I think listing RC'd players and the reuslts of the games those players have played in would be nice. I think the RC needs to be more month to month both in games played and getting reset.

Flagging needs to be changed, to avoid farming you could simply enact dom limits with some respect to mapsize/number or players still alive/round. Ryan flag and surrender was a better system and the competition was better in the months with it. I know you hate farming but I think you could fix that without having the terrible flagging system we have now.

Don't go expanding kdice very fast here, I think there is a decent foundation as the core game is awesome, but I think the game needs to be really solid before you start expanding the options too much, you have expressed this yourself.

Ryan, go forth and make kdice great, it is what everyone wants.

Now..

I know you have always had something against the 'point whores', but as far as I can tell, everyone who plays this game is technically a point whore. And in a way, point-whore-ism is encouraged by the structure of the game.

Why do people flag? They do it to try to hold on to 2nd or 3rd or whatever place - so that they'll end up with more points. In theory, the goal of each individual game should be to win first place. But having points persist across games changes the goal from "winning" to "not losing". And there's nothing wrong with that per se, but since the way the game works encourages "point whores", I don't think you can separate the fun of accumulating points from the fun of the game. They are one and the same.

The way people play is decided by how many points they will get. So if you want to change the way people operate, you have to change the way points are handed out. You've done this before (to discourage "point whores"/"elistists"/whatever). Some changes to points that I think would positively impact gameplay:

1. Gain points for finishing a player off. Think of it like a knock-out bonus in hold 'em. In each game, a certain amount of the point pool is paid out to any player who eliminates another from the game. This would encourage the elimination of smaller players, rather than encourage the smaller guys playing some ridiculous flag jockeying game.

2. Make second and third place get about the same number of points. Or maybe second third and fourth. As it is, nobody seems to want to win. If someone is in 2nd, they will give up (flag), and allow the person in 1st to steamroll everyone else. If they got about the same points for 3rd as they would for 2nd, maybe they would take a chance and try to win instead. The only downside I can see is that it would encourage everyone to team up against the leader, but I think you should expect to be a target if you take an early lead anyway.

3. Drain points from a player who sits doing nothing round after round. It's very frustrating to have a guy with 1 land sit safely behind someone who decides to pick you apart slowly while leaving the other guy alive, just to spite you. This way the other guy would be encouraged to flag rather than "wait it out". I think you already do something like this(?), but maybe make it a little more noticeable, because I still see plenty of people playing the waiting game.

Those are just a few things I came up with just now, but I'm sure there are a lot of things you could do. My general issue is that ever since you made the changes to flagging, the game has been half ruined. People don't try to win anymore, they take the safest (LAMEST) route to gaining points. This game should be all about taking chances and making bold moves, but the way flags and points work right now give far too much reward to playing it safe.

A few other things that I think would make the game more fun:

There has to be a better way to make the starts more fair. I know a lot of the game is randomness, but it just seems that far too often I'm handed a start that I really can't do anything with. To be left with 1 tower of 3 dice before you even get to take a turn really sucks. Maybe if you gave the first few players to go more lands but lower stacks and the last guy gets maybe only 3 lands but with more dice on them? It might making going last less of a terrible disadvantage.

Somebody earlier suggested that you can 'cut off' your tails or give up islands. I kinda like that idea, but I think that if you implement something like that, it should come with a drawback, like.. if I give up my island, it gets "donated" randomly to one of the players who is touching it. Or goes to neutral and can be 'claimed' by the next person to attack it, or something like that.

Okay that's all I've got for now, I haven't had any coffee yet.

Now..

I know you have always had something against the 'point whores', but as far as I can tell, everyone who plays this game is technically a point whore. And in a way, point-whore-ism is encouraged by the structure of the game.

Why do people flag? They do it to try to hold on to 2nd or 3rd or whatever place - so that they'll end up with more points. In theory, the goal of each individual game should be to win first place. But having points persist across games changes the goal from "winning" to "not losing". And there's nothing wrong with that per se, but since the way the game works encourages "point whores", I don't think you can separate the fun of accumulating points from the fun of the game. They are one and the same.

The way people play is decided by how many points they will get. So if you want to change the way people operate, you have to change the way points are handed out. You've done this before (to discourage "point whores"/"elistists"/whatever). Some changes to points that I think would positively impact gameplay:

1. Gain points for finishing a player off. Think of it like a knock-out bonus in hold 'em. In each game, a certain amount of the point pool is paid out to any player who eliminates another from the game. This would encourage the elimination of smaller players, rather than encourage the smaller guys playing some ridiculous flag jockeying game.

2. Make second and third place get about the same number of points. Or maybe second third and fourth. As it is, nobody seems to want to win. If someone is in 2nd, they will give up (flag), and allow the person in 1st to steamroll everyone else. If they got about the same points for 3rd as they would for 2nd, maybe they would take a chance and try to win instead. The only downside I can see is that it would encourage everyone to team up against the leader, but I think you should expect to be a target if you take an early lead anyway.

3. Drain points from a player who sits doing nothing round after round. It's very frustrating to have a guy with 1 land sit safely behind someone who decides to pick you apart slowly while leaving the other guy alive, just to spite you. This way the other guy would be encouraged to flag rather than "wait it out". I think you already do something like this(?), but maybe make it a little more noticeable, because I still see plenty of people playing the waiting game.

