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[QUOTE=MrMostache;812236]The main problem with Veteran, is that it is used for trolling most of the times. People usually end up acting like jesters/evil and then alerting just to kill as much as they can.

Veteran can be used correctly at the right time with the right "social deduction". The problem is that trolls likes to overpower people with their killing power.


If there is a role I would recommend removing, it would be Jailor. It's the strongest role in the game, being able to rb/kill/ pseudo-investigate/ give night immunity/self confirm. Also can be used to troll. It got everything.[/QUOTE]

What I like about the Jailor is that it is somewhat kept in check by the Kidnapper/Interrogator role. Sometimes games are close enough that 1) skipping a lynch to confirm the alignment of a Jailor claim, combined with 2) allowing Kidnapper/Interrogator role to RB a town role that night becomes a very costly way of confirming a Jailor claim.

What I would advocate for, however, is a hard cap on the number of Jailors in any game to 2. I have been in games where as many as 4 Jailors have been rolled, which is just insanely powerful because it gives town zero incentive to ever use a lynch when instead they can just jail and RB 4 players every night.

This hard cap would also mean that many games with 1 Jailor and 1 Kidnapper/Interro become dangerous for town because they need determine if it's better to risk having a Kidnapper on the loose or give up the chance to have 2 Jailors active.

Originally Posted by MrMostache

The main problem with Veteran, is that it is used for trolling most of the times. People usually end up acting like jesters/evil and then alerting just to kill as much as they can.

Veteran can be used correctly at the right time with the right "social deduction". The problem is that trolls likes to overpower people with their killing power.


If there is a role I would recommend removing, it would be Jailor. It's the strongest role in the game, being able to rb/kill/ pseudo-investigate/ give night immunity/self confirm. Also can be used to troll. It got everything.

What I like about the Jailor is that it is somewhat kept in check by the Kidnapper/Interrogator role. Sometimes games are close enough that 1) skipping a lynch to confirm the alignment of a Jailor claim, combined with 2) allowing Kidnapper/Interrogator role to RB a town role that night becomes a very costly way of confirming a Jailor claim.

What I would advocate for, however, is a hard cap on the number of Jailors in any game to 2. I have been in games where as many as 4 Jailors have been rolled, which is just insanely powerful because it gives town zero incentive to ever use a lynch when instead they can just jail and RB 4 players every night.

This hard cap would also mean that many games with 1 Jailor and 1 Kidnapper/Interro become dangerous for town because they need determine if it's better to risk having a Kidnapper on the loose or give up the chance to have 2 Jailors active.

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[COLOR="#FFFFFF"][B]"Vet is about luck"[/B][/COLOR]

This is true. However, that does not mean that it does not belong in the game. SC2Mafia is a game that is tremendously influenced by luck. Do evils run into a bodyguard? Who dies to a jester? Who was doused by a visit when arsonist ignited? Who are the town randoms? How strong is the Mafia/Triad role assignments?

The beauty of SC2Mafia is that the game does not revolve around pure strategy execution in a game with perfect information (for example chess), but rather a tremendous amount of unknown variables, compounded by randomness, and further complicated by deception, which drives players to learn to adapt to changing circumstances and strive to create frameworks of understanding despite having imperfect information.

There is a reason that poker is interesting and receives attention in a way that chess does not - the elements of randomness and luck are incredibly exciting to play and watch. What matters isn't the hand that is dealt - it's how players react to new information, and how they try to maximize their odds of success based off their analysis.

I would say veteran fits in a similar fashion with many other roles such as Jailor or Bodyguard or even Doc. 99% of saves limit the veteran to how many times they can alert, and this in itself has a poker-like element where veterans are incentivized to bluff their alerts and save them for when they feel they will be targeted. There is considerable strategy here that is very nuanced, and can make for some very tense games.

Lastly, early game deaths, in general, are extremely luck based. It sucks to visit a vet, but it also sucks when Town Government just happens to be killed Night 1 or when a Marshall reveals to be immediately lynched by Judge.

[COLOR="#FFFFFF"][B]"Vet does not contribute to social deduction"[/B][/COLOR]

To the contrary, vet does contribute to deduction directly by being able to directly confirm themselves as veterans when they kill an intruder. I think you mean vets do not contribute to social [I]investigation[/I], but there are many other roles (BG, Doc, Vigi) that don't directly contribute that either.

