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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
This topic should not come as a big surprise to anyone. Right here I'm going to define the rigorous rules for what encompasses a normal game.
Let's start off by thinking about what should be accomplished by defining a set of rules. The main thing is that we want to encourage play that is based off of analysis and not roles. A normal game should not have an over-dependence on roles. Furthermore, the majority of roles included should be those that promote good play and generally require thought upon using. Normal games also need to be as balanced as possible, so any role that is volatile depending on how well it is used should not be included.
We are abandoning the previous rule that hosts are allowed to make one "twist" to their normal game. Instead I will give you a list of what is allowed in a normal game, and you can choose how you want to set it up yourself. Yes, this is going to make normal games more "standard", and there is less room for hosts to come up with a unique setup. But we feel that this is how normal games should be. The themed games can handle the rest.
I'm not going to lie, there is some amount of subjectivity in this list. For everything listed we had to answer the questions, "Is this 'standard' for TL Mafia? Does this promote good play? Does this provide an atmosphere good for analysis?" Very frequently many could not agree on the answers. Hence here I am, asking for your feedback on what you think needs to be changed to the following list. The list is not absolute; we are always willing to change it to accommodate new rules/roles. If ever you feel like something should be added to the list you may petition to me to get the new thing added.
Grand list of rules for a normal game
Blue roles: Night vigi, Detective - 4 types (Parity cop, Alignment cop, Role cop, Standard cop - Alignment + Role), Watcher, Tracker, Veteran, Medic, Mad Hatter, Jailkeeper, Mason.
Mafia roles: Godfather, Roleblocker, Mason, Medic -Mafia team gets to choose which member gets what role -No KP cost roles (e.g. frame/cover for 0.5KP, etc)
Misc Roles: Miller, Nosy Neighbor
3rd Party: Serial Killer (SK), Traitor
Serial Killer: Gets 1KP per night. Bulletproof. Wins if last one standing. -May be information proof (i.e. can't be checked/tracked/whatever) at host's discretion -May slightly alter bulletproof and 1KP per night mechanic depending on the setup -Host must rigorously define weird ending scenario's in case of ties.
Traitor: May be recruitable or non-recruitable.
Elections: Allowed. May have Mayor or Pardoner or both (typically both). -Mayor still decides day 1 lynch. -Mayor typically has extra voting power (i.e. their vote counts as 2 or 3 instead of 1), but this is optional
Voting Systems: Majority and Plurality okay. No instant majority.
No Bodyguards!! -Elected officials get extra night life or check immunity or both (host's choice, depends on setup).
--Limited use roles are okay. e.g. Detective only gets 2 checks for whole game. Multi-shot vigi's are okay for large games.
--Any type of PM mechanic is okay, including flamewheel mechanic (each player gets to mason with 2 other players of their choosing for the entire game).
--No-flip games are okay. Alignment only flip games okay.
--No paranoid/naive/whatever variants for any role.
--No assassins. No village idiots.
--No double lynches (use vigi's if you need more town KP).
--No day vigi. No bulletproof. No vigi variants. No dreamflower. No vote altering roles (Mayor exception). No janitor.
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
That the topic title sounds like the title of a thesis was not intentional.
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It was totally intentional
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On April 23 2012 13:08 Foolishness wrote: This topic should not come as a big surprise to anyone. Right here I'm going to define the rigorous rules for what encompasses a normal game.
Let's start off by thinking about what should be accomplished by defining a set of rules. The main thing is that we want to encourage play that is based off of analysis and not roles. A normal game should not have an over-dependence on roles. Furthermore, the majority of roles included should be those that promote good play and generally require thought upon using. Normal games also need to be as balanced as possible, so any role that is volatile depending on how well it is used should not be included.
We are abandoning the previous rule that hosts are allowed to make one "twist" to their normal game. Instead I will give you a list of what is allowed in a normal game, and you can choose how you want to set it up yourself. Yes, this is going to make normal games more "standard", and there is less room for hosts to come up with a unique setup. But we feel that this is how normal games should be. The themed games can handle the rest.
I'm not going to lie, there is some amount of subjectivity in this list. For everything listed we had to answer the questions, "Is this 'standard' for TL Mafia? Does this promote good play? Does this provide an atmosphere good for analysis?" Very frequently many could not agree on the answers. Hence here I am, asking for your feedback on what you think needs to be changed to the following list. The list is not absolute; we are always willing to change it to accommodate new rules/roles. If ever you feel like something should be added to the list you may petition to me to get the new thing added.
Grand list of rules for a normal game
Blue roles: Night vigi, Detective - 4 types (Parity cop, Alignment cop, Role cop, Standard cop - Alignment + Role), Watcher, Tracker, Veteran, Medic, Mad Hatter, Jailkeeper, Mason.
Mafia roles: Godfather, Roleblocker, Mason, Medic -Mafia team gets to choose which member gets what role -No KP cost roles (e.g. frame/cover for 0.5KP, etc)
Misc Roles: Miller, Nosy Neighbor
3rd Party: Serial Killer (SK), Traitor
Serial Killer: Gets 1KP per night. Bulletproof. Wins if last one standing. -May be information proof (i.e. can't be checked/tracked/whatever) at host's discretion -May slightly alter bulletproof and 1KP per night mechanic depending on the setup -Host must rigorously define weird ending scenario's in case of ties.
Traitor: May be recruitable or non-recruitable.
Elections: Allowed. May have Mayor or Pardoner or both (typically both). -Mayor still decides day 1 lynch. -Mayor typically has extra voting power (i.e. their vote counts as 2 or 3 instead of 1), but this is optional
No Bodyguards!! -Elected officials get extra night life or check immunity or both (host's choice, depends on setup).
--Limited use roles are okay. e.g. Detective only gets 2 checks for whole game. Multi-shot vigi's are okay for large games.
--Any type of PM mechanic is okay, including flamewheel mechanic (each player gets to mason with 2 other players of their choosing for the entire game).
--No-flip games are okay. Alignment only flip games okay.
--No paranoid/naive/whatever variants for any role.
--No assassins. No village idiots.
--No double lynches (use vigi's if you need more town KP).
--No day vigi. No bulletproof. No vigi variants. No dreamflower. No vote altering roles (Mayor exception). No janitor.
...will comment later tho!
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United States22154 Posts
I vehemently disagree with no bodyguards, I feel that it removes the majority of the power of mayor roles.
I vehemently disagree with removing sanities,
I don't understand why you want to remove day vigis and vote altering roles.
I don't think we need stringent guidelines to limit normal games, rather this should be a set of guidelines, which you should adhere to, and the balancing team should have veto power over what constitutes a normal setup. I dislike making this into a set of hard and fast rules because that kill the entire creativity of hosts. Things like the coroner mayor from LSB's no flip normal, or the mechanics from jubjub which in my mind are normal would be disallowed under this type of ironclad rule.
TL:DR people should have to actually listen to the balance team, we should be able to have an open discussion about what is "normal", without having a wall of ironclad rules.
My counter proposal is this. Make these guidelines, have anyone hosting a normal talk to the balancing team, if the balance team gives the goahead to anything interesting, then its normal, if the balance team says "not normal" their word is final. We can have an open discussion of any funky mechanics people want to consider as normal openly in this thread as it come up. (E.G. someone wants to talk about allowing jacks in their upcoming normal)
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Bodyguards are terrible though. They require so much extra to be added in for balancing and they are another problem when stacked with Mayor/Pardoner that are immune to investigation.
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United States22154 Posts
On April 23 2012 13:22 Ace wrote: Bodyguards are terrible though. They require so much extra to be added in for balancing and they are another problem when stacked with Mayor/Pardoner that are immune to investigation. But extra lives and a handful of extra votes basically remove the majority of the incentive for scum to run.
Mayor becomes a glorified vet with a couple extra votes, whoop-di-do, as scum I'm going to lounge in the shade during the campaign and if its someone annoying I'll just stack kills. Investigation immune is a not a problem in my mind, you shouldn't be relying on dts with things like framers running around anyway.
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Which is the problem: It's a glorified Vet that requires you to add more KP to the game. Just one 1-shot Vet is good enough for most games. Giving someone a 2 shotter that you can't even directly aim for? That's ridiculous. Seriously, "Follow the Cop" is a breaking strategy and having players hide behind bodyguards is the same thing.
At the very least I hope we are talking about some other kind of bodyguards. The old mechanic where if you targeted the Mayor/Pardoner and your shots failed was just bad. If you target them then at least the Bodyguards should die. It still doesn't solve the problem of allowing a player to be near invincible early in the game which should never be possible.
