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 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.
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.
Re: Ghostbusters claims, you don't think it was maybe silly for them to claim on D1, before they could shoot, when they knew there were 4 Ghostbusters ad should have suspected they weren't all town because two extra town controlled day kills is a silly, silly thing in a 16 player game with probably 4 antitown roles?
You really think "maybe use your ability before you claim unless under pressure and your claim gets you out of a lynch" is a bad argument?
I see you don't think assuming the players will know one of the Ghostbusters is a wolf is fair. I'm not saying they should have known, I'm saying they should have thought about whether it was likely or not and what they were risking by claiming before they could shoot.
Re: optimal play, no, I don't think it's nearly as clear cut as you're making it. With perfect knowledge of the set up you can say "the optimal doctor protect is this role, the optimal night kill is this one" and so on, but you can never predict which players will get which roles or whether they will be able to get town read or their claim will be believed, etc. etc. The best you can do is assign roles a floor, a ceiling, and an average/random target case, and work off of those.
The floor for wolf roles is a bit higher than the floor for town roles, though, while the ceiling for town roles is quite a bit higher than the ceiling for wolf ones. The ceiling for Tubba's role, for example, is "catches a wolf doing the night kill" and the ceiling for ZDT's role is *Stops multiple kills" while the ceiling for, say, Kami's role is him taking a night off from tracking to do the kill and him getting tracked by Tubba, but Tubba doesn't get the usual clearing message of "Kami visited no one" he gets "Your ability failed" instead, which keeps Kami in the pool of players who might have done it. Or that he can see who everyone targets, passively, except that doesn't really tell us anything except who ZDT was permaguarding after he spent a doc protect on them.
I agree the wolf roles required less skill to pilot optimally (well, delayer required fairly precise targeting to be optimal), but that doesn't mean the wolf roles were stronger overall. I think the game is roughly balanced to maybe slightly town sided, not that you all should have crushed us because you had significantly superior resources or anything like that.
I value extra kills very, very highly. So maybe that's where we disagree. I actually think the doctorguard has a lower ceiling than straight doctor because he can't protect the same target ever agai, though the floor on the role is waaay higher than straight doc.
Re: counterclaiming, I would CC another tracker claim as a tracker, 100%. Even if the other claim is believeable, at worst we spend a lynch on a neutral, at best we lynch a wolf, and I eat a night kill either way (except, you had a Doctor/Bodyguard hybrid too, which would have guaranteed he had two nights minimum to track a kill!). Games aren't designed with multiples of the same role as villagers for a reason, and I think something like 2 town trackers in a closed set up is very bastard.
Edit: as far as ascetic roles on wolves, no, I'm not really a fan of them in general, but they're much better/less bastard than ninjas and godfathers.
DV, you shot your mouth off first and, truth to tell, I don't feel any need to justify myself to you, especially given you're accusing me of strawmanning you right after you strawmanned me. Look, I know you didn't mean it was "free kill" but I had an issue with your characterization of it as one. I knew what you meant, but calling it a "free kill" makes it look much stronger than it is. It's not a "free kill" it's a "strong kill" and Kami isn't a Ninja, he's an ascetic against basically just the tracker and the JoAT.
I'm interested in discussing this but I'm not going to stand for personal attacks or you calling my credentials or intelligence into question because I disagree with you.
The balance of any game, especially a complex one like this, isn't an objective fact. You can't measure a game's balance in an objective way such that it's plainly obvious who is right. Balance and game design are inherently subjective.
Yeah I did, DV, the Ghostbusters shouldn't have claimed until they were ready to use their role.
You have a real problem with finding charitable interpretations of people's arguments, I've noticed. You always attack the silliest or worst version of them to make your argument seem stronger. Obviously I don't think they should not use their role, I literally said their role was very strong because it gave twon an extra day kill.
If you don't think the power level of a role depends on the rest of the set up then we don't have anything worthwhile to talk about. A cop is much, much stronger if it's the only role in an otherwise vanilla set up than it is in a setup where the mafia have a godfather and a roleblocker.
DV's claim that his opinions are "facts" is spurious at best and I'm not entertaining this further.
If you want to talk about role interactions and whether I'm wrong, I'm open to having my mind changed, but the current conversation is verging on flaming and there's no call for that.
Actually, you know what I'm going to write some more on this.
This is a god damn call out. Silver how in the world do you get off saying this game is town sided? You want to open your mouth fine, ******* defend it.
This game is bastard along with being scum sided.
I mean, I think we can have differences of opinion without having a thunderdome, and the game definitely doesn't seem bastard to me.
Having Kami and the Free GB kill is just too much. That's my problem with this game. Its just too much. But the free GB kill with Kami is just bastard.
Mafia is a game of expectancy. You know what both Kami and the free GB kill say to that? **** you town for making the right decision. A town doc correctly reads that because of the GB claim the GB is going to be mafia killed and protects him. **** you doc. The Joat correctly blocks the mafia performing the kill on a GB or bus drivers it? **** you joat and you just wasted a one shot.
