Yeah yeah, but scum sided to me means if you run the game 100 times the scum win 60 the town win 40. Its a probability game. The scum have counters to literally everything the town can do, and in ways that feels almost unfair. If this game was to be run a lot, the mafia would always be able to save their abilities for the town PR claims that inevitably happen in mafia and then pick the town off at their leisure. The moment the doc claims the mafia can guarantee for at least two nights with the delayer that person doesn't do anything. And they can target another player as well.
I mean, yes, that's what's scum sided (or town sided) means, it means that on average one side defeats the other instead of being "perfectly" balanced (not that a game really can be perfectly balanced). "Roughly balanced" means maybe within 10% of each other (55-45 in either direction) so we're only off on evaluation by 12% of games? I think it's more like 52-48 town sided so if you think it's 60-40 scum sided, then, yeah. (But I don't think your math further on shows that it's 60-40 scum sided, either, it shows roughly balanced with a slight scum side if you value vigs and docs the same as trackers.)
I just don't value town kills nearly as much as other people do I guess. Vigs in good hands can be brutal, in bad hands they can be equally brutal. Extra kills like this are basically extra lynches, they pretty decent. But, that's really the only power the town had. And that's the issue. It isn't that the town didn't have power, its that the town had limited power.
The Ghostbusters absolutely are real power. The doctorguard is real power. The tracker is real power. The JoAT is real power (1 shot bus driver plus 1 shot roleblock, plus the 2 shot grave digger that gave more set up information than Cantrip usually gives out). The neighborizers can get a reusable vanilla cop shot that looks pretty strong in this set up since neither I nor Rodemy can actually claim our roles and we only have one fake claim (and Rodemy's role using it could actually be caught out by Tubba trying to track him and getting disabled).
You're seeming to ignore how much of an advantage on paper the mafia have over town. The mafia can **** with all of the power roles in a single night. Hell, they get the super witch on me it isn't even hard for them to do so. RB one, delay the other two, and **** me over as well wasting my one shot.
Yes, if Ivo Shandor targets exactly the JoAT on N1 and wolves spend all of their other resources to hose them specifically, the JoAT gets hosed, but it's not like the delay actually messes with the gravedigger shots anyway, and it uses basically all of the wolves' resources. The delay barely affects the doctorguard unless wolves target the same player he tries to because they still get cocooned.
I'm not ignoring the mafia's advantages, but I feel like you're downplaying the extra lynches, the doctorguard, the tracker, the potential vanilla cop, etc.
It just feels like you are not taking into account the litany of scum powers that exist in the game. All four of the mafia have power. The town has like 5 members that really have power and then the gatekeeper/keymaster roles. But that's not even true.
The wolf Ghostbuster doesn't have power, lol. That role merely ensures that one of the Ghostbuster kills is on a villager or that, at least, it can't kill a wolf (at the risk of tying yourself to them if they're lynched anyway). That's not a power role, it's a limitation on a town power. Requiring the other Ghostbuster also ensures that the kill is inside of the PoE and gives information because they aren't going to sign off on the wolf trying to daykill the towniest player in the game.
The town have the GB's lets give them .5 each That's what they are worth.
A doctor thing(True power role)
Then they have a tracker that loses their tracking.
A JoaT that has one ability that is sort of meh(The role flips) and two abilities.
And then the keymasters, which may or may not ever find each other and then their ability is OK afterwords.
At best the town have 6.5 power roles. In practice its something more like 4.
I hard disagree that the Ghostbusters are only worth a half point each, lol what even is that. A vig is worth 3 points by Axelrod's point method, so the first two should be worth 1.25 points at minimum. Maaaaybe the third is only worth a VT (1 point) because a wolf has to sign off on the second kill, but giving the town a potential two full extra PoE kills and only charging them for half of a vanilla town is. Weird to me.
Okay, I read the rest of your post and you're using a different point system / math than I'm used to, and not just that, but your point system values Doctor and Vigilante at the same rate as Tracker when they're closer to Watcher in power level, I think. But sure, we'll roll with that.
Three Ghostbusters are worth .5 points each by your count (1.5)
I'm assigning Doctorguard 1 full point because Bodyguard is worth at least .5 and this is quite a lot better than that (2.5)
The tracker with a disabling limitation is worth .5 probably? (3)
The JoAT is worth at least .5 given it has a busdriver + a roleblock, though it doesn't have control over which abilities it gets first (3.5)
The Gatekeeper+Keymaster are worth a full point together, I'm sure, given they become neighbors (+.5) and have access to a repeatable vanilla cop shot and one of them is a self watcher (4.5 total)
Plus 12 points for vanillas + town bodies is 16.5.
Let's take a look at the mafia.
Mafia goon that can also have access to a day kill(I'm going to count this as a one because goons already are counted as a one by most math and this does more a lot more).
Mafia two shot delayer that can target two players
Mafia one shot ROLE COP and WITCH
Mafia PERMANENT(albeit loud) tracker plus can't be targeted.
And the mafia have access to a strong man on three players.
We're counting the Ghostbuster as a goon, yes? So that's worth 0 points of power (0)
The delayer is maybe worth a full point, I guess you could push it to 1.5 given it double targets but also, limited shots (1.5)
A oneshot rolecop+witch is maybe worth another 1. (2.5)
The tracker is worth 1.5. Maaaaybe 2 if you're really pushing it because of the ascetic bit even though it also stops the tracker from being disabled and makes them suspicious as hell. (4.5)
The strongman shot is maybe another .5, though that's generous given that it only works on 3 players and is automatically expended on the first Ghostbuster kill. Call it 5 total, I guess, which puts you at 17. Barely "scum sided" given the town's 16.5 points. Even if you give the tracker a whole extra point and make it just as a good as a Cop (which is clearly not true) the wolves only have 18.
However, (1) I believe your point system doesn't value extra kills correctly, and the Ghostbusters should be worth closer to 1 each, and (2) points being exactly equal doesn't guarantee you a perfectly balanced game anyway because it doesn't take into account interactions between roles, set up size (masons are better in smaller set ups and worse in larger ones), or anything else. This isn't a science, it's an art, and having point values exactly the same isn't the goal, it's to be roughly equal so you know the game isn't an obvious blow out. This isn't wildly unbalanced by any stretch, especially considering the Ghostbusters are probably worth closer to .75 points each if we're valuing extra kills at 1.5 as I would prefer (which puts the wolves at 18.25 at most and the town at 18.25 points).
You see the problem here? What exactly does the town do? How do you see this as being town sided? The town just sort of suck.
The problem seems to be that you're using a point system to rate the set up in a vacuum, and your point system somewhat underrates town power like cops and vigs. In my opinion. You're also using it as some kind of final, objective arbiter of balance when it pretty clearly isn't. No point system is, it's all guidelines. It's someone else's opinion about what makes sense, not an objective fact, and being roughly equivalent is the goal of these things. Not to be exactly balanced, but to be "close enough." Off by a point or two isn't going to give you significantly lopsided games.
If this was a mountainous game 4 v 12 is balanced. And that's the issue. The mafia have pound per player more fire power than the town does. By A LOT.
Mafia have to have more power per player for the set up to be balanced. They have fewer players, so to keep the set up balanced according to these point tallies you have to spread the same number of points worth of power over a smaller number of players. Say you want to give each side 8 points worth of power, that means giving Mafia 2 points per player but only giving town one point per player with 4 vanillas.
But, yes, your point about "what if the game was mountainous" is well taken. See, the wolf abilities don't actually do anything except block town abilities. That means even if the wolves perfectly blocked every single town action and the Tracker disabled himself on N1, it would just be a 16/4 mountainous game with at least one extra lynch the mafia cannot vote for due to the Ghostbuster kill.
HOWEVER, mafia gain power for each roleblock and they can target two players with it. PLUS they have the can't be targeted.
I don't understand your point about the wolves gaining power with each roleblock, but I already accounted for point assignments including double target delayer and ascetic so I guess you can just tell me what you disagree with.
Its not town sided its scum sided.
The math says this is scum sided at the outset. Compound that with weaker town roles, and stronger mafia roles and this game is scum sided.
I disagree.
I disagree that the math shows the game is scum sided to any significant extent. Even if you alter the point totals so the wolves are two points up on the town somehow, that doesn't mean the game is actually wolf sided, it means if you measure the game using that specific, arbitrary point scale the game appears to be wolf sided. In addition, I'd probably rate the the Ghostbusters at .75 each rather than .5, and maybe even the JoAT as well since it actually has quite a bit of disruption on it that can change kill targets, etc.
I disagree that just because the town roles are weaker individually that means the entire town is weaker as a whole.
I think the game is roughly balanced (within 55-45), but if it's slanted in any direction it's slanted towards the town given the lack of safe claims, ways of catching wolves like the vanilla cop, the tracker working on half of the wolves and returning suspicious results on the other (who, it must be noted, must claim his role because it's loud and who should be counterclaimed immediately by the actual town tracker), etc. Wolves needed the amount of disruption we had given the amount of information the town had in this set up (tracker that acts as a psuedo-ectocop, the repeatable vanilla cop on the neighbors, the mass gravedigger shots) in addition to the amount of night kill disruption the town has (roleblock and busdriver on the JoAT, Doctorguard).
I'm not expecting you to agree with me, dude. It's just, like, my opinion, man. But I don't think I'm being wildly unreasonable with these ratings to the point that all of the hyperbole is warranted.
I think its widely unreasonable to give the mafia GB goon status of + 0 and the town all three of the GB roles as power. Its either two for town or the mafia pick up that point of power in their own accommodation.
The JoaT is pure garbage for what it does.
RB is good.
Role flips whoopty doo.
