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As players, what do you want from KDice?
Posted By: MadHat_Sam at 4:38 PM, Monday August 8, 2011 EDT
*This is not a discussion of mechanical changes you would like, read the Notes at the end before commenting please*
As has been discussed ad nauseum, us moderators have limited power and limited tools to punish players for transgressions or to encourage fair play. This isn't a post looking to continue that discussion.
As players what do you want from each other, from the game and from the moderators?
I have done my best to be a passive admin, since that is how I prefer administration of games and forums to be. I am never offended myself by the words of others although I may be disappointed by them for a variety of reasons so I often don't act when people are being politically incorrect. As individuals I don't have much actual animosity towards people here, although I often express displeasure with how people play, most often that is MadHat_Sam the player talking though not the moderator.
As players You/We/I look to the higher authorities to fix the game, to solve problems be it trying to get a moderator to ban someone or Ryan to fix some bug or issue. If this avenue worked that would be fine, but it has been obvious that appealing to authority does nothing to advance KDice, so I put this to you players, why look above instead of looking around?
Self policing each other instead of wanting moderators to solve the problems. This is a social game and applying social pressure to people that care about the game will always be more effective then hoping some authority solves the problem.
You don't like how Player A and Player B play with each other, PGA/OTF etc..., next time you sit at a game rally the board to kill them in round 1. Sure posting in the forums and writing reviews can help, especially at the lower levels but that isn't the only action to take.
The solution to most of the games problems doesn't just fall at the feet of moderators or Ryan, it is on you all as players.
When rnd formed the cabal to help win trophies Ryan wasn't the person that prevented him from doing so, the rest of the players were. Forming an-anti cabal and doing their best to take him down. The relationships and bonds players formed and care for competitive games carried KDice through 5 significant scoring changes in less than a year between August of 2007 and March of 2008. The 2k elo community spread from what it was to create a larger and more vibrant player base the thrived until the last year or so when game play has began to stagnate.
You can fix that, by changing how you play and changing the type of boring stagnant game play that is fostered in KDice.
So what do you want as players. Do you want totalitarian moderation that would be severe and arbitrary? Because the tone of the last few days seems to imply that. Or do you want to take some responsibility on to you the players and try to force change on a more meta and social level? On a level that might create more positive change and a better game.
So what do you want?
*Notes*
-Monte sorry for simplifying KHistory, please refrain from posting a correction here and feel free to write a separate forum post to illuminate my ignorance.
-Wanting better tools for moderators, different game mechanics and more action from Ryan is great, but doesn't really do much to further the game as that point has been beat to death.
As has been discussed ad nauseum, us moderators have limited power and limited tools to punish players for transgressions or to encourage fair play. This isn't a post looking to continue that discussion.
As players what do you want from each other, from the game and from the moderators?
I have done my best to be a passive admin, since that is how I prefer administration of games and forums to be. I am never offended myself by the words of others although I may be disappointed by them for a variety of reasons so I often don't act when people are being politically incorrect. As individuals I don't have much actual animosity towards people here, although I often express displeasure with how people play, most often that is MadHat_Sam the player talking though not the moderator.
As players You/We/I look to the higher authorities to fix the game, to solve problems be it trying to get a moderator to ban someone or Ryan to fix some bug or issue. If this avenue worked that would be fine, but it has been obvious that appealing to authority does nothing to advance KDice, so I put this to you players, why look above instead of looking around?
Self policing each other instead of wanting moderators to solve the problems. This is a social game and applying social pressure to people that care about the game will always be more effective then hoping some authority solves the problem.
You don't like how Player A and Player B play with each other, PGA/OTF etc..., next time you sit at a game rally the board to kill them in round 1. Sure posting in the forums and writing reviews can help, especially at the lower levels but that isn't the only action to take.
The solution to most of the games problems doesn't just fall at the feet of moderators or Ryan, it is on you all as players.
When rnd formed the cabal to help win trophies Ryan wasn't the person that prevented him from doing so, the rest of the players were. Forming an-anti cabal and doing their best to take him down. The relationships and bonds players formed and care for competitive games carried KDice through 5 significant scoring changes in less than a year between August of 2007 and March of 2008. The 2k elo community spread from what it was to create a larger and more vibrant player base the thrived until the last year or so when game play has began to stagnate.
You can fix that, by changing how you play and changing the type of boring stagnant game play that is fostered in KDice.
So what do you want as players. Do you want totalitarian moderation that would be severe and arbitrary? Because the tone of the last few days seems to imply that. Or do you want to take some responsibility on to you the players and try to force change on a more meta and social level? On a level that might create more positive change and a better game.
