You couldn't shake your read on me until the absolute end, but overall, it went well.
Quote from TS »
Vaimes I had pegged from day one. He was being pretty obvious with the fluff. Wish others would have picked up on it.
Hey!
Quote from Seppel »
Wow. I just thought Iso was playing absurdly poorly, not that he was scum! Like, I never would've guessed that he would make as poor choices for nightkills as imaginable.
Playing chicken with certain abilities might cause intriguing night kill choices to happen. Night kill choices should be considered, but not the end all be all, and clearing him base off of just that was kind of silly.
Quote from DV »
Ohh ooh.
Critique me please. Trying to get better at this game.
I think avoid getting distracted with random reads. You were correct on your initial town read of me, and right on some of your others. After I died, the spec chat was rooting for you, and I remember Twinborn, the game also felt like you were the town's hope. Just work on sticking to your guns.
To note as well I was upset since I thought you fake claimed GJ, then I remembered my own experience with my wording on my role as well. I was going to bring this up.
So my one complaint this game is this.
Medium-in-Training: Whenever a town player dies, you may choose to capture that player’s spirit at any time until the end of the following Night. Your Magatama can only “store” one spirit at a time, so using this ability will release the previously captured spirit.
Trial Abilities: (You do not start with these abilities. Trial Abilities are gained permanently when elected to the Jury.)
Kurain Channeling Technique: Once during the Investigation or Trial phases, you may choose to channel the spirit you have captured. If you do, that player will be placed into the game and you will be removed from the game until the beginning of the next phase.
Neither of these are worded very well from how you guys seemed to think that they worked. First off reading through spec chat too you seemed to think that I had to pick one player as soon as the night was over? But it seemed to me that I had the luxury of a whole day to choose to channel them or not.
Secondly, and this one gets me a lot. I played the first day assuming that I could channel my ability a lot. There is nothing to me that indicates that it is a one shot use. I read the "Once during to mean I could only channel one player". You see where I am getting at here? If I assume that I can hold multiple players in a day how my first ability is worded then the second part doesn't even remotely mean a one shot.
So, if in Investigation phase I channel WG, then I choose to capture Tom in Trail phase I could channel him as well. I see where you are coming from here and how to read it in a way that indicates a one shot. But I also feel that it is worded not as well as it could have been.
I also agree that GJ's was not worded that clearly either. Overall it wasn't the biggest deal on the face of the planet. But it could have been.
Yeah, the vague wording is something that we'll address once we get to our respective mod posts. Suffice to say that it was a pretty big problem and we wish that we had rewritten those role PMs to be more clear.
Yeah, the vague wording is something that we'll address once we get to our respective mod posts. Suffice to say that it was a pretty big problem and we wish that we had rewritten those role PMs to be more clear.
Overall though the game was a pleasure well written and well designed.
I think Vaimes's role was a little over the top? But then again he had everything break the way that was perfect for him.
My thoughts exactly, it was a fantastic setup and loads of fun to play. Vaimes was a bit of a surprise but I realised after I saw the role in the spec thread that we should have examined a role that hands out unlimited vig shots a bit more closely.
Would definitely /in if this setup were run again on the site!
Okay so let's talk about me first. I didn't have my best game, but I was still pretty good overall if we don't factor in Chris bias (ie punishing me for my usually high level of play.) I was right to defend a vast majority of the people that I did, I murdered Megs as hard as possible, and generally I didn't fall into silly role meta traps. I did fall into a) never thinking about third party and b) just letting Iso go because I was certain if he was scum he couldn't win. I mean, I was right, but always good to murder scum for bonus points and all of that.
So let's start with Iso: I was 100% correct to disregard him as scum when I did. He made a losing play. I don't worry about losing plays as town, I just don't. This will never burn me by its nature. Iso got cute, his team got butchered, he lost the game. If there had been no serial killer town wins this super easily. Iso was never going to be elected to the king maker spot, and there were too many people (including vaimes~) who were well regarded. People get too caught up in being precisely right or wrong. Sure nailing the entire scum team like I did in Predator night 1 is the optimal play (obviously) but there's very little lost at letting scum who make woefully poor decisions with no chance of escape to be left off the hook assuming you have an understanding of the gamestate and can trust the town to not allow that play to go unchecked. It worked out that way, but you know SK and stuff. I mean granted in the microcosm of "Chris didn't murder Iso" that's true, but not doing so cost me little.
So remember when I read like 2 posts, voted Vaimes, and begged you guys to do the same? I hate role meta. I hate all of you for this, in fact. Now granted Chris and his belief that SKs don't exist (I seriously have a problem where I just disregard third party stuff due to my bias against them being in games, its a blind spot for me) eventually let it go, but can we stop with the bad play? That's what it is. It is bad play. I never use role meta in the way you guys do and I am clearly scary good at mafia. You use it as a crutch except its a broken crutch that throws you into the ditch as often as it let's you play upright. Just... stop. Trying to play a host who often specifically does things in a weird way because of how often people role meta their games. Play the player, not the host. The host literally takes weeks, sometimes months, this time apparently more, to craft a setup. Experienced hosts are experienced players so they know what people tend to think is confirmable or 'obvious' and they will play to that. And guess what? If a player's role is obviously town more often than not the play behind it follows suit if only you decide to look. Stopping at the role is a venomous route for town to go, and this is how Vaimes won. Not because of a bad setup, or a stupid role (present here, mind you) but because everyone decided that Town Chris was a silly duck. Oh Chris, so silly. What does Town Chris know about playing mafia? Apparently nothing, according to his peers. I am not always right, and I will often make a wrong decision (letting go of Iso, my initial defense of rhand before I came around) but dismissing me out of hand because of role meta? That's not on me, that's on the game. It's just laziness. Vaimes won because town decided his role mattered more than the cracks in his armor which I for sure exposed. But, role. #Role.