Investigation immune IS a problem. If you have Framers in the game then allow them to act on the Mayor. It is bigger than relying on a Detective. It's more about why should that player be NK immune and Investigation Immune? Seriously why is that role getting so much power? Extra votes + instant lynch should be good enough. The threat of death on any given night should be a realistic possibility for everyone outside of an SK and the rare Vet role.
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are framers not considered normal? I just noticed a lack of them in the mafia list.
That and
edit: that and nothing else, I'm just retarded
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On April 23 2012 13:24 GMarshal wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 13:22 Ace wrote: Bodyguards are terrible though. They require so much extra to be added in for balancing and they are another problem when stacked with Mayor/Pardoner that are immune to investigation. But extra lives and a handful of extra votes basically remove the majority of the incentive for scum to run. Mayor becomes a glorified vet with a couple extra votes, whoop-di-do, as scum I'm going to lounge in the shade during the campaign and if its someone annoying I'll just stack kills. Investigation immune is a not a problem in my mind, you shouldn't be relying on dts with things like framers running around anyway. From a role perspective, yes. Mayor also gets a bunch of unearned cred for whatever reason, so theres that too. I've never liked bodyguards as they swing more than a simple vet+votes would.
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On April 23 2012 13:29 wherebugsgo wrote: are framers not considered normal? I just noticed a lack of them in the mafia list.
That and
edit: that and nothing else, I'm just retarded
Imo Framers are not normal, and are in fact usually useless. Detectives with varied sanity are much better for gameplay to me.
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United States22154 Posts
On April 23 2012 13:34 Ace wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 13:29 wherebugsgo wrote: are framers not considered normal? I just noticed a lack of them in the mafia list.
That and
edit: that and nothing else, I'm just retarded Imo Framers are not normal, and are in fact usually useless. Detectives with varied sanity are much better for gameplay to me. I think framers are fine, although I'll agree they have low success rate.
Fully agree with sanities, I think they are an important way to balance dts.
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I agree with GMarshal. I think that these guidelines need to be roughly followed, but that the balancing commitee needs to make the ultimate decisions.
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What was the reasoning for removing bodyguards from the list of normal mechanics? I can see if there's some argument for why we should find other ways of doing things, like what Ace is saying, but I would consider them "normal" for TL mafia.
I would maybe argue sanities can have a place in normal games, but I don't think that's a huge loss, so I don't see a reason to. Same goes for things like weak medics and cops. I could see them in a normal game, but it's not like they have to be, depending on how we redefine 'normal'.
However, what was the reasoning for removing double lynches? I think they serve a role in adding an extra dynamic into the game, and another layer of discussion. They aren't overly complicated, and they open up more avenues of play for town and scum.
Next, what is your opinion on mafia variants of town roles? For example, mafia vigilantes, role cops, etc.
Last, what voting systems are considered normal? Only majority and plurality? Or would instant majority be considered normal as well?
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Canada7875 Posts
On April 23 2012 13:19 GMarshal wrote: I vehemently disagree with no bodyguards, I feel that it removes the majority of the power of mayor roles.
I vehemently disagree with removing sanities,
I don't understand why you want to remove day vigis and vote altering roles.
I don't think we need stringent guidelines to limit normal games, rather this should be a set of guidelines, which you should adhere to, and the balancing team should have veto power over what constitutes a normal setup. I dislike making this into a set of hard and fast rules because that kill the entire creativity of hosts. Things like the coroner mayor from LSB's no flip normal, or the mechanics from jubjub which in my mind are normal would be disallowed under this type of ironclad rule.
TL:DR people should have to actually listen to the balance team, we should be able to have an open discussion about what is "normal", without having a wall of ironclad rules.
My counter proposal is this. Make these guidelines, have anyone hosting a normal talk to the balancing team, if the balance team gives the goahead to anything interesting, then its normal, if the balance team says "not normal" their word is final. We can have an open discussion of any funky mechanics people want to consider as normal openly in this thread as it come up. (E.G. someone wants to talk about allowing jacks in their upcoming normal)
Who is said balancing team? there are like only 4-5 people I would personally ever ask to help balance one of my games.
I only ask as I typically do not see the ones from the active games thread used in the credits for balancing of said game.
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On April 23 2012 13:41 BloodyC0bbler wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 13:19 GMarshal wrote: I vehemently disagree with no bodyguards, I feel that it removes the majority of the power of mayor roles.
I vehemently disagree with removing sanities,
I don't understand why you want to remove day vigis and vote altering roles.
I don't think we need stringent guidelines to limit normal games, rather this should be a set of guidelines, which you should adhere to, and the balancing team should have veto power over what constitutes a normal setup. I dislike making this into a set of hard and fast rules because that kill the entire creativity of hosts. Things like the coroner mayor from LSB's no flip normal, or the mechanics from jubjub which in my mind are normal would be disallowed under this type of ironclad rule.
TL:DR people should have to actually listen to the balance team, we should be able to have an open discussion about what is "normal", without having a wall of ironclad rules.
My counter proposal is this. Make these guidelines, have anyone hosting a normal talk to the balancing team, if the balance team gives the goahead to anything interesting, then its normal, if the balance team says "not normal" their word is final. We can have an open discussion of any funky mechanics people want to consider as normal openly in this thread as it come up. (E.G. someone wants to talk about allowing jacks in their upcoming normal)
Who is said balancing team? there are like only 4-5 people I would personally ever ask to help balance one of my games.
On December 05 2010 15:34 Foolishness wrote:
About balancing your game: All games must be balanced to ensure that people have fun while playing. Nothing sucks worse to lose a game only to find out your chance of winning was next to nil from the start. Please note that TL Mafia may be different from other forum mafia sites, and some setups that work on other sites may not be appropriate here. If you are hosting a game you must get the setup approved by one of the following members before starting your game:
Incognito, Ver, Foolishness, flamewheel, GMarshal
People on this list may refuse to look at your game for whatever reason (i.e. they are too busy with life). This is a volunteer job so please be understanding.
If you are an experienced host or player you may 'petition' to include yourself on this list. You must have at least 2 games of hosting experience and several games of playing experience to be considered to be on this list. Send me a PM if you wish to be on the list.
Active Games thread OP
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United States22154 Posts
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Canada7875 Posts
On April 23 2012 13:42 GreYMisT wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 13:41 BloodyC0bbler wrote:On April 23 2012 13:19 GMarshal wrote: I vehemently disagree with no bodyguards, I feel that it removes the majority of the power of mayor roles.
I vehemently disagree with removing sanities,
I don't understand why you want to remove day vigis and vote altering roles.
I don't think we need stringent guidelines to limit normal games, rather this should be a set of guidelines, which you should adhere to, and the balancing team should have veto power over what constitutes a normal setup. I dislike making this into a set of hard and fast rules because that kill the entire creativity of hosts. Things like the coroner mayor from LSB's no flip normal, or the mechanics from jubjub which in my mind are normal would be disallowed under this type of ironclad rule.
TL:DR people should have to actually listen to the balance team, we should be able to have an open discussion about what is "normal", without having a wall of ironclad rules.
My counter proposal is this. Make these guidelines, have anyone hosting a normal talk to the balancing team, if the balance team gives the goahead to anything interesting, then its normal, if the balance team says "not normal" their word is final. We can have an open discussion of any funky mechanics people want to consider as normal openly in this thread as it come up. (E.G. someone wants to talk about allowing jacks in their upcoming normal)
Who is said balancing team? there are like only 4-5 people I would personally ever ask to help balance one of my games. Show nested quote +On December 05 2010 15:34 Foolishness wrote:
About balancing your game: All games must be balanced to ensure that people have fun while playing. Nothing sucks worse to lose a game only to find out your chance of winning was next to nil from the start. Please note that TL Mafia may be different from other forum mafia sites, and some setups that work on other sites may not be appropriate here. If you are hosting a game you must get the setup approved by one of the following members before starting your game:
Incognito, Ver, Foolishness, flamewheel, GMarshal
People on this list may refuse to look at your game for whatever reason (i.e. they are too busy with life). This is a volunteer job so please be understanding.
If you are an experienced host or player you may 'petition' to include yourself on this list. You must have at least 2 games of hosting experience and several games of playing experience to be considered to be on this list. Send me a PM if you wish to be on the list.
Active Games thread OP
I have never gotten any of their go ahead on my games lol
then again I have been hosting longer than at least 4 of them have been playing mafia on TL?
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Regarding BGs: Extra nightlife is pretty useless if the mafia team knows you have it, and check immunity is almost completely useless to townies. You're gonna have a huge incentive for scum to run for mayor (extra nightlife protects from vigis, check immunity from DTs), and a huge disincentive for townies to run, as it's basically suicidal.