So what do you want?
*Notes*
-Monte sorry for simplifying KHistory, please refrain from posting a correction here and feel free to write a separate forum post to illuminate my ignorance.
-Wanting better tools for moderators, different game mechanics and more action from Ryan is great, but doesn't really do much to further the game as that point has been beat to death.
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WWCSD wrote
at 6:07 PM, Wednesday July 20, 2011 EDT I would like to be able to play four or five games a day and not have to deal with PGA. IDK how you are going to accomplish that but I have given my suggestions. If one day the format of KDICE changes I will come back till then I will stay away from this drug.
More 500 tourneys would be nice. And yes 2k has been pretty stagnant. Same players that do the same thing. It is not competitive anymore, it is not about risk management... it's about how much time you spend getting to know other players, forming truces, pgas, strategies(this is supposed to be a strategy game not a social one). I have no problem with on game truces because it's a part of the game but most of truces in high tables are done beforehand. Having said that, I have no intention of playing a game in which I have to beat 6 players while some of them cheat as well. I also have no intention of playing a game just for fun... if you haven't noticed I care about one thing: winning. I just think that is pathetic that people must cheat in order to win. It's an online game. That being said I know a lot of people who I told about this game... came for about a month and left. They all said it was one of the best online strategy games but it was frustrating how you had to deal with the PGA thing. I thought I was going to quit at the end of the month but fuck it. I am done and tired of that. Good job Sam for trying to make kdice a better place. P.S. The meta and social level is not going to change by itself. You need new rules or structure to force a different general behavior. And if you need to ban people... ban the ip. |
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WWCSD wrote
at 6:09 PM, Wednesday July 20, 2011 EDT The 100 and 500 tables are more true to the game than the 2k or 5k tables.
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montecarlo wrote
at 2:22 AM, Thursday July 21, 2011 EDT there are two things that are annoying as fuck right now in kdice (to me):
1) forum instigators and bitches currently were in a fucking quagmire of a situation which only exists because 1) there are trolls (yodel, fiero, curtis), who comment on shit for the sole purpose of annoying one person or a community of players, and 2) there are bitches (yodel, boogy, trav), who overreact to the trolls and take the high road (demanding punishment for the trolls). a self-policing community tried to do what was right, and 1) ignore the trolls while 2) reprimanding the thin-skinned. but it didnt work. the trolls wouldnt stop because the thinskinned refused to ignore them, and hell if i know why the thinskinned refused to listen to those of us with level heads. in this instance, i feel the community made a valiant effort to self-police, but i dont think it worked. people had their heads too far up their asses to realize how far up their asses their heads were (read that twice). i propose the following: 1) a mod creates a blog post outlining what is nonacceptable forum decorum, and then bans as he sees fit. thrax would be perfect for this role, because he has thick skin. while jurgen reads the forum prob just as much as thrax, he cares about ppl too much and is affected when they bitch at him a lot. since Ryan isnt going to appoint me mod any time soon, i will volunteer to write up a framework for forum rules, and let one of yall post it. 2) there needs to be a different method of reporting people. it should NOT be done in the forum. make it a rule that evidence should be sent via email to the mods. hell, create a community mod email acct where all of yall can check in on who wants whom banned. there is simply too much drama involved to have accusations going back and forth in the forum. if threads are created in forum just to get an acct banned, then warn the person who created that thread, and point them to the forum rules and jurgs post on how to report a cheater. and if they continue to use the forum for their personal accusation area, then ban them (looks at kdicefreak and CP03). i think those 2 changes are something the mods have the power to do, without requiring Ryan to code extra mod powers or forum abilities. and i think it will clean up the forum from a lot of the shit that gets slung back and forth. THE OTHER THING THAT SUCKS WITH KDICE AS OF NOW there are several groups of players who are too OTF on top tables. warn them and ban them. whether its murti/nex whenever they run into each other on kdice, or the overly-nice-group-which-never-hits-females, or whatever. if you know its gone too far, then warn/ban. dont feel like you have to write a textbook defending your actions either. no need to exhaust yourself. and ive got some issues with this whole youre-innocent-til-proven-guilty-by-several-screenshots. if you already suspect someone of being too OTF, then go straight to the warn/ban. i didnt personally watch that trial in florida (the lady that killed her daughter), but i understand that everyone agreed she did it, and even the jury admitted that they all thought she did it, but they couldnt get past the whole reasonable doubt issue. well kdice is NOT the fucked up US justice system. if mods