Those are just a few things I came up with just now, but I'm sure there are a lot of things you could do. My general issue is that ever since you made the changes to flagging, the game has been half ruined. People don't try to win anymore, they take the safest (LAMEST) route to gaining points. This game should be all about taking chances and making bold moves, but the way flags and points work right now give far too much reward to playing it safe.

A few other things that I think would make the game more fun:

There has to be a better way to make the starts more fair. I know a lot of the game is randomness, but it just seems that far too often I'm handed a start that I really can't do anything with. To be left with 1 tower of 3 dice before you even get to take a turn really sucks. Maybe if you gave the first few players to go more lands but lower stacks and the last guy gets maybe only 3 lands but with more dice on them? It might making going last less of a terrible disadvantage.

Somebody earlier suggested that you can 'cut off' your tails or give up islands. I kinda like that idea, but I think that if you implement something like that, it should come with a drawback, like.. if I give up my island, it gets "donated" randomly to one of the players who is touching it. Or goes to neutral and can be 'claimed' by the next person to attack it, or something like that.

Okay that's all I've got for now, I haven't had any coffee yet.

Point whore def:
a player that cares more about points than a fair game.

There aren't many, but those who are are a pain.

Suggestion: kdice radio?

Isn't this why we have an Ideas section on the menu...I mean i know my opinion doesn't matter...but seems like even an idiot would notice that...

I know many designers but saddly it would probably cost like 50-100$ for the images.

sprintt,
I'd pay $50-100 for a template image for achievements along with 5-10 completed achievements. Take this for example:
http://poker5.presidiomedia.com/poker/legend.html

They have an area for a short message and an area for an image. These look like crap but I'd use Johnsons donations for a designer to make this stuff look good. If you know people interested send them this message along with my email. I'll start a forum topic about this.

And the reason I have a blog post about ideas is because I'm at a point where I'm happy with game play and scalability of the software and want to get a good vision together about where this is heading. The ideas section is mainly for smaller ideas but I'll be adding some of the ones mentioned here to the ideas section to get them rolling.

Ryan,

I'd go with different versions of kdice.

Start with the classic kdice.

Then have something like kdice2 or K2Dice. As in K squared or the mountain. Personally I would make entry to K2Dice involve either 6 months or more active play on KDice or a certain number of points thus providing progression and meaning people are skilled and udnerstand what it is about. You could have combos on attacks which reward more dice when you attack a certaim number of times in your turn of a number of sequential moves with the same stack, A certain sequence of moves or attacks/defends that reward you with +1 (extra dice i.e you could have 9v8) card/token for attack or defence. If you look at LOTR risk you can get strongholds which are +1 defence and leaders which allow +1 attack. In an individual game I wouldn't suggest these are standard features rather that they are earnt through previous play. So in the later rounds how you played and defended your domain can help you. Some people get good position on the back of kamikaze and then the person who played hard and well all game gets 2nd or 3rd. You could also have a Bonus card/token that allows you to attack with a stack from anywhere in your domain to anywhere on your borders allowing back stacks to be employed.

You could also have a penalty for 1st attacking 6th or 7th after a certain number or rounds. And then possibly 4th and 5th after more rounds.

Essentially the above would allow you to keep dom and place scoring but would change the value of the dice and therefore only the parameters of the input as opposed to the equation itself. (That IS a huge assumption on my part.)

I'd then go a stage further and offer some sort of team game where you have a larger table and 2 or possibly 3 teams. Again entry criteria to apply and not just giving you money! This could emply Beer Me's idea of islands as I think it is good but needs to be incorporated in a more strategic way. All risk games traditionally have ports of some kind to allow round the board/table attacking and defending. In a team game you could also have defence bots who don't attack but recharge their territories every go and receive a bonus. These could be placed in strategically important places providing both benefit and hindrance to the teams.

Above all look to the roots of the game and see what features makes people play the other variants of risk.

If you combined with the principal of chess which is protect your king you could have a type of capture the flag game in a team scenario.

I understand (or rather I don't understand) that this would be technically challening, however, building in those sorts of features would look good on your resume and provide choice and progression to those who like kdice as it is.

I think it's a bit rich of you asking us for ideas since you live off this but as I play free and enjoy it so the above is gratis unless you want to make me a member!

Enjoy,
Phil.

Come on Ryan I know I said it in the douchiest way possible but weekly competition would be so rad.

Making the trophies mean less, by having four awarded in the same month, would reduce the number of "point whores" I think. The trophies wouldn't mean so much but the competition would still be in tact.

Also, the actual game would improve significantly. Since each game would mean a lot more within the shortened time frame people would strive to place as high as they can in a given game instead of settling for a position.

I think the game cap would have to be added because some lunatics play 100 games a day and it's kind of hard to compete with that.

Another way to improve gameplay would be to add smaller maps. 27 and 29 territory maps, which are always reserved for the 0 tables for some odd reason, take a lot more strategy then say the "connect and hope for the best," strategy that 35+ territory maps involve.

I am pretty sure I am not a point whore so please acknowledge my ideas even if you think they are shitty (uh, they aren't).