Without BG's, townie mayors are just gonna be tying up medic protection (and you know the mayors are gonna call for it, and most medics will probably give it). That just leads to the same situation as before where the mayor and pardoner aren't touchable, except now the town doesn't have medics to help them.
I see where you're coming from, but IMO it's essentially taking a blue role out of the game 95% of the time.
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Since any pm mechanic is okay, would my mute mechanic from the last normal be ok?
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
On April 23 2012 13:38 GreYMisT wrote: I agree with GMarshal. I think that these guidelines need to be roughly followed, but that the balancing commitee needs to make the ultimate decisions. The problem is is that leads to unpleasant debate that I have between the hosts of them arguing that their mechanic is normal and me arguing that it is not. And these arguments never get anywhere cause neither side will budge and I ultimately can't do anything without saying, "okay you're going to listen to me or else". And I want to avoid using that line as much as possible. There is way too much grey area to account for. I can't check every setup for every game without spending a ridiculous amount of time that I don't have.
Radfield has put in standards for the newbie games, there's no reason to not extend that to our normal games. Themed games can handle the rest.
On April 23 2012 13:39 Mr. Wiggles wrote: What was the reasoning for removing bodyguards from the list of normal mechanics? I can see if there's some argument for why we should find other ways of doing things, like what Ace is saying, but I would consider them "normal" for TL mafia.
I would maybe argue sanities can have a place in normal games, but I don't think that's a huge loss, so I don't see a reason to. Same goes for things like weak medics and cops. I could see them in a normal game, but it's not like they have to be, depending on how we redefine 'normal'.
However, what was the reasoning for removing double lynches? I think they serve a role in adding an extra dynamic into the game, and another layer of discussion. They aren't overly complicated, and they open up more avenues of play for town and scum.
Next, what is your opinion on mafia variants of town roles? For example, mafia vigilantes, role cops, etc.
Last, what voting systems are considered normal? Only majority and plurality? Or would instant majority be considered normal as well? Ace gave the reasoning why Bodyguards are a big headache. From a balance perspective they are not any better. Think of how good the Rockstar role is. Voting for Mayor is essentially giving someone that Rockstar role.
Double lynches add that nice dynamic, but all too frequently derail discussion. They also promote the "carpet bombing" style of lynching, where you just kill off all the offenders at once in the hopes (or knowing) you got at least one mafia dead. In a way a double lynch promotes the "lynch for information" since inflation decreases the value of each lynch, thus people won't think things through all the way.
Mafia variants on town roles is definitely something that we could add to the list if enough people agree. This was probably the thing on the list we are most lenient to changing. Personally I have nothing wrong with mafia vigi's or role cops, as they stop silly roleclaimers from thinking they are confirmed.
Majority and Plurality yes. I'm going to say no for instant majority unless people come in and say otherwise.
On April 23 2012 14:14 Kurumi wrote: Since any pm mechanic is okay, would my mute mechanic from the last normal be ok? Going to say no. Though it's never been tried outside your game (as far as I can remember). If you think it should be included give a detailed description of what you mean here so people know what you're talking about.
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Will there also be changes in the ratio of games? I know that there should always be one newbie game running and/or taking signups, but should we expect such normal comes running alongside themed games, or if there is only ever one non-newbie game running at a time, should we expect normal and themed games in roughly equal numbers?
If normal games are going to be standardized, I'd personally like to see more themed games, or maybe a higher number of smaller themed games running simultaneously, interspersed with larger normal games. I love what the hosts here do with setups, and I would hate to see that level of creative independence diminished.
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
On April 23 2012 14:48 MidnightGladius wrote: Will there also be changes in the ratio of games? I know that there should always be one newbie game running and/or taking signups, but should we expect such normal comes running alongside themed games, or if there is only ever one non-newbie game running at a time, should we expect normal and themed games in roughly equal numbers?
If normal games are going to be standardized, I'd personally like to see more themed games, or maybe a higher number of smaller themed games running simultaneously, interspersed with larger normal games. I love what the hosts here do with setups, and I would hate to see that level of creative independence diminished. This has to do with the setups, not so much the queue.
Probably going to keep the same strategy of altering back and forth. However, by seemingly popular demand, I think we're going to try to revert back to choices for games and see how that pans out. What I mean is that we will have multiple games up and taking signups at once, instead of just having once game taking signups and forcing players to either sign up for that game or just wait for the next one. I am going to start doing this right away; a few hosts have been really busy lately so we had to jumble the queue around a bit (hence why Kurumi's game is up right now).
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Fixing the normal game definition like this is bad for creative and reasonable setups. Foolishness is trying to make a rigid list in order to stop the headache of having to debate with hosts each time about whether a game is "normal" or not. While it certainly does seem that the player sentiment is that we should host more normal games, I still think people like variety. Variety takes many forms, and doesn't have to go to the extremes of a "themed" setup.
We know from polls and all that there is a demand for normal games. What we don't know is how people choose to define "normal". The current proposal offers a definition of normal and tries to solidify it. However, I think that the definition of "normal" has never been strictly defined in TL Mafia. Yet we still throw around the word as if it is defined. The problem is that it has a different meaning for many people. But the word can't be defined objectively, so it doesn't make sense to create objective boundaries for it.
The TL Mafia "normal" game is not a static collection of elements. On the contrary, the composition of these elements has changed many times over the course of TL Mafia history. Why is this the case? The answer is that the current 1-twist system actually works, and has allowed for variety, creativity, and experimentation. This has been a reasonable solution because it keeps games grounded in traditional roles while allowing hosts to experiment with 1 new idea. Sometimes, this idea has gained traction and has become more mainstream. Other times, it just dies off after 1 use. But by acknowledging the distinction, we keep allow games to evolve incrementally while keeping them rooted in the traditional mechanics.
The proposed system imposes a rigid structure that will stop this evolution and result in stale, boring setups. Many setups like Closed Casket, JubJub, and others are reasonable setups that would be disallowed under the proposed definition. Add in the fact that you're likely going to have to impose limits on how many of each role you can have (because I'm fairly certain Foolishness won't want a 15 vig game even though it only uses the roles listed here) and this makes even less sense.
The problem of creating a rigid system for normal games is that the line has to be drawn somewhere. If its drawn too close to the traditional roles, we lose out on a bunch of potentially interesting but reasonable setups. If we draw it too far out, hosts abuse the system and include a bunch of fringe roles while neglecting the traditional roles. In order to combat the second scenario, you could screen games like you do now. But if you do that, you introduce some form of arbitrary decision making that Foolishness wants to avoid. So in both cases, the outcome is distasteful for either hosts or players. In essence, the key difference between the current 1-twist system and the proposed system is that the proposed system weighs all roles equally in a binary fashion, i.e., they are either allowable, or not. On the other hand, the 1-twist system acknowledges a distinction between novel ideas and traditional roles and seeks to balance both.
In any case, if we are discussing what is a normal game, we might as well discuss what is a themed game. The key difference between normal and themed games is expectation. In normal games, you may be thrown a curve ball, but that curve ball is defined in an otherwise familiar environment. You know the interactions between the traditional roles, and you are trying to figure out how a new role integrates into that environment (even in a closed setup, you generally have an idea that the roles revolve around the traditional aspects of killing, information, protection, etc.). However, in the themed game, you expect that the game is going to be crazy. There are many new elements to consider, and you have no idea if the usual methods actually hold true. And since these games are more wild, you don't take the game as seriously. And that is the essential difference between normal and themed games. As long as we can ensure that normal games retain the traditional context, we can include a twist for variety.
Yes, there is an element of arbitrariness to what is considered an acceptable twist, but that is a price that needs to be paid in order to have variety. My suggestion is just to use the system we have now, with more transparency. Although people do post ideas in the thread, it seems as if the actual discussions occur in PMs, which means of course nothing ever gets done. As long as we get away from a jumbled up network of private communications and establish a system that allows for open discussion and flexible decision making, we can still handle the current system. This discussion was initiated because Foolishness doesn't want to deal with arguing with hosts about if a setup is "normal" or not. But really, the solution isn't to make a separate rule structure to deal with that issue. It makes more sense just to open up the discussion and stop taking the burden for running this whole place.
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The mute mechanic was pretty easy : everyone can pm unless they have a trait "mute" which lets them receive and read pms , but not write them. Some roles could become muted or mute depending on actions. The example from last game is roleblocker , who muted in addition to roleblock. The two bullet vigilante would lose his role and become muted upon a townie hit. There was no way for players to tell if someone is mute or not, because these people weren't confirmed by host in any way. This let scum to fake such condition(they could also be mute). If I remember correctly I banned ciphers in this game to prevent people from working around being muted. Muted mafia could contact their partners.