The "free" GB kill (which isn't free, by the way, because it still uses the NK) didn't even come up, so I don't know why you're complaining about it, and it's a, you know, anticlaim mechanic. Maybe don't claim so freely in your next game because set ups sometimes contain stuff like this to hurt people who claim too early.
The Joat and the tracker both correctly try and **** with Kami? **** you too. Not to mention the mafia have the delayer which is another tool at their disposal to say **** you to the Tracker, Joat and the Doctor.
I only had two shots, and while getting delayed as the tracker is virtually a roleblock, it doesn't really hurt your role other than busdriver and only turns the doc into a bodyguard on his intended target.
This game in abilities is just a big **** you to town. The town get ****ed with in every corner and the mafia have all the power AND all the information thanks to the busted tracker role they have. I'm sure somewhere that if I math this game in some sort of weird point count, but that ignores any semblance of actually looking at the board. Like, sure black is up two bishops and a queen but white has checkmate in 1 move and its their move. That's just how this game in abilities will always play out its check mate in abilities. Anything the town has the mafia say **** you to, and then on top of that they have these two bastard abilities.
Kami's role was loud, lol, and targeting Vezok outs him as the slimer. And truthfully, Tubba should have counterclaimed him and gotten him lynched, there's no way there are two town trackers (even if one is slightly nerfed) so he's a neutral at best. Also, Kami was the only wolf immune to your tracker, and he gave a roleblocked message rather than disabling it in addition to not being able to actually do the kill because we needed him to slime people.
Edit: I had an additional thought too. I really need to write pages on KA's role. I thought after Iso's BS death role in Horseman I would never see this role again, but its back in a slightly nerfed form, but also buffed. I really can't express how much I have an issue with KA's role. I hate KA's role, I just hate that it can't be targeted. In this game specifically KA's role is a ninja, can't be RB'ed. Its just so ******* strong. This role should not exist.
Its the passiveness of the role and the GB kill that irks me. You know at least with the super witch and the delayer the mafia have to use the role correctly. They have to hit. KA's and the free GB kill? Naw, here you go. Have at it. That's the problem there isn't any skill involved, its just a **** you to town and no skill at all.
I mean, you can certainly complain about passive roles, I don't like them much myself. And sure, Kami's role is really strong even though it's loud and almost immediately outs itself. But you guys had ZDT the doctor that permanently bodyguards people, too, which is pretty similar in strength and passiveness, an extra day kill baked into the setup that we couldn't have messed with without the other Ghostbusters outing themselves on D1, the JoAT, a tracker, etc. etc.
I'm pretty offended by your characterization of Kami as a ninja, too, because it isn't like the Tracker gets a message that says "Kami didn't go anywhere", they're told their ability failed. The first one is a ninja, the second one is not.
As "strong" as day chat can be, I find it pretty miserable to wolf with phases this long and no day chat. If we find that this makes games too wolf sided we can scale town power up a bit to compensate, but tbh I probably wouldn't have risked replacing in if I had known there was no day chat, lol.
Maybe give daychat and full flips to balance it out some, since full flips usually give town more information? I tend to support both where possible, though like you said if you're using standard roles then 1 line flips are equivalent anyway.
We killed one of the Ghostbusters on Night 1, I think, and the Terry death on D2 was from the Ghostbuster ability (there was No Lynch that Day). They could've gotten an additional kill if they'd gotten Vaimes and Grapefruit to use it on D1, I suppose, which could have made a difference in the end.
I think mechanically the game was fairly townsided though, yeah, (edit: but not significantly so). The main things that played in our favor were that we killed one of the Ghostbusters on N1 which limited the extra town controlled kills (actually, the one GB kill was designated by tom I'm pretty sure, so lol) and the fact that everyone thought DV was scum because he was Gozer after Rodemy flipped (flavor gaming is bad, folks). And the no lynches. Whatever it was that distracted Highroller for scum MVP, tbh.
Also the loudness of Kami's track was a real, uh, thing that didn't make sense but that sort of worked to our advantage just because it didn't.
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 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.
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.
You really think "maybe use your ability before you claim unless under pressure and your claim gets you out of a lynch" is a bad argument?
I see you don't think assuming the players will know one of the Ghostbusters is a wolf is fair. I'm not saying they should have known, I'm saying they should have thought about whether it was likely or not and what they were risking by claiming before they could shoot.
Re: optimal play, no, I don't think it's nearly as clear cut as you're making it. With perfect knowledge of the set up you can say "the optimal doctor protect is this role, the optimal night kill is this one" and so on, but you can never predict which players will get which roles or whether they will be able to get town read or their claim will be believed, etc. etc. The best you can do is assign roles a floor, a ceiling, and an average/random target case, and work off of those.
