Also when you said “Cop/Doctor/Durable/Vanilla/Detective are liable to be instantly thrown into a counter-claim”
That simply isn’t true unless someone claims a role from the same percentage the town rolled.
Also when you said “Cop/Doctor/Durable/Vanilla/Detective are liable to be instantly thrown into a counter-claim”
That simply isn’t true unless someone claims a role from the same percentage the town rolled.
Like you can claim Jailkeeper as Mafia and probably get away with it
Unless Rolestopper or Jailkeeper rolled you should be fine.
Mafia can also sort it out so their claims hit out many and have the only slots cleared 100% and 90%.
Non-town roles only have relevance to the analysis in whether they can deceive someone about someone else's role or deceive someone about their own role. Otherwise, they're irrelevant for one simple reason.
Ultimately, in order to mechanically appear town, you have to look like a town role and have circumstances supporting that. Hence why I didn't really look at any of the non-town roles in that analysis. Especially when it seems some mafia roles have only a chance of appearing.
Well yeah its not true, but what's also isn't true is that's not what I said :P. Though I don't mean to be snarky or whatever about that -- I'm not the most amazing communicator in the world.
I'll take another look when I can, which probably won't be for the next 36 hours at minimum, and I'll try to take the mafia's full list of potential options in mind. As I've mentioned above and in my last post, my analysis was intentionally limited so things could be good enough now.
A.K.A "That One Idiot"
Apologies for the delay. I've been busy with important life stuffs. I'll have more time in the days comming.
The average chance a town is a power-role, not including the 100% town (and now including the 90% town), is now .46%, and so the average amount of unique roles randed is around 5.2 rather than 6. Its better I suppose, but I think it fairs better in the sense there are now less roles with high chances of randing unique town roles. It may still be easy to believe there'll be 5 town slots that can clear themselves easily, but it'll be harder to believe any specific slot is clear especially when most are a 50% or less chance of being a unique role. There's also factors such as certain roles maybe being incentivized to not claim just because they're a more useful power role. I think at that point people's paranoia and fears start playing into these situations and potentially ruin any consensus clears. Although with the amount of semi-unique roles (i.e. roles with 2 appearances max) there could maybe be a risk of cascading clears, but I don't think its too likely when just mathing all the semi-unique %s and considering the fact they're largely alternative to slots being unique.
Spoiler : just stuff I did when looking at it :
I could also be out of my league with this stuff (re: I'm not awesome at math lmao) and being an idiot so I'd like to see if @Marshmallow Marshall agrees to any extent with what I've said above, and if not, why differ.
This seems good enough. It also may help to reduce the likelihood that town 5 gets cleared. Potential to king-maker, but they have options unless they rand all town or mafia in that group of 3 lol. So for them its just better to help whichever slot they think is most likely to win with their help. In other words, when it king-makers it probably just ends up making a winning side win harder I would conjecture.Dancer - At the beginning of the game choose 3 players to dance with. Those players will be roleblocked if they visit each other. Every night you may choose a player you are dancing with and Roleblock all their visitors.
Dancer - Ensure at least one of the players you danced with end game and achieve their win condition.
I don't really think people enjoy playing with this, because then suddenly someone acting scummy is a potentially valid reason to not vote them. And on the off-chance that argument is right and yet they go through with it, I would not be surprised if people were upset. Recommend that this is removed.Fool - If you’re executed you win and everyone else loses.
Honesty this seems preety cool to play as and with. Considering town is very likely to have some form of KP, Masochist doesn't really side with anyone unless they've lost KP. Its also incentivized to just live lol, though maybe in some cases people may just claim as being it though idk if they would as that could hurt the chances they are directly NK'ed.Masochist - Each night you may choose a player and redirect all their actions to yourself.
Masochist- Get killed at night.
I think this role got more fun to play as, but it is still forced to king-maker with whoever its protecting. It's okay I guess, maybe even good for the sake of variety and potential chaos if the ability is used, but not ideal. Regardless, I probably wouldn't fuss over its inclusion.Guardian Angel - You have been assigned (Player) as the person you deem to protect.