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United States2186 Posts
We must fight the mighty forces of bureaucracy, lest it take us over! Comrades Foolishness and Qatol have already fallen. We must not let their sacrifice be in vain! We shall challenge the might of the evil bureacracy in my upcoming game,Bureaucracy Mafia: The Town Strikes back!
I agree with gmarshal here. If people aren't satisfied with decisions to deny certain aspects of a game, they can bring it out to everyone. I also dislike the amount of closed doors negotiating and preference for quiet and easy solutions over hammered out, open, and satisfactory ones. That's what spawn monstrosities like this thread.
People want to keep playing mafia games because every game is unique in its own way, but if all normal games are almost virtual clones of each other, it will gradually strip the fun out of it; both for hosting and playing. Over time through experimentation we've figured out lots of interesting ideas to enhance play and give people chances to create new plots ingame. Removing that possibility for the future so everybody can feel content is silly and regressive.
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I think it's fine. Some people may just want to play a standard game of Mafia where the game is exclusively played based on thread analysis rather than convoluted blues and set-up guessing.
I think we should change the queue though to perhaps give one of the Normal game slots to a Themed game.
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Personally I'm fine with normal games being allowed one or two small twists. However, recently there has been a gaping hole where the normals should be. Even some of the games that are labeled normal have more than one or two twists, and sometimes these twists are major.
Basically the problem I have with the current system is that too many themed games are being hosted. I actually don't think that the expected answer to the question "what is a normal game?" is off by any means currently. I just think not enough normals are being hosted in comparison to themed games.
For example, if you looked at the queue a couple days ago, you'd have seen two normals there, and like 6 or 7 themed games. That's a huge discrepancy especially when the polls I ran about a month ago showed that normals and themed games were being demanded almost completely evenly.
EDIT: And this is a host problem, IMO, not necessarily a queue or definition problem. Hosts just don't like making normal setups for whatever reason, be it that they may be "boring" or whatever.
If that's the case then the solution might lie along the lines of what we did with newbie games.
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This shouldn't surprise anyone, but I'm against this.
My game essentially caused this thread, but we can't talk about my game until its over. So I have nothing to say other than i'm against this.
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Here is what I'd say is a normal game,
NO over the top special roles(0.5 kp, blah blah)
Easy roles to understand
No funky mechanics (Gmarshals "delay" mechanic is acceptable as its just no kill one night then 2 kp the next night.
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I know I'm not a host or anything. Not sure if this is the place to state this but;
I think there should be a rule against voting for yourself.
At least in Normal games and Newbie games. Why? Cause in these types of games where there is no village idiot. It is completely playing against your wincon. Even if its scum vs scum, you should be able to find ways to sway on keeping which scum you want alive, rather than voting for yourself. Same with Vanilla vs Blue, you should be able to sway people with logic, rather than push it over the edge for voting yourself.
Also it always pisses me off when people do it. I see that in the rules right now it specifically says You can vote for yourself. I would like an explanation for why this is allowed?
Maybe I should post this in TL Mafia OP. But this place seems to be discussion for Normals and Newbies basically.
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United Kingdom35820 Posts
On April 23 2012 14:20 Foolishness wrote: Mafia variants on town roles is definitely something that we could add to the list if enough people agree. This was probably the thing on the list we are most lenient to changing. Personally I have nothing wrong with mafia vigi's or role cops, as they stop silly roleclaimers from thinking they are confirmed.
I definitely agree with this. I don't see why a mafia rolecop or vigi wouldn't be considered 'normal'. Everyone understands it, it's kinda cool.
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I know I haven't been here long enough to know about all the variety the gamehosts come up with, but it seems like casting games in such a strict mold will cause many games to be rather similar. A game like GoT mafia is a "normal" game imho: it had a completely normal mafia faction and a normal town faction. The only weird mechanic was the Littlefinger role. This falls in the 1-twist definition of normal, but using this definition is not included.
Also, the loss of framers and sanities means DT checks are 100% reliable, which seems quite boring (basically all the town has to do is decide whether the DT claim is believable or not).
@mementoss: why not allow players to "martyr" themselves? It seems like a perfectly good mechanic. Townies' wincon is not to "not die", it's to "kill mafia". If the lynch is between two people and one is convinced the other is town and a better player, he should be able to vote for himself. I don't LIKE that style of playing, but forbidding it seems like it's going too far.
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The part about DTs is false. Even if you eliminated framers and sanities there are still millers and godfathers.
However I don't agree that framers aren't normal (quite frankly they're barely different from and arguably better than godfathers)
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United States22154 Posts
On April 23 2012 17:45 iGrok wrote: This shouldn't surprise anyone, but I'm against this.
My game essentially caused this thread, but we can't talk about my game until its over. So I have nothing to say other than i'm against this. Hate to tell you, but your game didn't exactly cause this thread, the "unnormal" normal game issue has been an ongoing issue.
Anyway, more arguing when your game finishes if you so desire :-P
On April 23 2012 17:26 wherebugsgo wrote: Personally I'm fine with normal games being allowed one or two small twists. However, recently there has been a gaping hole where the normals should be. Even some of the games that are labeled normal have more than one or two twists, and sometimes these twists are major.
Basically the problem I have with the current system is that too many themed games are being hosted. I actually don't think that the expected answer to the question "what is a normal game?" is off by any means currently. I just think not enough normals are being hosted in comparison to themed games.
For example, if you looked at the queue a couple days ago, you'd have seen two normals there, and like 6 or 7 themed games. That's a huge discrepancy especially when the polls I ran about a month ago showed that normals and themed games were being demanded almost completely evenly.
EDIT: And this is a host problem, IMO, not necessarily a queue or definition problem. Hosts just don't like making normal setups for whatever reason, be it that they may be "boring" or whatever.
If that's the case then the solution might lie along the lines of what we did with newbie games.
The thing is, Normal Games are being hosted at the same rate as themes, even if we have fewer hosts, we just cycle them, the real issue is when a game that sells itself as normal is really not, and makes players play with uncomfortable mechanics or not at all. (E.G. Zona's Steamship)
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On April 23 2012 17:45 iGrok wrote: This shouldn't surprise anyone, but I'm against this.
My game essentially caused this thread, but we can't talk about my game until its over. So I have nothing to say other than i'm against this.
I probably misread it but outside of Death Miller your game is what I would consider normal.
On April 23 2012 20:58 Mementoss wrote: I know I'm not a host or anything. Not sure if this is the place to state this but;
I think there should be a rule against voting for yourself.
At least in Normal games and Newbie games. Why? Cause in these types of games where there is no village idiot. It is completely playing against your wincon. Even if its scum vs scum, you should be able to find ways to sway on keeping which scum you want alive, rather than voting for yourself. Same with Vanilla vs Blue, you should be able to sway people with logic, rather than push it over the edge for voting yourself.
Also it always pisses me off when people do it. I see that in the rules right now it specifically says You can vote for yourself. I would like an explanation for why this is allowed?
Maybe I should post this in TL Mafia OP. But this place seems to be discussion for Normals and Newbies basically.
It is somewhat playing against your win con, but sometimes players get frustrated and just want to kill themselves (in Majority Lynch) and this works. Roles like that shitty Mad Hatter also get stronger if they can lynch themselves. When Scum know they are clearly going to be lynched, they just self vote and get killed to stop all discussion.
Of course since we can't lock threads, everyone still talks during the after lynch phase in the thread. So this doesn't always work out so well
Speaking of Mad Hatters they should only blow other players up by getting lynched. Placing bombs and self detonating, or dying by NK and still killing a bunch of people is ridiculous.
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On April 23 2012 22:10 Ace wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 17:45 iGrok wrote: This shouldn't surprise anyone, but I'm against this.
My game essentially caused this thread, but we can't talk about my game until its over. So I have nothing to say other than i'm against this. I probably misread it but outside of Death Miller your game is what I would consider normal. Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 20:58 Mementoss wrote: I know I'm not a host or anything. Not sure if this is the place to state this but;
I think there should be a rule against voting for yourself.
At least in Normal games and Newbie games. Why? Cause in these types of games where there is no village idiot. It is completely playing against your wincon. Even if its scum vs scum, you should be able to find ways to sway on keeping which scum you want alive, rather than voting for yourself. Same with Vanilla vs Blue, you should be able to sway people with logic, rather than push it over the edge for voting yourself.
Also it always pisses me off when people do it. I see that in the rules right now it specifically says You can vote for yourself. I would like an explanation for why this is allowed?
