Balanced Drop

I agree that a player having a region on the initial drop should prompt the computer to re-scramble the drop. I'm not sure how it would work if it's a two player game, but it should be possible.  It's just not fair for a player to start a game with a region.
Ed

I do a bunch of coding, but don't know about the language/code that runs this site. So since it seems like the issues here are both appeal and feasibility, can someone with knowledge of the backend chime in on what option(s) are easy to implement (@@Cireon)?

1) Assign territories -> if bonuses are unequal, then reassign territories

2) Assign territories -> assign all players the same initial bonus regardless of regions

3) Assign territories according to regions, with an equal (or nearly equal) number of territories per player in each region

4) Allow the game to reset if all players select an option to do so before the first turn

As for appeal, I like the idea of having (1) or (2) as an option, but not (3) or (4) for the reasons outlined above. Like jfults said, it sounds like balanced dice or fog to me: if the game/tournament creator likes it, they can make games that way and then other players can choose for themselves whether or not they want to join. I don't have very strong feelings about it though, so if it were up to me I'd really want to know how much time and effort it takes to set up.

I am happy to leave it to the balance of whatever the AI decides

1 is by far the easiest. Try to reroll a few times and if after three tries it's still unbalanced... Tough. Should reduce the number of times it happens significantly. The thing that worries me is that we're optimising all the fun out of the game this way. I also worry that the create game page becomes a mixing board like affair with a toggle for everything. Personally, if this became a thing, I would group it either with balanced dice and call it something like the "more predictable outcomes" setting, because all we're doing - seemingly - is remove outliers and make the game more deterministic.

It's just not considered a priority for programmers to implement this. We only have two (semi-)active programmers right now, and they both have other priorities right now, so the long and short of it is: even if it were considered desirable to have this feature... Well, likely not any time soon.

Cool   
Just happy it will be implemented one day. I know these things take time.  When it is finally implemented, can we have it as an option for tournaments? It's ok if the tournament generator is already cluttered....im used to navigating it anyway!  Thanks for hearing us out.   I know this will improve player satisfaction and retention....until players think of something else to complain about

“Got to love how everybody became an expert on what is much work and what is not in the last few hours ”

Nope, not an expert coder. But I am a professional in my field and deal with professional coders on the daily.

If anyone cares about taking D12 to the next stages grabbing more market share and profit, they need a fair droop. To my knowledge Land Grab and Conquer club both have it. Majorcommand does, but I do not consider them competitors anymore and would be surprised if they reawaken from the dead. So essentially, D12 is not even in the competition for some people since they do not have basic functionality as other sites do. Fair drops as defined by no region bonus should be standard.

To determine how much is lost, which is easily quantifiable. You grab a data set and see how many people start with 1v1 and work their way up to other games. How I started and many others. If you do not have a fair drop in 1v1, you are losing potential paying customers and definite market share. A bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea. Quantative analysis.

Then you have the coders determine how much time is involved in the coding, the effects on the servers. If there is noticeable degradation based on the new code. If there is more cost due to server usage, etc. Easily done in test environment. I have never heard of professionals using a opinion to say whether something can be achieved without running tests to determine averages, medians, etc. How many drops will it take for a 1v1 on Atlantis to be fair? 10? 20? 100? What is the cost of each?

Then run a cost benefit analysis and return on investment and throw that at the senior partner, CEO for them to make the call.

Make it for the whole site as well on every game. Your balanced dice is a thing unto itself.

Considering this thread started close to 5 years ago and everyone has been too busy to worry about bringing this place up to standard. I do not expect any current posts to chnage the current dynamic.

So I will just keep on keeping on

This all makes sense, but it doesn't really apply to D12, because this site is frankly not built as a business. It is "just" a group of volunteers who want a nice place and community to play Risk It is for that reason that we're not really in the mindset of making sure we have all the features from "the competition". I think each Risk community has its own feel and its own ideas about what should be part of the site and what shouldn't, so I think it shouldn't be seen as a problem that D12 lacks some features other sites might have: that just represents a difference in underlying principles, and it's what gives multiple Risk sites the right to exist.