[COLOR="#FFFFFF"][B]"Vet is a role about lottery draw of kills"[/B][/COLOR]

True, but I think that is okay. Vet is currently the only thing that NI killing roles (GF, SK, etc.) have to worry about. It forces evil roles to calculate carefully based on what information they have. Otherwise there is no strategy and you would be free to blindly target (because it's not like you can predict where a bodyguard is going to be anyway). In my opinion, it's not always a great idea to send out all 3 Mafia/Triad members specifically because of the risk of veterans. Especially for roles like Blackmailer who do very little when blindly blackmailing someone (and thus potentially exposing themselves for no reason) rather than only activating only when they have a high-priority target they want to muffle. In fact, what is a Blackmailer doing visiting a vet rather than a confirmed investigative role that might actually have a lead? (Not to say that there is never value in making a vet shut up, but targeting recklessly should be punished, and vet is currently the only role that does this)

[COLOR="#FFFFFF"][B]"I don't have a Veteran in my setup."[/B][/COLOR]

More than fair. I think keeping a role in the game but allowing players to remove that option in their own save is the best way. However, a better option is to [I]reduce the odds of the role in the save[/I] rather than removing it entirely. A large part of SC2Mafia should be looking at role probabilities and using that to drive strategy rather than removing chunks of the game entirely purely for simplicity's sake.

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"Vet is about luck"

This is true. However, that does not mean that it does not belong in the game. SC2Mafia is a game that is tremendously influenced by luck. Do evils run into a bodyguard? Who dies to a jester? Who was doused by a visit when arsonist ignited? Who are the town randoms? How strong is the Mafia/Triad role assignments?

The beauty of SC2Mafia is that the game does not revolve around pure strategy execution in a game with perfect information (for example chess), but rather a tremendous amount of unknown variables, compounded by randomness, and further complicated by deception, which drives players to learn to adapt to changing circumstances and strive to create frameworks of understanding despite having imperfect information.

There is a reason that poker is interesting and receives attention in a way that chess does not - the elements of randomness and luck are incredibly exciting to play and watch. What matters isn't the hand that is dealt - it's how players react to new information, and how they try to maximize their odds of success based off their analysis.

I would say veteran fits in a similar fashion with many other roles such as Jailor or Bodyguard or even Doc. 99% of saves limit the veteran to how many times they can alert, and this in itself has a poker-like element where veterans are incentivized to bluff their alerts and save them for when they feel they will be targeted. There is considerable strategy here that is very nuanced, and can make for some very tense games.

Lastly, early game deaths, in general, are extremely luck based. It sucks to visit a vet, but it also sucks when Town Government just happens to be killed Night 1 or when a Marshall reveals to be immediately lynched by Judge.

"Vet does not contribute to social deduction"

To the contrary, vet does contribute to deduction directly by being able to directly confirm themselves as veterans when they kill an intruder. I think you mean vets do not contribute to social investigation, but there are many other roles (BG, Doc, Vigi) that don't directly contribute that either.

"Vet is a role about lottery draw of kills"

True, but I think that is okay. Vet is currently the only thing that NI killing roles (GF, SK, etc.) have to worry about. It forces evil roles to calculate carefully based on what information they have. Otherwise there is no strategy and you would be free to blindly target (because it's not like you can predict where a bodyguard is going to be anyway). In my opinion, it's not always a great idea to send out all 3 Mafia/Triad members specifically because of the risk of veterans. Especially for roles like Blackmailer who do very little when blindly blackmailing someone (and thus potentially exposing themselves for no reason) rather than only activating only when they have a high-priority target they want to muffle. In fact, what is a Blackmailer doing visiting a vet rather than a confirmed investigative role that might actually have a lead? (Not to say that there is never value in making a vet shut up, but targeting recklessly should be punished, and vet is currently the only role that does this)

"I don't have a Veteran in my setup."

More than fair. I think keeping a role in the game but allowing players to remove that option in their own save is the best way. However, a better option is to reduce the odds of the role in the save rather than removing it entirely. A large part of SC2Mafia should be looking at role probabilities and using that to drive strategy rather than removing chunks of the game entirely purely for simplicity's sake.