So I went on a bit of a rant... I hope no one is expecting an apology. I didn't say that because I was in a bad mood, I often don't say it because I am in a really good, kind, patient mood. There's a difference and it is so important. I didn't say anything wrong. I didn't personally attack anyone. I questioned the mafia ability of members of this community, and I was right to do so. I was 100% right to do so. Even when I am not at the height of my playing ability I get pretty good results, like this game. I thought rhand was town, then I decided that I had been wrong. How often do most of you decide you are wrong? It doesn't seem often. There is this need... to be right. I don't have that need. I will switch my opinion at any time if something convinces me. You guys... don't seem to like to do that. And you don't like to catch scum either, you love to catch bad. You punish mistakes. It's just not how mafia needs to be played. Necarg, great example, my town case on him jury 1 was superb. No way should dota have ever hammered him. But he did. Because. Often Scum Megs who I very correctly called out for not having any of his usual town heart. I butchered Megs Trial 1. That was straight up classic town chris being savage to a member of scum. Didn't matter. Hell, I even correctly called out Iso not switching and letting GJ die as very scum motivated. If we had lynched Megs there I would have butchered Iso the next day. I probably still should have, but I was a bit demoralized, admittedly. That's on me, I can admit when I don't do the things I want to do.
No one is going to be perfect, I certainly am not, but I feel like a lot of you need better methodology. People are calling this an off game for me and that's my point: It was... but because I follow my methods every game, I can still have pretty good results and reads because I view games from a consistent point of view instead of whatever whimsy suits my needs for that day.
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2014 - Best Mafia Performance (Individual)(Wu Tang) 2014 - Best Mafia Newcomer 2015 - Best Town Performance (Individual) (Predator) 2015 - Best Town Performance (Group) - Predator Mafia 2015 - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - 2015 Invitational 2015 - Best Town Player 2015 - Best Mafia Player 2015 - Best Overall Player
Also before I forget. Tom, WTF was that Mato lynch?
Ignoring the town on that one(I don't get that logic either), but your logic on why he was scum made zero sense and not only that I proved it. And you even admitted at one point I was right, then basically said "But I'm lynching you anyways".
Citrus: I think you guys would have easily won the game if not for the track. I don't think you would have gotten lynched very easily for behavioral reasons.
My thoughts exactly, it was a fantastic setup and loads of fun to play. Vaimes was a bit of a surprise but I realised after I saw the role in the spec thread that we should have examined a role that hands out unlimited vig shots a bit more closely.
Would definitely /in if this setup were run again on the site!
Also before I forget. Tom, WTF was that Mato lynch?
Ignoring the town on that one(I don't get that logic either), but your logic on why he was scum made zero sense and not only that I proved it. And you even admitted at one point I was right, then basically said "But I'm lynching you anyways".
well remember i was totally backwards on my read of you and megs. that was a contributor to my behavior.
but when i hammered mato i was completely sure huntz and gj were town. and the two of you didnt make no lynching an option.
so i actually stand by that decision.
A lot of people are criticizing my play, but I feel like to do so here does completely misses the mark of what I was attempting to accomplish.
All game long, I was playing with the assumption that I would NOT survive endgame. This meant one of two things:
I needed to make my buddies look good, and
I needed to make my buddies survive as long as possible.
I was quite adept at #2 until Citric lynched Rhand after I gave him the perfect opening to No Lynch, and then I specifically told Citric that Megiddo needed to perform the Nightkill on the Night that Citric got Tracked. I also thought we'd have another 24 hours in Night, and I was out and about for a period of about 3 IRL days starting shortly before Night began, and noticed that it was already Day and that Citric had performed the kill. The plan was to go all-in on a Hail Mary to speedlynch as many people as possible while controlling the lynch outside of the Jury, both with our votes and with Rhand's ability. Boy, was I pissed when neither of those came to fruition.
So from that point on, I knew that Megiddo was going to be the next Day's lynch. I didn't expect him to get poisoned; hell, I expected to get poisoned, myself.
I had to completely change gears mid-game and play off of my interactions with Citric, as well as my incredibly risky moves that I had performed to keep my buddies alive to set myself up for endgame. For the most part, I was able to thinly veil them in WIFOM, which had players like GJ questioning my scum status.
I may be a reckless Mafia player, and I may do erratic, careless things (such as not reading the OP thoroughly - something I do as any alignment), but if there's something I always have going for me, it's that I have my finger on the pulse of the game at all times. The Night we killed Cyan? He was going to make noise until I was put on trial the next Day. The Night I wanted Megiddo to perform the kill but Citric did, instead? I knew Anak was going to Track Citric. I always have a plan, whether it's Electron Cloud as town or Cunning Scheme as scum, and that's why people are paranoid of me. Sure, I have games like Twinborn where I literally don't read the game and **** around because I'm lazy or whatever, but in general, my games lean more towards the Stargate realm of play - as in, nail the scumteam on Day 1 type stuff.