We'll never please everyone here at D12, and if some people find exactly what they seek in another website, then power to them.

So yeah, I understand where you come from. I've been through the whole thing you have described, though before all the technical analysis happens, a product analysis happens too on whether adopting this feature and moving the product in this direction is desirable in the first place. It is too simple to say that this is a "must have" feature, and because we don't have the resources to do proper market research, we have to rely on community discussions like these, and programmers have to make judgement calls on what they work on, keeping in mind both all the technical aspects, as well as the product aspects.

I am not so much concerned that this will really fry the servers or be months of work to implement, but I still dislike it when people pretend to know how easy it is to implement, and use it as an argument against the programmers of this site: "why doesn't this exist yet??? it's so easy to implement!!!" I hope this post, in combination with some of my other posts above, clarify that (1) it remains a non-trivial problem to find a good solution for, even if the technical challenges are easy to solve and (2) this site is not run as a business, but as a group of passionate volunteers who do what they can in their free time, and the best way to get features you want is to have respectful conversations with the programmers about the features you would like to see, with the expectation that there's a good chance they simply can't.

For an example to why 'something simple' can 'become complicated', let's take my own 'very simple' idea of just regenerating a new drop whenever the region bonusses are not the same. If you do this a couple of times on world classic or another small map that'd probably give a fair drop.

But on a big map (say, world expanded), you can try this 20 times, but you're still not likely to get a fair drop.

So really, you'd have to check which drop is the least unfair. And now we need to keep track of all our previous generated drops, keep the fairness score and then pick one. Still doable of course, but not trivial.
And no, I haven't thought this out enough to say there are no other details that could make things more complicated.

When this is implemented it most likely will not be an option but enabled 'mandatory' for all 2 player games (or games with only 2 teams?)

Oh....That works too  thanks! 

Another option if only mandatory for 1v1 or 2v2 might be to swap a neutral for one of them. Prevents a start bonus but still luck is there and if they want to burn against a neutral ok.

Those mentioning Atlantis and other big maps I think they don't count if you are playing them with less players than recommended.

My only comment for what I made is because even with no one getting a bonus on the drop, you could still have someone get 3 of 4 with blockers. If you are doing a 1v1 tournament with 1 game, I would much rather play on a balanced board. Still too much luck on the drop even with no bonus. This is the #1 reason why I don't do 1v1. You already have a balanced dice option, why not a balanced board? If you don't want to play on it then don't choose or join.

I agree with dough_boy here, I think if there is going to be a balanced board feature it should be listed in the options when creating a game. That way some can play the way it is now or choose to play the balanced board.

If there are 4 (or 8) players on the Atlantis map it's literally impossible to have a drop without someone holding the central +1 bonus (there are no neutrals). So maybe let's tollarate a +1 bonus, and just redrop in case of +2 and higher?? Just an idea.

Or otherwise I keep pushing what I told above: everyone starting with 3 reinforcements at the first round. This would also help to balance games played on oversized maps, especially 1v1, because if the first player deploys 10-12 reinforcements, the second is already in trouble! This way maybe doesn't change much, the second player will be in trouble from the second round, but at least he can find some ways to counter, especially if the first makes mistakes.

I agree that the most impacted are 1v1 and 2v2 games, however I would apply the 're-drop rule' (to be defined) to any numbers of players and make it mandatory. I know randomness affect the games in many ways, but an unfair drop is something unnice to see, a bad way to start that doesn't lead to a good game.

Not to get off topic, but there are many items that could be added in. Even if in Capped games or Non-capped games, have the option to increase the bonus for having a card when turning in a set be higher... would that not change the dynamic of moving around the board if you could get a bonus of 4, 6, 8 or 10+ for having the actual territory vs only +2.

Variety and options creates New Excitement and leads to new ideas to gather continued interest and growth.

As per this topic... i could care less if someone has a bonus on turn 1 when playing with 3 or more players, it is the job of the other players to play the board and attack or plan for what may occur. Also, having all your troops in one region, to me, is a negative cause that means one less territory you can have AWAY from your area to assist in positioning for kills.