Dueling Zone Casino

[Jake]

It's not the same as Fantasy TDL, but the Dueling Zone Casino is almost ready for play-testing, and I'm looking for people to check it out and offer feedback/suggestions.

I'm hoping to open the casino before TDL 522 Week 8 begins, and perhaps even in time for Wednesday's All Star Match.

Ultimately, the casino is intended to be in support of all dueling events (not just TDL), or at least any event for which I can get info (e.g. lists of participants) prior to the event actually happening.

If you are interested, please check it out and then drop me an email at jakethrash at duelingzone dot com.

[Jake]

A few people have been kind enough to visit the casino and place some bets, but thus far I've not seen any comments.

What I am hoping to find out is what suggestions people might have that would make the process of betting, or reviewing the status and results, easier to understand (or was it so obvious that no one had any confusion?).

Was the process of registering and logging in clear enough?

Was the process of betting clear enough?

Are the terms clear enough?

Are the tables informative?

...

I've made some changes to the displays to try and further enhance the clarity of the tables. For those that have already placed bets, if you could review and let me know if these new changes make it a little clearer, I would like to hear. If it didn't help, what would?

[G]

Heh, to be honest, I don't get betting much as it is, so was just looking around. Everything seemed okay, though I don't know about the rules. I don't think there was much trouble there, but again, I don't know much about placing bet rules beyond utter basics of 100-1 odds, if you bet 1 dollar you get 100 if you win. (I think)

[MurOllavan]

Everything seemed clear. I am glad you guys added more conditions. For each event, will every participant be listed? That would help. I don't know much about odds-making, but it would be cool if the multipliers were not the same for all conditions. Thus, there would a "line" on everything. This would be like having the news section of TDL predictions, but for all possible dueling events. Thank you for making this.

[Jake]

Everything seemed clear. I am glad you guys added more conditions. For each event, will every participant be listed? That would help. I don't know much about odds-making, but it would be cool if the multipliers were not the same for all conditions. Thus, there would a "line" on everything. This would be like having the news section of TDL predictions, but for all possible dueling events. Thank you for making this.

I hope to add every participant, but that will of course be dependent upon being able to obtain a list of participants prior to the event. In the case of things like challenges that's usually pretty easy. The case of tourneys, some of the hosts have been good about advertising who's entered, and some haven't. e.g. I don't know (yet) who's actually registered in the upcoming MegaBrawl (I just picked some names out of a hat for testing purposes).

Where we can obtain info in advance, yes, I'd like to list all participants.

Hopefully the condition stuff can expand the range of betting and make it more than just "win or lose" to make the whole thing a little more fun. Another sample condition in a challenge might be "will they make use of the Test of Worthiness" for example.

And yes, over time, the bet values will change. This will partly depend upon what info the player of the betting house can dig up on the participants beforehand and how much research they are willing to do. (For test purposes I kept it pretty simple). For example, if Dueler X is the Overlord facing his/her first challenge, there's no precedent for knowing if they might use the ToW. However, for another Overlord who's used the ToW in 4 out of 5 challenges, that becomes a real statistic, and makes for a viable bet condition.

Ideally, the casino might also drive more traffic to the various archives to see how people did before. Searches back through DoS Archives to see who used the ToW. Searches back through DoF Archives to see who's won the Diamond before. Searches through the TDL Archives to see how teams have fared against each other. etc...

Thanks for the feedback! I hope people have fun with it.

[Slothy]

Jake, it looks great, but for some reason, it doesn't give me the option to place a bet! And yes, I'm registered.

-Slothy

[Morgan le Fay]

I think there's a no Slothy bets clause. Sorry.

::flee::

[Morgan le Fay]

It might be too late since the AS tourney is tonight, but you could put up there all the individuals and have people bet on them. Of course, since no one knows who is fighting whom, it makes it a bit more challenging.

[Jake]

For TDL Events, I probably will not do that in general. One, because it would be too time-consuming to do it for every match when you are not sure who's going to fight and who's not, and two because you are not sure who they will get matched against, and so you can't really do any sort of projection of what the odds would be (other than "win get x, lose get x" regardless of who the duelist is).

For tournies, where a participant list is available beforehand, it works better because you know all those people will (or should be) in the event, and you don't know who they are going to fight, so it's more of a blind event by nature.

[Jake]

Jake, it looks great, but for some reason, it doesn't give me the option to place a bet! And yes, I'm registered.

-Slothy

After registering, did you sign in?

