Yuck on people playing with custom tables of cards of their choosing. At least when it's grouped by expansion you're buying into a specific pool of mechanics with each one.
Everyone's gotta nickel and dime it. Here's how it should be. Basic set free. $5 lifetime price you get to play in "real" games that have every card. If you don't pay you can't even join a game that is using non-basic cards.
I believe all this becomes available tomorrow and the guy who put out the fan made Dominion iOS will be taking his app down.
Yeah that's the story. Apparently there will be iOS and Android apps, which just ask as an interface for the goko client. Curious to see if they make it work well. The only digital board game that you can play cross-platform is Ticket to Ride, as far as I know.
Everyone's gotta nickel and dime it. Here's how it should be. Basic set free. $5 lifetime price you get to play in "real" games that have every card. If you don't pay you can't even join a game that is using non-basic cards.
I think it's a really smart model. Cheapos can just play with payers, people only play with acquaintances have a bit of a break, and you gain social cred for paying without getting an unfair advantage in game.
Isotropic currently has a message about the Goko version. No idea if it's a warning of take down, an endorsement to a competitor, or something else entirely. I know isotropic guy had ties to Vaccarino. Maybe he's a part of that team now?
The deal with the unofficial Dominion clients was that they would be allowed to exist only in leiu of the official version. I feel that it is likely Isotropic will go away.
The BGG commenters are digging up all sorts of hilarious details about Goko. Apparently one of the major players behind the company is a former Zynga game designers. No surprise that his new venture has you buying "gokoins" and paying "zaps" to weaken an AI opponent's deck.
Whoa. Abort. Abort. Rio Grande better make some changes or they are going to be a laughing stock. I don't want to see that, but be able to play the game similar to the other apps.
Goko is back in beta, and at risk of violating the NDA, I'm happy to say that it appears as though they're getting their shit together. The game interface has been improved a bit, they added a single-player "adventure" campaign, complete expansions seem like they're going to be running for about $5-$7, and you can buy promo cards with the victory points you accumulate through gameplay. Gives me hope.
The grammatical validity of "Goko is games that go anywhere" is still questionable, though.
This game is interesting, in that my opponent went for a duke/duchy strategy, but the game didn't support it (no +buy). Despite superior buying power and more torturers, the curses worked against them -- once I had secured a lead via provinces, I soaked up the curses to end the game before they bought enough dukes to make it worthwhile. Worst case (if they distributed buying duke/duchy), I could fall back on gardens. http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201209/13/game-20120913-075008-d0f8e6ef.html
Yeah. I had an epic game where the dude knew he was going to lose that he began doing that on turn 7. 3 hours, 4 episodes of Star Trek and some chores later, I won.
Comments
I've been such an addict with the online play of Carcassonne that I look forward to doing the same with Dominion.
Just played with the updated client. I don't see how this is even near ready for release.
They are just trying to nickel and dime consumers.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201208/29/game-20120829-003751-a2464b17.html
The grammatical validity of "Goko is games that go anywhere" is still questionable, though.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201209/13/game-20120913-075008-d0f8e6ef.html
I am so sick of rude players.. I made this gDoc to keep track of them. Feel free to add to the list. Also just added the awesome people column.