"Advanced Settings" - Round Speed and Spoils Value

[Sebastian4141]

Concise description:

• "Advanced Settings" box on Game Creation
• Allows players who know what they're doing to create more interesting, custom games
• Advanced Settings only become available to a premium player who has a certain number of games completed, and these games can only be joined by someone with that number completed

Specifics:

• "Round Speed" - Can be set between 1 minute and 48 hours. This lets avid speed gamers play lightning fast 1-on-1 and freestyle games without having to wait for a player who isn't paying attention, or waiting in dead time in freestyle for the end of the round.
• "Spoils Value" - Can be set to any particular number or rate of increase game creator chooses. So a player could set "all sets are worth 5", or choose a very low escalating rate like cards increase by 1 per turn starting from 1.
• When advanced settings is selected and the game is available for people to join, it will say, "Custom Game" like how games say "Speed Game" currently.
• Advanced Options can be an expandable box that's hidden unless it's selected. This keeps the "Start A Game" screen from being too cluttered or confusing. The option doesn't show up until the player has completed a certain amount of games - maybe 200 games completed, or 500 games completed.

This will improve the following aspects of the site:

• A lot more flexibility in the types of games created. Sometimes I just want to play one speed game, and it'd be nice to play with 90 second rounds with someone else who only wants one game. Likewise, freestyle often has lots of sitting around waiting for the end of the round.
• This can be used as a way to experiment with new setting types before making them live. Just like how maps start in Beta, having potential new settings start as Advanced Settings gives a testing ground where it'll only be used by advanced players, thus keeping the game balanced for new players while allowing experimentation and testing.
• In creating a website, you need to pay attention to usability and features. More features is a good thing, except things can get cluttered and become harder to use. Conquer Club currently does a great job of giving lots of play options while still being easy and intuitive to use. But after a significant number of games, players know the basic options and won't be confused. This way gets both the clean usability for beginners, and exciting advanced features for veteran players.
• More gameplay and options keeps veteran players more engaged, and likely helps get more premium membership signups and renewals, which means more revenues for a great site.

I'd be thrilled if something like this could happen - I think it'd strike a great blend of keeping the site clean, usable, and intuitive for new players, while giving veteran players more options and ability to customize their games. If the idea is interesting and I can be of help putting this into place, please let me know. All feedback very welcome - what do you think?

[epicethan]

I really like the idea and many people would thoroughly benefit if it was sometime instituted. However, I disagree with a few things you said.

First off, I don't think that you should have to be a premium member or reach a certain number of games before you can construct or take part in a customized game. I think that if you are going to offer this feature you have to allow everyone to be able to use it. If it was only available to members who had completed a certain amount of games, then when any player who didn't fall under those categories searched for a game, his choices would be severely limited because I think a lot of people would be making custom games.

I think round speed is a great idea, but I think that 5 minutes should be the lowest and 24 hours the highest (maybe 30 minutes or 1 hour increments?). I say this because 90 second games and 48 hour games are just ridiculous (from all aspects - IMO), although I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with me regarding that.

If you are going to make customized games, you have to have a customized search with all of those options (which is perfectly fine if someone wants to go through the whole list and check off 50 different boxes). You could, at the top of a game finder, you could have two boxes, one which read 'custom' and another which read 'regular' (or something of the sort) and whatever option you chose, a drop-down menu would appear.

Overall, I think this is a great idea but it just needs some tweaking. You may have not realized this when writing it, but if this gets instituted you may have helped a lot of players with genius game variation suggestions. I say this because the mods will always be looking for more options, and they will be more readily accepting of otherwise stagnant suggestions!!
Great job!