If you are signed in, the menu at the top should list who you are signed in as, and the login/register option should be replaced by a logout option.

If you are signed in, you should see the place a bet option below the bet conditions.

If you are signing in, but then not being listed as signed in, you might check to see if you are allowing cookies, or have other settings that might be interfering with the server being able to associate to your brower's instance.

[Tareth Thorn]

This looks all well and good to me, even like a lot of fun! The only question I have is that there's always been somewhat of a buffer between the world of the duels, being based in "Rhydin", and the world of TDL. Should this be able to translate IC between the two, do you think?

[Jake]

You'd have to clarify what you mean by a buffer.

You mean as in whatever mythological date it is in RhyDin as opposed to real dates?

Pretty much have to ignore RhyDin chonology since as far as I know there's no standard of any kind to do a translation from or to, and no two people I know use the same scale.

Also, with things like the Calendar, it's the player that needs to know when things are so they can attend (or not). So it probably works better to stick with real dates since that's what everyone uses to decide how to use their time.

If you meant something else, you'd need to clarify.

[Tareth Thorn]

I meant more like how things in TDL never alluded to anything in Rhydin as a general rule, though the duels did exist within Rhydin themselves. That sort of buffer.

[Jake]

Ah...

The biggest reason there was a separation between TDL and Rhydin/the Dueling Forum in the past was that, with the Dueling Forum on AOL there was some degree of question about Intellectual Property rights. Ian separated TDL from AOL as far as he possibly could to prevent any remote possibility that they could lay any claim to the content of TDL (e.g. should TDL ever in some manner actually make a profit or otherwise become an attractive property to AOL).

When AOL essentially abandoned the Dueling Forum, and disavowed any ownership, which (in part) prompted the move to the web, the TDL Staff re-addressed the question of the relationship between TDL and Rhydin/the Dueling Forum.

While it's still entirely possible that New Caithness (the intellectual property of Ian MacKenzie's player) is nowhere to be found in or near Rhydin, the TDL staff agreed that the separation between the two could come down. (That's also when we added the link on the main page of TDL to Rings of Honor).

Also, with the Rings of Honor off of AOL, we've potentially lost one of the venues we had for acquiring new players. In as much as that is true, it behooves all of the FFGF/role-playing/dueling venues to work as cooperatively as possible because we leverage each other for players. -- If the Dueling Forum/Rings of Honor dies, it cannot be too long before TDL dies as well. Likewise, while I do not think that RoH would necessarily die if we never did another TDL season, I do think there's a segment of players that has stuck around dueling at least in part because they enjoy the competition aspects of TDL.

Thirdly, while I do what I can to maintain an IC "flavor" (e.g. DZN) to much of what is Dueling Zone, I make no reservation about the fact that some of DZ's content (perhaps much of it depending upon who you ask...e.g. the Practice DoS Game) is really OOC content in nature. I don't care how people interpret it really, as long as it provides some entertainment and maybe helps keep some players interested and around.

So...whether you choose to make reference to the casino from the perspective of your character is entirely up to the you/the player and what you feel is in keeping with the nature of your character. However, my primary goal in creating the casino is to appeal to the player (upon whatever level they want to use it) to find ways to keep the duels attractive, fun, fresh, and to find new ways to appeal to players that may have gotten bored/tired with what's already existent and might get lured away by EQ, Halo, or whatever other alternatives there are for people to invest their time in.

Not everyone will be into betting. Not everyone is into DZN (though I wish there were more people subscribing). Hopefully there's something, somewhere that appeals to everyone. Maybe it's TDL. Maybe it's DZN. Maybe it's the casino. Maybe it's Baronial Challenges or MegaBrawls. Maybe it's Wraith/Ward storylines.

We can't go wrong by trying to provide something for everyone's taste.

Something for everyone.

DZC is for those that find the idea of betting (either as an exercise as a player predicting who will win and seeing how they do against other players or as something IC for the characters to play off of) interesting.

...

Another of the ideas I have kicking around for the future is some form of automated Auction site (e.g. Ebay). Once the casino is operating to my satisfaction, and after a few other projects that need some attention get some of my energy, I'd like to stand up an auction type site where characters can auction/bid on things like "Athlstan's second favorite sword, or Kaja Adair's favorite T-shirt, etc. etc..."

Anything we can do to expand the play and keep it fresh, rich and entertaining for the players.

[Jake]

Betting for TDL 522 Week 8 is open at Dueling Zone Casino. It will only be open until Sunday night, midnight (Eastern time). Get your bets in now!