Maybe I should post this in TL Mafia OP. But this place seems to be discussion for Normals and Newbies basically. It is somewhat playing against your win con, but sometimes players get frustrated and just want to kill themselves (in Majority Lynch) and this works. Roles like that shitty Mad Hatter also get stronger if they can lynch themselves. When Scum know they are clearly going to be lynched, they just self vote and get killed to stop all discussion. Of course since we can't lock threads, everyone still talks during the after lynch phase in the thread. So this doesn't always work out so well Speaking of Mad Hatters they should only blow other players up by getting lynched. Placing bombs and self detonating, or dying by NK and still killing a bunch of people is ridiculous. So basically a Village Idiot who kills people and doesn't win?
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so call me old fashioned but i think that a mad hatter shouldn't be included in normal setups. I think normal games should be basic straight up games based minimally around power roles. Leave those games to the themes IMO
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Also as an addendum I think many hosts have gotten away from Normals where there are very few power roles and a lot of Vanilla Town. With lots of Vanilla, few PRs and the chance of Mafia killing anyone they need to with 1 KP and few protective roles the skill of the players usually has to be high for the game to be enjoyable.
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On April 23 2012 22:48 Ace wrote: Also as an addendum I think many hosts have gotten away from Normals where there are very few power roles and a lot of Vanilla Town. With lots of Vanilla, few PRs and the chance of Mafia killing anyone they need to with 1 KP and few protective roles the skill of the players usually has to be high for the game to be enjoyable. You and I both think DMs are normal, but you'd be surprised just how much backroom arguing there was.
Re: Low PR #s: Ive got 3/16 (not giving anything away here). The solution is clearly have me host all the games because my setups are best :p.
I had to completely ignore two seasoned vets on the balance team to run my game. Thats not a decision I made lightly. Ultimately though, I decided what was best, cleared it with Foolishness, and ran it. As long as behavior doesn't ruin and at least 4-5 players play competently, it should be a very good game by current standards (but thats a topic for another thread).
That being said, I don't really care. I think its bad to have strict rules. I also think its bad that a host can just overrule the balance team. I don't have a solution to the issue or a way to unify the problems. What I do know (and this may sound a little egotistical but whatever) is that my games consistently are very highly regarded (aside from one bastard game) and its ridiculous that I had to fight to run a normal game.
Eh, fuck it. Its spilling out, may as well post the whole thing.
This os my last game for the forseeable future, hence my not caring. There's a lot of reasons why, but basically i'm sick of the godawful play on TL. Its so bad I asked foolishness to let me run a 25 man all townie game, where I kill off whoever was the most BM at night. Modern TL towns have changed strategies from hunting scum to provoking everyone and looking for any slips. I don't mind if 1-2 players play protagonist, they get the game going. But its a community-wide mindset now. 90% of players act this way. New players pick up the bad habits. Games essentially turn into who can shit on the other guy the loudest, and actual scumhunting gets ignored.
Now, there are a couple players who don't follow this trend. But from a hosting perspective, its not worth the time and effort (and I put more time and effort into hosting than most players playing the game) to host a terrible game. So this is my last one.
To LIII players: consider this your last warning. I'm going to start enforcing no warning instant modkill for bad behavior. You've already had several warnings. My patience is GONE. Shape up.
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
On April 23 2012 17:01 Incognito wrote: In any case, if we are discussing what is a normal game, we might as well discuss what is a themed game. The key difference between normal and themed games is expectation. In normal games, you may be thrown a curve ball, but that curve ball is defined in an otherwise familiar environment. You know the interactions between the traditional roles, and you are trying to figure out how a new role integrates into that environment (even in a closed setup, you generally have an idea that the roles revolve around the traditional aspects of killing, information, protection, etc.). However, in the themed game, you expect that the game is going to be crazy. There are many new elements to consider, and you have no idea if the usual methods actually hold true. And since these games are more wild, you don't take the game as seriously. And that is the essential difference between normal and themed games. As long as we can ensure that normal games retain the traditional context, we can include a twist for variety.
I'm going to say that this is close to 100% inaccurate. DrH's recent game is full proof that the expectation of "crazy" in themed games is not true (with the exception of Caller games I would imagine). DrH's game was a themed game, yet I had multiple players (both mafia and town) express concerns over the setup being unbalanced. At the end of the day it basically came down to me saying, "well it's a themed game it's too hard to guarantee anything about balance". Which I hated having to say everytime.
It shows that people are expecting the balance even in the themed games. Your definition of "You know the interactions between the traditional roles, and you are trying to figure out how a new role integrates into that environment" for a normal game is what a themed game should be. For example, most of the games you and Ver host are well balanced but may have everyone as a vigi or a very unique blend of roles. The themed games should be like those games. Maybe you can't get the balance perfectly, but it's close enough that an exciting game with possibilities for good play will result. The normal games should let players focus on hard analysis, not figuring out how setup elements can be used to gain an advantage or win.
On April 23 2012 17:01 Incognito wrote: Yes, there is an element of arbitrariness to what is considered an acceptable twist, but that is a price that needs to be paid in order to have variety. My suggestion is just to use the system we have now, with more transparency. Although people do post ideas in the thread, it seems as if the actual discussions occur in PMs, which means of course nothing ever gets done. As long as we get away from a jumbled up network of private communications and establish a system that allows for open discussion and flexible decision making, we can still handle the current system. This discussion was initiated because Foolishness doesn't want to deal with arguing with hosts about if a setup is "normal" or not. But really, the solution isn't to make a separate rule structure to deal with that issue. It makes more sense just to open up the discussion and stop taking the burden for running this whole place. Let me be frank, and this is going to come out nasty. This discussion was not initiated because I don't want to deal with arguing with hosts. This dicussion was initiated because I don't want to deal arguing with YOU. And by YOU I mean almost anyone on the balance crew. I had discussions with you (Incognito), Ver, GM, and some other host where by the end I was incredibly angry at what I was hearing. Among other things, let me pull out a snipit from some of the chats:
Incognito: "tell iGrok to take it out or else he can't host" Ver: "can't you just stop [iGrok] from ever hosting again?"
For two people who are claiming issues about transparency it is quite disturbing the amount of lip like this I have to deal with (you two are the biggest offenders). Hopefully the irony of your request is coming into fruition because I have a lot of other juicy things you two have said about other hosts here and I got no problem making it public.
The fact of the matter is, everyone who complained about iGrok's game complained about the fact that it was not "normal". This left our arguments in a very ambiguous area over what is considered normal and what isn't. When it came down to it, the reasonings I got from GM, Incognito, Ver, and one other unnamed host about why the game isn't normal is because "the role is stupid". No one provided ample evidence to me that the game was unbalanced in any way.
At the end of the day, iGrok did a much better job convincing me that his game was normal and should be allowed than any of you did at convincing me that his setup needed to be changed. The rest of you felt like whiny babies not getting what you wanted; iGrok handled my complaints in a mature fashion.
Thus I will still stand by my decision to let him host his game as it was. You must understand I was put in a difficult situation and ultimately somebody was going to end up unhappy. If you feel that I was overusing my authority by going against what everyone on the balance crew was saying then please be assured this was not the case. I made my decision by weighing both ends of the argument and considering what everyones' opinions were. As I said above, iGrok gave the better case on why his game should be allowed to run as the other arguments boiled down to "this role is stupid".
And personally I actually was considering playing in the game cause the setup meant the game was all about analysis, which has been one of the few recently.
While we're near the subject of authority, I will put some other things out here since you want them public. If you have a problem with the way I'm handling matters on the forum then you need to stop beating around the bush by calling me a bureaucrat. I think it's a hilarious joke but when issues like this come along and I have Ver making posts like the one on the second page not only is it disrespectful but it is childish.
May I remind you that it was not my choice (nor did I want to at the time) to become de facto head of the mafia forum. I was just the person making all the update posts when Qatol decided to pursue his ambition of world domination because I was the person with the most free time. Since then everything has just kinda evolved to the point where I basically tell people that I'm the head of the forum since it's easier than trying to explain how things are run here. If you have a problem with me not listening or taking your advice, or not having things go your way (which you make it seem to happen a lot) then you have only yourself to blame here for letting me be the one to get into this position. And that's especially true considering how vehement I'm against elitism compared to the rest of you. Do I need to remind you of the days when I first started playing here? I used to think all of you (Incognito, Ver, flamewheel, etc) were all a bunch of pompous pricks. Of course I don't feel that way anymore (and I was pretty immature myself at the time) but when Ver makes posts like that it just rekindles those old feelings.
Hope you're happy!
On April 23 2012 22:48 Ace wrote: Also as an addendum I think many hosts have gotten away from Normals where there are very few power roles and a lot of Vanilla Town. With lots of Vanilla, few PRs and the chance of Mafia killing anyone they need to with 1 KP and few protective roles the skill of the players usually has to be high for the game to be enjoyable. And I think most of us would like to go back in that direction. There have been many complaints about the level of play being abnormally low, perhaps forcing players into a situation where they need to start thinking on not relying on game setups will help bring the level of play up.
