Anybody want to play a game right now? John Newhouse • Tabletopia
Okay i played a mono black (me)vs @MVashM 's mono red
First thing first, thank you for allowing me to have a premium experience.
Our game was fun (as any codex game) and hella long (1 hour and a half) cuz the interface is anything but intuitive.
IF anyone wants to keep his subscription i suggest jotting down all the hotkeys on a notepad and keeping it close.
Here is my review.
Long story short: Final vote 4/10
Explanation(is just my 2 cents mates): the commands are not intuitive, the first tries even picking the right starter is a pain. The funnies moment was when we both failed to pick it and had to set the cards 1 by 1 and the shufle them. not having the AI auto give you gold at the start of a turn or pointing out what was played and when (to remember what has arrival sickness and what not) makes it a lesser version of PBP. At least in PBP u have a game log, and before posting u can check that everything makes sense. In the TT version is ez to miscount gold or forget about scav.
Also you are inable to search properly your discard, so for example, garth maxband allows for cheating, since you either reveal the whole discard or add it to your hand, creating an opportunity to cheat. All this makes the interface almost useless, and makes you waste a ton of time.
The only perk we both agree on is the shuffle function, that btw cannot be used unless you perfectly piled your cards, and even that requires a simple but totally unintuitive trick if you do not want to lose time like we did.
Hotkeys and tips:
Q= rotate card(s)
F= Flip card(s)
Mousewheel= increase/decrease damage chit, life and select the n° of cards to draw for discard/draw phase or cards effects
How to safely pile stuff: select 1 or more cards then hover them above the pile you mean to build. Wait a second or 2 until you see the selected cards and the pile below become red. Only then release the left mouse button for piling them
F1 = Display hotkeys (like in almost all software)
Rotating cards is Q or E, you don’t need to do 270°s
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have u understood how the heck move a whole pile, not going card by card?
Shift + drag allows you to select multiple cards, for example a whole pile.
Or you can just click the pile once, so that it is highlighted with a blue color, and then drag it.
For the no-log and auto money, well guess what? Tabletopia simulate real life boardgaming and in real life, you dont have a log and the gold chits doesnt magically appear on your board.
To search your discard pile, simply drop your current hand on the table, then pick the discard pile into your hand, select what you want, put back it into discard spot, take back your hand. Yes, it is annoying, but it is a limitation of Tabletopia for the moment and I am sure they will add this feature some days soon. Just like the first car didnt have power steering nor electric windows. The product is new, give it some times.
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dude, no need to be this harsh/rude. I clearly stated that was just my impression (and also MVashM’s if i understood him correctly). TT wants money, and clearly do not deserve mine.
Real life gaming would be much simplier and intuitive, so your last objection simply does not makes sense and sounds just polemical.
Tabletopia advertises about asynchronous play though, so being able to view the moves your opponent made in your absence doesn’t seem farfetched.
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I mentioned all this stuff a few months ago when the game was in beta. They clearly didn’t listen, so it’s doubtful they will in future.
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I don’t think it is technically impossible to do logs or auto money. however to protect the sandbox nature I don’t see how they could do it without some sort of “turn” button . where when you click the turn button, it generates some gold, and record the differences in hand size, cards in play area, etc , in the form of a log.
Personally, I am not asking for any of these and I am totally fine without them. after all it is imitating real life.
on the other hand, I found the experience not very pleasant overall. I was fighting the interface more than I was fighting my opponent.
drawing cards, handling techs, discarding cards, moving cards from discard to draw, , all of these were not as simple or intuitive as one would like them to be.
I think our game was a quick 35-45 minutes game but the interface make it 90 minutes or so.
granted, some of these issues might be not as terrible if we play some more and get good with the sandbox control. These first impressions are very real; I am not excited to renew subscription, and I dont think Legion got interested in subscribing. Imagine if you try to introduce someone to tabletopia and play with them a game. They will probably get frustrated quickly. I cannot see them getting all excited and subscribing the next day to be honest.
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Good point, Zejety. I did not think of this, but actually the lack of log makes TT much more cheating oriented than PBP, since no one can actually check ur hand/discard. So unless 2 people play the game straight from start to end is clearly a no go for tournaments.
Well if you wanted to cheat in PBP, it wouldn’t be very hard. I don’t see any reason to disallow Tabletopia from tournaments if we allow PBP.
is different. In PBP when u write down ur hand is definitive. In tabletopia one could just swap cards from hand/discard/codex freely if the opponent is not there to chek.
Yes, it’s different in the sense that you have to write down your hand and stick to it, but you can still trivially rig your draws each turn beforehand. PBP also allows another opportunity for cheating by looking at all of your opponent’s cards and thoughts.
Right now, the base assumption for all tournaments on this site is that players won’t cheat, because even through PBP players could easily cheat without getting caught if they wanted to. Basically:
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Any amount of cheating is unnacceptable
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In the current system, players already have plenty of opportunities to easily cheat without getting caught
So, it shouldn’t matter if it’s “easier” to cheat in Tabletopia, because if a player is going to cheat, we can assume that they would cheat in PBP as well.
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okay but hear me out. While in PBP ur opponent, the TO, spectators can follow the flow of game and correct mistakes, TT negates that. How many times someone miscounted his gold, summoned more than the heroes number he is alowed and such? TT has no way to convey your moves to your opponent , so as for asynchronous is a total failure for Codex, since ur opponent has to move your cards to discard and when u come back have no idea of what happened and in wwhat order. Many mistakes (i am not even talking of chating, just honest mistakes) are bound to go unnoticed, hence, imho, PBP is clearly superior.
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I agree that PBP is superior for asynchronous play. In your previous post, you said that Tabletopia should be a “no-go” for tournaments because of the possibility of cheating. My point was that I don’t think that is a sufficient reason to disallow Tabletopia from tournament play, provided that both players agree to use it.
Besides, the primary advantage of Tabletopia is the ability to play in real time, as opposed to asynchronously. I think that the consideration of Tabletopia as an asynchronous alternative to PBP is mostly pointless, because of how much worse it is in that respect.
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