I get caught as scum, yes - but a lot of the time, that's because people have gotten burned off of me before (Pope Mafia, Mostly Mute Monk Mafia, hell, even my first scum game: Amnesia Mafia) and are scrutinizing me extra-closely because of this. I also recognize that my laziness as town is my biggest weakness; I want to be right, so sometimes I suffer from confirmation bias and don't re-read when I should. Mafia's felt less like fun and more like a chore for me, lately, and I think that's why I've become a Mafia curmudgeon in my old days.
So, Chris - would you like to talk about Electron Cloud Theory and how I approach Mafia as town, while I have you here?
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
As a General Rule of thumb I very much disagree with Sir Chris on role analysis. I think that if I had for a moment taken a very very long step back I would have seen Vaimes's role for being SK. We had already seen at least one town that killed. What I would not have seen is Vaime's role being able to win. If this game had gone on for a day longer I would have floated that idea around and proposed a Vaimes lynch so I disagree that role analysis is a crutch in this game it actually would have won if I had actually really thought about it and I had the seed starting to grow in my head but I was too late on that regard.
Very interested to hear about Iso's Electron Cloud Theory, although I think it'd be better to put it in the Theory and Discussion thread so everyone can join in.
Vaimes role was OP, but the town has no excuse for not lynching him. He contributed nothing, at any point, ever. He really didn't even PRETEND to contribute. His behavior was markedly different than it was in Stargate. Etc etc etc.
I'm also disappointed that you guys made no effort to try to figure out whom would want to NK me, when it clearly could only have been Iso. This game was very, very winnable for the town, especially when Citric just served himself up, and Huntzilla beautifully vigged Megiddo.
As a General Rule of thumb I very much disagree with Sir Chris on role analysis. I think that if I had for a moment taken a very very long step back I would have seen Vaimes's role for being SK. We had already seen at least one town that killed. What I would not have seen is Vaime's role being able to win. If this game had gone on for a day longer I would have floated that idea around and proposed a Vaimes lynch so I disagree that role analysis is a crutch in this game it actually would have won if I had actually really thought about it and I had the seed starting to grow in my head but I was too late on that regard.
I think that is Chris's point (he can correct me if I am wrong). If you ignored roles and went on behavior alone, Vaimes should have been lynched probably right after mato bit it.
Quote from Cyan »
Vaimes role was OP, but the town has no excuse for not lynching him. He contributed nothing, at any point, ever. He really didn't even PRETEND to contribute. His behavior was markedly different than it was in Stargate. Etc etc etc.
I will argue that Vaimes dies after Iso does. Like I said in spectator chat, the number of times an sk claims a vig like ability, after another vig is real and lives to the end game are far and few inbetween. Vaimes's role played more like a cult, and I think it's fair to say based on mtgs that cults are really, really frowned upon. I don't think anyone thought the game was ended with 6 people left, and 3 mafia dead.
Very interested to hear about Iso's Electron Cloud Theory, although I think it'd be better to put it in the Theory and Discussion thread so everyone can join in.
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Good.
Also thanks for the props in the QT. That goes to everyone who said nice job for the vig.
I called that you would vig him. Proph was the one who was doubtful : P
Also sorry guys, got a little distracted with an offsite game, Mod Notes will come maybe tonight or sometime tomorrow. I'm gonna primarily be talking about how the setup was created, what we can learn from it, etc. Proph I think you should use yours go over the play of the actual game itself.
Yeah that's my point. Not that role meta can never work, but that behavior analysis will much more often yield results and often makes sense with good and proper role meta.
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2014 - Best Mafia Performance (Individual)(Wu Tang) 2014 - Best Mafia Newcomer 2015 - Best Town Performance (Individual) (Predator) 2015 - Best Town Performance (Group) - Predator Mafia 2015 - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - 2015 Invitational 2015 - Best Town Player 2015 - Best Mafia Player 2015 - Best Overall Player
Behavioral analysis would never have worked on me, because from the beginning I played this game with the intention of winning with town. As a result, I felt I played this 99% how I would have played as actual town. Maybe I was slightly more self-conscious about drawing attention to myself, but that's about it as far as non-town mindsets go.
I've said it countless times, but I'm a pretty passive player. I had a spark of aggression/confidence in Classic, but that was pretty atypical (though I would like for my play to move more in that direction. I can only get told I'm "doing absolutely nothing to help town" so many times before I start to feel incompetent). And in Stargate, I got super lucky with Sir Chris flipping scum. My play didn't have a lot to do with me being townread, aside from getting the stamp of approval from Voxx for how I reacted to pressure.
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Iso, it's a little poor form to lose a game and immediately try to jettison all blame on a teammate over something that needs to be decided as a team (night actions) that you decided to not submit (forcing that teammate to submit them last second between important RL commitments), but you do you I guess. Least I know that if a scum-team you're potentially on is doing bad I just need to look to poor activity from you to confirm you're on it
Dude, I accepted responsibility for my part of it. I ****ed up because I thought our Night deadline was longer and IRL got in the way of me checking in sooner. Why is that the only thing you took from my post?
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Vaimes role was OP, but the town has no excuse for not lynching him. He contributed nothing, at any point, ever. He really didn't even PRETEND to contribute. His behavior was markedly different than it was in Stargate. Etc etc etc.
