15 April, I want to know how to play with all the cards I pay for.

[Ingix]

1) They are not going to show up in automatch, and there is nothing you can do to change that.

2) If you make a table, by default they will also not show up.

3) If you want to play with one of those cards, click the "Select Kingdom Cards" button (marked red), then select the depreciated cards "set" (marked blue), then choose directly which card you want to include in your kingdom.

[AthosNRW]

Thank you, but I knew that. But I don't want to block individual places in the set with manually selected cards, I want them to be randomly part of the set from time to time.

[AthosNRW]

To make that clear:

The last time I renewed my subscription, these cards were still part of the standard collection I was paying for. Several of my top favourites (Pirate Ship, Venture, Goons) are among them. If you now reduce your service during the paid subscription period by removing cards that have already been paid for, this is in my eyes a unilateral violation of the paid agreement between provider and customer. If this practice is to be expected permanently in the future, you are not a serious provider of a paid service.

Each player can use the buttons to decide for himself which cards he likes and which he does not. It is not you who decides for him! The player is the customer.
I need a decision by 15 April whether you will at least re-integrate Pirate Ship, Venture and Goons back into the Standard Collection. I have to renew my subscription on 15 April.

[Ingix]

I can see your point. But note that Dominion Online is not an independent game, its an implementation of a paper card game that expanded (Allies and Plunder) and evolved (2E Seaside, 2E Prosperity, 2E Hinterlands) in the last 12-14 month. The second editions removed/replaced cards that were deemed not good or unfun by the creator.

The depreceated cards are not gone, they are still available to be played with. Dominion Online has generally tried to not fragment the player base in automatch too much. That means a distinction between players wanting to automatch only with the "latest" cards, and those wanting to include the depreciated cards (or even further selection which depreciated cards) seems unlikely to me.

You wrote:

If you now reduce your service during the paid subscription period by removing cards that have already been paid for, this is in my eyes a unilateral violation of the paid agreement between provider and customer. If this practice is to be expected permanently in the future, you are not a serious provider of a paid service.

This is an online game. Online games change over time. Wold of Warcraft has changed so much that now there is a classic version that puts it back into the state it was at (or shortly after) it went live. Many things have changed for Dominion Online. Some of them I don't like.

It's in the nature of change that some don't tangent you, while others have a big impact. If some of your favourite cards are now not usable during automatch, then that is a big impact. If you decide not to renew the subscription, I can understand that. Some players like not encountering the depreciated cards during automatch, its different for you.

At the moment I do not see a change coming that would restore the functionality you want.

[AthosNRW]

You wrote:

Some players like not encountering the depreciated cards during automatch, its different for you.

I wrote:

Each player can use the buttons to decide for himself which cards he likes and which he does not. It is not you who decides for him!

Your argument carries no weight.

So I'm afraid I can't understand your point of view. The platform already offers every player the possibility to deselect those cards they do not like. You don't have to do that for them. What right do you have to decide what I like and what I don't like? I can decide that myself, and the platform already offers me the opportunity to make my own decision.

I have never played World of Warcraft. But I'm pretty sure that it has changed over time because new things have always been added. But did the creators also take things away from their customers? Did they reduce their equipment, their credits, their abilities, their options? I don't think so. They made it more and more complicated, but they didn't limit it. You limit it. Now they have released a retro version, you say? Were the players annoyed? If they can do that, why can't you? Give me back my (already paid for) playing cards!

What do you gain by disabling arbitrary cards (that people have already paid en masse to have available in random sets)? What do you gain? You piss off a few players, okay. But what is the advantage of that? I can't see it. Maybe your server can only handle a certain number of cards. That would be a reason, but otherwise I don't see one. By the way, Dominion hasn't changed. The game itself has remained the same. You start your turn with 5 cards, play actions, money and nights, discard your cards and draw new ones. The game itself remained the same. You just add new cards and take away your paying customers' favourite cards in return. That's all. And I don't understand that.