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why do you guys assume that every game i host is a themed game foolishness you're a racist assuming that i only host themed games
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
On April 24 2012 04:43 Caller wrote: why do you guys assume that every game i host is a themed game foolishness you're a racist assuming that i only host themed games Well if you weren't on the themed queue all the time maybe people wouldn't think that!
And I'd tell you to go put yourself down for a normal game (there's 2 spots open) but you're already on the queue for a themed game!
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On April 24 2012 04:49 Foolishness wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 04:43 Caller wrote: why do you guys assume that every game i host is a themed game foolishness you're a racist assuming that i only host themed games Well if you weren't on the themed queue all the time maybe people wouldn't think that! And I'd tell you to go put yourself down for a normal game (there's 2 spots open) but you're already on the queue for a themed game! put me down for a normal game too i'll run two games at the same time if i have to
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Caller:" you think I can't afk host one measly game at a time?
I'll afk host TWO, damn it!"
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I think Foolishness is a pretty cool guy.
I like the idea of trying to make the requirements for normal games more rigorous. Not only will it lower the burden on Foolishness, but I also think it will make the games more focused on analysis. If it doesn't work out then we can always revert back to the "1 twist only" pseudo-rule. If people want to host funky setups, then just do it in the themed queue for now.
Also, I think people are generally both overly bitchy and overly sensitive on this sub forum. Death Factory Mafia 2 saw the host tell town to give up because they sucked and he didn't want to moderate that anymore (then don't host if you can't handle people being terrible), and Space Station saw DoctorHelvetica get (in his own words) humiliated which was really hard for me to see. I'm not going to blame anybody in particular because that whole situation arose because people were getting on each other's nerves and it just spun out of control. People need to be able to count to ten ... sometimes maybe even to one hundred. Ultimately, just about everybody agreed that his game had awesome flavor and it's common knowledge that it's hard to balance themed games and I'm absolutely sure that he did his absolute best (or games in general!). Players should generally just play as well as they can, and hosts should just host as well as they can and then nobody can really complain about anything. This is turning into a "general grievances" thread but whatever
I don't like the idea that "90% of everybody just want to piss other people off". This game will sometimes get you emotionally invested and that's perfectly fine with me (and I promise you all, I've been called dumb/stupid/useless way more than anybody who posted in this thread so far, probably more than all of you combined as I've been dumb in like 30 games so far), but generally, people actually want to play well and people actually want to improve. I just think it's better to discuss how we can make people improve as well as possible. Saying "read the thread" is often just non-constructive (it's like saying "macro better" to bronze leaguers, cf. Gheed's last blog post). People sometimes can't use that for anything because they might not understand what the game is essentially about even though they're actually reading the thread! (at least that was my problem, I'm still not sure I understand what this game is about even after 30 games, mafia is really hard for some people so have patience!).
I still love this sub forum though, I've never put this much time or effort into any other forum before.
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So much Drama
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Erandorr thread MVP for sure
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Why don't we make a poll or something?
As I said before I am 100% in support of normal games having a set list of roles that can be in the game. If I join a normal game chances are I don't want to play with the Time Travelling Cthulhu Vigilante. The game very much shifts towards analysis and there's a certain level of comfort for both Town and Mafia when they know what roles are possible in the game and know that they are not crazy.
I don't think there should be a "one or two exceptions" rule about it either; normal games should be strictly normal with no special mechanics or special roles.
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On April 24 2012 10:15 Curu wrote: Why don't we make a poll or something?
As I said before I am 100% in support of normal games having a set list of roles that can be in the game. If I join a normal game chances are I don't want to play with the Time Travelling Cthulhu Vigilante. The game very much shifts towards analysis and there's a certain level of comfort for both Town and Mafia when they know what roles are possible in the game and know that they are not crazy.
I don't think there should be a "one or two exceptions" rule about it either; normal games should be strictly normal with no special mechanics or special roles. I know im still new and my opinion doesn't hold much weight but i completely agree with this
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I think the key for "Normal Game" needs to be what is being said, that the game is based around performance rather than power roles. Personally I don't care about keeping things strictly normal, or allowing exactly one twist. As long as the theme of the game is roles that are fairly normal and encourage optimal, good play by all players, I'm fine with it.
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On April 24 2012 09:44 prplhz wrote:Erandorr thread MVP for sure
Haha it's all you inspiring me with your play in the last game
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On April 24 2012 10:32 GreYMisT wrote: like the great paul mooney said, everybody wanna be aperture, nobody wanna be aperture
fixed that for you
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On April 24 2012 10:58 Mattchew wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 10:32 GreYMisT wrote: like the great paul mooney said, everybody wanna be aperture, nobody wanna be aperture
fixed that for you
I'm sensing more than a few grammatical fixes.
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So....why don't we just add another category then?
1)Normal Games 2)Kind-of-normal-but-with-twisted-setups Games 3)Themed Games
Have this set of rules for Normal games, and it will be perfect. If somebody wants to play a game without having to rely on weird mechanics, or just think about the setup at all they can join these Normal Games. If somebody wants to play a game, but would like some weird mechanics here and there, or wouldn't mind having some parts of the game revolve around it, then let them play the 2nd type of games If somebody wants to be amazed by the type and amount of roles and all the weird mechanics, and wants to read awesome flavour and get awesome roles and do awesome or weird shit, then let them join Themed Games.
Also, if a host wants to host a game, he makes the setup first, and then asks the balancing team for their thoughts. What difference does it make if the balancing team tells him "This is a Normal game" or "This isn't a Normal Game"? The setup will be the same one and people will join it based only on the setup, not just because it has a [N] or a [T] next to it.
I'd like to say however, that there are some type of games that shouldn't be considered "Themed", and that aren't considered strictly "Normal" based on these rules.
For instance, yes iGrok's game, or JubJub, and some other ones.
Mostly because I consider a "Themed Game" to have one (or more) of the following:
- Lots of original roles, or at least ones that are used sparingly.
- A lot of relevant flavour
- Not "Normal" mechanics
Well, you could say that the "flavour" doesn't really change much (for instance LI had lots of flavour but was Normal I think); but most of the time the "Themed Games" have more relevant flavour than other type of games.
So anything that doesn't fit on this "Themed" category, nor on the "Normal" category belongs to a new one and then we are all happy.
So, to recap:
- If someone wants to play a normal analysis game, they join "Normal Games"
- If someone wants to play some wacky shit, they join "Themed Games"
- If someone doesn't want to play any of the above, they join the other type of games
Thoughts?
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Speaking of Aperture
...
*cough* blogs EEHMM Grey EHmmm blogs please *cough*
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Also, that "heavy lore" thing people talk about (Like having each Vanilla Townie have a different role name and PM flavour and shit) shouldn't be allowed in a Normal game and include it in the new category.
Because scum need to be given fake-claims for that, maybe some part of the game will revolve around discussing said lore too, etc. Maybe the people that just want to have a relaxing mafia time don't want to deal with all those names and flavour and claims and shit and just want a plain ol' "Vanilla Town" or "Mafia Goon".
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i fully support a "Semi-Normal" Category of games
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I agree with prplhz, gonzaw, and Foolishness' posts on this page.
1. normal games should be really normal. 2. lots of drama, people need to calm down. we're all friends, and we're all BAMFs. No need to have so much tension. 3. Should add a Semi-Normal category.
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On April 24 2012 12:17 gonzaw wrote: Speaking of Aperture
...
*cough* blogs EEHMM Grey EHmmm blogs please *cough*
Yea i know, been really busy.
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On April 24 2012 12:36 GreYMisT wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 12:17 gonzaw wrote: Speaking of Aperture
...
*cough* blogs EEHMM Grey EHmmm blogs please *cough* Yea i know, been really busy.
Nah don't worry take your time.
I just don't want you to forget that's all
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While I think a "semi-normal" category seems like a good middle road between the strict rules of the OP and the current normal, it solves none of the problems Foolishness mentioned at the start. It just shifts the debate to whether it can be considered "semi-normal" rather than whether it can be considered "normal".
It might give more leeway to the balancing team, but given foolishness' last post, the problem isn't even so much the definition of normal, but rather drama in the balancing team itself. Not gonna comment on that stuff
@Curu: I'm quite surprised to read your opinion. Would you not consider your GoT game normal?
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man Curu's game had me as an invulnerable troll that just shat on everyone's opinions.