Bus driver is so ******* hit and miss, I can **** the town over as much as I **** the scum over with that.
I think fundamentally part of the problem is you're bad at playing mafia. And I mean the alignment.
Scum just have way more power in this game. They can sit back and watch and react to town and they really are kings of the castle in this game for being able to always succeed in the kill they want with very little claims from the town. I'm looking at this from the prospective of a holistic approach you seem to be looking very much at each tree.
This town is garbage. I'm baffled that you think otherwise.
Also, you can definitely claim the Rodemy and Delayer roles. Once again bad at playing mafia here. Its really holding you back. You are making hand waving arguments and you don't understand.
You mentioned in scum chat that I didn't want to claim the two shot of revealing roles, and you thought that was the most town ability I had. I saw it as a SK claim, I was aware of the problems it presented in claiming that.
I just think you're bad at mafia and that's why you don't understand.
The tracker is sort of real power but it can turn itself off night one. Its so ******* swingy. Its a bad role.
The GB is power, but its hard to figure out what to rate them, they work as a collective and sort of in an interesting way. You want to rate all three of the towns higher, but you're ignoring the mafia one and not giving the mafia any power for that. Ehhh seems like a noob decision to me.
Yes, if Ivo Shandor targets exactly the JoAT on N1 and wolves spend all of their other resources to hose them specifically, the JoAT gets hosed, but it's not like the delay actually messes with the gravedigger shots anyway, and it uses basically all of the wolves' resources. The delay barely affects the doctorguard unless wolves target the same player he tries to because they still get cocooned.
Ehh
**** me man.
You realize there are hero shots in this game right? I've continually brought it up. Your whole arguments seem disingenuous to me. Its like you are avoiding talking about some things and really only trying to fight like one battle. Its just such bad logic. Its not all of their power, the town has like no power. The scum have limited power, but its ******* defined and they know what they have. They also get hero shots and you're ignoring that in your analysis.
Vanilla cop isn't bad, it isn't good, and its just a potential?
I'm not downplaying, the doc is a doc. Its not worth much more than that, and its not worth less. Vig is vig shot I'm not sure how to rate it, I don't think its that much stronger than a normal vig in the game, but I'm not sure its weaker either.
Joat is pretty bad and the tracker is so swingy its hard to figure out.
Town's power CAN be insane, but more likely than not its not going to be. The tracker disables itself. The Joat can **** the town over almost as much as it can **** the mafia over. Its like you've never played mafia before. You've never seen a RB, block the town doc.
But, yes, your point about "what if the game was mountainous" is well taken. See, the wolf abilities don't actually do anything except block town abilities. That means even if the wolves perfectly blocked every single town action and the Tracker disabled himself on N1, it would just be a 16/4 mountainous game with at least one extra lynch the mafia cannot vote for due to the Ghostbuster kill.
Come on you've played mafia, you should know normal setups. Normal setups are like 3 goons 9 VT and a jailer and a doc. That's like slightly town favored but not much. I just feel like I'm arguing with someone that hasn't played mafia.
Your logic is lack of safe claims, even though all of the roles are safe claimable. Ways of catching wolves is off, because of this also that vanilla cop might never turn on and likely won't in most games. Tracker is like Ehh sometimes they hit sometimes they don't(Also the tracker can track the doc to the GB and the mafia can force the kill on that player). Town doesn't have any info. The vanilla cop may turn on but likely it won't. The JoAT likely is going to **** with the doctor as much as with the town.
I just feel like you've never played mafia. That's what this feels like. Its bizarro land to me. The night kill is not really disrupted though that's the problem. 3 out of 12 of the town have a guaranteed kill on them 25%, the mafia also can safe guard from the RB by just using kami. The busdriver is going to be just as likely to **** with the doc as with the mafia. The doc is powerful, but its also going to die.
Your whole analysis just really lacks for the power of the wolves and I think that's because you don't know how to play wolves.
Also I'm deeply skeptical of that grids scoring. A pair of Masons (with our standard confirmed town definition) are not half a point weaker than a watcher and a full point weaker than a cop. It's a useful heuristic but I don't agree with all it's judgments.
Its .5 per. So that's a 1 for the mason group. If they know its town its double at 2.
So same power level as a cop.
You can't have a group of 1 though. It specifically says it's a two person group at .5. And I'd agree with that as I'd definitely not weigh a neighborhood without confirmation as being equivalent to a tracker or Doc. So basically I don't trust that point system at all.
I see what you mean now about the ability failing. You're correct, but I think it's still possible to resolve those two abilities in a non bastard way. That's why I'm very curious as to how Cantrip would resolve it. I think (I believe in agreement with you) that it would be bastard to not notify the busdriver somehow that their redirection failed, I think a message along the lines of "You sucessfully busdrove x and y, but there was an ability that you failed to redirect" would have been an appropriate and expect notification.
And the ability to reevaluate after a day vig is why I think it's noticeably more powerful than a regular vig.
For the record a Mountainous 15er (12T 3W) is often played on MU don't know if it is statistically balanced, but it is widely played.
Yeah so one more mafia is highly suspect.
Well not exactly. Mafia power is usually disruptive to town power. It doesn't usually add strength beyond numbers. It tends to be used to rein town power in. Town power adds to the game more often. It either provides additional alignment information, town controlled flips, or prevented mafia night kills. Those give the effect of adding additional mislynches to a game. Very few mafia roles (and none present in this game) change the clock. Town has at the most stringent reading 1.5 roles that do. The ghostbusters and the doc. The mafia roles are very disruptive/good at gathering information but none of them are truly additive beyond the numbers. Town has some that are.
If we accept 11/2 and 12/3 as roughly balanced but slightly scum favored then I'd guess without knowledge that 13/4 is also close as a 17er. Maybe growing linerally doesn't work but if it does then you just have to ask if town will gain on average value equivalent 1 mislynch through use of their PR's through mafia disruption. And I'd say the doctor and ghostbusters provide that on average.
Come on you've played mafia, you should know normal setups. Normal setups are like 3 goons 9 VT and a jailer and a doc. That's like slightly town favored but not much. I just feel like I'm arguing with someone that hasn't played mafia.
I have literally never seen a 12-player setup on MTGS where town has PRs and scum don't. Going back through 10 or so basics, I can't find a setup that matches that description.
Please consider that your experience may not be universal. Including your expectation of what is "normal".
I think its widely unreasonable to give the mafia GB goon status of + 0 and the town all three of the GB roles as power. Its either two for town or the mafia pick up that point of power in their own accommodation.
I was using your own values there, you said the mafia Ghostbuster was worth the same as a goon so I gave it goon points. Give it an extra point, that literally doesn't change the thrust of my post at all.
The JoaT is pure garbage for what it does.
RB is good.
Role flips whoopty doo.
Bus driver is so ******* hit and miss, I can **** the town over as much as I **** the scum over with that.
You're choosing the floor and arguing it's the average case. Average case is that it does stone cold nothing, for all of these roles, which makes the set up mountainous with an extra town kill. Do you fundamentally disagree with this assessment or not?
Also, role flips are a very, very strong ability in no flip set-ups, and getting delayed actually makes them better since you get an extra flip for the same activation.
I think fundamentally part of the problem is you're bad at playing mafia. And I mean the alignment.
I'm bad at actively posting as mafia and rolereading, I'm not that bad at night action assessment lol.
Scum just have way more power in this game. They can sit back and watch and react to town and they really are kings of the castle in this game for being able to always succeed in the kill they want with very little claims from the town. I'm looking at this from the prospective of a holistic approach you seem to be looking very much at each tree.
I'd argue the reverse , you're the one trying to say "the individual mafia roles are too strong, look at this garbage tracker they're competing with" while I'm saying the town as a whole is roughly balanced against the wolves.
This town is garbage. I'm baffled that you think otherwise.
Also, you can definitely claim the Rodemy and Delayer roles. Once again bad at playing mafia here. Its really holding you back. You are making hand waving arguments and you don't understand.
You reallllly can't claim those and use them in a scum sided way, dude. And if you town side with them, then what's the point? Also, you're doing waaaay more handwaving than I am here.
You mentioned in scum chat that I didn't want to claim the two shot of revealing roles, and you thought that was the most town ability I had. I saw it as a SK claim, I was aware of the problems it presented in claiming that.
What? Two shots of mass gravedigger, dumping flip info into the public where it's most relevant for town, is a serial killer ability?
I just think you're bad at mafia and that's why you don't understand.
The tracker is sort of real power but it can turn itself off night one. Its so ******* swingy. Its a bad role.
I'm not saying it isn't swingy, I'm saying it should be a CC to the loud mafia role at worst and is virtually a full tracker at best. I don't like the role myself, I don't go in for the swingy ones and I probably wouldn't have passed this set up in review just on the number of swingy roles alone, but that doesn't mean it's useless. And I only gave it a half point anyway, yep, I gave it half tracker points even though it only disables itself 25% of the time. That's a bargain.
The GB is power, but its hard to figure out what to rate them, they work as a collective and sort of in an interesting way. You want to rate all three of the towns higher, but you're ignoring the mafia one and not giving the mafia any power for that. Ehhh seems like a noob decision to me.
Dude, look. The first two are worth a vig at least, right? The third at worst forces the wolf to target someone in the PoE. Same for the wolf, he stops the other kill from landing on a partner but the kill still has to be in the PoE and is therefore, at least slightly, townsided. But fine. Give the first two .75, the third .5, and the wolf a full point for all I care, you aren't engaging in the core of the criticism I gave you, you're nitpicking point values while refusing to concretely assign your own in order to sidestep the actual point of my post.