I'm also disappointed that you guys made no effort to try to figure out whom would want to NK me, when it clearly could only have been Iso. This game was very, very winnable for the town, especially when Citric just served himself up, and Huntzilla beautifully vigged Megiddo.
I figured it was a terrible scumteam, and that discounted Iso
What worked:
Flavor
Best modding 2016
The jury system
Some of the roles
What didn't work:
Vaimes's role
Poor wording of role PMs
I see you Togs, and I will definitely write this to focus a bit more on the play, but I want to talk about the setup too
In my mafia career, I've been obsessed with the "experience" a good game and good mod can invigorate a player in. I believe that memories and experiences are important with a game like Mafia, and I can count the number of seminal games like Seasons, Ataghan, Cyberpunk, and Hobbit as games that were well-received by the community and extremely memorable. Before and during the design of this game, I was investigating the elements of what makes a mafia game "great". Like, what separates a run of the mill Mini or Specialty over something truly special and memorable? Part of that can be a high level of play, which as a mod I don't have much control over (usually depends on the quality of the playerbase at the time) but I do have control over the mechanics and role design, as well as the flavor.
If I had to sum of the design of this game in a sentence or two, it would be "Megiddo-style Specialty with actual effort put into the flavor, plus unique role designs". Megiddo is a good friend of mine and I've been greatly influenced by his style of design. His games (Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, Presidential Mafia) usually have a central "hook" or mechanic, and then he builds off on them. With Presidential Mafia, it was the kingmaker system. With RtR/Gatecrash, it was the guild system. If you look at the design for this game, you'll notice something similar: Nearly every element was centered around the jury system, which we thought was a massive success (I'll get to that in a bit, though). We designed the jury system first, then we created roles that would explore that design space in a very cool way. The fact that we were able to pull it off, while staying true to the flavor of Ace Attorney was definitely one of the cooler aspects of the setup, in my opinion. Another plus of the setup was the fact that the mechanics did not detract much from the game. With these Specialty-type games, it's a very common trap to design your roles in such a way that they dominate the game. The fact that the jury system, as well as all of the 19 individual role designs did not detract from behavior is something we strived for, and daresay we succeeded at.
So that's the manifesto - we strove to design a game based around the game Ace Attorney, which Togs and I are huge fans of, while pushing the boundaries of role design and innovate using the jury system.
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There isn't really too much to say about the flavor, but I thought the fact that we provided flavor for every one of the lynch and opening scenes, as well as the Trial transition, was great. One of my pet peeves in mafia is when game mods go something like "Flavor coming later" and never providing it, since in my opinion, it damages the immersion and experience of a mafia game and turns your game into a forgettable one. I felt like the strongest flavor scene was Rhand's lynch scene, since it was the one I spent the most time on. Togs's role PM flavor for Godot and Sebastian (Cyan and Ghosting's roles) were IMO the best. I still laugh every time I read Ghosting's role PM. I was pretty proud of my Shi-Long Lang role PM flavor for smoothly transitioning him to have "evil" flavor, since he's normally a good guy/rival in the games. When I had to write for Klavier Gavin (Megiddo's role PM flavor) it was much harder because Klavier Gavin is one of the "cleanest" prosecutors and one of the most honorable.
Onto the modding. I pretty much declared this game my top priority and gave it every bit of modding energy I could - once again, I've played games with shoddy/not so good modding and they really put a damper on the game experience. I wanted the modding for this game to be so good that you didn't notice it, and judging by the positive comments about the modding (Seppel said something about the vote counts, and Anak was impressed by the speed of the action reception) this was another strong success. The modding was only good because I was able to offload some of the flavor scenes onto Togs, as well as strictly enforcing myself into giving vote counts every single day. If I had to offer tips to new mods, it's to gauge the pace of your game and provide vote counts - sometimes I posted two or three vote counts in one day since the game was moving super fast.
The jury system working well was also a very nice surprise. Before the game started, I noted that the jury system was the mechanic that was most likely to "go wrong", mostly because it wasn't tested and we spent little time working on it in review. We were very pleased for it to work out mostly how it was expected. I definitely think that the town could have done better controlling the jury if they monitored the jury votes, but the inclusion of one scum on each of the juries up until Day 5 didn't really harm the town? Iso could have confirmed himself as scum by not lynching Citrus and letting the deadline pass on Chris, but that was the only worrying part of the jury system. The jury system weakened the power of the lynch a bit (as if they got multiple townies arrested, like Day 2) but it could be pretty damaging to the scum as well: Day 3 was really when the town was on the ball and the jury was presented with multiple scum to lynch.
Some of the roles I thought were just basic "run of the mill" roles ended up working a lot better than expected. Sir Chris's neighborizer role was sort of a last-minute addition to the setup, but it ended up comboing very well with Gentleman Johnny, who was in jury three times until he got vigged. GJ could transmit messages to the jury from Chris, and Chris could use it to communicate with GJ at a time period where Chris could not speak. The communication barriers, and the fact that the neighbor role could transcend them, was a very neat thing that we did not notice in design.
We were also tickled at Citrus's role being EXACTLY used as we intended it to, as a way to "steal" the identity of someone else, which is what the Phantom actually did in Dual Destinies. The gameplay to story integration was epic. D_V also utilized his role well by channeling the dead spirit of Wheat, who had one of the best performances of a revived player I've ever seen. TappingStones was also funny as he blocked Anak from serving on the jury.. which ultimately ended up Anak getting to track the only scum role in the game that could be tracked.
