I think it is safe to say that people care about this game, whether they are complaing or suggesting. They are wanting their voices to be heard and this means they want to stick around and see changes.


1. I wanted to say that those who critise you, harshly or not, should not be ignored per se. Might not seem constructive to you, but in a way it is still better than those who complain and never say do out loud. Negative critisism is hard to take but is as much a tool for quality control as the positive feedback. Just that the latter is nicer to deal with.

Personally I feel many of those who critised have been around for quite some time and just want to see some changes they may have hoped for for some time now. People often ask you why didn't you or why did you? You may not have an obligation to respond to these questions, but I think it would help those who have been loyal to the game to show some understanding.


2. Also, would it be possible to make it so people don't get to use 100 different accounts? How about signing up for a main account, under which you get to create 6 additional names.
You would not have to sign out each time, and merely select a different player from your pull-down menu. Right now, people's alts are revealed by showing them on Friend's List and I find it to defy the purpose of slipping into a less known name to just play some no-social-obligation-diplomatic-nonesense games.


3. To come back to my idea of handing out more than points for those who give money. People seem to like the idea of special priviledges. So why not use this to your advantage and theirs.
A basic membership or gift would buy you points at the beginning of the month (First week only like some have suggested.)
After this you could give them:
1. the ability to start own room.
2. the ability to create your own map.
3. etc...

You create a structure of payment vs reward.
Basically, it is like purchasing a monthly or yearly upgrade of the game. People get to try it out for a month and see if it is as fun as it seems or they sign up for a year. This will make it dynamic and people off all budgets get to buy some of these priviledges, if only for a month.


4. Now I will just continue on my ideas about the graphic side, the community look of the site.
You could write out the competition and submit this to a variety of Graphic Sites such as DeviantArt. New customers are always welcome.

Personally I would suggest the entire top to be dedicated to KDICE content only, not a banner. It is above the fold information and it should tell people something about your site instead of someone else's.

If you know Jay from JayIsGames, do talk to him. 1 of his last lay-outs had been created on sprites and it looked modern and sharp.
I keep refering to JayIsGames because he is an example of a simple site gone bigger and bigger and more and more commercial. Though I don't much like the logo he uses, it is 1 that is now firmly linked to his site and that is something any "brand" needs. It is crucial that if you want to make the game into a household name (Couldn't find a a better way to say this in English, sorry) you need a recognizable image. This image could then be transposed into many different contexts, whether it be ads on other sites, banners or shirts.
Make an image with the text KDICE, this will then be what the other graphics will go around.
Doesn't have to be flashy, some of the most recognizable brands are just a specific font.
Jay's logo incorporated into the modern graphics works nicely.

I know these suggestions don't actually decide on the future, but they are visually part of the building blocks.

Like I suggested you could write out a competition, because I believe there are many competent people playing this game. But maybe this is 1 of those things you shouldn't try to cut corners on too much. Better to have a solid good looking logo which will be the game's image for many years to come.

5. People have been talking about mini-games and I rather like the idea. But it seems to me that these things are extras and you should 1st iron out all the issues the basic game has.
Some have said it to you, you tend to want to change too much at the same time without 1st fixing what was wrong. I understand the urge to go forward, but it is better to have a simple concept worked out to perfection, rather than updates and upgrades which always leave some errors behind.


6. Also, would it be possible to make it so people don't get to use 100 different accounts? How about signing up for a main account, under which you get to create 6 additional names.
You would not have to sign out each time, and merely select a different player from your pull-down menu. Right now, people's alts are revealed by showing them on Friend's List and I find it to defy the purpose of slipping into a less known name to just play some no-social-obligation-diplomatic-nonesense games.

7. What is obvious is how much people still love the game, keep this in mind when the critisism is starting to get to you and gets too frustrating. The more paying members you have, the more you will have to start seeing them as customers, who have some rights.
Is a choice you have to stand behind, users or customers.

You did a great job at making this game. Doesn't mean it couldn't be even greater :).
Have fun :).

(Just making sure my previous post doesn't get missed) lol sorry. :P

Makes teams a more explicit part of the game. Anyone can request to join another player's team (e.g. a request to join team blue) The lead player (e.g. blue) decides whether or not to accept the request. If yellow has already joined blue's team and a request to join yellow's team is made, this automatically escalates to a request to blue. Could use a star of the lead player's color to indicate which players are on which team ...

I love the idea of competitions with a buy-in and anonymous gameplay (to avoid pga).

2.500 points for a 5$ donation is ok, so you can avoid the lower tables by buying in for just a month (damn, should have done it this month, the low-tables are kinda really strange) - good way for players who can't or won't buy a membership, but please fix the bug, that its possible to buy the bonus twice or more. Just make that small line of code to prevent further idiocracy.

I heard alot of good ideas in here, especially BC's , or the shop, but dont really change the mainpart of the game. There will always be "pointwhores", and isnt that some point of the game - the competition?
And yes, RC's were a good idea, keep em.

Hey Ryan, listening again to the customers? Great idea, in my opinion this is the best way to develope a business.

I mostly agree with Sarah's and Wicked's ideas (seriously, women rule the k-world), but I guess that the main goal should be growing the kdice population.