The appeal of the game is the randomness of the sets. Because the strength of individual cards depends on this randomness. Some cards are very strong in one set, in another they don't matter. That is the genius of the game. Weighing the individual cards in a random set and combining them optimally with each other is what makes the game so appealing. But this attraction depends on the randomness of the selection. The manual selection of individual cards from the outdated pool reduces this randomness and thus the appeal. It is not the same.

As I said, I don't understand what you want to gain by arbitrarily deactivating certain cards. You say to spare many players the old playing cards. Again, the platform allows them to decide for themselves which playing cards they no longer want to see. You don't have to decide that for them. I don't understand it. 

Long story short: If I renew my subscription for another 18 months on 15 April, I will get a fixed pool of cards at that time in return, depending on whether I take silver or gold. But you reserve the right to take some of that consideration away from me over the next 18 months without paying any of the money back, right? Without notice. Without justification. Without the right to object. At best, I may demonstrate here in the forum. That is all. But it is of no use. You are the ruler. I see.

You said yourself that Online Dominion is not an independent game, it is attached to the card game. In my boxes there are still the old cards, and they are playable. New expansions are put through their paces before release so they don't clash with the old ones. I have yet to read the sentence in a rulebook, "If you play with this expansion, you may not use the Pirate Ship or Goons." As far as that goes, I guess online Dominion is independent of the card game after all, contrary to your assertion. It has its own laws. And they are quite arbitrary.

Give me back my cards. Who doesn't like them can block them individually. If the creators of World of Warcraft can do that, you can do that as well. Why not?

I wish I could get more support from your other paying customers here ...

[Ingix]

The option to ban/dislike cards is limited to a few (16), not comparable to the 500+ cards existing and the 26 cards that are depreciated.

You wrote:

I have never played World of Warcraft. But I'm pretty sure that it has changed over time because new things have always been added.

Of course things have been added, but there were big changes to areas as well. There was an ongoing story arc in Warcraft (from previous games) and then in a new expansion some areas where markedly different because ithas just been the place of a brutal war. Since many players share a server, some with expansions and others not, it couldn't stay "the old way" for players wihtout those expansions.

You ask:

What do you gain by disabling arbitrary cards (that people have already paid en masse to have available in random sets)? What do you gain?

Why do you think Donald X. made the decision to rework those expansions, taking cards out and putting new ones in? They already exist, and could have been reprinted when supply ran out as has been done in the past. But with years of experience coming afterwards, he tried to make the game better, to remove duds and also cards that turned out maybe to powerful or centralizing.

Games change over time, and since dominion.games is a reflection of the IRL game, it changes with it. And the decision to have the depreciated cards not appear in automatch was because it is supposed to make the game bettter, by removing some cards that the game's creater did no longer want in the game.

And again, nobody is taking those cards away from you, you can play with, in your own tables, as much as you want.

[AthosNRW]

You say:

Nobody is taking those cards away from you, you can play with, in your own tables, as much as you want.

I said:

The appeal of the game is the randomness of the sets. (...) The manual selection of individual cards from the outdated pool reduces this randomness and thus the appeal. It is not the same.

You also say:

The option to ban/dislike cards is limited to a few (16)

I did not know that. In that case it would have been a customer-friendly alternative to extend this ban function to those cards Donald doesn't want to see anymore in his game, but I do in mine. You could have marked these cards visually, accomplished with a public recommendation to ban them.

You say, nobody takes us away the cards (which is only the half of the truth, see above).
But you take us away the decision wether we want to have those cards in a randomly set or only in a manually selected one.

A restrictive politics.

I prefer a customer-friendly one.

But even that is your decision.

Whatever. I give up. I couldn't convince you. It's a pity. It doesn't make Donalds game better, it limits it.
For a printed cardgame you may be right to recreate the published boxes time by time. But a digital version has much more opportunities to keep players satisfied with the stuff they like, not necessarily just Donald.