On the flip side, I was really hoping to see Wheat's role (Ema) do something, since it was personally my most favorite role in the game. Seeing it get offed N1 was pretty heartbreaking.
Let's move onto what didn't work, and lessons to learn for next time.
Obviously the biggest mistake in retrospect was Vaimes's role. If I had to do the game again (and see how his role worked), I would have definitely made Vaimes need to target everyone in the game to win, and leave the game once he does. I would make him probably more of a friendly neutral rather than a Serial Killer, though as you can see in the review QT that Dahlia was in the game from the start (well, originally we had an even more wackier Neutral idea, but ZDS shot it down pretty quickly). Another idea would be to also make Dahlia some form of Hitman. However, the biggest mistake of Dahlia's role, I feel, was the "rug pulled out from under" the town. This is a cheating feeling that should never occur in a game ever, and I'm really sad that it occurred in ours. It's reminiscent of the "secret wincon" Clan Content Mafia 6 had. I thought it was pretty clear that the town would win if Vaimes left the game, as Iso would have been the eventual lynch on Day 6 - so feel free to count this as a spiritual town win, for any townies out there.
Another problem would be with the poor role PM writing. This is mostly with D_V's and GJ's roles. D_V's role was very poorly written, and we wished that we clarified the role better. We were actually considering letting GJ send a message N1, but it wouldn't have accomplished much. Speaking of GJ's role, I wish we just scrapped it and put a different role in. The original "Journalist" role - which lets players display a message during the Night - is a solid one, and I think it could have been used well, but the yes-no modifier and the questions just nerfed the role way too much.
I'll probably go over play in another post since this one is too long and I need to sleep.
One final tip I would offer new game mods is to strongly consider a co-mod/backup-mod for your game. This is so underutilized and I have no idea why. Togs was such a huge help throughout all the aspects of the game, from review to modding. He was with me throughout every stage of the game and really helped with the design of the game. I personally believe that games can be improved doublefold if people had a reliable, competent co-mod that was passionate about the game and the design.
Finally, I'd like to thank ZDS and all the people who replaced in (Huntzilla, Necarg). As I'm sure you can observe in the review QT, ZDS was a god tier reviewer and he helped us so much when we were designing the game. There would be a lot more problems with the setup if ZDS wasn't there to help us out. We surprisingly got very little replace outs, which is rare for a game of this caliber. I'm very happy that many of you decided to stick it out, and we hope that you guys had as much fun playing the game as we had designing it.
I thought that the unique setup of this game was amazing, and would love to see Phoenix Wright Mafia 2 at some point(since this is really the only type of game that can take advantage of this type of setup). The role flavor was awesome, my role was one of the coolest roles I've seen in quite awhile. Vaimes role sucked, but what can you do. Other than it, this game was outstanding, and you guys should be proud. I hope Xyre sees this post, so he knows that I really do praise Mods once in awhile.
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Hey!
Playing chicken with certain abilities might cause intriguing night kill choices to happen. Night kill choices should be considered, but not the end all be all, and clearing him base off of just that was kind of silly.
I think avoid getting distracted with random reads. You were correct on your initial town read of me, and right on some of your others. After I died, the spec chat was rooting for you, and I remember Twinborn, the game also felt like you were the town's hope. Just work on sticking to your guns.
The GJ way path to no lynching:
So my one complaint this game is this.
Medium-in-Training: Whenever a town player dies, you may choose to capture that player’s spirit at any time until the end of the following Night. Your Magatama can only “store” one spirit at a time, so using this ability will release the previously captured spirit.
Trial Abilities: (You do not start with these abilities. Trial Abilities are gained permanently when elected to the Jury.)
Kurain Channeling Technique: Once during the Investigation or Trial phases, you may choose to channel the spirit you have captured. If you do, that player will be placed into the game and you will be removed from the game until the beginning of the next phase.
Neither of these are worded very well from how you guys seemed to think that they worked. First off reading through spec chat too you seemed to think that I had to pick one player as soon as the night was over? But it seemed to me that I had the luxury of a whole day to choose to channel them or not.
Secondly, and this one gets me a lot. I played the first day assuming that I could channel my ability a lot. There is nothing to me that indicates that it is a one shot use. I read the "Once during to mean I could only channel one player". You see where I am getting at here? If I assume that I can hold multiple players in a day how my first ability is worded then the second part doesn't even remotely mean a one shot.
So, if in Investigation phase I channel WG, then I choose to capture Tom in Trail phase I could channel him as well. I see where you are coming from here and how to read it in a way that indicates a one shot. But I also feel that it is worded not as well as it could have been.
I also agree that GJ's was not worded that clearly either. Overall it wasn't the biggest deal on the face of the planet. But it could have been.
Overall though the game was a pleasure well written and well designed.
I think Vaimes's role was a little over the top? But then again he had everything break the way that was perfect for him.
Would definitely /in if this setup were run again on the site!