Which is that these point scales aren't objective, but that the game is roughly balanced according to them anyway, and that the floor for this game is a 12v4 with a town day vig versus the ceiling which is multiple stopped kills and tracked/CC'd wolves. The average game is going to be between those two extremes, clearly, but even if you're right that the game is slightly scum sided, the mere idea that it might be slightly town sided is not so ludicrous that I deserve to be insulted the way you've been insulting me since the beginning of this conversation.
You realize there are hero shots in this game right? I've continually brought it up.
Yes, and? What does that have to do with literally anything? What's the point of an extra role cop + witch when you're the last wolf left? I guess it's somewhat useful if it's, like, a 1v8 or something, but at that point you're so far behind you're hosed anyway, one more shot of anything other than an extra kill isn't really worth points. If you're in F3 the shot does nothing. The delayer shot activates earlier and could be somewhat more relevant, I guess, but is it worth another .5 points? I don't think so, but you know what? Fine. Give the delayer another half point and the Rolecop+Witch another full point for all I care. Or vice-versa. Unless you think the Tracker is worth a Town Alignment Cop that still only puts the wolves at 19.5 while overvaluing the wolf ghostbuster at a full point even though he can't place his shot at will versus the town's 17 (with two ghostbusters at .75 and the third at .5 because wolves can mess with it or whatever).
This still doesn't matter, because the point is that you have to completely contort reasonable point assignments for these roles to make this significantly scum sided, and I think that's why you're refusing to concretely assign points to most of these roles.
Your whole arguments seem disingenuous to me. Its like you are avoiding talking about some things and really only trying to fight like one battle. Its just such bad logic. Its not all of their power, the town has like no power. The scum have limited power, but its ******* defined and they know what they have. They also get hero shots and you're ignoring that in your analysis.
Wow, okay, wolves can coordinate and town can't??? That's super strong, maybe we should ban mafia night talk too??????
Stop treating me like I've never played a game before and engage me on the substance of my argument.
Vanilla cop isn't bad, it isn't good, and its just a potential?
I'm not downplaying, the doc is a doc. Its not worth much more than that, and its not worth less. Vig is vig shot I'm not sure how to rate it, I don't think its that much stronger than a normal vig in the game, but I'm not sure its weaker either.
Joat is pretty bad and the tracker is so swingy its hard to figure out.
Okay, but do you fundamentally disagree with my assessment of their point values? If we rate the Ghostbusters at .5 each (including the wolf buster), the Doc at 1 point, the joat and tracker at .5, then wolves only come out (significantly) ahead if you rate their tracker at the same strength as a Town Alignment Cop. Does that really seem so unreasonable to you that it deserves saying you're talking to someone who's never played Mafia before, or are you going to continue dismissing me without actually engaging with the argument I'm presenting?
Town's power CAN be insane, but more likely than not its not going to be. The tracker disables itself. The Joat can **** the town over almost as much as it can **** the mafia over. Its like you've never played mafia before. You've never seen a RB, block the town doc.
Uh. Yes, I have, and we're talking floors again now, and the floor for this game is 12v4 with a town vig. I don't think that's too scum sided. Could it lose a game that would otherwise be saved? Yeah, sure, but we aren't talking average cases anymore, you're cherry picking bad things that can happen with town roles and saying that's the average case. I already agreed the wolf roles have a higher floor, I just don't think that matters as much.
But, yes, your point about "what if the game was mountainous" is well taken. See, the wolf abilities don't actually do anything except block town abilities. That means even if the wolves perfectly blocked every single town action and the Tracker disabled himself on N1, it would just be a 16/4 mountainous game with at least one extra lynch the mafia cannot vote for due to the Ghostbuster kill.
Come on you've played mafia, you should know normal setups. Normal setups are like 3 goons 9 VT and a jailer and a doc. That's like slightly town favored but not much. I just feel like I'm arguing with someone that hasn't played mafia.
What does this have to do with... literally anything? It has nothing to do with my claim that the ceiling for wolves is to make the game effectively a 12v4 with a town vig. You're just quoting stuff I've said so you can dismiss it without even engaging it. I'm not even actually sure you read my post as much as you selectively quoted it and ignored the stuff you couldn't argue against.
Your logic is lack of safe claims, even though all of the roles are safe claimable. Ways of catching wolves is off, because of this also that vanilla cop might never turn on and likely won't in most games. Tracker is like Ehh sometimes they hit sometimes they don't(Also the tracker can track the doc to the GB and the mafia can force the kill on that player). Town doesn't have any info. The vanilla cop may turn on but likely it won't. The JoAT likely is going to **** with the doctor as much as with the town.
Uh, no the roles are definitely not safe claimable. You cannot use those roles in a wolf sided way and claim them, and the rolecop+witch is outright a wolf role, that's nearly never town. The tracker should get CC'd immediately and is loud. The delayer is possibly claimable but only if you town side with it / only target scum reads.
I just feel like you've never played mafia. That's what this feels like. Its bizarro land to me.
Cut this ***** out. It's rude, it's demeaning, and it doesn't help your argument. It doesn't make me a fundamentally bad player or game designer because I disagree with you to within a couple of points on an arbitrary scale made up by someone neither of us have ever actually talked to.
The night kill is not really disrupted though that's the problem. 3 out of 12 of the town have a guaranteed kill on them 25%, the mafia also can safe guard from the RB by just using kami. The busdriver is going to be just as likely to **** with the doc as with the mafia. The doc is powerful, but its also going to die.
"The night kill isn't disruptable, but here's all the ways the nightkill is disruptable that I'm handwaving as bad while accusing you of handwaving wolf power. Also, I'm gonna say that a quarter of the town was unprotectable even though I already know the strong man only works once and automatically activates the first time you target one so it's more like 1 in 12 town are unprotectable."
Your whole analysis just really lacks for the power of the wolves and I think that's because you don't know how to play wolves.
Your whole analysis really lacks for the power of the town and I think it's because you don't know how to play town.
The more I think about it the more I dislike assigning point values to roles to determine if a setup is balanced. It me it's more about getting the game to the correct number of virtual mislynches.
As far as stats for C9 go, since that's a noob set up I'm not sure those stats are comparable to whether this set up, played by reasonably experienced players is balanced.
MU's 12v3 mountainous is probably a better comparison, but this isn't strictly a 12v4 mountainous it's a 12v4 with vig if everything goes wrong for town roles and none of them do anything.
I don't generally evaluate roles strictly by point value, either, my point is that even if you use his scale you have to contort the point values to unreasonable extents to make the game significantly scum sided.
I'd argue the reverse , you're the one trying to say "the individual mafia roles are too strong, look at this garbage tracker they're competing with" while I'm saying the town as a whole is roughly balanced against the wolves.
You're not though, you're arguing this is town sided it isn't. I'm trying to show you all of these massive statistics to prove to you how not town sided this is. Would you have thought that any of those games would have had that low of win rates? The mafia literally have goons in most of the setups. And the town have way more PR. In this game the mafia have pound for pound more power than the town. Lets just say its even, that's a heavily scum sided game.
If a mountainous game of 12-2 is only a 40% win for town then, the mafia having point for point equal abilities negating the town and having two additional scum, that makes it ******* scum sided.
You reallllly can't claim those and use them in a scum sided way, dude. And if you town side with them, then what's the point? Also, you're doing waaaay more handwaving than I am here.
Good scum play might involve this. Food for thought there.
Oh LOL I just realized the hero shots you and I are both wrong.
Your's was two Rod was three. I thought they were both two and I think you thought they were both three.
So the delayer can be in F5, which I knew I just thought that Rod could be in F5 as well. I got to think on that.
I don't generally evaluate roles strictly by point value, either, my point is that even if you use his scale you have to contort the point values to unreasonable extents to make the game significantly scum sided.
Yes, I agree with this. I don't think the game is significantly scum sided.
I think you've forgotten, and thus won me the argument.
This game isn't TOWN SIDED. Its scum sided I was unsure by how much. I think its fair to say 60-40 that isn't that insane.
I know they are not stronger than a vig who gets multiple shots. But, they also have other added benefits that the one doesn't. Its like a 50/50. They both have their bonuses they both have their draw backs.
I think their ability if it goes off is really good. I think they allow town the ability to reconsider analyze more and make their lynch worth more. That being said a good vig kill does the same thing coming from night phase into day phase. I guess these can't be ****ed with. IDK. I don't think its worth more than a vig kill the more I think about it.
That's the trade off, both allow for reflection on flips, but one can be ****ed with and the other can be legislated.
The half I truly don't know what to do with it. Its like a good scum can easily sort of force a kill with this in a townie way, and IDK its hard for me to figure it out. Its a hard call on that one.
Edit: I'm not trying to downplay one extra lynch. But I think that its equivalent to a vig shot. I think people are over hyping it as anything more than that.
I think this game is basically even but that's because I think a game with 12t 4w, a 1 shot vig and a bodyguard is basically even. If you disagree then we can move on but it's really difficult to judge power levels by scum roles as they are largely reactive. I think that is where our differences are coming from. I see a game with 1 more scum than I'd expected for an all vanilla game and try to see if the average town use through interference is worth that extra team member.
You appear to be looking at it from a position of stacking the roles against each other.
All of you are missing a point. Why do the scum even have a strongarm for the first GB? They control one of the shots and they can't kill two people at once so the other shot is going to go off. As a mechanical ability that thing is just to **** ***** up for the town for no reason. It doesn't change numbers.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy. Check out the Shop Thread
So, beyond feeling a little guiltily like the kid who put a bunch of bugs in a jar and shook it to make them fight each other, I'm really enjoying and appreciating the discussion/debate that this has spawned. I have to filter the crap out of it because there's a lot of emotion involved, which I get, but can we maybe tone down on the "you bad/no u" mentality? I know I'm no longer your mod, so I can't threaten a modkill or anything, but....geez. I'm glad there's conversation, and I'm glad people are passionate; let's just not become enemies for life, yeah?
