Limitless Live Game Fortnight, new features, and map updates

Hi everyone! It's been a while since you last heard from us, so we have been long overdue to share the changes we have been making here on Dominating 12. Before we go into those changes though, we have something quite exciting to announce. [size=16px]Limitless Live Game Fortnight[/size] Between [b]Wednesday 27 July 12:00[/b] and [b]Wednesday 10 August 12:00[/b] (server time), the daily limit on the number of live games will be [i]suspended[/i] for non-premium members. It's a great way for you to spend your summer holiday (if you're in the northern hemisphere, at least!), and it's a great way for us to learn more about the capabilities of our server. As you might remember, the daily live game limit was introduced because running the Dominating 12 servers costs money, and live games cause the largest strain on our servers. This is why we have a [url=https://dominating12.com/account/premium]premium subscription[/url], which allows you to contribute to these costs, and in turn we give you access to all the live games your heart desires (+ some additional cool benefits). Lately, the number of open live games has been limited during quiet hours, which is not good for anybody. Servers get bored too, you know! While we will not be removing the daily live game limit permanently, knowing the effects of removing them will help us make the best decisions in providing the fairest offer to both premium and non-premium members alike. Of course, we will also be weighing in your feedback, so don't hesitate to let us know your thoughts in the [url=https://dominating12.com/forums/6/suggestions-feedback]Suggestions / Feedback[/url] forum. Hopefully you'll join us during the Limitless Live Game Fortnight with lots of games. Don't forget to invite friends, family, and even pets, because there is no better time to start getting addicted to Risk as this summer! [size=16px]Feature updates[/size] We haven't told you much about what's been going deep inside the mountains and valleys of code, but we continue to make improvements to Dominating 12 over time. The following list contains a quick overview some of the major changes since our previous news post, but it only represents a small bit of the work that has been done, with many bug fixes, infrastructure changes, and more being done behind the scenes. [list] [li]We moved the new troops UI out of beta and enabled it for everybody.[/li] [li]We fixed some encoding issues with special characters in maps, messages, and the forums. This inadvertently caused some messages to be marked as unread. Oops![/li] [li]If you are a premium member and your membership is about to expire, you will now receive a reminder to renew it.[/li] [li]The server time is now shown in the nav bar, and has been removed from the other places where it was more in the way.[/li] [li]The account dashboard was rebuilt to have more useful information, especially for those who play lots of games, or have friends who do so.[/li] [li]We added a lot of information about how the dice work at https://dominating12.com/its-never-the-dice[/li] [li]For non-premium members, we increased the number of people you can add to your friends and avoid list to 10 each.[/li] [/list] We are also currently running an experiment where premium members can enable push notification on their devices (iOS currently not supported sadly) whenever it is their turn. This is very much an early access feature, and has plenty of rough edges. We're getting this in the hands of our premium members early to gather feedback, and build a feature that is useful to you. [size=16px]Map updates[/size] The following maps have been released out of beta since the last news post: [list] [li]French Republic (by [user]Hoodlum[/user])[/li] [li]Zealandia AD 202020 (by [user]Hoodlum[/user])[/li] [li]Middle East (by [user]The_Bishop[/user])[/li] [/list] At this time, we do not have the staff capacity to mentor map creators, and so we aren't actively pursuing new maps for this reason.

The limit cap is now disabled for the next two weeks. Enjoy!

Thank you so much for all the hard work! [quote][b][size=18px]Limitless Live Game Fortnight[/size][/b][/quote] (Y)

This is great!! Lets hope two weeks is long enough to prove the test,, its really a great start in approaching the need to boost Live game activity. i hope old timers that mostly prefer long terms & mafia will step back into this Live arena and help prove the capacity of the server. And i hope people will start thinking about what will attract the core community back to the Live game arena. i think we should change the preset chat that says "Boo on cigarettes" to "Boo on 1v1 games"

From what I can tell, the activity boost was minimal, and it’s a certainty the server wasn’t stressed. For this reason, I vote to have it extended, even for a year. People who have settled into near exclusive live 2p zone may have landed there via their enthusiasm to be here and their drain of tokens. Making the transition to multiplayer games means ( for many of these 2p aficionados) the encounter of a whole new learning curve, and that takes time and opportunity. New people come and are more likely to stay if the live game lobby is generous with its offerings. If 2p aficionados learn the basic patient skills of multiplayer Risk, I think their experience here would be much enhanced. If we ever find a way to entice old timers to visit Live multiplayer gaming more often, it would have a way of upping skills and enthusiasm in that arena. And so I think the tokens barrier should be lifted until success in growing the Live mp games begins to stress the server.. and I think that may be awhile (providing I am correct in assuming the small surge during quarantine covid days didn’t stress it’s capacity).

