In my case, I was 'smacked live' by @Cindy B ...😅

A Match (0 Soundcoins) option might bring in the Soundcoin savers. If you win after choosing a 0 Soundcoins match, you will not collect from your opponent. If you lose to a riskless opponent, you will keep your 1 Soundcoin wager.

Alternatively, the maximum Soundcoins to be wagered could be chosen by the player. Nothing wagered, nothing gained. Want to play for 10,000 Soundcoins and your opponent wants to play for 2,000 -- the pot becomes 2,000 for that match. Large matches can be made public. High rollers need to be made aware of Rank-up and random glitch risk.

Continuing from above comment, if a winning player chooses to donate a portion of their opponent's losses, SoundGym, at that time only, could match the donation (make it count double).

@Stephen Craig: That would make it worse - if I play and maybe don't even get that one lousy coin for winning, it's even less of an incentive.

And you also divide the already small playerbase into different leagues. Good players would only want to play for high stakes, while new / f2p people wouldn't want to lose a week / month worth of grinding in one battle.

How about already generous SoundGym (remembering the Duels Spinner) picks up the tab for the 1 Soundcoin -- losers pay nothing, winners get 1 Soundcoin as before (because making the lucrative Duels Spinner contingent each day upon playing at least one duel would be unthinkable haha).

Well, not many people who visit soundgym even know about duels, cause they are hidden. Maybe put them on main page? Or advertise it a bit more?

Speaking as somewhat of a newbie, I will say, I don't really understand duels. At one point I read the little info box ... but I don't know what the skills are that are required, how I would know when to use these powerups or whatever they are, and if I would experience good gameplay. To elaborate on that last point: I think I attempted one duel once when I was really new, and it was over in a matter of seconds ... because the person I was playing was like a Diamond who knew the game, had the skills. There wasn't much motivation for me to throw coins at another match at that point. I've just never been motivated to try again because there are enough things to do here on the site to improve my skills.

Perhaps there is this sense of barrier to entry for others? I think a way to level the matches based on some kind of evaluation of a player's skill history might be good. Maybe it can progressively get harder, as a player wins, meeting harder and harder opponents? Just some ideas.

Also, I gotta say, it was a pleasure to watch Cindy work in that vid, ha! I don't know how you can answer so fast, dang.

I am not sure that the SC incentive is the thing here. and Yes I think it can get better exposer :) 😎 TNX

making the lucrative Duels Spinner contingent each day upon playing at least one duel would be unthinkable
@Stephen Craig it actually might work :)

:) I was thinking the same thing haha, but do love the effort-free coin. Just because you know you just collected free Soundcoins and should be more than willing to duel anyone with them, sadly doesn't mean that you will -- some sort of laziness and greed takes over and you move on to the daily workouts getting richer and richer (but not better and better) instead. I guess sometimes you need SoundGym (like a personal trainer) to make you do the right thing and duel.

Yes, I see the personal trainer thing @Stephen Craig. Might be something to think about

I'm happy to see Duels might be on the verge of getting some of that good old splendor back! As a 'victim' of the set-back effect described by @Michelle P , and having only very recently been lucky enough to enter a duel in which I finally was able to spend the time required to figure out how the game actually works, I've been having such a hard time finding fellow duelists to play with.

I even made a post, describing the situation, and asking any users interested in dueling for the following 24 hours to write in the comments when approx. would they be available for dueling, as a way to avoid entering every hour to check, then invite some drinks, wait for a while and find out no one was actually interested, or even present.

The success was such that after 24 hours no one had written a single comment nor had I found anyone to duel with, so I deleted my post and went somewhere else. Ever since that happened, I've been thinking about what could be done in order to revitalize Duels, and I'd like to throw here some of the ideas I came up with, some of them updated according to things said in this post. I'll share them a bit later...

1. LET DUELS MAKE A GOOD FIRST IMPRESSION

For many of us, our first duel is something like 4 seconds inside a storm of sound chops, beeps, flashing red lights and slaps in the face. Once you're ejected out, you're left with one loss and still clueless how to avoid that sweep next time you try. But...who would like to repeat that bad and sterile experience?

I'm sure not every duelist's first attempt looks like my description, but I think every effort made towards providing an easy access for everyone will eventually pay off. With that in mind, and after considering several different ideas, I've come up with one that is a mixture of two of them.

From my own experience with some 1-on-1 sports I used to play and prepare for, I conclude that once you've got a set of basic skills, the best way to keep improving and learning the rules, strategies and the philosophy behind that sport is playing against a wise, experienced and patient teacher. Any possible translations of this situation to some kind of 'live test-duel' would require an actual human with said abilities to play/teach against any newcomer, and complex technologies to make that work live.

But...what about a real duel with an interactive tutorial inside, in which new players will meet a robotic teacher (RoboRival?) programmed to play against humans in such way that it controls the evolution of the match by adapting in real time to human player's moves and also by guiding him/her through a path of relevant situations that will trigger some kind of pause for displaying information about rules, strategies, etc. relative to each different situation.

Maybe there should be 2 or 3 different tutorials, respectively covering diverse levels of difficulty, or just one with adjustable play/explanations rate... I think programmers have the skills to make these decisions. I absolutely don't :)

2. OTHER IDEAS FOR KEEPING DUELISTS HAPPY, ACTIVE AND MODERATELY HUNGRY

These are some points that require further developement if they ever get taken into consideration:

- In order to prevent excessively unbalanced matches, I'd add the option to let the computer filter the list of available players for matching, according to the desired settings (max. or min. rank, for example).

- In the context of the Duels page, I also think it's important to have each player's rank symbol displayed beside the regular profile pic and his/her name.

- Explore new effective ways to favor matches, like giving players the option to send a number of invitations for different users at a time, or a silent alert system to let users know who's available for dueling, no matter what they are doing inside or outside SG...

- I don't know how this can be done, but DUELS TOURNAMENTS would be awesome!! I have thought of Promotional Tournaments with a rank-based groups round, then elimination rounds and a great final game with some kind of prizes. It would also be cool to do Tournaments for Duel Teams (random, computer-balanced or made by users)...

Well, that's all for now. Cheers!

Exciting stuff, my two thoughts:

I think I would be more inclined to duel if the gamemode was more distinct from the olympics. It still kind of feels like an olympic race and you can do olympics instantly.
If the battle for speed is already fought in the olympics the battle for accuracy could be fought in the duels.
I had something like a very narrow range that slowly expands, until one of the duelists calls a shot in mind.
But I'm not sure how much sense that makes from an ear training/ gameplay perspective.

Thanks @Cuantas Vacas & @Gunnar Maaß; this is really helpful, and I think you are pointing in the right direction. and thanks to everyone who shared his thoughts and insights here. You have made my thoughts about the future of Duels much clearer🙏

I haven't been asked as I'm not Noam, but I just wanted to share the main reason why I like playing duels: because it's FUN.

The fact that coins are irrelevant (as fee or prize), there's no scoreboard specific to the round of duels you play non-stop against the same rival or each individual match having its own settings (sounds set and tolerance) randomized are features that also benefit its enjoyment.

Yes, I guess a fun hyper-gamified environment for audio and gaming fanatics is the right name for it.