I want to comment on a lot of what's been said, but I don't really have a lot of time atm. Hopefully tomorrow. For now, I'll answer the question that was posed: What happens if the mafia target a GB with the kill, it's the first kill directed at a GB, and Gozer's bus drive targets include the GB? Alternatively, same deal, but what if Gozer instead roleblocks the mafia performing the kill? (Let me know if I've misinterpreted your question.)
The actual mafia ability reads: The first kill any mafia player performs on a Ghostbuster will not be preventable.
In my mind, "preventable" doesn't mean it can't be redirected or impacted; it applies primarily to protection roles. So...
Case 1: Mayor Lenny targets Egon with the kill and Gozer bus drives Egon and Janine. I'd rule that the kill is redirected to Janine, is no longer targeting a GB, and Janine could be doctor'd (or bodyguarded, if cocooned).
Case 2: Mayor Lenny targets Egon with the kill and Gozer bus drives Egon and Zeddemore. Kill is redirected to Zeddemore; it's still the first kill against a GB. If Stay-Puft doctors Zeddemore, Zed still dies. If Zeddemore is cocooned, Zed still dies.
Case 3: Mayor Lenny targets Egon with the kill and Gozer roleblocks Mayor Lenny. I'd say that Mayor Lenny gets roleblocked. No kill occurs. Next Night, scum target a GB and nothing affects it, it's the first kill against a GB and Stay-Puft can't save them.
Before you jump all the way down my throat, please keep in mind that a) the above is how I would have ruled; b) as is obvious in the spec chat, I felt very lucky to have others with good experience and wisdom who could chime in and provide their perspective/opinion on these kinds of situations, and I would definitely have opened this kind of situation up to my reviewers/co-mod to see if anyone felt I was way off-base; and c) even if some of the above situations would have resulted in players feeling like I had been bastardly, that certainly wasn't my intent. Not that that makes it all ok, but I suspect what is really lacking, for this particular question, is a clear definition of what "preventable" means in my setup.
I definitely want more discussion, because if my setup really was unbalanced, then I (and other hosts and reviewers) should take lessons away and make future games better. But can we please not resort to arguments that imply or explicitly state that individuals are stupid/bad at mafia/bad at life/etc?
If we just blanket across back and forth and remove the town power with scum power due to counters.
This game effectively becomes.
Town Doc, Tracker and Vig against 4 mafia with a strong man and maybe something else. Should be noted that our vig is one shot and our doc can't protect the same target, and the tracker in this game effectively had lets say 3 shots.
All of the matrix 12 setups give the town more power with an additional player and keep the mafia around the same power level of this game. I'm just saying we've seen a lot of MTGS mafia wins in recent years, it may be that we are giving the mafia too much power. Or the town too little.
Food for thought, but I think our overall math of how we have been calculating mafia may be off. Additionally with more and more pushes towards mafia day talk something we didn't use to do this gives the mafia even more power in their court.
The proper way to evaluate the ghostbusters is 1 is scum 3 are town. That seems reasonable.
Take them out and balance the rest.
Duh
While im here...
Tubba + rhand/vez add up to a pretty solid investigative suite. Its a combo of hard to interpret/unreliable info, but its a bunch of it. Add in kamis role being loud and the random extra info tacked on to zdt role, and its even better
Zdt is a more powerful doc. I... dont really see how thats being argued hes a doc plus other stuff
DV roleblock plus busdrive another way to mess with mafias kills, lets call that a pretty powerful set of protective roles.
For killing roles im still thinking the very nature of the ghostbuster roles intrinsically balances, so no need for more.
So im calling that the equivalent of (at minimum) a cop and a jailer spread out among 5 town players.
To counteract this, scum has
>kamis tracks to find them. The spreading track is pretty crazy, but makes sense with how town power is so spread out. Tracking itself isnt the best way for scum to gain info, but i think this works
>Silvers delay to "stop" it. Its 2 at a time, which is cool, but doesnt stop anything outright. Also makes sense with the town power being so spread out.
>And rods thing, same caveat that it can only be as good as what its targeting, but still solid disruption. 1 shot, maybe a second (actually 0 but not relevant here)
None of this seems that far apart to me...
The only other thing is the "strongman"
Certainly dont think a 1 shot strongman is broken, and this is... fairly significantly worse than that. Since it can only hit 3 players and isnt optional...
Said this in scumchat but think lack of proper flips is about equal to lack of daychat. Maybe i value daychat too highly so lets add in DVs shot of full flips and call it good.
So... roles balance out and 12v4 is, yknow, totally expected numberswise
Interesting the matrix 12 definitely contradicts my opinions. I'll admit that stance on balance might be off base.
@Cantrip I'd argue pretty strong against the roleblock stopping a 1st unpreventable kill on a GB. Feels wrong to be able to block an unstoppable kill.
@Cantrip The redirection strikes me as wrong but I'm not actually sure now that I think about it. I think as scum I'd be surprised and angry if that happened but that doesn't mean I'm right to feel that way.
Ive decided to randomly assign numbers to everything and think its about 52/48 in favor of scum.
Rod getting himself lynched day 1 probably put it to 55-60% in favor of town, but yall squandered that advantage and then some by no lynching twice
Id like to think me taking control of the ghostbust kill and making sure everyone thought kami was a neutral topped it off, but the town infighting/incorrect flavorgaming/inability to agree is what actually did it.
Tubba + rhand/vez add up to a pretty solid investigative suite. Its a combo of hard to interpret/unreliable info, but its a bunch of it. Add in kamis role being loud and the random extra info tacked on to zdt role, and its even better
Zdt is a more powerful doc. I... dont really see how thats being argued hes a doc plus other stuff
DV roleblock plus busdrive another way to mess with mafias kills, lets call that a pretty powerful set of protective roles.
For killing roles im still thinking the very nature of the ghostbuster roles intrinsically balances, so no need for more.
So im calling that the equivalent of (at minimum) a cop and a jailer spread out among 5 town players.
A tracker that randomly offs himself and 2 shot self watcher plus a one-shot vanilla cop that only triggers when two players find each other is not equivalent in any way shape or form to a full cop.
I agree that the protection roles were reasonable. Zdt's role is equivalent to a doctor while DV has enough to not matter.
I don't know how you can claim that after Rodemy died town had higher chances when Night 1, every single attempt at anything by the town got blocked. Tubba got blocked by kami, dv got delayed and zdt got delayed. They practically ****ed with every role the town could use for anything useful. And if somehow zdt would have tried to prevent grape kill, it would've still sucked. I also don't know wtf silver is talking about claiming. The Ghosbusters only claimed day 2 with the exception of Highroller.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy. Check out the Shop Thread
I definitely think lack of flip info is far more helpful to scum than day chat. Town are dealing with a lack of info; the more info they have, the better. Scum already have info; day chat helps, but they already have some knowledge.
Put it this way: if you knew you were town, would you rather have full flips, or scum not having daychat?
I definitely think lack of flip info is far more helpful to scum than day chat. Town are dealing with a lack of info; the more info they have, the better. Scum already have info; day chat helps, but they already have some knowledge.
Put it this way: if you knew you were town, would you rather have full flips, or scum not having daychat?
I'd take scum not having day chat over flips at all.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy. Check out the Shop Thread
I definitely think lack of flip info is far more helpful to scum than day chat. Town are dealing with a lack of info; the more info they have, the better. Scum already have info; day chat helps, but they already have some knowledge.
Put it this way: if you knew you were town, would you rather have full flips, or scum not having daychat?
I'd take scum not having day chat over flips at all.
I would strongly go the opposite. It's virtually impossible for town to win a no-flip game.
I definitely think lack of flip info is far more helpful to scum than day chat. Town are dealing with a lack of info; the more info they have, the better. Scum already have info; day chat helps, but they already have some knowledge.
Put it this way: if you knew you were town, would you rather have full flips, or scum not having daychat?
I'd take scum not having day chat over flips at all.
I would strongly go the opposite. It's virtually impossible for town to win a no-flip game.
I agree role flips I'm not so sure on, but alignment flips absolutely.
Tubba + rhand/vez add up to a pretty solid investigative suite. Its a combo of hard to interpret/unreliable info, but its a bunch of it. Add in kamis role being loud and the random extra info tacked on to zdt role, and its even better
Zdt is a more powerful doc. I... dont really see how thats being argued hes a doc plus other stuff
DV roleblock plus busdrive another way to mess with mafias kills, lets call that a pretty powerful set of protective roles.
For killing roles im still thinking the very nature of the ghostbuster roles intrinsically balances, so no need for more.
So im calling that the equivalent of (at minimum) a cop and a jailer spread out among 5 town players.
A tracker that randomly offs himself and 2 shot self watcher plus a one-shot vanilla cop that only triggers when two players find each other is not equivalent in any way shape or form to a full cop.
I agree that the protection roles were reasonable. Zdt's role is equivalent to a doctor while DV has enough to not matter.
I don't know how you can claim that after Rodemy died town had higher chances when Night 1, every single attempt at anything by the town got blocked. Tubba got blocked by kami, dv got delayed and zdt got delayed. They practically ****ed with every role the town could use for anything useful. And if somehow zdt would have tried to prevent grape kill, it would've still sucked. I also don't know wtf silver is talking about claiming. The Ghosbusters only claimed day 2 with the exception of Highroller.
i said after day 1
We did great night 1. We had 4 actions including the kill and hit 4 of the 8 power roles with them.
I should hope that kind of accuracy screws up town power...