[jrh_cardinal]

good idea
epicethan, you would have to be premium for 2 reasons
1. this would ruin the point of banning freemies from speed games (so the site would lose its paying members and its money then nobody could play at all)
2. honestly, you can't pay $25 dollars for a year? maybe this would give you enough incentive
3. (2 wasn't really a reason) freemies, in general, miss too many turns, don't play as well, etc. Many times I want to create private games because I want to play good opponents, while there are premiums that are poor players, in general premiums know what they are doing more

In terms of games played, that could be one of the options, but I see no reason to exclude people (who aren't new recruits) that are paying members of our community. Notice I have almost 1000 games, so I'm not just saying this because I want to play in them, I just think there is no reason to exclude people who pay (and have finished 5 games)

[epicethan]

1. this would ruin the point of banning freemies from speed games (so the site would lose its paying members and its money then nobody could play at all)

Very true, I hadn't thought of it in that regard. Maybe you could only allow free players to go as low as 12 hours? Or even keep the minimum 24 hours for free players.

2. honestly, you can't pay $25 dollars for a year? maybe this would give you enough incentive

Ha, I could easily pay $25 dollars a year, but I choose not to for a variety of reasons. First, I have better things to spend my money on. Second, the only reason I play this is because I enjoy playing risk and the variety of maps and different game types throw a cool twist in here and there. Besides, I'm never going to be physically playing more than one game at a time so by the time I go my turns a few times a day, I don't have to back up the game log to remember which game was which. And lastly, for incentive, well, I enjoy the setup now and wouldn't pay for anything more, but if there were other game variations and they were free, I would experiment here and there.

3. (2 wasn't really a reason) freemies, in general, miss too many turns, don't play as well, etc. Many times I want to create private games because I want to play good opponents, while there are premiums that are poor players, in general premiums know what they are doing more

Unfortunately that is true of a lot of free players, so maybe you could have another option under the customized tab that allowed for premium only players (as opposed to anyone and everyone), or that you have to be a certain rank.

In terms of games played, that could be one of the options, but I see no reason to exclude people (who aren't new recruits) that are paying members of our community. Notice I have almost 1000 games, so I'm not just saying this because I want to play in them, I just think there is no reason to exclude people who pay (and have finished 5 games)

If it happened to be a members only option, then I completely agree with you that any paying member should get full access to all content (be it certain maps, certain rules, tournament only, round speed, etc.)

[Sebastian4141]

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback so far. I was thinking it'd be Premium Only as an incentive for people to join - there'll always be enough for a free player to find four games going at a time, and most people who play here for a while go premium. This site is a heck of a lot more entertaining than one trip to the movies with junk food or a mainstream video game.

Had an idea for another option:

In doubles games, be able to choose between "Back to Back" and "Alternating". Currently it's alternating - back to back might be interesting, need coordination to do it. Maybe the round always starts with the second person on a team. So the order would be either "Team 1 Second Person/Team 2 First Person/Team 2 Second Person/Team 1 First Person/Team 1 Second Person/Team 2 First Person..." and so on. It'd require a lot of coordination and teammwork and thinking as a team. Another potential advanced setting.

[epicethan]

This site is a heck of a lot more entertaining than one trip to the movies with junk food or a mainstream video game.

Well, to each his own.

Had an idea for another option:

In doubles games, be able to choose between "Back to Back" and "Alternating". Currently it's alternating - back to back might be interesting, need coordination to do it. Maybe the round always starts with the second person on a team. So the order would be either "Team 1 Second Person/Team 2 First Person/Team 2 Second Person/Team 1 First Person/Team 1 Second Person/Team 2 First Person..." and so on. It'd require a lot of coordination and teammwork and thinking as a team. Another potential advanced setting.

Being a free member who is not going to become a premium member anytime in the near future, I still like improvements to game play, so I'll keep contributing.

I think this is a good idea but only on larger maps.
I think on another thread awhile back, someone suggested surrendering a territory to a teammate (such as in Classic: Team 1 Player 1 has two territories in North America and his teammate has the rest of them. I think it would be cool (not to mention beneficial) if player 1 could just surrender his pair of territories to his teammate instead of having his teammate having to attack him and risk losing more armies). Again, just another possible option for team games.

