No chat sounds like a good solution but maybe you need to mute all chat during the first 3 rounds so people won't use an alt to do the talking.

CB - there is no real flags any more as you give the kill-bounty to persons you like, try to impress or for arbitrary reason.

No chat from anybody, no names and no avatars for 3 rounds sound great. You don't know with whom you are sitting, whom you are attacking and so on. It can be discussed if it has to be 3 rounds or rather 2 or 4, the idea of anon-playing for the start is nice.

Identities should be revealed if a person is killed.

this -^

I personally would miss the early chat. People that have played with me know I detest early round "flags" (which should be worth as much as the electrons they're printed on.)

However, I enjoy the social aspect: saying hello, complaining about a bad start, giving teal grief for being late, etc. Also, being able to counter silent truces (which can occur as early as round two) would be far more difficult without chat, although I recognize that's not frequent.

I think Ryan giving a clear indication of his thoughts (first round flags should be countered!) would go a long way towards changing the style of play in the game.

Kill points are already having an effect, and one that will continue to increase over time.

how about this for no names - no avatars:

People sit like they are sitting now so you can see that I sat 2nd for example(being green) before the start of the game

The moment the game starts, the names and avatars are removed. People are randomly seated again and chat stops for 3 rounds.

So you only find out who is "blue" after round 3

It might drive people towards a messenger program to inform "friends" which colour they are. But I seriously hope that not many people would be lame and point-whorish enough to actually cheat like that.

You could partially counter that by randomising the colours for every player individually so red isn't the bottom left colour by default and red is not the same person for everyone. People will have to stop saying flag red then.

@ vermont about the early counters

partly good point although no chat might actually help to start some silent counters more frequently.

The smart people will still notice the silent truces. The problem is you can't yell counter any more so you will have to "show" you want to counter by attacking the truce rather than testing the willingness of others to counter by means of the chatbox. Some people are afraid to yell counter as first because it could get them targeted by the truce if the others wussie out of the counter.

...but yeah, I'm a pretty chatty person too so I would miss the hello's and the complaining about a bad start.

You could allow people to type in the chatbox but only show it to the rest after round 3 though.

No chat/avatars is a nice idea but would damper some of the fun.

I think flag system and how dom works plays into the desire for players to try to limit their risk as fast as possible.

I know I may be a broken record, but the advantage of going back to Elo era flags, is it removes the need for people to flag in chat. You now have a actual mechanic in the game that you use to indicate you are flagged, but it is still nebulous enough that you can unflag or stall about who you are flagged to. Also it forces the game to be dynamic constantly. People will have a vested interest in defending their place through the entire game.

Also dom is skewed too far to the late game making it hard to earn points early in a game. Dom needs to be easier to earn, it is skewed to far to the largest player late in the game. There needs to be a balance between the losses for 5-7 and gains for finishing 1-4 and use dom more as a way of still earning points even if you end up finishing down towards the bottom of a game. Dom should start earlier and be easier to hold onto. The best dom was the system that was in place Oct-Dec 2007, it was fluid but made sense and seemed to be able to be something you could get from any position.

I agree with Sam about the dom

a bigger % of dom should be earned (and locked within the first 8 rounds)

split dom up in 3 equal parts: round 1-4; round 5-8 and everything after round 9.

that also has the advantage that someone who basically sealed the game in round 8 can let 2 and 3 fight through him without donating 50% of his dom

also, in case he gets stabbed later, at least he keeps most of his dom that he earned in the first 2 dom stages