[snip]
Rest of the neutral stuff seems good enough too. Though Senator is kinda a strict down-grade from Serial Killer in most circumstances imo and the demands they make could be revealing. So they should probably have a protective vest or something that is automatically used in order to make it more relatively closer in power.
I'll look at the mafia roles later, to try to make rough comparisons of mafia v town power, probably like Saturday.
Last edited by MartinGG99; September 29th, 2023 at 02:35 AM.
A.K.A "That One Idiot"
Should I go back to Jester but make it so Jester can still speak when dead rather than receiving a shot.
If I remove fool I want the replacements WinCon to get executed
If I understand correctly, you want a role that has the goal of being executed but isn't something vanilla (vanilla being a role that has no abilities what-so-ever)? Idealistically I think a role that either is vanilla or night immune or looks suspicious mechanically or something like that tends to be the best neutral you can get (for the sake of game fun while not being too king-maker) if it has the wincon of getting executed.
I'll think on ideas for that and also talk to staff to see if they have any ideas just in general. I also want to clarify that we generally act in an advisory manner rather trying to limit creativity. Really we only step in on the process if things seem un-fun for people in general or if there's a level of game balance that is expected but does not have an accurate disclaimer (ex: "this game may be unbalanced a bit") on. Because, in theory, social games like Forum Mafia are basically just social contracts at the end of the day. If a game is potentially very swingy, and people understand it could be very swingy when signing, things should be fine because everyone has basically agreed to it.
A.K.A "That One Idiot"
Talked with MM so yeah the only real issue we have is the "get-voted-out" role shouldn't be too king-maker or anti-fun. Idealistically its a role that does nothing other than getting voted out, but if you really want to make it stand-out in some way beyond that there maybe could be a few variations that could work. Such as night-immunity, which isn't quite king-maker because mafia/town have KP and jester's survival at night helps its goal / own interests primairly. Again though we can brainstorm more ideas.
We talked about the double-voter and it seems good enough in the sense that its double-vote makes whoever it is apparent and the 50/50 split with survivor neutral makes it so that paranoia will probably be some significant part of gameplay with respect to handling the double-voter. In basically every alignment the double-voter rands there'll be some reason (or opinion) to balance towniness and potential scumminess of their appearance to ensure they either ensure survival or their team's wincon. It is technically a significant king-maker as survivor, but its not really king-maker in the sense that it can really decide who it sides with because town will fear them being mafia and mafia will fear them being town. That is largely my opinion but MM broadly agreed with me (or at least found it acceptable).
And again, we think any mass-claim scenario isn't as bad per the changes you made. Any mass-claim with clears could be reasonably contested without too much risk or problems for the mafia as paranoia, again, could be a balancing factor due to the lower Unique Role total RNG chances of the individual town slots.
Edit: And, of course, this is a 15 player game. It could be a bit challenging to fill on this site, and perhaps bigger challenge to get replacements for.
Last edited by MartinGG99; September 29th, 2023 at 06:09 PM.
A.K.A "That One Idiot"
How about the Senator can store kills?
And if they get attacked and have a stored kill, they lose that stored kill instead of dying?
I made it so the Jester gets a 1-Shot Loki dreaming god.
Actually I’ll rename it to Trickster
That's a good idea. That said, I think Senator should have some kind of "host must approve the demand" mechanic, just in case someone tries to do something like "lynch minus 3,1416 people today" lol.
Making the Jester give an ability to someone when he already won is pure kingmaker fluff, though. If you want such a thing to be in the game, it would need to help the jester's wincon in some way, instead of really just being there to annoy other players imo: would you really like to play in a game where a jester randomly decides to screw your team (or even the other team) with an ability that gives him strictly nothing? I doubt it, and I doubt even more that other people would, unless the game is literally a troll game.
Alright changed it, LMK what you think now.
As for Senator.
I think it’s self explanatory for the demand to be reasonable and manageable.