So let's start with Iso: I was 100% correct to disregard him as scum when I did. He made a losing play. I don't worry about losing plays as town, I just don't. This will never burn me by its nature. Iso got cute, his team got butchered, he lost the game. If there had been no serial killer town wins this super easily. Iso was never going to be elected to the king maker spot, and there were too many people (including vaimes~) who were well regarded. People get too caught up in being precisely right or wrong. Sure nailing the entire scum team like I did in Predator night 1 is the optimal play (obviously) but there's very little lost at letting scum who make woefully poor decisions with no chance of escape to be left off the hook assuming you have an understanding of the gamestate and can trust the town to not allow that play to go unchecked. It worked out that way, but you know SK and stuff. I mean granted in the microcosm of "Chris didn't murder Iso" that's true, but not doing so cost me little.
So remember when I read like 2 posts, voted Vaimes, and begged you guys to do the same? I hate role meta. I hate all of you for this, in fact. Now granted Chris and his belief that SKs don't exist (I seriously have a problem where I just disregard third party stuff due to my bias against them being in games, its a blind spot for me) eventually let it go, but can we stop with the bad play? That's what it is. It is bad play. I never use role meta in the way you guys do and I am clearly scary good at mafia. You use it as a crutch except its a broken crutch that throws you into the ditch as often as it let's you play upright. Just... stop. Trying to play a host who often specifically does things in a weird way because of how often people role meta their games. Play the player, not the host. The host literally takes weeks, sometimes months, this time apparently more, to craft a setup. Experienced hosts are experienced players so they know what people tend to think is confirmable or 'obvious' and they will play to that. And guess what? If a player's role is obviously town more often than not the play behind it follows suit if only you decide to look. Stopping at the role is a venomous route for town to go, and this is how Vaimes won. Not because of a bad setup, or a stupid role (present here, mind you) but because everyone decided that Town Chris was a silly duck. Oh Chris, so silly. What does Town Chris know about playing mafia? Apparently nothing, according to his peers. I am not always right, and I will often make a wrong decision (letting go of Iso, my initial defense of rhand before I came around) but dismissing me out of hand because of role meta? That's not on me, that's on the game. It's just laziness. Vaimes won because town decided his role mattered more than the cracks in his armor which I for sure exposed. But, role. #Role.
So I went on a bit of a rant... I hope no one is expecting an apology. I didn't say that because I was in a bad mood, I often don't say it because I am in a really good, kind, patient mood. There's a difference and it is so important. I didn't say anything wrong. I didn't personally attack anyone. I questioned the mafia ability of members of this community, and I was right to do so. I was 100% right to do so. Even when I am not at the height of my playing ability I get pretty good results, like this game. I thought rhand was town, then I decided that I had been wrong. How often do most of you decide you are wrong? It doesn't seem often. There is this need... to be right. I don't have that need. I will switch my opinion at any time if something convinces me. You guys... don't seem to like to do that. And you don't like to catch scum either, you love to catch bad. You punish mistakes. It's just not how mafia needs to be played. Necarg, great example, my town case on him jury 1 was superb. No way should dota have ever hammered him. But he did. Because. Often Scum Megs who I very correctly called out for not having any of his usual town heart. I butchered Megs Trial 1. That was straight up classic town chris being savage to a member of scum. Didn't matter. Hell, I even correctly called out Iso not switching and letting GJ die as very scum motivated. If we had lynched Megs there I would have butchered Iso the next day. I probably still should have, but I was a bit demoralized, admittedly. That's on me, I can admit when I don't do the things I want to do.
No one is going to be perfect, I certainly am not, but I feel like a lot of you need better methodology. People are calling this an off game for me and that's my point: It was... but because I follow my methods every game, I can still have pretty good results and reads because I view games from a consistent point of view instead of whatever whimsy suits my needs for that day.
2014 - Best Mafia Performance (Individual)(Wu Tang)
2014 - Best Mafia Newcomer
2015 - Best Town Performance (Individual) (Predator)
2015 - Best Town Performance (Group) - Predator Mafia
2015 - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - 2015 Invitational
2015 - Best Town Player
2015 - Best Mafia Player
2015 - Best Overall Player
Ignoring the town on that one(I don't get that logic either), but your logic on why he was scum made zero sense and not only that I proved it. And you even admitted at one point I was right, then basically said "But I'm lynching you anyways".
Crapsickles.
My only regret is that this wasn't a shared victory.
but when i hammered mato i was completely sure huntz and gj were town. and the two of you didnt make no lynching an option.
so i actually stand by that decision.
And being wrong.
@GJ
Thanks!
I didn't take it personal.
All game long, I was playing with the assumption that I would NOT survive endgame. This meant one of two things:
I needed to make my buddies look good, and
I needed to make my buddies survive as long as possible.
I was quite adept at #2 until Citric lynched Rhand after I gave him the perfect opening to No Lynch, and then I specifically told Citric that Megiddo needed to perform the Nightkill on the Night that Citric got Tracked. I also thought we'd have another 24 hours in Night, and I was out and about for a period of about 3 IRL days starting shortly before Night began, and noticed that it was already Day and that Citric had performed the kill. The plan was to go all-in on a Hail Mary to speedlynch as many people as possible while controlling the lynch outside of the Jury, both with our votes and with Rhand's ability. Boy, was I pissed when neither of those came to fruition.
So from that point on, I knew that Megiddo was going to be the next Day's lynch. I didn't expect him to get poisoned; hell, I expected to get poisoned, myself.
I had to completely change gears mid-game and play off of my interactions with Citric, as well as my incredibly risky moves that I had performed to keep my buddies alive to set myself up for endgame. For the most part, I was able to thinly veil them in WIFOM, which had players like GJ questioning my scum status.