And still between you and tubba you outed kamis full role basically. Not the setups fault yall let him live forever
Think the 3 info roles plus the extra info tacked on to zdt is plenty.
Like, 1 pr got lynched and we killed 4 in 4 nights.
Good job us
@Cantrip I'd argue pretty strong against the roleblock stopping a 1st unpreventable kill on a GB. Feels wrong to be able to block an unstoppable kill.
Yes, there was definitely a disconnect between my intent for the role and how it presented. Thankfully the situation never came up, but the lesson for me is to be explicit. As I mentioned in the spec chat, the original specialty setup had Walter Peck as a neutral Ghostbusters Hitman. When that role was removed, and in conjunction with concerns that players would setup-game the 3-1 town/mafia GB ratio, it was suggested that the mafia be given a 1-shot strongman against a GB to compensate. The literal line was "..maybe a mafioso could have an ability that lets them kill a GB through protection or something?" If I had just accurately made the ability say "The first kill any mafia player directs at a Ghostbuster will bypass any protection" or even "will not be preventable by a doctor/bodyguard/similar role", I think it wouldn't have been a concern.
Quote from Grape »
@Cantrip The redirection strikes me as wrong but I'm not actually sure now that I think about it. I think as scum I'd be surprised and angry if that happened but that doesn't mean I'm right to feel that way.
See above. Same dealio. It was never intended to be a laser-guided heat-seeking lock-on missile. Just a kill that bypassed protection on players that were likely to be townread due to the dayvig ability. (I actually said in the discussion "Not sure how I feel about the communal 1x strongman, as it has the potential to completely screw over the one protective role in the game...which means it's highly likely that that's exactly what will happen...but I do like the idea of them having that ability." :stuck_out_tongue: )
@DV: It's not typical strongman wording, though, as strongman, as I've usually seen it, says "this kill can't be blocked". Where I came up with the term "preventable" I don't know.
A lot of players have already argued points that I've thought similarly about, so instead of retreading, I'm going to post a few thoughts about what my intent was for certain roles (and in doing so maybe speak to some of the frustrations that have been voiced). First off, I almost always approach a new game design flavor-down, as I find that almost always sparks new ideas and role twists (such as Gozer's JoaT ability). To my reviewers' dismay, that also often results in me latching onto roles/ideas that I love, but that really aren't all that wonderful/useful/fun/practical in an actual game of Mafia. :smiley: So it doesn't really surprise me to hear that from a purely mechanical/setup viewpoint, there are elements that don't completely make sense (such as a tracker that randomly turns herself off). That is, I fear, a byproduct of letting the flavor drive the design and then not enough practical scrutiny being applied before finishing the setup. (This is not a shortcoming of Eco's or Proph's review; they reined me in a TON. Had I had my way, the train wreck likely would have been epic.)
--Ivo Shandor/Architect: Just to give you a little taste of the original specialty setup, the first version of Ivo was BOTH the Role Controller AND the Delayer...gained additional shots of each if so many mafia were dead...and could use any number of abilities each Night. Eco (thankfully) suggested that maybe he was both too powerful and too swingy if he died early game, so he got split into two roles. The version that made it to the final was actually intended more as "rolecop with a perk", as we knew that there weren't any significantly devastating Night abilities among the town. --Slimer: Vaimes mentioned this role being me wanting to have my Neutral cake and eat it with Mafia frosting, and he's not far off. Slimer started off as a SK before joining the scum team, and in that light, his whole "can only be targeted by Ghostbusters" piece made a lot more sense, giving him (primarily) some protection from being killed by mafia (unless the scum GB made the kill), prevented him being commandeered by Ivo Shandor (in effect giving Mafia multiple kills), as well as granting some protection from town investigative roles. The uber-tracker actually started off as an uber-self-watcher when he got shifted to the scum team, sliming any players that targeted him, and then seeing who else they targeted. At some point, we switched it to a tracker and just left the sprawl ability on there. lul --Alice, Librarian: This was a late addition to the setup, and the conversation was basically "hey, Cantrip, town could probably use a little more investigative power", "Oh, what about a 1-shot tracker?", "Yeah, that's probably sufficient", "Hmm, what about a tracker who gets to keep tracking as long as they don't target any ghosts", "Yeah, that's cool, too". So I guess it's really a good thing we added the role. It wasn't supposed to be a "lol, you lost your tracking ability N1"; it was supposed to reward good choices, reduce the feel-sads of tracking a Vanilla (note that all vanillas + the scum GB, who wouldn't target at Night other than the NK, were human), and limit the repeatability. --Stay-Puft: OG setup had multiple neutrals with kills; a doctor who late game could prevent multiple kills in one Night was a lot more powerful there. When we dropped the extra kills, we just left him because One other element that I felt made him a little more powerful than a standard doc was that he got info: since he was told who was cocooned (in order to know whether he could target them again or not), he knew whether his target was or was not targeted with the kill, something a doctor doesn't usually learn. Minor, but something we discussed. --Dana Barrett: She started out as unlimited self-watcher. At some point in the review process, we were discussing her power level, and I posted:
Actually, I think the self-watcher is pretty strong. 3/4 of the scum team gets in a lot of trouble if they target her (especially if they're the ONLY one that targets her that Night). If Mayor Lenny is the only one to target her, she sees him target her and her "find the Keymaster" ability is delayed. If Ivo Shandor targets her, she sees him target her and her "find the Keymaster" ability doesn't go where she wants it to (although, Ivo could guess her target correctly, and then she'd only know that she was targeted, not that something negative happened). And Ivo would, of course, know that he's in trouble based on learning her role. If Slimer targets her, she knows who's sliming players.
If Ray targets her with his Day ability, she (probably) dies, and it's public, so moot. Same with the Nightkill.
But...is this a problem? If it is, would it be better if Dana's ability only self-watched Night actions (would still nail Mayor Lenny and Slimer, but would avoid catching Ivo, since he has a Day ability)?
This is balanced, of course, by her having to be targeted by them to get caught...but is that punishing the mafia team for playing as they should?
Some of this, plus feeling like limited shots would be more skill-testing, led her to get a 2-shot ability. (Lol, like anyone isn't going to use their two shots on N1 and N2.)
All in all, I felt pretty good about the setup pre-game, but I can certainly understand some of the perspectives of players post-game. As always, I shall take these discussion gems and apply their wisdom to hopefully more enjoyable and balanced future setups.
TBH I should have realized tom was scum. He literally convinced me to go for a no-hang when attacking D_V, which was bad(on my part), and I probably should have noticed that scum like no hangs.
Also I shouldn't have forgotten that tubba existen when choosing who to protect. That was certainly a mistake(The worst part is the next day all I was thinking was "Oh shoot, someone will ask me why I didn't save tubba and the response 'I forgot he existed' is probably going to get me hanged", so I was not playing especially well.)
This game did play to my strength, which is not getting hanged as town.
To be honest, town should have won. But the double no hang was a problem.
Yeh the no lynching was deadly.
I’ve gotten flak before as town for trying to get us to move to claim range etc a week before deadline, but we need to change our general approach on this sote towards that. Post frequency of most of us is too low to rethink things and choose a lynch in only a few days.
Yeh the no lynching was deadly.
I’ve gotten flak before as town for trying to get us to move to claim range etc a week before deadline, but we need to change our general approach on this sote towards that. Post frequency of most of us is too low to rethink things and choose a lynch in only a few days.
Its a double edged sword, because having a bunch of claims is bad, but having no time to reconsider wagons is a problem. I think you are probably in the right to push for claims to start at around a week before, and using this game (among others to no lynch) as examples of what happens should work.
Yeh the no lynching was deadly.
I’ve gotten flak before as town for trying to get us to move to claim range etc a week before deadline, but we need to change our general approach on this sote towards that. Post frequency of most of us is too low to rethink things and choose a lynch in only a few days.
ftr, i think ive given you flak for this because i thought you just wanted claims, not that you wanted to leave a week to reconsider lol
The Ghostbusters absolutely are real power. The doctorguard is real power. The tracker is real power. The JoAT is real power (1 shot bus driver plus 1 shot roleblock, plus the 2 shot grave digger that gave more set up information than Cantrip usually gives out). The neighborizers can get a reusable vanilla cop shot that looks pretty strong in this set up since neither I nor Rodemy can actually claim our roles and we only have one fake claim (and Rodemy's role using it could actually be caught out by Tubba trying to track him and getting disabled).
Yes, if Ivo Shandor targets exactly the JoAT on N1 and wolves spend all of their other resources to hose them specifically, the JoAT gets hosed, but it's not like the delay actually messes with the gravedigger shots anyway, and it uses basically all of the wolves' resources. The delay barely affects the doctorguard unless wolves target the same player he tries to because they still get cocooned.
I'm not ignoring the mafia's advantages, but I feel like you're downplaying the extra lynches, the doctorguard, the tracker, the potential vanilla cop, etc.
The wolf Ghostbuster doesn't have power, lol. That role merely ensures that one of the Ghostbuster kills is on a villager or that, at least, it can't kill a wolf (at the risk of tying yourself to them if they're lynched anyway). That's not a power role, it's a limitation on a town power. Requiring the other Ghostbuster also ensures that the kill is inside of the PoE and gives information because they aren't going to sign off on the wolf trying to daykill the towniest player in the game.
I hard disagree that the Ghostbusters are only worth a half point each, lol what even is that. A vig is worth 3 points by Axelrod's point method, so the first two should be worth 1.25 points at minimum. Maaaaybe the third is only worth a VT (1 point) because a wolf has to sign off on the second kill, but giving the town a potential two full extra PoE kills and only charging them for half of a vanilla town is. Weird to me.Okay, I read the rest of your post and you're using a different point system / math than I'm used to, and not just that, but your point system values Doctor and Vigilante at the same rate as Tracker when they're closer to Watcher in power level, I think. But sure, we'll roll with that.
