Monte, I can stream audio from each player and create voice chat at each table.

In fact I shopped the idea around with a few people and they didn't like it.

ooooo, nice.

i mean, if i'm thinking about it from a laptop/desktop perspective, streaming audio is a novelty which only a few people would appreciate. but if i'm approaching it from a tablet perspective, MUCH more appeal, because then i dont have to use the clunky tablet typing.

or am i offbase on that? you've probably got a better grasp of the market.

That was close to my own thinking as well.

@ELO: I think elo worked because we didn't have monthly resets then. Starting your elo-score from 0 each month would make it different. At that time the >2k-group was a pretty closed circle that was hard to get into. Also with elo you'd have to understand the not so simple system in order to estimate the risk at the tables. So, while I was comfortable with elo, I think the current system is much easier to understand for new players - and thus more suitable for a society without patience.

@STREAMING: It would be nice if you would transform the spoken words into chatbox-lines. Else anybody would need the sound turned on, which makes playing in the office much harder. The rolling of the dice may be ignored, some guy yelling "WTF, 8v3 AGAIN!!!!!!" might get you in trouble. While I see the advantage for tablets, there is problems if sound is mandatory for those playing at work. And that's not just a few from my personal non-representative observations. In consequence, sound must not be mandatory to play this game.

"STREAMING: It would be nice if you would transform the spoken words into chatbox-lines"

That's gonna be quite hard if not impossible.

For a taste of how challenging such a task may be, just try to watch some youtube videos without sound, but with the automatically generated subtitles turned on. Well, enough to say that it occasionally gets it wrong even when native speakers of English are speaking with a more or less neutral American accent. And for more exotic accents, it's usually terrible.

And Google has been fiddling with voice recognition for a while...

good points louis.

elo: yes there was a monthly reset in elo times. remember there were two scores being tracked: your elo score and your monthly score. at the end of each game, your monthly score was increased by 1/elo_rank. at the end of each month, the monthly score would be reset, but you would maintain your elo.

the 1/elo_rank scoring definitely favored the top of the top: if you were 1st in elo, you'd gain 1 point, which was huge. compare that to if you were merely 10th in elo (out of a player base of thousands!!), then you'd only gain 0.1 points. it would take 10 games to equal what 1st in elo could achieve in one.

this was wayyyy too skewed to the top-of-the-top. if you weren't socially accepted by that crew, you had zero chance of finishing at the top. to fix this, Ryan could simply tweak the 1/elo_rank increment to something like 1/(elo_rank+10). (that's just something i made up on the fly, obv not the optimal choice.)

also, if you were to make tourney wins contribute towards the monthly score, you could devise a system where you counterbalance the regular table winners (based on elo) with lower-skill players who win tourneys. i think it would be fun.

your point about the complexity of the scoring stands. it took a few games to understand how the two rankings worked together (your monthly score being driven by your elo score).

audio: yes, having to talk or listen at work isn't a good idea. that's why you'd perhaps create two kdice worlds: one for tablets, one for laptop/desktops. one driven by a keyboard/mouse, one driven by voice/touching. there's probably some ingenious way to make those two worlds overlap, i just cant think of it right now. but at least the two communities could share a forum, and they would draw players from each other. if i play at work, i play in one world; if i play at home, i play in another.

or, for the tablet world, perhaps just kill audio altogether, and kill the chatbox with it. maybe anonymize each game, maybe not, benefits either way.

then the laptop/desktop people could jump in those games as well without any penalty.

the main problem (imo) is that social gaming has moved away from the laptop/desktop world, and into the tablet/smart device world. if you want to increase player pool, you need to focus there somehow. and the current set up (having to type) is terrrrrrrible for tablets.

"simplified elo" might be of interest and should be discussed seperately if there is enough concern about modifying the scoring system again.

Seperated versions are a good thought. You could just add the points to the same list. It is the same account in both worlds adding points to the same total from both worlds. Of course there will be discussions about how much easier it is to score in world A rather than B due to the speed games start and the noob-density. Well - make that part of your strategy then if you need 1st that urgent.

To emphasize the need for retaining a version without speech I want to add that having your voice send to an unknown number of anonymous others you also give up part of you being anonymous. It is harder to pretend being female/male or even and adult with voices heard. You'd have to have voice-recordings with the screenprints/replays in order to catch the inevitable harrassment, insulting and so on that will occur with life-chat.

While I agree that opening up to the tablet world is a good shot at increasing the player base, voice transmission remains a difficult issue.

How about making the most mandatory lines clickable? "You suck <color>!", "Flag <color>", "Counter!!!" - this list is not complete.

Video avatars would be the worst..lol