I may be a reckless Mafia player, and I may do erratic, careless things (such as not reading the OP thoroughly - something I do as any alignment), but if there's something I always have going for me, it's that I have my finger on the pulse of the game at all times. The Night we killed Cyan? He was going to make noise until I was put on trial the next Day. The Night I wanted Megiddo to perform the kill but Citric did, instead? I knew Anak was going to Track Citric. I always have a plan, whether it's Electron Cloud as town or Cunning Scheme as scum, and that's why people are paranoid of me. Sure, I have games like Twinborn where I literally don't read the game and **** around because I'm lazy or whatever, but in general, my games lean more towards the Stargate realm of play - as in, nail the scumteam on Day 1 type stuff.
I get caught as scum, yes - but a lot of the time, that's because people have gotten burned off of me before (Pope Mafia, Mostly Mute Monk Mafia, hell, even my first scum game: Amnesia Mafia) and are scrutinizing me extra-closely because of this. I also recognize that my laziness as town is my biggest weakness; I want to be right, so sometimes I suffer from confirmation bias and don't re-read when I should. Mafia's felt less like fun and more like a chore for me, lately, and I think that's why I've become a Mafia curmudgeon in my old days.
So, Chris - would you like to talk about Electron Cloud Theory and how I approach Mafia as town, while I have you here?
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Good.
Also thanks for the props in the QT. That goes to everyone who said nice job for the vig.
I'm also disappointed that you guys made no effort to try to figure out whom would want to NK me, when it clearly could only have been Iso. This game was very, very winnable for the town, especially when Citric just served himself up, and Huntzilla beautifully vigged Megiddo.
I think that is Chris's point (he can correct me if I am wrong). If you ignored roles and went on behavior alone, Vaimes should have been lynched probably right after mato bit it.
I will argue that Vaimes dies after Iso does. Like I said in spectator chat, the number of times an sk claims a vig like ability, after another vig is real and lives to the end game are far and few inbetween. Vaimes's role played more like a cult, and I think it's fair to say based on mtgs that cults are really, really frowned upon. I don't think anyone thought the game was ended with 6 people left, and 3 mafia dead.
The GJ way path to no lynching:
So you wish it, so shall it be.
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Also sorry guys, got a little distracted with an offsite game, Mod Notes will come maybe tonight or sometime tomorrow. I'm gonna primarily be talking about how the setup was created, what we can learn from it, etc. Proph I think you should use yours go over the play of the actual game itself.
2014 - Best Mafia Performance (Individual)(Wu Tang)
2014 - Best Mafia Newcomer
2015 - Best Town Performance (Individual) (Predator)
2015 - Best Town Performance (Group) - Predator Mafia
2015 - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - 2015 Invitational
2015 - Best Town Player
2015 - Best Mafia Player
2015 - Best Overall Player
I've said it countless times, but I'm a pretty passive player. I had a spark of aggression/confidence in Classic, but that was pretty atypical (though I would like for my play to move more in that direction. I can only get told I'm "doing absolutely nothing to help town" so many times before I start to feel incompetent). And in Stargate, I got super lucky with Sir Chris flipping scum. My play didn't have a lot to do with me being townread, aside from getting the stamp of approval from Voxx for how I reacted to pressure.
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Iso, it's a little poor form to lose a game and immediately try to jettison all blame on a teammate over something that needs to be decided as a team (night actions) that you decided to not submit (forcing that teammate to submit them last second between important RL commitments), but you do you I guess. Least I know that if a scum-team you're potentially on is doing bad I just need to look to poor activity from you to confirm you're on it
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Flavor
Best modding 2016
The jury system
Some of the roles
What didn't work:
Vaimes's role
Poor wording of role PMs
I see you Togs, and I will definitely write this to focus a bit more on the play, but I want to talk about the setup too
If I had to sum of the design of this game in a sentence or two, it would be "Megiddo-style Specialty with actual effort put into the flavor, plus unique role designs". Megiddo is a good friend of mine and I've been greatly influenced by his style of design. His games (Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, Presidential Mafia) usually have a central "hook" or mechanic, and then he builds off on them. With Presidential Mafia, it was the kingmaker system. With RtR/Gatecrash, it was the guild system. If you look at the design for this game, you'll notice something similar: Nearly every element was centered around the jury system, which we thought was a massive success (I'll get to that in a bit, though). We designed the jury system first, then we created roles that would explore that design space in a very cool way. The fact that we were able to pull it off, while staying true to the flavor of Ace Attorney was definitely one of the cooler aspects of the setup, in my opinion. Another plus of the setup was the fact that the mechanics did not detract much from the game. With these Specialty-type games, it's a very common trap to design your roles in such a way that they dominate the game. The fact that the jury system, as well as all of the 19 individual role designs did not detract from behavior is something we strived for, and daresay we succeeded at.
So that's the manifesto - we strove to design a game based around the game Ace Attorney, which Togs and I are huge fans of, while pushing the boundaries of role design and innovate using the jury system.