Another option for not only team games but for any type of game: In addition to the "Back to Back" and "Alternating" game play, maybe adding a "Random" option. This would work such as at the beginning of each round, players are chosen in a random order to take their turns (it would add a twist here and there).

[Timur the Lame]

I think the variable turn length is a great idea. Just as an indicator of its popularity, within the month or so that ive been on its been proposed a few time. I even proposed it. I dont see why it shouldn't be an option

[Tupence]

First, thanks for proposing a thorough suggestion and for using the form.

As far as I'm aware, there aren't any plans to make a setting with a turn length of less than 5 minutes; it's been suggested multiple times before.

What would be the reason for a 48-hour turn? I think people are actually more likely to miss turns with a 48-hour setting, as logging on every day makes it more of a regular habit, so you're less likely to forget.

In your suggestion, what "round speed" settings would be available? For example, if the game was set to 6 hours, most people would probably miss at least 1 out of 4 turns, just through being asleep or at work and unable to play.

[epicethan]

In your suggestion, what "round speed" settings would be available? For example, if the game was set to 6 hours, most people would probably miss at least 1 out of 4 turns, just through being asleep or at work and unable to play.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the impression that I got when I was playing it out in my mind was that it was aimed towards very low round speeds (he may have just said 90 seconds to 48 hours so as to have a wide range of possible round speeds) such as 15 minutes, 30 minutes, up to a maximum of 2 hours (but not limited to only those times).
For example, if a player knows that he will be able to check his games at least once every hour during the time span of, lets say his work day (9 hours), then he would choose the one hour round speed setting, hoping that he would finish the game before he had to go to sleep. This would allow for a minimum of 9 turns (but likely to be triple or quadruple that because many people playing a game do not wait until the last 2 minutes of their allotted time to take their turns). Another example would be if someone is working on a project/homework assignment and they knew that they had a long night ahead of them. They know that they are going to be at the computer for the next few hours and they might choose to play a game with 15 or 30 minute round speeds.
Obviously these are only two unique examples that might occur, but using their knowledge of past games and maps and knowing how long a game takes (by that I mean *on average* how many rounds/turns a game on a specific map would take to play out), a player would take that into consideration when joining/creating one of these type of games.
As with these two examples and with any other reason as to why someone might choose to play a 30 minute, 1 hour, etc. round speed setting, is because they might want to actually try and get something productive done (in the physical world), instead of being glued to the computer screen if they were to play a speed game.

Of course, this may or may not have been the main reason/intent for shorter round speeds, but that is what I deduced from it.

Personally, I think that if everything else here is rejected, I would like to at least see a 12 hour round speed implemented.

Also, for the search options, maybe if the various round speed options were implemented, then the search query could have 5 or 6 different options instead of either
a) having to enter a specific time for each search...or
b) having 15 or 20 options for every 5, 10, 15 minute interval of time that would be present such as....
1) Speed Game (5 Minutes(
2) 10 Minutes - 2 Hours
3) 2 Hours - 12 Hours
4) 12 Hours
5) Regular (24 Hours)
6) Extended (48 Hours)

[epicethan]

Geez...It feels like I am hijacking this thread....lawlz

[jrh_cardinal]

Tupence, I understand quicker games have been rejected before, but I still like the idea. If you are playing multiplayer sequential speed games, you have to play multiple games at a time in order to have a turn within a couple minutes, which is the idea for speed games. Also, if you play freestyle, you pretty much sit there for 4-4.5 minutes to try to end up on top at the very end of the turn. Both would benefit from quicker rounds.
I agree that anything between 1 and 10 or 12 hours would be pretty stupid. Also I agree that I would never join anything over 25 hours because people would forget. 25 hours would be good because some people may check at the same time every day (and only that time) so they would have opportunity to be a couple minutes late and nor miss any turns.