Three Ghostbusters are worth .5 points each by your count (1.5)
I'm assigning Doctorguard 1 full point because Bodyguard is worth at least .5 and this is quite a lot better than that (2.5)
The tracker with a disabling limitation is worth .5 probably? (3)
The JoAT is worth at least .5 given it has a busdriver + a roleblock, though it doesn't have control over which abilities it gets first (3.5)
The Gatekeeper+Keymaster are worth a full point together, I'm sure, given they become neighbors (+.5) and have access to a repeatable vanilla cop shot and one of them is a self watcher (4.5 total)
Plus 12 points for vanillas + town bodies is 16.5.
We're counting the Ghostbuster as a goon, yes? So that's worth 0 points of power (0)
The delayer is maybe worth a full point, I guess you could push it to 1.5 given it double targets but also, limited shots (1.5)
A oneshot rolecop+witch is maybe worth another 1. (2.5)
The tracker is worth 1.5. Maaaaybe 2 if you're really pushing it because of the ascetic bit even though it also stops the tracker from being disabled and makes them suspicious as hell. (4.5)
The strongman shot is maybe another .5, though that's generous given that it only works on 3 players and is automatically expended on the first Ghostbuster kill. Call it 5 total, I guess, which puts you at 17. Barely "scum sided" given the town's 16.5 points. Even if you give the tracker a whole extra point and make it just as a good as a Cop (which is clearly not true) the wolves only have 18.
However, (1) I believe your point system doesn't value extra kills correctly, and the Ghostbusters should be worth closer to 1 each, and (2) points being exactly equal doesn't guarantee you a perfectly balanced game anyway because it doesn't take into account interactions between roles, set up size (masons are better in smaller set ups and worse in larger ones), or anything else. This isn't a science, it's an art, and having point values exactly the same isn't the goal, it's to be roughly equal so you know the game isn't an obvious blow out. This isn't wildly unbalanced by any stretch, especially considering the Ghostbusters are probably worth closer to .75 points each if we're valuing extra kills at 1.5 as I would prefer (which puts the wolves at 18.25 at most and the town at 18.25 points).
The problem seems to be that you're using a point system to rate the set up in a vacuum, and your point system somewhat underrates town power like cops and vigs. In my opinion. You're also using it as some kind of final, objective arbiter of balance when it pretty clearly isn't. No point system is, it's all guidelines. It's someone else's opinion about what makes sense, not an objective fact, and being roughly equivalent is the goal of these things. Not to be exactly balanced, but to be "close enough." Off by a point or two isn't going to give you significantly lopsided games.
Mafia have to have more power per player for the set up to be balanced. They have fewer players, so to keep the set up balanced according to these point tallies you have to spread the same number of points worth of power over a smaller number of players. Say you want to give each side 8 points worth of power, that means giving Mafia 2 points per player but only giving town one point per player with 4 vanillas.
But, yes, your point about "what if the game was mountainous" is well taken. See, the wolf abilities don't actually do anything except block town abilities. That means even if the wolves perfectly blocked every single town action and the Tracker disabled himself on N1, it would just be a 16/4 mountainous game with at least one extra lynch the mafia cannot vote for due to the Ghostbuster kill.
I don't understand your point about the wolves gaining power with each roleblock, but I already accounted for point assignments including double target delayer and ascetic so I guess you can just tell me what you disagree with.
I disagree.
I disagree that the math shows the game is scum sided to any significant extent. Even if you alter the point totals so the wolves are two points up on the town somehow, that doesn't mean the game is actually wolf sided, it means if you measure the game using that specific, arbitrary point scale the game appears to be wolf sided. In addition, I'd probably rate the the Ghostbusters at .75 each rather than .5, and maybe even the JoAT as well since it actually has quite a bit of disruption on it that can change kill targets, etc.
I disagree that just because the town roles are weaker individually that means the entire town is weaker as a whole.
I think the game is roughly balanced (within 55-45), but if it's slanted in any direction it's slanted towards the town given the lack of safe claims, ways of catching wolves like the vanilla cop, the tracker working on half of the wolves and returning suspicious results on the other (who, it must be noted, must claim his role because it's loud and who should be counterclaimed immediately by the actual town tracker), etc. Wolves needed the amount of disruption we had given the amount of information the town had in this set up (tracker that acts as a psuedo-ectocop, the repeatable vanilla cop on the neighbors, the mass gravedigger shots) in addition to the amount of night kill disruption the town has (roleblock and busdriver on the JoAT, Doctorguard).
I'm not expecting you to agree with me, dude. It's just, like, my opinion, man. But I don't think I'm being wildly unreasonable with these ratings to the point that all of the hyperbole is warranted.
The JoaT is pure garbage for what it does.
RB is good.
Role flips whoopty doo.
Bus driver is so ******* hit and miss, I can **** the town over as much as I **** the scum over with that.
I think fundamentally part of the problem is you're bad at playing mafia. And I mean the alignment.
Scum just have way more power in this game. They can sit back and watch and react to town and they really are kings of the castle in this game for being able to always succeed in the kill they want with very little claims from the town. I'm looking at this from the prospective of a holistic approach you seem to be looking very much at each tree.
This town is garbage. I'm baffled that you think otherwise.
Also, you can definitely claim the Rodemy and Delayer roles. Once again bad at playing mafia here. Its really holding you back. You are making hand waving arguments and you don't understand.
You mentioned in scum chat that I didn't want to claim the two shot of revealing roles, and you thought that was the most town ability I had. I saw it as a SK claim, I was aware of the problems it presented in claiming that.
I just think you're bad at mafia and that's why you don't understand.
The tracker is sort of real power but it can turn itself off night one. Its so ******* swingy. Its a bad role.
The GB is power, but its hard to figure out what to rate them, they work as a collective and sort of in an interesting way. You want to rate all three of the towns higher, but you're ignoring the mafia one and not giving the mafia any power for that. Ehhh seems like a noob decision to me.
Ehh
**** me man.
You realize there are hero shots in this game right? I've continually brought it up. Your whole arguments seem disingenuous to me. Its like you are avoiding talking about some things and really only trying to fight like one battle. Its just such bad logic. Its not all of their power, the town has like no power. The scum have limited power, but its ******* defined and they know what they have. They also get hero shots and you're ignoring that in your analysis.
Vanilla cop isn't bad, it isn't good, and its just a potential?
I'm not downplaying, the doc is a doc. Its not worth much more than that, and its not worth less. Vig is vig shot I'm not sure how to rate it, I don't think its that much stronger than a normal vig in the game, but I'm not sure its weaker either.
Joat is pretty bad and the tracker is so swingy its hard to figure out.
Town's power CAN be insane, but more likely than not its not going to be. The tracker disables itself. The Joat can **** the town over almost as much as it can **** the mafia over. Its like you've never played mafia before. You've never seen a RB, block the town doc.
Come on you've played mafia, you should know normal setups. Normal setups are like 3 goons 9 VT and a jailer and a doc. That's like slightly town favored but not much. I just feel like I'm arguing with someone that hasn't played mafia.
Your logic is lack of safe claims, even though all of the roles are safe claimable. Ways of catching wolves is off, because of this also that vanilla cop might never turn on and likely won't in most games. Tracker is like Ehh sometimes they hit sometimes they don't(Also the tracker can track the doc to the GB and the mafia can force the kill on that player). Town doesn't have any info. The vanilla cop may turn on but likely it won't. The JoAT likely is going to **** with the doctor as much as with the town.
I just feel like you've never played mafia. That's what this feels like. Its bizarro land to me. The night kill is not really disrupted though that's the problem. 3 out of 12 of the town have a guaranteed kill on them 25%, the mafia also can safe guard from the RB by just using kami. The busdriver is going to be just as likely to **** with the doc as with the mafia. The doc is powerful, but its also going to die.
Your whole analysis just really lacks for the power of the wolves and I think that's because you don't know how to play wolves.
You can't have a group of 1 though. It specifically says it's a two person group at .5. And I'd agree with that as I'd definitely not weigh a neighborhood without confirmation as being equivalent to a tracker or Doc. So basically I don't trust that point system at all.
I see what you mean now about the ability failing. You're correct, but I think it's still possible to resolve those two abilities in a non bastard way. That's why I'm very curious as to how Cantrip would resolve it. I think (I believe in agreement with you) that it would be bastard to not notify the busdriver somehow that their redirection failed, I think a message along the lines of "You sucessfully busdrove x and y, but there was an ability that you failed to redirect" would have been an appropriate and expect notification.
And the ability to reevaluate after a day vig is why I think it's noticeably more powerful than a regular vig.
I pulled a fast one on silver by mistake.
https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Mountainous
2 mafia 11 town, considered mafia sided even there.
So 4 mafia 12 town definitely mafia sided.
Here are some more mafia scum stats on C9 another similar vein of this argument.
https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?p=2234627#p2234627
M6 statistics here.
https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Matrix6
https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=39739
Yeah so one more mafia is highly suspect.
Well not exactly. Mafia power is usually disruptive to town power. It doesn't usually add strength beyond numbers. It tends to be used to rein town power in. Town power adds to the game more often. It either provides additional alignment information, town controlled flips, or prevented mafia night kills. Those give the effect of adding additional mislynches to a game. Very few mafia roles (and none present in this game) change the clock. Town has at the most stringent reading 1.5 roles that do. The ghostbusters and the doc. The mafia roles are very disruptive/good at gathering information but none of them are truly additive beyond the numbers. Town has some that are.