The idea of the flash adds is neat, fast way to attract brand new players. Cool.

But, what can you do to retain them?, customer loyalty is essential to the long term survival of a bussines. You can make bigger and bigger the upper side of the bucket, but you'll achieve nothing if you have a huge hole down it.

Then, what's the goal of the players?, why they (we) keep coming month after month to kdice?... The easy answer is "for fun", and well, that's right, but obvious.

The fun in this game comes from three sides:

a) The game. Yeah, the game is fun to play. That's the main reason to be here. Some of the ideas to improve it are great, but keep the backbone.

b) The social environment. Of course, how wouldn't it be funny having friends, chatting, etc.? You've done a great job with it, and the RC system keeps this social part where it should have been always.

c) The challenge/success. Would you play any sport where you would never win? The answer is no. There have to be real challenges for the players and it's necessary a real possibility of success in it. The idea of starting each month at 0 points (despite I didn't liked it at first) was a great step in this sense. But not enough. The idea about leagues can help: 4 or 5 categories (or 10, whatever), people qualifying for each category based on their previous results, trophies for each category... more challenge, more possibilities of success... more fun. Sprint's idea about different trophies should help in that sense.

Minigames, teams, etc... are cool ideas for a bunch of oldies (including me) looking for new ways to have fun with kdice. Cool. But not really necessary, imo.

About other bussines posibilities, well, you know one of my ideas on the matter.

Anyway, focus on your daughter, mine is 10 now and, trust me, her education and hapiness is the best challenge I've ever found.

One more thought:

1) FIX THE LOOPHOLES as soon as you notice them.

I'd like to be able to decide where to place reinforcements, even if it's just a percentage of them.

Also would be nice to be able to surrender or give up lands if so wished to, like the isolated ones from the base that just drain resources, or a tail after a cut.

These two changes would reduce the frustration of pure bad luck and improve strategie

Bots that attack the slowest player.

Open source and allow people to publish their own mods to the game.

These comments are getting better and better. There's a lot of smaller ideas and I'll try to respond to the hilights:

1) Add other awards - SprintT
Great idea and I would love to do this. However I'm not so great at building the images. Anybody know a good designer for this? I would love to give awards for accomplishements like:
- winning 4v8 (or other low prob attacks)
- winning a 0 table, 100 table etc (first time y ou win on each level)
- big comeback... some type of determination that you were tiny and came back to win
- weekly awards for top 100 (thanks les)
I'm sure this can be a seperate forum post and we can brainstorm a whole bunch of ideas. The hard part is creating a good looking badge for each award.

2) 20 different colors - kdicefreak
Having a set of 20 colors is a great idea and would make games look more unique. I really like this idea. However it's hard to do right since there are people with varying levels of color blindness. If you have 3 blues and 3 greens chances are they'll look fairly similar. I really want to do something like this but will probably have to think more about it.

3) More member bonuses - kdicefreak
Agreed. Membership could always use some more compelling bonuses. The ability to create private tables is a good one. Selecting maps is another (creating maps is difficult since a specific algorithm is used to get them to look a particular way, territories have to have a certain number of hexes so that the dice aren't too close to each other - so they need to be somewhat round - do you force members to make round ones?). We could create a list for other table customizations, some would be:
- 16 dice (yes wicked!)
- 4 players
- flag style
- point levels
Nuflis - I know you say these aren't necessary but I think this is the first step to starting leagues. Once there is enough interest in one of these alternate games a league could probably be started. Also I think the kdice population has to be quite a bit bigger for leagues.
What about other member bonuses?

4) Unify games under a single domain - Danny_DCB
Yeah. My goal is to unify under a domain. At this point the domain may be iogc.org (which will either be Independent or International Online Game Competition) - going for an official sounding parent site. The unifying site would contain your stats and rankings accross all games. This is also where team rankings would be listed.

5) Better graphics - SarahPlaying
The deviant art thing sounds like a good idea. But first I think we need to decide on what kind of image or feel the site should have.


6) Perfection before expansion - Danny_DCB, SarahPlaying, Wicked!
Agreed. I probably need to create a better list of outstanding bugs. Currently its pen and a piece of paper on my desk. I add to the list everytime i hear about a but. Then before the end of the month I try to make sure the bug is gone for the new month. It probably makes more sense to have a forum for bugs to encourage reports.

I really don't want to make dramatic changes to the game itself. I think the actual gameplay is at it's most balanced point ever. The monthly competitions are relatively smooth with the exception of a few people being more interested in points than fairly winning - and I suppose this is complement towards the relevance of the competition.

The excessive buying points bug will definitely be taken away. Honestly it's not still there because I just want money. The extra $80 from Johnson is not much in the grand scheme of things. To fix it I'll probably add a $5 once per month 2500 bonus to the member page and limit it to accounts that have played under say 10 games for the month. This brings up the question about stars and if they're still relevant - I think I may bump up their price and make them purely about donation.

Please keep the ideas coming and feel free to respond to the above highlighted ideas (refer by number)

First... adding "previous" and "next" links at the bottom of each page of a forum thread would be so easy and so welcome... Like you could just click next after reading this instead of scrolling back to the top and having to click next to see the rest of my post.