Pretty sure that isn't normal, even if that's what I do in the majority of my games anyway
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iGrok I hope you just take a break from hosting as you frequently have interesting setups that I particularly enjoy spectating or participating in. If you have a problem with how certain people behave (it's certainly not 90%), you should make it clearer that kind of behavior will not be acceptable to you. If they persist, you are free to ban them from your future games or just make it an invitational.
Also I strongly disagree with the notion that players do not take themed games seriously and if some don't, they shouldn't be joining at all. A themed game just means to me that more attention has to be directed towards setup speculation, planning and forming strategies unrelated to actual analysis.
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On April 24 2012 12:24 gonzaw wrote: Also, that "heavy lore" thing people talk about (Like having each Vanilla Townie have a different role name and PM flavour and shit) shouldn't be allowed in a Normal game and include it in the new category.
Because scum need to be given fake-claims for that, maybe some part of the game will revolve around discussing said lore too, etc. Maybe the people that just want to have a relaxing mafia time don't want to deal with all those names and flavour and claims and shit and just want a plain ol' "Vanilla Town" or "Mafia Goon".
disagree here. I like the heavy flavor in normal games a lot and it makes the whole thing feel less 0815-setup that was just randomly created by a setup-creating-machine. As long as it's flavor that is not affecting the game I have no problem with that at all.
Also if that's the case People HAVE fakeclaimes before the game starts. As an example you probably still remember LI. Mafia was given 2 Role-PM's before the game started for every player. One Role was the real one for your mafia role and the 2nd was a fake claim for a VT that was exactly like all the real VTs. Additionally we had the possiblity to ask for up to 6 (?) more fake-claims if we wanted to blue fakeclaim. I asked for a vet fakeclaim and got this: + Show Spoiler +Welcome to TL Mafia LI, you are Robert Boscawen, Viscount of Falmouth, you had a brief flare of glory in the great battles of Kommar, where you were made an honorary General after a cannon ball took off your left arm. Your family has always been one of the smallest and least influential, as your father bemoaned in his deathbead, and despite your best efforts it looks like they will remain under the boot of the other families forever, as even your generalship wasn't enough to get you a seat in the house of lords. Still, you know enough of war and battle to survive the first hit aimed at you during the game. Now, quash the anti-monarchists, decisively, so that you will finally be noticed, rather than pushed aside as a cripple. (I guess I am allowed to post this, the game is over after all?)
And if it's like that I have no issues at all with flavor. In contrary it spices the whole thing up, changed the whole thing and again, it just doesn't feel like one of those out of the box set-ups. I can understand if people are not going that way for newby games or minis because those are getting hosted so quickly but for normal games I don't see a problem at all with that.
That being said I have to 100% agree with prplhz. I can understand that people are emotional. I was pretty angry after LI myself and I am sorry for behaving like I did the moment I found out the game ended like that because I really wanted to win that game. So I can understand people who are getting angry about host failures the first moment but that really is an issue for us. I don't think we can have people running around telling hosts how retarded they are after a game because of a mistake or because the game was slightly imbalanced. I still remember the game with Annul (not talkign about the funny parts). Don't know what it was called... I think incog hosted it and wbg co-hosted it? At some point we as mafia basicly all-ined because we thought it's looking really good and we'd win that way. I did a huge case on Erandorr about how he was ignoring the game which was bullshit but it was our counterwagon to safe Annul and it worked. Erandorr was something like 4 votes away from majority while 2 mafias still had their vote pending 3 hours before the deadline and suddenly out of nowhere WBG tells people that erandorr gets replaced 2 hours prior to the deadline. Apparently it was all just a really unlucky situation, because Erandorr already requested to be replaced way earlier but neither incog nore wbg were around so they did a last second decision to replace Erandorr that moment and not with the next day/night-post. I was so mad at that point because it obviously ruined our all-in and people were unvoting erandorr to get Annul lynched instead which was the reason we got pretty desperate and everyone knows how that ended.
That's the kind of stories I remember and the moment they happen I get mad but the next day or a week later it's all fine again. Noone cares about stuff like that anymore and if they do it's more like a funny story nowadays. That's the kind of thing that comes to my mind everytime something weird happens and I try to think about and stop me from posting like a total retard because we can't have people running around insulting hosts, telling them how retarded they are just because of a mistake or whatever else happend. I know people get angry but everyone knows that the hosts are at least frustrated as well when something like that happens. They put some effort into the game themselves after all.
Big fancy conclusion: I really don't think we can afford people running arround telling hosts how retarded they are, pretty much no matter what. DocH comes to mind (although I never read that game, but I heard postgame was brutal oO), the co-host mistake in LI comes to mind and people still refer to those things all the time. I still feel bad for screwing up wbg's first C9++ when I spelled the VT "Vannila TownY" makeing someone confrim himself because he quoted that from the pm. Everyone's mad at everyone else for screwing up the game in some way and that's not helping us at all and I think that's the reason why everyone's yelling at each other telling them how we need to change everything because they are mad about what happened the last couple games or whatever else.
Just my opinion on what's going on right now because I think what we have right now is fine, we just need people to chill.
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+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2012 23:36 iGrok wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 22:48 Ace wrote: Also as an addendum I think many hosts have gotten away from Normals where there are very few power roles and a lot of Vanilla Town. With lots of Vanilla, few PRs and the chance of Mafia killing anyone they need to with 1 KP and few protective roles the skill of the players usually has to be high for the game to be enjoyable. You and I both think DMs are normal, but you'd be surprised just how much backroom arguing there was. Re: Low PR #s: Ive got 3/16 (not giving anything away here). The solution is clearly have me host all the games because my setups are best :p. I had to completely ignore two seasoned vets on the balance team to run my game. Thats not a decision I made lightly. Ultimately though, I decided what was best, cleared it with Foolishness, and ran it. As long as behavior doesn't ruin and at least 4-5 players play competently, it should be a very good game by current standards (but thats a topic for another thread). That being said, I don't really care. I think its bad to have strict rules. I also think its bad that a host can just overrule the balance team. I don't have a solution to the issue or a way to unify the problems. What I do know (and this may sound a little egotistical but whatever) is that my games consistently are very highly regarded (aside from one bastard game) and its ridiculous that I had to fight to run a normal game. Eh, fuck it. Its spilling out, may as well post the whole thing. This os my last game for the forseeable future, hence my not caring. There's a lot of reasons why, but basically i'm sick of the godawful play on TL. Its so bad I asked foolishness to let me run a 25 man all townie game, where I kill off whoever was the most BM at night. Modern TL towns have changed strategies from hunting scum to provoking everyone and looking for any slips. I don't mind if 1-2 players play protagonist, they get the game going. But its a community-wide mindset now. 90% of players act this way. New players pick up the bad habits. Games essentially turn into who can shit on the other guy the loudest, and actual scumhunting gets ignored. Now, there are a couple players who don't follow this trend. But from a hosting perspective, its not worth the time and effort (and I put more time and effort into hosting than most players playing the game) to host a terrible game. So this is my last one. To LIII players: consider this your last warning. I'm going to start enforcing no warning instant modkill for bad behavior. You've already had several warnings. My patience is GONE. Shape up.
I agree, the games of late have become shitslinging contests. Your latest games are stacked with players who take every opportunity to insult someone. I, myself also tend to become an arrogant BM bastard when annoyed and thats why I have decided to change up my game, and toning it down.
I think we need more hosts that modkill for BM, and I think you should stick around and be one of those who do.