If we accept 11/2 and 12/3 as roughly balanced but slightly scum favored then I'd guess without knowledge that 13/4 is also close as a 17er. Maybe growing linerally doesn't work but if it does then you just have to ask if town will gain on average value equivalent 1 mislynch through use of their PR's through mafia disruption. And I'd say the doctor and ghostbusters provide that on average.
Please consider that your experience may not be universal. Including your expectation of what is "normal".
You're choosing the floor and arguing it's the average case. Average case is that it does stone cold nothing, for all of these roles, which makes the set up mountainous with an extra town kill. Do you fundamentally disagree with this assessment or not?
Also, role flips are a very, very strong ability in no flip set-ups, and getting delayed actually makes them better since you get an extra flip for the same activation.
I'm bad at actively posting as mafia and rolereading, I'm not that bad at night action assessment lol.
I'd argue the reverse , you're the one trying to say "the individual mafia roles are too strong, look at this garbage tracker they're competing with" while I'm saying the town as a whole is roughly balanced against the wolves.
You reallllly can't claim those and use them in a scum sided way, dude. And if you town side with them, then what's the point? Also, you're doing waaaay more handwaving than I am here.
What? Two shots of mass gravedigger, dumping flip info into the public where it's most relevant for town, is a serial killer ability?
I'm not saying it isn't swingy, I'm saying it should be a CC to the loud mafia role at worst and is virtually a full tracker at best. I don't like the role myself, I don't go in for the swingy ones and I probably wouldn't have passed this set up in review just on the number of swingy roles alone, but that doesn't mean it's useless. And I only gave it a half point anyway, yep, I gave it half tracker points even though it only disables itself 25% of the time. That's a bargain.
Dude, look. The first two are worth a vig at least, right? The third at worst forces the wolf to target someone in the PoE. Same for the wolf, he stops the other kill from landing on a partner but the kill still has to be in the PoE and is therefore, at least slightly, townsided. But fine. Give the first two .75, the third .5, and the wolf a full point for all I care, you aren't engaging in the core of the criticism I gave you, you're nitpicking point values while refusing to concretely assign your own in order to sidestep the actual point of my post.
Which is that these point scales aren't objective, but that the game is roughly balanced according to them anyway, and that the floor for this game is a 12v4 with a town day vig versus the ceiling which is multiple stopped kills and tracked/CC'd wolves. The average game is going to be between those two extremes, clearly, but even if you're right that the game is slightly scum sided, the mere idea that it might be slightly town sided is not so ludicrous that I deserve to be insulted the way you've been insulting me since the beginning of this conversation.
Yes, and? What does that have to do with literally anything? What's the point of an extra role cop + witch when you're the last wolf left? I guess it's somewhat useful if it's, like, a 1v8 or something, but at that point you're so far behind you're hosed anyway, one more shot of anything other than an extra kill isn't really worth points. If you're in F3 the shot does nothing. The delayer shot activates earlier and could be somewhat more relevant, I guess, but is it worth another .5 points? I don't think so, but you know what? Fine. Give the delayer another half point and the Rolecop+Witch another full point for all I care. Or vice-versa. Unless you think the Tracker is worth a Town Alignment Cop that still only puts the wolves at 19.5 while overvaluing the wolf ghostbuster at a full point even though he can't place his shot at will versus the town's 17 (with two ghostbusters at .75 and the third at .5 because wolves can mess with it or whatever).
This still doesn't matter, because the point is that you have to completely contort reasonable point assignments for these roles to make this significantly scum sided, and I think that's why you're refusing to concretely assign points to most of these roles.
Wow, okay, wolves can coordinate and town can't??? That's super strong, maybe we should ban mafia night talk too??????
Stop treating me like I've never played a game before and engage me on the substance of my argument.
Okay, but do you fundamentally disagree with my assessment of their point values? If we rate the Ghostbusters at .5 each (including the wolf buster), the Doc at 1 point, the joat and tracker at .5, then wolves only come out (significantly) ahead if you rate their tracker at the same strength as a Town Alignment Cop. Does that really seem so unreasonable to you that it deserves saying you're talking to someone who's never played Mafia before, or are you going to continue dismissing me without actually engaging with the argument I'm presenting?
Uh. Yes, I have, and we're talking floors again now, and the floor for this game is 12v4 with a town vig. I don't think that's too scum sided. Could it lose a game that would otherwise be saved? Yeah, sure, but we aren't talking average cases anymore, you're cherry picking bad things that can happen with town roles and saying that's the average case. I already agreed the wolf roles have a higher floor, I just don't think that matters as much.
What does this have to do with... literally anything? It has nothing to do with my claim that the ceiling for wolves is to make the game effectively a 12v4 with a town vig. You're just quoting stuff I've said so you can dismiss it without even engaging it. I'm not even actually sure you read my post as much as you selectively quoted it and ignored the stuff you couldn't argue against.
Uh, no the roles are definitely not safe claimable. You cannot use those roles in a wolf sided way and claim them, and the rolecop+witch is outright a wolf role, that's nearly never town. The tracker should get CC'd immediately and is loud. The delayer is possibly claimable but only if you town side with it / only target scum reads.
Cut this ***** out. It's rude, it's demeaning, and it doesn't help your argument. It doesn't make me a fundamentally bad player or game designer because I disagree with you to within a couple of points on an arbitrary scale made up by someone neither of us have ever actually talked to.
"The night kill isn't disruptable, but here's all the ways the nightkill is disruptable that I'm handwaving as bad while accusing you of handwaving wolf power. Also, I'm gonna say that a quarter of the town was unprotectable even though I already know the strong man only works once and automatically activates the first time you target one so it's more like 1 in 12 town are unprotectable."
Your whole analysis really lacks for the power of the town and I think it's because you don't know how to play town.
MU's 12v3 mountainous is probably a better comparison, but this isn't strictly a 12v4 mountainous it's a 12v4 with vig if everything goes wrong for town roles and none of them do anything.
I don't generally evaluate roles strictly by point value, either, my point is that even if you use his scale you have to contort the point values to unreasonable extents to make the game significantly scum sided.
You're not though, you're arguing this is town sided it isn't. I'm trying to show you all of these massive statistics to prove to you how not town sided this is. Would you have thought that any of those games would have had that low of win rates? The mafia literally have goons in most of the setups. And the town have way more PR. In this game the mafia have pound for pound more power than the town. Lets just say its even, that's a heavily scum sided game.
If a mountainous game of 12-2 is only a 40% win for town then, the mafia having point for point equal abilities negating the town and having two additional scum, that makes it ******* scum sided.
Good scum play might involve this. Food for thought there.
Oh LOL I just realized the hero shots you and I are both wrong.
Your's was two Rod was three. I thought they were both two and I think you thought they were both three.
So the delayer can be in F5, which I knew I just thought that Rod could be in F5 as well. I got to think on that.
Yes, I agree with this. I don't think the game is significantly scum sided.
I think you've forgotten, and thus won me the argument.
This game isn't TOWN SIDED. Its scum sided I was unsure by how much. I think its fair to say 60-40 that isn't that insane.
I know they are not stronger than a vig who gets multiple shots. But, they also have other added benefits that the one doesn't. Its like a 50/50. They both have their bonuses they both have their draw backs.
I think their ability if it goes off is really good. I think they allow town the ability to reconsider analyze more and make their lynch worth more. That being said a good vig kill does the same thing coming from night phase into day phase. I guess these can't be ****ed with. IDK. I don't think its worth more than a vig kill the more I think about it.
That's the trade off, both allow for reflection on flips, but one can be ****ed with and the other can be legislated.
The half I truly don't know what to do with it. Its like a good scum can easily sort of force a kill with this in a townie way, and IDK its hard for me to figure it out. Its a hard call on that one.
Edit: I'm not trying to downplay one extra lynch. But I think that its equivalent to a vig shot. I think people are over hyping it as anything more than that.
You appear to be looking at it from a position of stacking the roles against each other.
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy.
Check out the Shop Thread
I want to comment on a lot of what's been said, but I don't really have a lot of time atm. Hopefully tomorrow. For now, I'll answer the question that was posed: What happens if the mafia target a GB with the kill, it's the first kill directed at a GB, and Gozer's bus drive targets include the GB? Alternatively, same deal, but what if Gozer instead roleblocks the mafia performing the kill? (Let me know if I've misinterpreted your question.)
The actual mafia ability reads: The first kill any mafia player performs on a Ghostbuster will not be preventable.
In my mind, "preventable" doesn't mean it can't be redirected or impacted; it applies primarily to protection roles. So...
Case 1: Mayor Lenny targets Egon with the kill and Gozer bus drives Egon and Janine. I'd rule that the kill is redirected to Janine, is no longer targeting a GB, and Janine could be doctor'd (or bodyguarded, if cocooned).
Case 2: Mayor Lenny targets Egon with the kill and Gozer bus drives Egon and Zeddemore. Kill is redirected to Zeddemore; it's still the first kill against a GB. If Stay-Puft doctors Zeddemore, Zed still dies. If Zeddemore is cocooned, Zed still dies.
Case 3: Mayor Lenny targets Egon with the kill and Gozer roleblocks Mayor Lenny. I'd say that Mayor Lenny gets roleblocked. No kill occurs. Next Night, scum target a GB and nothing affects it, it's the first kill against a GB and Stay-Puft can't save them.
Before you jump all the way down my throat, please keep in mind that a) the above is how I would have ruled; b) as is obvious in the spec chat, I felt very lucky to have others with good experience and wisdom who could chime in and provide their perspective/opinion on these kinds of situations, and I would definitely have opened this kind of situation up to my reviewers/co-mod to see if anyone felt I was way off-base; and c) even if some of the above situations would have resulted in players feeling like I had been bastardly, that certainly wasn't my intent. Not that that makes it all ok, but I suspect what is really lacking, for this particular question, is a clear definition of what "preventable" means in my setup.
