I keep bugging him about those same exact sentiments. :)

Some thoughts and an idea:

1) Ads are not a problem, dc-tools remove them nice and clean. This and a different UI will not get more people here.

2) More tourneys is a good idea. An addition might be the idea to limit the number of players in a tourney. I can hardly guarantee in advance to be able to spend 1.5h for a tourney and from my experience that's what it takes. Thus I don't sit. Of course tourneys with less players should pay less, but they are more predictable in being done in let's say 45 minutes.

3) Point caps for low tables is an idea. However, this might also resul in no possible game for guys that are just good and reach the limit quickly. Thus the limit should also be enforced if enough people are online that exceed the limit. Let's say the limit for 0 tables is 1k (randomly chosen, I haven't thought about reasonable numbers). If there is only 1 guy only with a score above 1k he should be allowed to play 0 tables. If there is 10 guys online, 0 tables should be closed for them.

4) The idea or recommendation.
There needs to be a comprehensible, updated introduction to the game and what's going on. There is too many new people not getting the current interpretation of flagging, the meaning of kills and boni, how new dice are gained and distributed, the existence of truces or even silent truces, the danger and existence of stabbing and pga and so on. There is no easy to find guide (like a link on the first page). There is the Help-section, but it is not too much up to date imho.

I fully agree with Monte that you need to dare to delegate some things. This might free up some of your scarce time to develop this game more efficiently (and faster).

If you're looking for player pool growth, that's what you'll need: regular updates and new features. The monthly competition is fun but after a few months (cough, years), it gets boring and people will be looking for something new.

Right now, the fresh people just replace the bored people that leave. If you want to keep your current players interested in the game, you need to give them more, also create features to help them bring in new players (custom tables, facebook invites, etc).

I'm sure you can safely outsource some of the coding work to people who would do it for free (you could reward them with free memberships). Like Monte suggested, let them work in a sandbox environment and push the updates that you double checked.

Also in other areas, you could delegate more: if a tournament crashes, your mods could handle that for you (especially now that your current new stack might probably allow for tourney resets without having to restart the entire site). Maybe even payment issues or other customer care. I'm not sure but my guess is that it can get pretty demotivating if you have to handle everything on your own and you don't know where to start.

Personally I think it's in your best interest and also in the community's best interest if you could keep everything well under your control but allow for some people to help you. It's a win win for everyone.

I agree with almost all of jurgen's- Ryan's suggestions, not sure about the attacker wins the draw one.
Personally I'd love to see team games or clan wars (tournaments or normal games) and 1v1 tables-tournies. I don't mind if the scores are the same or separate, provided that there is no cheating, I don't think that you should be able to podium anyway if u suck on 1v1. Also, to be able to flag out only on your turn is important in my opinion. Clans could be fun with a maximum number of players/clan (10-20 players)

Trusting players to administer servers is an entire additional level of responsibility and trust.

However, the source code is all in git and it's really easy to lock down branches and such.

Ryan, I'm sure you have a robust suite of unit tests already written ;)

brainstorm:

what if player get (normally calculated)points only if we killed at least one enemy?
(will have big (positive?)influence on flaging behaviour/acceptance)
just thinking...

@probabler:
What if you won a table and all flagged out not letting you kill them (for dom e.g.). Was that your fault and reduce your points?

I vote "no".

I'm revisiting my "ties go to the attacker" suggestion

The idea is to promote more early round aggression and well, actually to make it worth more to do even or -1 attacks at any point in the game.

8v8 battles, especially bottleneck fights would also finish quicker.

From a psychologic point of view, it would also matter because luck% should end up >50% on average since grey can't attack back and defending now has the disadvantage

Anyways, maybe the impact of ties go to the attacker might be too big and starting rounds would become really dicewars-alike


I just realised that maybe ties being re-rolled is the most balanced approach: then there is no advantage for attacker or defender. Average luck should be 50% in that situation, which is far easier to grasp intuitively for players too.

actually, nvm, I still like the attack advantage is best (this is a wargame after all)

this may be a war game. but it's mainly a strategy/puzzle game. You change the entire game if you make even rolls in your favor.

Reasons:

-It makes whoever goes first have a huge advantage
-stack a 6 no longer counters an enemy 6
-late game waiting for a restock will actually be a waste of time since you will want to do as many 8v8s as possible since they are always in your favor.


-these are just a few reasons how this would destroy the strategy aspect of the game

tldr; i didn't read anything you wrote defending it so don't feel like you need to read mine