ToS

I know that in the past, people here on this site have been very critical on the design choices of Town of Salem.

For the first time ever, I happen to read their role list:
https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/30543

I thought their Detective is much more fitting for the name, whilst our Detective would indeed be more fitting if called Tracker.

This first impression had me asking as I'm not very familiar with ToS:
What design choices of ToS, excluding Necromancer, have the fine people from the SC2Mafia past regarded as bad?

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Originally Posted by OzyWho

I know that in the past, people here on this site have been very critical on the design choices of Town of Salem.

For the first time ever, I happen to read their role list:
https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/30543

I thought their Detective is much more fitting for the name, whilst our Detective would indeed be more fitting if called Tracker.

This first impression had me asking as I'm not very familiar with ToS:
What design choices of ToS, excluding Necromancer, have the fine people from the SC2Mafia past regarded as bad?

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No citizen, dead interaction.

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Originally Posted by SuperJack

No citizen, dead interaction.

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There's Citizen though

It's not the roles. It's the players. They're worse than even SC2 Players.

As an aside, I never liked how cultists kill the mafia if they visit them.

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Originally Posted by Oberon

It's not the roles. It's the players. They're worse than even SC2 Players.

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Judging by some of their FM players, that's hard to imagine. I have been impressed by ladd every game I played with him (2), and Chemist was voted the most improving player on MU in 2019 and got to champ finals in 2020.

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Originally Posted by OzyWho

There's Citizen though

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Lol about time.

I like what ToS has done. For a long time a lot of people demanded that any role that interacts with the dead can not work and would break the game yet they pulled it off. They took DR's format and made it stand alone and made some pretty interesting twists on the roles.

I do feel that the bar for skill is a little lower than what we have on the SC2 mod when I played a few years back but that is to be expected when you have a more open player base. The only thing I took real issue with was that they were launching kickstarters to make more promises before fulfilling the ones they had already made. That kind of practice is what has everyone so upset about ScamCitizen.

I should probably play ToS again someday just to see how things have been tweaked. The devs are also really chill people as well.

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Originally Posted by Helz

I like what ToS has done. For a long time a lot of people demanded that any role that interacts with the dead can not work and would break the game yet they pulled it off. They took DR's format and made it stand alone and made some pretty interesting twists on the roles.

I do feel that the bar for skill is a little lower than what we have on the SC2 mod when I played a few years back but that is to be expected when you have a more open player base. The only thing I took real issue with was that they were launching kickstarters to make more promises before fulfilling the ones they had already made. That kind of practice is what has everyone so upset about ScamCitizen.

I should probably play ToS again someday just to see how things have been tweaked. The devs are also really chill people as well.

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I think with regards to dead roles it was more of an ideal than the thought they wouldn't work.

We can always have a night on ToS :D

I really disliked how our community treated that community in a few respects. But I think they had the last laugh after being berated and told dead interaction roles could never work by so many people and then it worked totally fine when they did it

For all we know, their success might have been even greater without the dead interaction roles. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Originally Posted by SuperJack

I think with regards to dead roles it was more of an ideal than the thought they wouldn't work.

We can always have a night on ToS :D

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ToS isn't free to play anymore, though.

Tbh the worst part about ToS was the very short day length, and the fact that trials didn't pause days. I really hated that :(

Wtf not f2p

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Originally Posted by Oberon

ToS isn't free to play anymore, though.

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The mobile app seems free, and so too does the browser version.
Unless they ask for money after registering that is.

Don't know about the steam version though. Don't have steam and never will.

Tbh, I'd play mafia.gg over tos/tol/epicmafia. Though it's same as epicmafia but epicmafia is dead.
The sc2 version over all of them though.

i was finding the old threads for you so you can just see the original opinions but then i saw this and was amazed how closely helz mirrored his own post from 5 years ago

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Originally Posted by Helz

Straight up I dislike our communities attitude towards ToS. I think they did an excellent job creating a browser based format for Mafia. They simplified the game to a very heavy extent which does not appeal to me at all but I understand that they were going for mass appeal. It honestly tickled the hell out of me that they implemented roles that interact with the dead, eliminated the citizen and created self-healing doctors. Those are all things our community forever cried could never work and it works just fine. All in all I think their developers did an excellent job taking a game format they loved moving it into a browser based format while making a living doing it.

What I do not like is that they ran a 2nd kickstarter campaign before they had fulfilled the promises they made on the first one. That straight up disgusted me and some of the things they put in were just insane. Like another 30K donation stretch goal was something like adding 1 role. It was a shameless money grab that made me loose a good portion of the respect I had for their developers. Hopefully their next one has goals that have some kind of effort in them.

All that aside I really do like the game. Its much too simple for my taste but I think it nails exactly what it was going for. A very light and simple version of the mafia game for a much more casual audience. I have some special privileges in that game but you will probably never see me playing it. I would best summarize it as a blend between Epic Mafia and our SC2 mod.

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this is the main quote from their main thread which they received much ridicule for

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Originally Posted by BlankMediaGames

1.) First, we have two new roles (the retributionist and the medium) which offer new mechanics with the game involving the graveyard which will give players who have died more incentive to stay around and finish the game. This will not be the last of the new roles that we add, we will continue updating and adding new roles to the game.

Secondly, Citizens and Detectives have been removed. Detectives are very similar to Lookouts but had a weaker ability and the Citizens were not exciting to play. We understand that some people may not support this decision but we feel it will improve the gameplay.

Bodyguards now have one bulletproof vest which helps during the first night when noone knows who anyone else is. It sucks to defend a Mafia member from a serial killer and forfeit your life.
For a similar reason Doctors have been given one self heal. They can choose to use this on night one when they aren't sure who to protect or they can save the self heal for when they out themselves as the towns doctor (and are most likely to be attacked that night).

The Jester can choose who they want to kill among their guilty voters instead of having it be random. It's just more fun to choose who dies :)

2) We have only played a few games of epic mafia. Are there any particular features you would like to see implemented?

3) Since we aren't going through SC2 there is no "double lobby" scenario. We have one lobby at the start where the roles list can be chosen. There will be a lobby leader that chooses which roles to add to the roles list for the game.

Additionally we have houses in this game with customization options and different towns as well. You don't have to keep looking at the same zone/town every time.

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Our community was very unkind towards them. Even way back then I recognized how we were just isolating ourselves from the global community and how that 'pull' from the SC2 mod would not go on forever..

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Originally Posted by Helz

Our community was very unkind towards them. Even way back then I recognized how we were just isolating ourselves from the global community and how that 'pull' from the SC2 mod would not go on forever..

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Damn, you're not wrong. That thread is pretty awful. It's the equivalent of walking into your average shitty high school and asking people to critique some idea you had.

Pretty funny, in hindsight, considering many people play ToS but only ~200 people play SC2Mafia.
What goes around, really comes around.

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Originally Posted by aamirus

i was finding the old threads for you so you can just see the original opinions but then i saw this and was amazed how closely helz mirrored his own post from 5 years ago

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For the longest time I had no understanding that this kind of memory is abnormal..

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Originally Posted by Helz

For the longest time I had no understanding that this kind of memory is abnormal..

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It’s not weird to have the same opinion I was just impressed your whole post was the same structure bit by bit

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Originally Posted by aamirus

It’s not weird to have the same opinion I was just impressed your whole post was the same structure bit by bit

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Someday test me on it if you would like. Ask me about some conversation we had a year ago and I can probably remember a weird amount of it. I suck with specific dates or names but concepts I just never seem to forget