I honestly don't get the intention with the jester-esque wincon role with its latest changes and I'm not really seeing any reasoning behind such changes. Like, lets frame it another way: How does this role (as quoted) benefit and enrich the game's experience? Where does a role giving a counter-win-con ability, of which that ability can seemingly be anything, enrich the gaming experience? What would the game be missing from its experience if this role was excluded?
If you can help me understand that then I would be more accepting of its inclusion.
Trickster - Target a player during the night and for the rest of the game prevent them from visiting you. Once per game during the day, give someone a 1-Shot Loki dreaming god ability and you may decide what that ability does however upon doing so that player’s vote on you counts as zero for the rest of the game.
Trickster - Get Executed
A.K.A "That One Idiot"
We've had issues with roles of that kind in the past - granted the directive was PMed to a single player instead of publicly announced, but still. It never hurts to have a clear and specific policy; the opposite does.
Also, dittoing Martin with his last post. It would be nice if you could explain what your design intent is here.
“Trickster”
Loki is the God of Trickster’s.
So I wanted to give it a Loki god ability.
Thought it was cool but perhaps it doesn’t actually help.
Alright so I changed it to benefit their WinCon rather then it just looking misplaced.
Honestly "however the ability must benefit your chances to be executed in some way" seems preety good. Its more difficult to king-maker with that and, if it does king-maker, it probably does not to the same extent as something like vengeful might. Its not ideal, but I think its good enough to be acceptable. If @Marshmallow Marshall concurs then I think I'm fine with giving the A-Okay with this setup and adding it to the Queue.
Which may mean actually posting signups within the next few days, because Geyde has not posted their signups yet (despite given time to do so) and PoD has hosted twice recently and as such would prefer if he didn't prevent others from hosting.
A.K.A "That One Idiot"
It is cool, to be fair! It was more the gameplay we were worried about, but I like that flavor a lot
I am indeed fine with approving this. The Experimental tag remains appropriate, considering the setup's nature, though, so leaving it there. @MartinGG99
Random questions:
what are your "be all end alls" aka things you absolutely want not to be changed?
what was your goal with the design of this setup?
what would your role pm look like (let's say I'm 100% townie and we randed dreaming god)?
are you reranding obviously one sided role rands?
if the above is no, do you have any 'self-balancing' mechanism to ensure that one side getting a god rand has counterbalance?
I honestly don’t remember the goal of the setup. As I made it back in 2020, 3 years ago.
There’s a decent amount I wouldn’t change but I am open to discussing. (Like probably the 100% town I wouldn’t touch though as well as their being neutrals. I could add/change neutrals depending.)
I also refuse to remove Gun Dealer, I loved making that role.
I won’t re-rand things no. However for example what I might do is if the town power is pretty high I’d make it so JOAT/DG has weak abilities and if it’s lower I might give them strong and perhaps do one or the other if both is pretty balanced so no one can use this and I can throw them off.
Last edited by Dark Magician; October 1st, 2023 at 12:57 PM.
would you be fine with completely changing the doublevoter slot to something else
I recently helped review a setup
I think you might have been in it, can't remember
ToS3FM on FoL
It had a similar issue where massclaiming was so effective that, in order to play the game as nontown, you needed to mass CC and hope that you could severely outplay village into making several critical mistakes without giving up nearly any ground
This setup, mathematically, is extremely similar with the potential to be even worse for mafia
I have a few fixes in mind, a couple way more esoteric than the others
To be clear, the issue the last post of mine is considering is one of enjoyment
I've seen this kinda thing play out and it's mad stressful for everyone involved and often leaves them not wanting to continue playing
there's balance consideration in there
it's just not as important fmpov
Also mass claiming is really not that difficult to deal with.
I could easily win as mafia if town mass claimed.
You just gotta know who to use what actions on and you’re golden.
People think it hurts mafia without actually taking the simulation into account.
I simulated the setup with random.org and see how it would playout because I was bored.