misban an account here or there, tough. we dont need a 99.9% success rate or whatever. sorry im rambling now. Ryan really needs to code a tool that will save game replays on each persons stat page, so that yall can watch the last ~5 or so games for everybody. and games get auto-deleted after 3 days, or something like that. that would make the whole reporting system SO MUCH easier, and yalls ability to judge SO MUCH easier, and the community THAT MUCH better. i hope that we/yall can convince him that its a worthwhile endeavor. oh, shit, forgot to talk about the self-policing community. i disagree that the anticabal was a good idea. that is not the way we should want this game to go. now that we have mods who can ban accts, a cabal will never exist again. but on a smaller scale, yes, totally agree that the community needs to self-police by calling people out when they get to OTFish. if you see two friends warp logic so that they hit a nobody in one game, then warp the same logic a different way so that they dont have to hit each other the next game... whether its 2 specific people, or a group of nice people, fucking call them out then and there. i do this all the time when i play. if i see a nobody getting dicked, i say, "thats fucked up" in the chatbox, and make it clear that i know whats going on here, and disapprove. since im monte, and my word carries a decent amount of weight, most times the fucking-of-the-nobody stops, and he is only given n-1 placement instead of n-3 placement. so, yes, self-policing will work in this instance. call each other out when you know its obv that your doing the standard warps of logic to screw the nobodies. its 3:20am, and i need to wake up at 5am to go to work. fuck. |
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captainLAGER wrote
at 7:11 AM, Thursday July 21, 2011 EDT What I want:
lower table limits, to force more players to the real tables. this is a no-brainer, and takes only about a minute to code. although 2k and 5k participation has been considerably better this month, more players lead to more variety, which is always welcome. It helps diluting structures of "friendliness" and "trust", or "default silent truces". Fix the design facelift: Stats are hidden, countdown timer is invisible for the top row. Either revert to the old design or fix that. Why not go for dynamic height/width of the game Allow mods access to more tools and measures. I'm not sure if saving game recaps is technologically feasible, but it would certainly be nice to have. In the meantime, mods should be able to IP ban, to reset points, and to RC manually. If Ryan thinks that is too much power, how about the need for two (or more) mods to come to the same verdict. Also, more tournaments would be nice. For the forum I'd like to have reddit style commenting system (upvote/downvote comments), a "sage" option (reply without bumping), search function, post history, a "quote" option, and a link to other pages at the bottom of the page. In the matter of gameplay style, I don't think there are many top-down solutions. I dislike the now common last-resort tactic of weak-flagging, but that can't be helped by changing the rules. Change will have to come in terms of awareness by the players who accept these flags. Read kdice.com/blog/48 people :) |
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greekboi wrote
at 8:15 AM, Thursday July 21, 2011 EDT A+ Joe I've always had the same sentiments regarding bans for otf/pga. it's ruining 2k/5k lately
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greekboi wrote
at 8:16 AM, Thursday July 21, 2011 EDT also, good post Sam
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jurgen wrote
at 1:36 PM, Thursday July 21, 2011 EDT Great idea to post this here Sam. I hope many players can post their views here so we get a representative mix of what the entire community wants.
Great insights from players so far, especially Monte's post. I will keep lobbying for you as mod until I quit KDice. I was preparing a list of forum rules and bannable trolling and harassment rules. In fact there is a provisional version in the mod forum and I had a reworked one which was almost finished to publish here. But me needing a big break meant I didn't finish it yet. We need more mods first who want to keep the forum clean before I post it and give myself even more work. |
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jurgen wrote
at 1:45 PM, Thursday July 21, 2011 EDT P.S. I just mailed Ryan, also suggesting to add "junior mods": people with maybe only -chat - post. Or at least mods to focus mainly on forum and chat modding. Thraxle might make the perfect junior mod (I'll use the banhammer from now on, he can have the custom-made junior banhammer) :D
P.P.S If I decide to mod again, I think I will use Monte's idea to keep more cases out of the forum. We don't have to keep everything behind the scenes and people are free to post opinions but lately I spent more time explaining actions or discussing in chat and forum rather than actually watch games. My own bad of course |
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XWhiteDesigns wrote
at 3:52 AM, Friday July 22, 2011 EDT Anonymous matchmaking. Or Matchmaking. Or just anonymity at tables. AND GET RID OF MEMBERS POINTS SHIT. GIVE THEM INCENTIVES THAT DONT TAKE AWAY FROM COMPETITION.... LIKE FUCKIN TEAM KDICE LEAGUES
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XWhiteDesigns wrote
at 3:54 AM, Friday July 22, 2011 EDT ALSO IF YOU GO WITH MATCHMAKING, DO IT FUCKING ELO
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