---
There isn't really too much to say about the flavor, but I thought the fact that we provided flavor for every one of the lynch and opening scenes, as well as the Trial transition, was great. One of my pet peeves in mafia is when game mods go something like "Flavor coming later" and never providing it, since in my opinion, it damages the immersion and experience of a mafia game and turns your game into a forgettable one. I felt like the strongest flavor scene was Rhand's lynch scene, since it was the one I spent the most time on. Togs's role PM flavor for Godot and Sebastian (Cyan and Ghosting's roles) were IMO the best. I still laugh every time I read Ghosting's role PM. I was pretty proud of my Shi-Long Lang role PM flavor for smoothly transitioning him to have "evil" flavor, since he's normally a good guy/rival in the games. When I had to write for Klavier Gavin (Megiddo's role PM flavor) it was much harder because Klavier Gavin is one of the "cleanest" prosecutors and one of the most honorable.
Onto the modding. I pretty much declared this game my top priority and gave it every bit of modding energy I could - once again, I've played games with shoddy/not so good modding and they really put a damper on the game experience. I wanted the modding for this game to be so good that you didn't notice it, and judging by the positive comments about the modding (Seppel said something about the vote counts, and Anak was impressed by the speed of the action reception) this was another strong success. The modding was only good because I was able to offload some of the flavor scenes onto Togs, as well as strictly enforcing myself into giving vote counts every single day. If I had to offer tips to new mods, it's to gauge the pace of your game and provide vote counts - sometimes I posted two or three vote counts in one day since the game was moving super fast.
The jury system working well was also a very nice surprise. Before the game started, I noted that the jury system was the mechanic that was most likely to "go wrong", mostly because it wasn't tested and we spent little time working on it in review. We were very pleased for it to work out mostly how it was expected. I definitely think that the town could have done better controlling the jury if they monitored the jury votes, but the inclusion of one scum on each of the juries up until Day 5 didn't really harm the town? Iso could have confirmed himself as scum by not lynching Citrus and letting the deadline pass on Chris, but that was the only worrying part of the jury system. The jury system weakened the power of the lynch a bit (as if they got multiple townies arrested, like Day 2) but it could be pretty damaging to the scum as well: Day 3 was really when the town was on the ball and the jury was presented with multiple scum to lynch.
Some of the roles I thought were just basic "run of the mill" roles ended up working a lot better than expected. Sir Chris's neighborizer role was sort of a last-minute addition to the setup, but it ended up comboing very well with Gentleman Johnny, who was in jury three times until he got vigged. GJ could transmit messages to the jury from Chris, and Chris could use it to communicate with GJ at a time period where Chris could not speak. The communication barriers, and the fact that the neighbor role could transcend them, was a very neat thing that we did not notice in design.
We were also tickled at Citrus's role being EXACTLY used as we intended it to, as a way to "steal" the identity of someone else, which is what the Phantom actually did in Dual Destinies. The gameplay to story integration was epic. D_V also utilized his role well by channeling the dead spirit of Wheat, who had one of the best performances of a revived player I've ever seen. TappingStones was also funny as he blocked Anak from serving on the jury.. which ultimately ended up Anak getting to track the only scum role in the game that could be tracked.
On the flip side, I was really hoping to see Wheat's role (Ema) do something, since it was personally my most favorite role in the game. Seeing it get offed N1 was pretty heartbreaking.
Let's move onto what didn't work, and lessons to learn for next time.
Obviously the biggest mistake in retrospect was Vaimes's role. If I had to do the game again (and see how his role worked), I would have definitely made Vaimes need to target everyone in the game to win, and leave the game once he does. I would make him probably more of a friendly neutral rather than a Serial Killer, though as you can see in the review QT that Dahlia was in the game from the start (well, originally we had an even more wackier Neutral idea, but ZDS shot it down pretty quickly). Another idea would be to also make Dahlia some form of Hitman. However, the biggest mistake of Dahlia's role, I feel, was the "rug pulled out from under" the town. This is a cheating feeling that should never occur in a game ever, and I'm really sad that it occurred in ours. It's reminiscent of the "secret wincon" Clan Content Mafia 6 had. I thought it was pretty clear that the town would win if Vaimes left the game, as Iso would have been the eventual lynch on Day 6 - so feel free to count this as a spiritual town win, for any townies out there.
Another problem would be with the poor role PM writing. This is mostly with D_V's and GJ's roles. D_V's role was very poorly written, and we wished that we clarified the role better. We were actually considering letting GJ send a message N1, but it wouldn't have accomplished much. Speaking of GJ's role, I wish we just scrapped it and put a different role in. The original "Journalist" role - which lets players display a message during the Night - is a solid one, and I think it could have been used well, but the yes-no modifier and the questions just nerfed the role way too much.
I'll probably go over play in another post since this one is too long and I need to sleep.
One final tip I would offer new game mods is to strongly consider a co-mod/backup-mod for your game. This is so underutilized and I have no idea why. Togs was such a huge help throughout all the aspects of the game, from review to modding. He was with me throughout every stage of the game and really helped with the design of the game. I personally believe that games can be improved doublefold if people had a reliable, competent co-mod that was passionate about the game and the design.
Finally, I'd like to thank ZDS and all the people who replaced in (Huntzilla, Necarg). As I'm sure you can observe in the review QT, ZDS was a god tier reviewer and he helped us so much when we were designing the game. There would be a lot more problems with the setup if ZDS wasn't there to help us out. We surprisingly got very little replace outs, which is rare for a game of this caliber. I'm very happy that many of you decided to stick it out, and we hope that you guys had as much fun playing the game as we had designing it.