1. Town
2. Dreamer God
3. Arsonist
4. Doctor
5. Jailkeeper
6. Bus Driver
7. Tracker
8. Detective
9. VT
10. VT
11. VT
12. Monk
13. Roleblocker
14. Janitor
15. Dancer
If everyone massed claimed:
100% 70% 60% are all claims that know their role flavors.
Town would piece together that if 60% town is Bus Driver, then 90% must be Arsonist; if 70% is Jailkeeper, then 80% must be doctor. It will be hard for mafia to counterclaim those.
50% and 40% are both Tracker/Detective.
It's hard to CC tracker if Tracker can visit a confirmed town and clear themself.
It also hard to CC either of those roles if they found a mafia and clear themselves.
30 20 10% are all VT.
What would happen when Mafia fakeclaim:
Claiming JOAT/Dream God is 1 on 1 CC that mafia dont really want because they dont know what will happen if Dreaming God perform a night action.
Claiming Gun Dealer/Vigilante/Poisoner/Arsonist will just get the real arsonist to douse you and kill you. Roleblocker have to basically RB them, and say you got RBed too because it will be sus you didnt kill either, but you may be risked being found out by the tracker/detective.
Claiming Huntsman meant that doctor is your CC.
Claiming Babysitter/Doctor meant you are CCing either Doctor or Jailkeeper.
Cant claim Assassin as you cant perform the kill.
Claiming Rolestopper meant that you are CCing Jailkeeper, and you can easily get caught because Tracker/Detective will try to make you prove your role, and you will be found out.
Claiming Jailkeeper meant that you are CCing Jailkeeper. Jailkeeper will just roleblock you forever, to the point that you cant be the last wolf alive or you autolose.
Fakeclaiming Lie Detector/Redirector/Bus Driver meant that you are CCing Bus Driver.
Fakeclaiming Cop meant that you are either CCing Jailkeeper or Tracker.
Fakeclaiming Watcher/Tracker meant that you are in a three way CC of yourself Tracker/Detective, where 2 is real 1 is fake.
Fakeclaiming Detective meant that you are either CCing Detective or Bus Driver.
Claiming BP townie meant that you are probably CCing Detective if Tracker/Bus Driver is left uncc'd.
Mafia can safely claim VT or any of the roles in 30/20/10% but you will leave too many PRs uncc'd.
Also how is a neutral killer supposed to win if everyone mass claim? They have no choice but to hide among the VTs as ccing PRs is way too risky. Its really hard for neutrals to win in games where mass claims happen.
I feel like you can break this game with mass claims unless RNG is lucky for mafia/unlucky for town.
Also in an event that Double Voter is Mafia Traitor, its basically 10v5v1 in term of votecount, and town can only mislynch twice before it become 6v5v1 and have to rely on neutral to vote with them.
It could even be 4v5v1 if neutral killer killed 2 towns by Day 3. It is really hard for town to win with a Mafia Traitor Double Vote.
So let’s look at a mass claim with this following Rand:
Town Double Voter
Town JOAT (Motion Detect, Mailman, Gravedig.)
Town Vigilante
Town Babysitter
Town Cop
Town Redirector
Vanilla Townie
Detective
Treestumped Townie
Vanilla Townie
Miller
Brute
Rolecop
Redirector
Arsonist
So
100% is a for sure clear.
90% Vig is a Semi Clear.
80% or 70% is Babysitter
50% or 70% is Cop
60% is Redirector
80%, 60% and 40% is Detective
Treestump is 30%
VT claims are within 50%, 40%, 30%, 20% and 10%
We know VT won’t be within the 30%.
Logically mafia does something like this:
One claims VT (50, 40, 20 or 10)
One claims Doctor
One claims Arsonist (which throws doubt at Redirector and Vigilante.)
Brute gives mafia a 1-Shot Extra Kill
Redirector can Redirect a player for mafia.
Arsonist does their own thing.
So just to show you, Rolecop makes the Arsonist claim, the other 2 mafia buss.
