Right right, what is to become of kdice?
Let's start small and go from there hmm?

Well first off, the little odds and ends need to be fixed.

1) Close the 2.5k point bonus for donating. This could be done in a number of ways that have already been discussed around on the forums, game, etc. (limiting to first week only, only being able to do it X amount of times, you get the point)

2) Further cleaning up of the forum. I direct you to the formal idea about this: http://kdice.com/ideas/ideas/44759588

3) At the moment you can only click on the "leaderboard", "forum", "help", etc. links from the actual kdice game. Allow it to be accessed from anywhere on the website.

4) My personal grievance: the "KDice" logo in the top left is BORING, a tad spruce up would be nice. I mean, look at gpokr's and xsketch's. Nothing big.

5) No more stalking. Only allow you to see somebody else if they also add you. (Sarah's idea, I second it)

6) More efficient way of reporting problems or bugs. PROBLEMS not players. An example would be, if a table is broken, a message is automatically sent, or somebody can send one manually.

7) Formal rules? Please? Not even rules, but guidelines maybe? People just seem confused on some things. I've seen people thinking attacking a flagged player is against the rules, so even an outline would be great. I know you fancy the lax feeling of the game and I do too, but just a little something is needed.

8) Bring the news page back, and have that be the place where the Advisor Blog goes, and have a direct link to the Advisor Log there. Have the game results up there from games that were just played, but make them random. A 0 game has as much of a chance as a 10k game being on the front page.

Graphics next. (I know you don't exactly mean graphics with the future, but I'm just throwing ideas out there)

1) Skins? Different templates that people can choose. My firefox browser has a red and black theme, it'd be great to have a dark theme for kdice.

2) I like kdicefreak's idea of having different dice colors. Maybe a player has a choice of X amount of colors and he/she rates them on which one they want first. The color rated 1 would be used first if nobody else has it already who is sitting at the table, then it goes to 2 if it is being used and so on. With that, and option for other players to use default colors because of the color-blind issue.

3) It would be SWEET if on the "Change Table" list, when a map is highlighted, you could see what it looks like, so you could scroll through the maps quickly. Just the general shape, territories not needed. This is more for style than practical use since it doesn't take long to go to a map.

4) Fullscreen? Yes please. The problem I can see is that it would be harder to include ads in fullscreen mode, but it could probably be done. Though I don't even know if fullscreen is needed for a game like this, since it is quite plain. Perhaps is the game is made more dynamic (don't ask me how!) it could be implemented.

5) Since I know somebody asked how to make kdice more dynamic, I will say, 3D maybe? I don't even know if that's possible... Something where you can grab the map and rotate it. This would make possible a globe-type map (not necessarily of Earth, but just a globe). Neat.

Moving right along....bigger ideas.

1) "For fun" servers. I don't know how much you can do with the money you make, but I'd love to see branches off kdice that lead to little minigames/different versions.

I want to play with 16 dice again Ryan!

This could also be used for tournaments. These "branches" would only have a few tables, and no points would be kept. Once "branch" is 16-dice, another is no name/chat, another is for tournaments, so on and so forth.
Although you say mainstream kdice is not set in stone yet, I think this could be done. Just one at a time, little by little. Twenty months into kdice...it has come a long way, but how much of the core game are you thinking about changing? The rhombi/diamond/points system has now been in place longer than Elo was, is the game going to change even more? You hinted at changes for the future, do we get to know of what kind? Honest questions, I'm not trying to lead with them.

2) The age old idea of creating a map. I'll leave the members to decide how that'll work ;)

3) Semi-customizable sound effects. Have a list of noises that can be heard for wins/losses/flagging/etc. Probably a member's thing again.

I honestly don't think many big changes are needed. Additions is a better name for them. The game has only a few flaws, if any, it's the players that take advantage of those flaws for their own personal gain that are the problems. I personally think that they will always exist as long as scores are kept and they get a .png trophy. I'm not saying take those away, just stating my perceived reality of the situation.

I keep coming back after 20 months, you must be doing something right. :D I just wish I could donate, but alas, I'm not able to.

Yours,
Wicked!

P.S. Congrats on the baby!

Weekly competitions with 100 game limit.

Just think about it.

It would devalue the trophies reducing the number of "point whores."

And be more fun and shit.

Like an all out sprint for first.

You know?

Yeah, do that Ryan.

I honestly appreciate the membership point bonus. Moreso than bumping up my points, it prevents me from getting stuck playing at the 0s or 100s for the first few days of every month.

Truly, playing an extended amount of games at those tables is a frustrating thing to have to do (or it was, before the 2500 bonus) and I would be upset to see it go. Is it an advantage (point-wise) to members? Sure. But if we're all here for fun and not to win 1st, then it shouldn't matter. Plus, members should be allowed a point advantage anyway. It'll promote donating to the site, which is only a positive consequence as far as I can tell.

Anyway, to reiterate:

Having to play on the lower tables again every month deteriorated the overall quality of the gaming experience for the veteran players. It wasn't the fault of the scoring system or the fault of the inexperience new players, just an unfortunate effect of having monthly resets. I think the 2500 point bonus has been a great way to circumvent the problem.


As for the other ideas, I'm all for expanding the style of play (tournaments, teams, etc...) and I really think customization would be beneficial too (colors, maps, etc...) If there were more specific questions that you had Ryan, I'd love to be able to give you constructive input whenever. Thanks for the game.
-JP

I think you should unify all your game pages under a single domain name. I mean keep the kdice.com, gpokr.com and xsketch.com but buy a new domain, something like kgxgames.com (bad example since it doesn't allow expanding) that would basically have only a guidepost to all your game sites and maybe some unified statistics etc. I have a feeling that you're almost embarrassed about your creations - like you don't want kdice players to know there's gpokr and xsketch and vice versa. It's kind of chaotic right now and it will only get worse with new games.

Please, don't make the gameplay more complicated. No blind tables, no islands, no bridgebuilding or any other stuff. The main advantage of this game is it's simplicity. And most of the world most famous games are simple to learn (go, backgammon, poker, even chess). The basic principle of this game is perfect. I won't talk about flagging though because although I don't think the current system is the best, I can't think of any other that would be better than it.

I love your first two ideas. Embedded flash apps are a great way to advertise this game. For example Desktop Tower Defence gained a lot of publicity with this approach and I really think you can attract lots of new players this way.

Tournaments are classic. I can't think of any con here so let's move on.

Teams. I'm kind of undecided. On one hand it may hinder PGAing and silent truces (since team players will already be "truced") and make the gameplay more transparent, on the other hand having two players from one team at the same table will immediatelly force a counter-truce. And 1st round truces are player based, rather than territory based (which is wrong imho).