Board Game Arena

I'm not sure that this is a bug, per se - so I'm not sure where to address it - but it is an issue in my opinion, and I'm wondering if anyone else finds it frustrating sometimes. I experience it in Takenoko, but I am pretty sure I've heard the same issue brought up about other games.

The problem is that I can't necessarily see how many cards are left in a deck in an electronic version of a game. This can have a real impact in Takenoko when you are deciding what gambles to take at the end of the game for those critical last few points - wasting an action trying to draw an objective card that is no longer in stock can potentially lose games, and is always annoying. I suppose one could calculate the number of cards remaining by looking at the game state and knowing how many of each specific objective type are available at the start, but this information is not even in the rule book.

And I don't want to hear any arguments about how the rules don't say that you are allowed to know how many cards are left. If the game didn't come with invisible cards or some other obfuscation method, it is obviously implied that you be able to see the deck and know how many cards are left. Also, in every IRL gaming group I've been in, table information (like number of cards in a deck) is considered public - unless, of course, it is 'black boxed' somehow, like drawing tiles from a sack; or specifically prohibited in the rules, like camel cards in Jaipur.

While this sort of thing is easily overlooked in coding (or looked at and deemed unimportant to devote time to), in games with chance elements, knowing how to make use of every scrap of actual information available is crucial. Limiting access to this normally presumed public data makes results more subject to chance instead of careful planning, and it makes the gameplay feel further away from that of the tabletop version. As usual, I find myself referencing Tash-Kalar as the ideal implementation of a mechanic.

So to the players I ask:
Does this happen in other games? If so which ones, and what useful information is missing that would be available if playing at a table (deck size, remaining amount of public resources, etc.)?

And to the admins I ask:
Can you please show the remaining amounts of cards in each of the 3 objective decks in Takenoko, so players can make decisions with the same information they have access to in the tabletop version of the game? You already have a display section for information like this, where it tracks the remaining number of plots and plot upgrades; I'm not sure why the objective cards were not included, it is much more important information than remaining plots, IMO. And please keep this issue in mind when adding games in the future - if there is a deck or any other supply of something that impacts gameplay, you should make the normal information about it accessible to the players.

veme wrote:So to the players I ask:
Does this happen in other games? If so which ones, and what useful information is missing that would be available if playing at a table (deck size, remaining amount of public resources, etc.)?

Sometimes some minor information is hidden. Also for real games you knows how much cards(tiles) of each type there is in the box and what you can expect. For BGA games this information usually is not mentioned in the rules so you don't know what cards and how many copies of each are exist.

veme, BGA has a feature you probably didn't consider. Every game implementation has its own author. Every author implemented games in the way he could and wished. So there is not one unified way in which all games are implemented. Also some author have already stopped maintain their games and this duty now on the BGA admins. Due to these facts it's so hard to make changes that affect a lot of games at once.

veme, BGA has a feature you probably didn't consider. Every game implementation has its own author. Every author implemented games in the way he could and wished. So there is not one unified way in which all games are implemented. Also some author have already stopped maintain their games and this duty now on the BGA admins. Due to these facts it's so hard to make changes that affect a lot of games at once.

I am well aware of this, but I don't see how it changes whether or not the information should be available. How hard something is to fix has nothing to do with whether or not it should be fixed.

Unless the admins are not going to support games already implemented on the site (in which case, I'm not sure what I would pay them for), then issues like this should be looked at, no matter who originally coded the game. I mean, it is essentially a change to the rules of the game; how did the game get approved in the first place if it violates BGA policy by not respecting the official rules?

Problems with the rules like this are more important (to me anyway) than many other things the admins do choose to spend time on, so that is why I bring them up. You say this missing information is minor, but you can lose games due to it. In my opinion, there is no sense making the site prettier, or the karma system more accurate, or letting people pick their favorite colors, etc., until all the dang games are working correctly.

veme, I agree with you in general. I said that the things you want (not only in this topic) can't be realized in near future. As for hidden information, this information is minor in the games I played, I can't say for all games. Actually some changes in online implementation of the game as compared with real game are not a big issue for me while they are clear and game is balanced.
The top priority for me on BGA is

1. Bug fixes, especially in popular games
2. Stability, rare (better no) lags
3. Usability

i don't have an issue with displaying the number of cards remaining in each deck.

however, for Takenoko specifically, there are 15 of each objective type, so it is very easy to determine how many objectives are left in each deck. as for how many are still 'live', you can look at the board state and the count of each objective type held by your opponents to make an educated guess. if you cycle thru the plot or gardener decks more than a dozen times ... all the live objectives are likely already drawn.

i seem to recall that Eruption originally displayed the number of cards left in the draw deck ... but i haven't seen the number in recent games. it's still pretty easy to hold off on playing the rain cards until the deck has been shuffled after the first pass thru, so it isn't a huge dealbreaker.

battle sheep should indicate the number of pasture quads left to play, along with a first.player marker. this isn't a big deal for a 2p game, but for 3p or 4p, it is easy to lose track, especially for turn.based games.