The floor for wolf roles is a bit higher than the floor for town roles, though, while the ceiling for town roles is quite a bit higher than the ceiling for wolf ones. The ceiling for Tubba's role, for example, is "catches a wolf doing the night kill" and the ceiling for ZDT's role is *Stops multiple kills" while the ceiling for, say, Kami's role is him taking a night off from tracking to do the kill and him getting tracked by Tubba, but Tubba doesn't get the usual clearing message of "Kami visited no one" he gets "Your ability failed" instead, which keeps Kami in the pool of players who might have done it. Or that he can see who everyone targets, passively, except that doesn't really tell us anything except who ZDT was permaguarding after he spent a doc protect on them.
I agree the wolf roles required less skill to pilot optimally (well, delayer required fairly precise targeting to be optimal), but that doesn't mean the wolf roles were stronger overall. I think the game is roughly balanced to maybe slightly town sided, not that you all should have crushed us because you had significantly superior resources or anything like that.
I value extra kills very, very highly. So maybe that's where we disagree. I actually think the doctorguard has a lower ceiling than straight doctor because he can't protect the same target ever agai, though the floor on the role is waaay higher than straight doc.
Re: counterclaiming, I would CC another tracker claim as a tracker, 100%. Even if the other claim is believeable, at worst we spend a lynch on a neutral, at best we lynch a wolf, and I eat a night kill either way (except, you had a Doctor/Bodyguard hybrid too, which would have guaranteed he had two nights minimum to track a kill!). Games aren't designed with multiples of the same role as villagers for a reason, and I think something like 2 town trackers in a closed set up is very bastard.
Edit: as far as ascetic roles on wolves, no, I'm not really a fan of them in general, but they're much better/less bastard than ninjas and godfathers.
I'm interested in discussing this but I'm not going to stand for personal attacks or you calling my credentials or intelligence into question because I disagree with you.
The balance of any game, especially a complex one like this, isn't an objective fact. You can't measure a game's balance in an objective way such that it's plainly obvious who is right. Balance and game design are inherently subjective.
You have a real problem with finding charitable interpretations of people's arguments, I've noticed. You always attack the silliest or worst version of them to make your argument seem stronger. Obviously I don't think they should not use their role, I literally said their role was very strong because it gave twon an extra day kill.
DV's claim that his opinions are "facts" is spurious at best and I'm not entertaining this further.
If you want to talk about role interactions and whether I'm wrong, I'm open to having my mind changed, but the current conversation is verging on flaming and there's no call for that.
The "free" GB kill (which isn't free, by the way, because it still uses the NK) didn't even come up, so I don't know why you're complaining about it, and it's a, you know, anticlaim mechanic. Maybe don't claim so freely in your next game because set ups sometimes contain stuff like this to hurt people who claim too early.
I only had two shots, and while getting delayed as the tracker is virtually a roleblock, it doesn't really hurt your role other than busdriver and only turns the doc into a bodyguard on his intended target.
Kami's role was loud, lol, and targeting Vezok outs him as the slimer. And truthfully, Tubba should have counterclaimed him and gotten him lynched, there's no way there are two town trackers (even if one is slightly nerfed) so he's a neutral at best. Also, Kami was the only wolf immune to your tracker, and he gave a roleblocked message rather than disabling it in addition to not being able to actually do the kill because we needed him to slime people.
I mean, you can certainly complain about passive roles, I don't like them much myself. And sure, Kami's role is really strong even though it's loud and almost immediately outs itself. But you guys had ZDT the doctor that permanently bodyguards people, too, which is pretty similar in strength and passiveness, an extra day kill baked into the setup that we couldn't have messed with without the other Ghostbusters outing themselves on D1, the JoAT, a tracker, etc. etc.
I'm pretty offended by your characterization of Kami as a ninja, too, because it isn't like the Tracker gets a message that says "Kami didn't go anywhere", they're told their ability failed. The first one is a ninja, the second one is not.
Maybe give daychat and full flips to balance it out some, since full flips usually give town more information? I tend to support both where possible, though like you said if you're using standard roles then 1 line flips are equivalent anyway.
I think mechanically the game was fairly townsided though, yeah, (edit: but not significantly so). The main things that played in our favor were that we killed one of the Ghostbusters on N1 which limited the extra town controlled kills (actually, the one GB kill was designated by tom I'm pretty sure, so lol) and the fact that everyone thought DV was scum because he was Gozer after Rodemy flipped (flavor gaming is bad, folks). And the no lynches. Whatever it was that distracted Highroller for scum MVP, tbh.
Also the loudness of Kami's track was a real, uh, thing that didn't make sense but that sort of worked to our advantage just because it didn't.
Good game all. Sorry Vaimes and Highroller.
Still can't believe there was another no lynch and... well, the DV lynch was pretty unbelievable too.
Game was weird and I really didn't have the time or wim to give it what it deserved.
Thanks for hosting Cantrip.