I definitely want more discussion, because if my setup really was unbalanced, then I (and other hosts and reviewers) should take lessons away and make future games better. But can we please not resort to arguments that imply or explicitly state that individuals are stupid/bad at mafia/bad at life/etc?
Which is this
https://www.mafiauniverse.com/wiki/Matrix_12
Which has 13 town 4 scum.
If we just blanket across back and forth and remove the town power with scum power due to counters.
This game effectively becomes.
Town Doc, Tracker and Vig against 4 mafia with a strong man and maybe something else. Should be noted that our vig is one shot and our doc can't protect the same target, and the tracker in this game effectively had lets say 3 shots.
All of the matrix 12 setups give the town more power with an additional player and keep the mafia around the same power level of this game. I'm just saying we've seen a lot of MTGS mafia wins in recent years, it may be that we are giving the mafia too much power. Or the town too little.
Food for thought, but I think our overall math of how we have been calculating mafia may be off. Additionally with more and more pushes towards mafia day talk something we didn't use to do this gives the mafia even more power in their court.
Take them out and balance the rest.
Duh
While im here...
Tubba + rhand/vez add up to a pretty solid investigative suite. Its a combo of hard to interpret/unreliable info, but its a bunch of it. Add in kamis role being loud and the random extra info tacked on to zdt role, and its even better
Zdt is a more powerful doc. I... dont really see how thats being argued hes a doc plus other stuff
DV roleblock plus busdrive another way to mess with mafias kills, lets call that a pretty powerful set of protective roles.
For killing roles im still thinking the very nature of the ghostbuster roles intrinsically balances, so no need for more.
So im calling that the equivalent of (at minimum) a cop and a jailer spread out among 5 town players.
To counteract this, scum has
>kamis tracks to find them. The spreading track is pretty crazy, but makes sense with how town power is so spread out. Tracking itself isnt the best way for scum to gain info, but i think this works
>Silvers delay to "stop" it. Its 2 at a time, which is cool, but doesnt stop anything outright. Also makes sense with the town power being so spread out.
>And rods thing, same caveat that it can only be as good as what its targeting, but still solid disruption. 1 shot, maybe a second (actually 0 but not relevant here)
None of this seems that far apart to me...
The only other thing is the "strongman"
Certainly dont think a 1 shot strongman is broken, and this is... fairly significantly worse than that. Since it can only hit 3 players and isnt optional...
Said this in scumchat but think lack of proper flips is about equal to lack of daychat. Maybe i value daychat too highly so lets add in DVs shot of full flips and call it good.
So... roles balance out and 12v4 is, yknow, totally expected numberswise
Sorry whats the problem here?
@Cantrip I'd argue pretty strong against the roleblock stopping a 1st unpreventable kill on a GB. Feels wrong to be able to block an unstoppable kill.
@Cantrip The redirection strikes me as wrong but I'm not actually sure now that I think about it. I think as scum I'd be surprised and angry if that happened but that doesn't mean I'm right to feel that way.
Rod getting himself lynched day 1 probably put it to 55-60% in favor of town, but yall squandered that advantage and then some by no lynching twice
Id like to think me taking control of the ghostbust kill and making sure everyone thought kami was a neutral topped it off, but the town infighting/incorrect flavorgaming/inability to agree is what actually did it.
A tracker that randomly offs himself and 2 shot self watcher plus a one-shot vanilla cop that only triggers when two players find each other is not equivalent in any way shape or form to a full cop.
I agree that the protection roles were reasonable. Zdt's role is equivalent to a doctor while DV has enough to not matter.
I don't know how you can claim that after Rodemy died town had higher chances when Night 1, every single attempt at anything by the town got blocked. Tubba got blocked by kami, dv got delayed and zdt got delayed. They practically ****ed with every role the town could use for anything useful. And if somehow zdt would have tried to prevent grape kill, it would've still sucked. I also don't know wtf silver is talking about claiming. The Ghosbusters only claimed day 2 with the exception of Highroller.
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy.
Check out the Shop Thread
Put it this way: if you knew you were town, would you rather have full flips, or scum not having daychat?
Club Flamingo Wins: 1!
I'd take scum not having day chat over flips at all.
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy.
Check out the Shop Thread
I agree role flips I'm not so sure on, but alignment flips absolutely.
So Cantrip I think you have the wrong wording. Your wording is a strong man wording and it goes through all of this.
"Target GB's life can't be protected"? Maybe.
Trying to think of the best way to word this.
We did great night 1. We had 4 actions including the kill and hit 4 of the 8 power roles with them.
I should hope that kind of accuracy screws up town power...
And still between you and tubba you outed kamis full role basically. Not the setups fault yall let him live forever
Think the 3 info roles plus the extra info tacked on to zdt is plenty.
Like, 1 pr got lynched and we killed 4 in 4 nights.
Good job us
See above. Same dealio. It was never intended to be a laser-guided heat-seeking lock-on missile. Just a kill that bypassed protection on players that were likely to be townread due to the dayvig ability. (I actually said in the discussion "Not sure how I feel about the communal 1x strongman, as it has the potential to completely screw over the one protective role in the game...which means it's highly likely that that's exactly what will happen...but I do like the idea of them having that ability." :stuck_out_tongue: )
@DV: It's not typical strongman wording, though, as strongman, as I've usually seen it, says "this kill can't be blocked". Where I came up with the term "preventable" I don't know.
A lot of players have already argued points that I've thought similarly about, so instead of retreading, I'm going to post a few thoughts about what my intent was for certain roles (and in doing so maybe speak to some of the frustrations that have been voiced). First off, I almost always approach a new game design flavor-down, as I find that almost always sparks new ideas and role twists (such as Gozer's JoaT ability). To my reviewers' dismay, that also often results in me latching onto roles/ideas that I love, but that really aren't all that wonderful/useful/fun/practical in an actual game of Mafia. :smiley: So it doesn't really surprise me to hear that from a purely mechanical/setup viewpoint, there are elements that don't completely make sense (such as a tracker that randomly turns herself off). That is, I fear, a byproduct of letting the flavor drive the design and then not enough practical scrutiny being applied before finishing the setup. (This is not a shortcoming of Eco's or Proph's review; they reined me in a TON. Had I had my way, the train wreck likely would have been epic.)
--Ivo Shandor/Architect: Just to give you a little taste of the original specialty setup, the first version of Ivo was BOTH the Role Controller AND the Delayer...gained additional shots of each if so many mafia were dead...and could use any number of abilities each Night. Eco (thankfully) suggested that maybe he was both too powerful and too swingy if he died early game, so he got split into two roles. The version that made it to the final was actually intended more as "rolecop with a perk", as we knew that there weren't any significantly devastating Night abilities among the town.
--Slimer: Vaimes mentioned this role being me wanting to have my Neutral cake and eat it with Mafia frosting, and he's not far off. Slimer started off as a SK before joining the scum team, and in that light, his whole "can only be targeted by Ghostbusters" piece made a lot more sense, giving him (primarily) some protection from being killed by mafia (unless the scum GB made the kill), prevented him being commandeered by Ivo Shandor (in effect giving Mafia multiple kills), as well as granting some protection from town investigative roles. The uber-tracker actually started off as an uber-self-watcher when he got shifted to the scum team, sliming any players that targeted him, and then seeing who else they targeted. At some point, we switched it to a tracker and just left the sprawl ability on there. lul
--Alice, Librarian: This was a late addition to the setup, and the conversation was basically "hey, Cantrip, town could probably use a little more investigative power", "Oh, what about a 1-shot tracker?", "Yeah, that's probably sufficient", "Hmm, what about a tracker who gets to keep tracking as long as they don't target any ghosts", "Yeah, that's cool, too". So I guess it's really a good thing we added the role. It wasn't supposed to be a "lol, you lost your tracking ability N1"; it was supposed to reward good choices, reduce the feel-sads of tracking a Vanilla (note that all vanillas + the scum GB, who wouldn't target at Night other than the NK, were human), and limit the repeatability.
--Stay-Puft: OG setup had multiple neutrals with kills; a doctor who late game could prevent multiple kills in one Night was a lot more powerful there. When we dropped the extra kills, we just left him because One other element that I felt made him a little more powerful than a standard doc was that he got info: since he was told who was cocooned (in order to know whether he could target them again or not), he knew whether his target was or was not targeted with the kill, something a doctor doesn't usually learn. Minor, but something we discussed.
--Dana Barrett: She started out as unlimited self-watcher. At some point in the review process, we were discussing her power level, and I posted:
Some of this, plus feeling like limited shots would be more skill-testing, led her to get a 2-shot ability. (Lol, like anyone isn't going to use their two shots on N1 and N2.)
All in all, I felt pretty good about the setup pre-game, but I can certainly understand some of the perspectives of players post-game. As always, I shall take these discussion gems and apply their wisdom to hopefully more enjoyable and balanced future setups.
Also I shouldn't have forgotten that tubba existen when choosing who to protect. That was certainly a mistake(The worst part is the next day all I was thinking was "Oh shoot, someone will ask me why I didn't save tubba and the response 'I forgot he existed' is probably going to get me hanged", so I was not playing especially well.)
This game did play to my strength, which is not getting hanged as town.
To be honest, town should have won. But the double no hang was a problem.
Deal with it.
I’ve gotten flak before as town for trying to get us to move to claim range etc a week before deadline, but we need to change our general approach on this sote towards that. Post frequency of most of us is too low to rethink things and choose a lynch in only a few days.