CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

Ok cool, that makes sense!
Also, I just noticed that the actual dates are listed there, and it's partially while I'm out of town! I totally knew this was going to happen!! Arg!!

EDIT: A gold on Mother's Day? That's just cruel!

The only thing I can think that would fit with the current aesthetics of the game would be to circle the numbers you click with ink. Then unclicking would cause the ink to evaporate, or seep into the parchment (think Harry Potter writing in Tom Riddle's journal).

This would be really handy, but it would have to be really obvious to the player that the graph and mouse-overs are displaying what they are because of a locked value. I'd hate to lose because I accidentally clicked the graph and didn't realize I wasn't seeing the whole picture.

Personally, I liked how prizes were resolved in the original amulet contest. Someone couldn't win two, and would get the better prize. That way you don't have folks disappointed they didn't win anything and someone has won two. Also, awarding them like you've outlined in reverse order still incentivises early winners to continue playing for better prizes. So in this scenario you'd award the prizes at the end of the contest, with the person getting the gold from day 6, and the copper would go to the person in second.

Then again, I may like this type of reward structure because it's the reason I won $30...

Exactly, ya. There were moments in our game where either of us could've left early and still come out ahead, but we played to the end and I don't think it's a bad idea to reward that.

What I was thinking is something along the lines of an ante of 20 would double a positive score or halve a negative one. So winning a longer game nets you a better score, or losing a longer game leaves you with less of a hole to climb out of. I'm not sure what the formula is exactly, but it would end up looking like:

Ante = Max Positive Score
1 = 99
10 = 149
20 = 198

Ante = Max Negative Score
1 = -99
10 = -75
20 = -50

So now that you're tracking coins won/lost for the vs contest, have you considered making some kind of persistent leaderboard for it? Maybe even just an average of coins won/lost?

I can't tell you how many times I tried to clean those tiny bits of parchment peaking out from under the overlay thinking they were dirt on my monitor!

Soooooo I didn't get to play too much this morning, but from what I could tell this actually worked extremely well. There were lots of folks playing lot of games are various stakes. The games I played were real games without any reckless strategies. I was worried the emphasis on coins would cause more small lead leaving, but that didn't seem to be the case. I didn't get to play Jason, but I was never sure if I was or wasn't playing him at the time.

So it seems like April Fools is on you, jere! You came up with a perfect solution!

Ya, 20 hours from now is 10am... but the contest starts at 9am PST. We're on PDT right now, which is an hour ahead. So I think that's where the problem is.

I'm not sure if I love jere's original post more, or the fact that you're off and running with this idea, Jason!

Unfortunately, there's two problems with banning Visa gift cards: one is that they allow you to create and register an account with your address on file for when you have to use it for a site that requires address verification... and the other is that, given the nature of the game (an anonymous, occult themed betting game), you'll probably be turning away real players who want to use a gift card for legitimate reasons (since I almost did that until I read up on the CC encryption etc for the game).

I going to toss out a really dumb idea I had, because why not. If the issue is collusion between the amulet holder and non-amulet holders, then maybe the solution is to get rid of any interaction between them. I know you liked the idea of passing the football around, but what if amulets were only given to a player out of the pool to the winner of a random non-amulet game for 0 points. After that you only pair two amulet games together. The winner keeps and gets points for their amulet, and the loser drops theirs back into the pool. This is probably exploitable too, but maybe less so? I just thought I'd throw it out there.

Whatever you decide for the contest, I think the idea of the amulets for prizes is awesome, and I'm glad you're sticking with that.

I think the discussion was that the drop button would allow those that play during the off hours to have an alternative to simply wait around and watch their points decay when no one else is playing. It was also important when the initial amulet drop awarded 0 points, but that's since been changed.

Instead of removing the drop amulet button altogether, could you maybe disable it until a set amount of time has passed waiting for an opponent? Personally, that's how I've used the drop button. If I can't find a match after 30 minutes, I give up and drop it. So I'm not losing 120 points from just sitting around, but I'm also trying to join a match.