Saw you wanted comments.. so here are some comments: 1. Live Games - If the goal is to get veteran players (or those whom nearly 100% play long-term games vs live games) to play some live games, then there has to be incentive - Reasons people don't play live games - It takes a dedicated time frame to pay attention and win; their ratings are hurt; live games (although you can set limits) usually have lower tiered players playing in them (or at least available for them) *** possibly solution - change the rating system to two rating systems, one for Long-Term and one for Live... to be determined as the "best player" on the website, you need both ratings to be high (or higher than others)... thus, this will provide incentive for players to play both types... (I also think their could be a third one for tournaments too) 2. Long-term games - Create option for 12 hr to speed these games up a bit. Those who can make the 12 hr window work will play them, those you don't want this option, won't. However, I sure can't be the only one that is tired of waiting over a week for a 9 player game to get through each round. Thanks

Thanks for the feedback. Here are some of my responses. [quote=Axobongo] For this reason, I vote to have it extended, even for a year. [/quote] This isn't feasible, as we rely on premium membership to maintain the servers of the site. Even if the servers could handle the extra traffic, I do not believe it is fair to have non-paying users make limitless use of our servers for an extended period of time. [quote=Axobongo] If 2p aficionados learn the basic patient skills of multiplayer Risk, I think their experience here would be much enhanced. [/quote] In the end, preference is preference. Early results from the experiment are showing that it didn't push people to multiplayer games, which means that the limit is not the deciding factor in why people are playing 2p games. For that reason, we are probably going to looks elsewhere to solve this problem, though we also need to wonder if this is a problem at all. [quote=Axobongo] (providing I am correct in assuming the small surge during quarantine covid days didn’t stress it’s capacity). [/quote] We had to significantly invest in server infrastructure to be able to handle the surge during the covid quarantine period. [quote=God_of_War] - If the goal is to get veteran players (or those whom nearly 100% play long-term games vs live games) to play some live games, then there has to be incentive [/quote] I do not believe this is a goal at all. One of the most important things that underlines our decisions at Dominating 12 is that we believe both live games and long term games should be a viable way of playing here. If you're an adult with limited time to invest in a game that takes an hour or more, then live games are a great way to play, since you can just spend a few minutes here and there throughout the day doing your turns. [quote=God_of_War] *** possibly solution - change the rating system to two rating systems, one for Long-Term and one for Live... to be determined as the "best player" on the website, you need both ratings to be high (or higher than others)... thus, this will provide incentive for players to play both types... (I also think their could be a third one for tournaments too) [/quote] As explained above, this goes against the philosophy of the team, where long term games and live games should both be a viable strategy to the top. [quote=God_of_War] - Create option for 12 hr to speed these games up a bit. Those who can make the 12 hr window work will play them, those you don't want this option, won't. However, I sure can't be the only one that is tired of waiting over a week for a 9 player game to get through each round. [/quote] This has been suggested a few times before, and seems unrelated to the experiment. I can't find the suggestion thread right now, but it's not something that's high on our priority list.

What kind of thoughts did you or any other site owners/creators think? What is the priority list? I would love to read about them if there is a post that lays them out.

[quote=God_of_War]What kind of thoughts did you or any other site owners/creators think? What is the priority list? I would love to read about them if there is a post that lays them out. [/quote] There is no post like this currently. I also don't expect there to be one any time soon, and I think it's only fair I explain why I think that: [list type=decimal] [li]Sharing a priority list sets expectations. Expectations that may not be met because - and I am aware I sound like a broken record on this topic - the site is run by volunteers. While it is fun building things that people like, it's very hard trying to meet people's expectations if they have some big wishes. For that reason, we tend to avoid building up too much in terms of promises. Otherwise we may burn out the few programmers we have.[/li] [li]Because all the programming work (and all the non-programming work as well for that matter) is done by volunteers, they kinda get to pick what they want to work on based on what they think is fun. There is coordinating within the staff to establish priorities, because building things that other people want is actually the most fun, but it also means I can't really speak on behalf of the site staff on what we're prioritising.[/li] [/list] As for my personal thoughts: I am not an active player myself, so it's hard for me to judge what's a problem or not. We're still seeing more games being played than before the Covid peak, so by that metric, the site is still doing very well, but many players are apparently experiencing a lack of active games. Maybe it's a vocal minority, maybe they play at the quiet times on the website, or maybe they are looking for a certain niche of games that isn't offered sufficiently. I think growing our overall community would be the best way in providing more games for everyone, and that is not something that's solved by programming.

Noticed that live multiplayer games have decreased significantly following end of the limitless trial. It's 2 player live games and 3 player capitals 98% of the time for some odd reason.