Brute Kills Vig
Mafia Faction Kills JOAT
Redirector redirects Vig into Cop
Remaining Townies:
Double Voter
Babysitter
Redirector
Detective
Treestump
Miller
2 VT
Remember there is a mafia in the VT claims and a Doctor claim.
The Redirector and Detective and technically still be viable for 60% and now the mafia can use the fact mafia has a Redirector to make the Redirector claim look sus.
Town Redirector gets executed.
Mafia Redirector Redirects Babysitter to Detective
Mafia Kills Babysitter
Remaining:
Brute - Doctor Claim
Redirector - VT Claim
Arsonist
Double Voter
Treestump
Miller
2 VT
80% or 70% is Babysitter
50% or 70% is Cop
80% or 70% is Doctor
Now technically Mafia is in no means outed.
Cop could have been 50% and Babysitter could have been either or of 80 or 70 with Doctor as the other.
This Gamestate here is very winnable for mafia.
Now the only argument you could make is Neut gets fucked over from a mass claim which is fair I suppose.
Alright now time for me to go read POD’s simulated game.
I’ll make sure the game is balanced despite the RNG.
Suggestions:
Make the Mafia Double Voter not know their partners as well. I know traitor role card said they do but I feel like removing that would make it more balanced.
Allow a little bit more overlaps for claims in general.
Allow the neutral role get some kind of choice at start whether they want to be immune to night kills or immune to detection, or whatever ideas you might have. They feel like they need some kind of buff.
You dont have to listen to my suggestions tho, theyre just suggestions.
Thought it’s clarified but Double Voter doesn’t know who they are it’s only the other potential mafia traitor that would.
Clarification would be good. Are you saying that if Double Voter randed mafia traitor, and the mafia did not rand any traitors of their own in their mafia-specific slots, then Double-Voter wouldn't know who's mafia and who's town? It helps if things are said and then said again in a different way in case the first attempt isn't somehow clear.
Sidenote I intend to check out the hypotheticals you guys did later, probably within 24 hours. Thanks to you, @powerofdeath , and @geyde for your guys time into this. The more people review stuff the easier it is to spot issues and accurately evaluate them.
Last edited by MartinGG99; October 2nd, 2023 at 03:17 PM.
A.K.A "That One Idiot"
After considering it a bit.
I might give Rolecop knowledge at the start of the game of one role that isn’t present in the game.
But like a unique role.
Unrelated to the hypothetical above and in general, I think:
100% town -- you just don't CC as instant thunder-dome or worse
90% town -- you also don't CC unless you wanna get shot/burned, though maybe slight chance of town friendly fire if Arson is actually randed while someone claims a possible 60% role.
80% town -- among the safer options overall for CC'ing imo, even Assassin can be claimed with Brute though good luck if Assassin actually exists lmao
70% town -- Risky to CC but not the worst
60% town -- Could be bad if you're CCing a bus driver. Otherwise probably relatively safe enough.
50% town -- Unwise to CC given potential investigative thunder-dome
40% town -- same as 50%, unless VT claim
30% town -- you probably just claim vanilla town, vengeful would be bad to CC against and Restless Spirit is not something you CC with lmao
20% town -- VT exists, but Durable townie might not be that bad. You would also have an easier time getting rid of hated townie if it existed
10% town -- A miller claim probably gets you role-blocked or otherwise. in that regard, a bit risky.
Colored according to how bad or good the situation looks to CC there imo. These could be better or worse depending on actual town rand, as well as what specific role you're claiming. 80% and 20% probably among the safest non-VT areas to claim.
Idealistically though the game probably becomes much better if there was soup-kill. The game would played more like normal mafia and not have to rely on paranoia so much to balance it. Though if that does become the case, Double-voter either should be removed or changed so that 1) not know of any teammates in any circumstance and 2) not count towards mafia wincon in any way, as it not knowing its teammates will prevent "If nothing can stop mafia from winning the game will end in a mafia victory" from ever being true for the double-voter without the mafia winning a lot already.
Honestly might want to implement that change to Double-Voter regardless if soup-kill is ever added to the game.
A.K.A "That One Idiot"