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On April 24 2012 21:32 Tunkeg wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2012 23:36 iGrok wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 22:48 Ace wrote: Also as an addendum I think many hosts have gotten away from Normals where there are very few power roles and a lot of Vanilla Town. With lots of Vanilla, few PRs and the chance of Mafia killing anyone they need to with 1 KP and few protective roles the skill of the players usually has to be high for the game to be enjoyable. You and I both think DMs are normal, but you'd be surprised just how much backroom arguing there was. Re: Low PR #s: Ive got 3/16 (not giving anything away here). The solution is clearly have me host all the games because my setups are best :p. I had to completely ignore two seasoned vets on the balance team to run my game. Thats not a decision I made lightly. Ultimately though, I decided what was best, cleared it with Foolishness, and ran it. As long as behavior doesn't ruin and at least 4-5 players play competently, it should be a very good game by current standards (but thats a topic for another thread). That being said, I don't really care. I think its bad to have strict rules. I also think its bad that a host can just overrule the balance team. I don't have a solution to the issue or a way to unify the problems. What I do know (and this may sound a little egotistical but whatever) is that my games consistently are very highly regarded (aside from one bastard game) and its ridiculous that I had to fight to run a normal game. Eh, fuck it. Its spilling out, may as well post the whole thing. This os my last game for the forseeable future, hence my not caring. There's a lot of reasons why, but basically i'm sick of the godawful play on TL. Its so bad I asked foolishness to let me run a 25 man all townie game, where I kill off whoever was the most BM at night. Modern TL towns have changed strategies from hunting scum to provoking everyone and looking for any slips. I don't mind if 1-2 players play protagonist, they get the game going. But its a community-wide mindset now. 90% of players act this way. New players pick up the bad habits. Games essentially turn into who can shit on the other guy the loudest, and actual scumhunting gets ignored. Now, there are a couple players who don't follow this trend. But from a hosting perspective, its not worth the time and effort (and I put more time and effort into hosting than most players playing the game) to host a terrible game. So this is my last one. To LIII players: consider this your last warning. I'm going to start enforcing no warning instant modkill for bad behavior. You've already had several warnings. My patience is GONE. Shape up. I agree, the games of late have become shitslinging contests. Your latest games are stacked with players who take every opportunity to insult someone. I, myself also tend to become an arrogant BM bastard when annoyed and thats why I have decided ...to hit preview instead of post + Show Spoiler +Will edit this after you finish lol EDIT: Glad to hear you're shaping up! I did talk to foolishness about staying, but the only condition would be that I get to host the 25 player all-townie game I mentioned before. iGrok's Good Clean Old Fashioned Mafia. He said no (as he should have).
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I would still rather play with these people than with people who barely provide any content at all
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On April 24 2012 21:32 Tunkeg wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2012 23:36 iGrok wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2012 22:48 Ace wrote: Also as an addendum I think many hosts have gotten away from Normals where there are very few power roles and a lot of Vanilla Town. With lots of Vanilla, few PRs and the chance of Mafia killing anyone they need to with 1 KP and few protective roles the skill of the players usually has to be high for the game to be enjoyable. You and I both think DMs are normal, but you'd be surprised just how much backroom arguing there was. Re: Low PR #s: Ive got 3/16 (not giving anything away here). The solution is clearly have me host all the games because my setups are best :p. I had to completely ignore two seasoned vets on the balance team to run my game. Thats not a decision I made lightly. Ultimately though, I decided what was best, cleared it with Foolishness, and ran it. As long as behavior doesn't ruin and at least 4-5 players play competently, it should be a very good game by current standards (but thats a topic for another thread). That being said, I don't really care. I think its bad to have strict rules. I also think its bad that a host can just overrule the balance team. I don't have a solution to the issue or a way to unify the problems. What I do know (and this may sound a little egotistical but whatever) is that my games consistently are very highly regarded (aside from one bastard game) and its ridiculous that I had to fight to run a normal game. Eh, fuck it. Its spilling out, may as well post the whole thing. This os my last game for the forseeable future, hence my not caring. There's a lot of reasons why, but basically i'm sick of the godawful play on TL. Its so bad I asked foolishness to let me run a 25 man all townie game, where I kill off whoever was the most BM at night. Modern TL towns have changed strategies from hunting scum to provoking everyone and looking for any slips. I don't mind if 1-2 players play protagonist, they get the game going. But its a community-wide mindset now. 90% of players act this way. New players pick up the bad habits. Games essentially turn into who can shit on the other guy the loudest, and actual scumhunting gets ignored. Now, there are a couple players who don't follow this trend. But from a hosting perspective, its not worth the time and effort (and I put more time and effort into hosting than most players playing the game) to host a terrible game. So this is my last one. To LIII players: consider this your last warning. I'm going to start enforcing no warning instant modkill for bad behavior. You've already had several warnings. My patience is GONE. Shape up. I agree, the games of late have become shitslinging contests. Your latest games are stacked with players who take every opportunity to insult someone. I, myself also tend to become an arrogant BM bastard when annoyed and thats why I have decided I must play in different games then, because the only bad memories I have are with layabout, but its my fault. Since there was no thread/problem about behaviour I really can't see what the deal is. Besides couple of players of course, because this happens from time to time.
On January 01 2012 21:06 Palmar wrote: What's with the doomsaying?
Sure, things get heated and a little out of hand that game, but people cool down. It's like in sports or whatever, if you really care about what you're doing, you're going to get angry. The main thing is that people can then let it go and play again, which most of us have no problem with.
I dislike people throwing demeaning comments against a community like that.
Confirmed town. Listen to him.
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On April 24 2012 21:35 syllogism wrote: I would still rather play with these people than with people who barely provide any content at all I feel like Sleeper Cell I had a very good mix of characters. That was a good game. There's also a difference between playing with aggressive players and playing with shit-slingers.
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On April 24 2012 21:37 iGrok wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 21:35 syllogism wrote: I would still rather play with these people than with people who barely provide any content at all I feel like Sleeper Cell I had a very good mix of characters. That was a good game. There's also a difference between playing with aggressive players and playing with shit-slingers.
I agree that I would rather play with players that have personality to them. It helps distinguish well known players, as well as lightens up the game from super serious mode. Cause in the end, we are not actually finding killer mafias, were having fun.
I'm not sure about other people but, when people "insult" me or other players with maybe a pictoral representation or a shot at my logic, it seems in good fun/ part of the game. It doesn't feel like to me they are personally attacking that person because they dislike them, unless that said person feels that they are being personally attacked and hurt and PM's the host. Obviously there are exceptions to this, as really vulgar insults are not needed in the game. (EG different ways of saying the same thigns - "Fucking asshole do you have no brain to think", or "It seems as though your logic is not fully functioning today")
Anyways when I see a little bit of "shit-slinging" going on. It reminds me of those pictures that show the difference between people you hang out with and friends. The friends all give each other shit and make fun of each other in good fun. I know most people don't personally know each other IRL here, but its still a community where certain names and faces come up with each other often. Its fun as long as its sort of in the moment, and not a game long 2 players hate each other, or this player slings shit on everything he talks to.
One last thing on this topic: when action is taken, to me it seems like its always going to be bias towards taking action against a player playing for the town over the mafia. Why is this? Outting a mafia can hurt there team much more as they are smaller and/or it can give away other players motivations, even though similar offenses or people throwing gasoline on the flame maybe be thought about over more time in the latter situation.
TLDR; I agree I don't want to overall outlook to be bad on the mafia subforum and that people getting hurt and certain precautions should be taken so this is avoided, however I don't want the game to turn into "super serious mode", where the rules are so strict that the personality is sucked out of the game. This goes for both player actions, as well as set-up rules.
imo
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We're getting off topic O.o
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On April 24 2012 22:17 iGrok wrote: We're getting off topic O.o
Yeah thats true, it slowly started getting off topic, then I completely threw it off topic. My bad, back to discussing the TL standard of normal games.
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United Kingdom35820 Posts
On April 24 2012 17:24 syllogism wrote: iGrok I hope you just take a break from hosting as you frequently have interesting setups that I particularly enjoy spectating or participating in. If you have a problem with how certain people behave (it's certainly not 90%), you should make it clearer that kind of behavior will not be acceptable to you. If they persist, you are free to ban them from your future games or just make it an invitational.
Also I strongly disagree with the notion that players do not take themed games seriously and if some don't, they shouldn't be joining at all. A themed game just means to me that more attention has to be directed towards setup speculation, planning and forming strategies unrelated to actual analysis.
Absolutely agree with this, this is how I distinguish between normal and themed games in my head.
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On April 24 2012 19:16 Toadesstern wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 12:24 gonzaw wrote: Also, that "heavy lore" thing people talk about (Like having each Vanilla Townie have a different role name and PM flavour and shit) shouldn't be allowed in a Normal game and include it in the new category.
Because scum need to be given fake-claims for that, maybe some part of the game will revolve around discussing said lore too, etc. Maybe the people that just want to have a relaxing mafia time don't want to deal with all those names and flavour and claims and shit and just want a plain ol' "Vanilla Town" or "Mafia Goon". disagree here. I like the heavy flavor in normal games a lot and it makes the whole thing feel less 0815-setup that was just randomly created by a setup-creating-machine. As long as it's flavor that is not affecting the game I have no problem with that at all. Also if that's the case People HAVE fakeclaimes before the game starts. As an example you probably still remember LI. Mafia was given 2 Role-PM's before the game started for every player. One Role was the real one for your mafia role and the 2nd was a fake claim for a VT that was exactly like all the real VTs. Additionally we had the possiblity to ask for up to 6 (?) more fake-claims if we wanted to blue fakeclaim. I asked for a vet fakeclaim and got this: + Show Spoiler +Welcome to TL Mafia LI, you are Robert Boscawen, Viscount of Falmouth, you had a brief flare of glory in the great battles of Kommar, where you were made an honorary General after a cannon ball took off your left arm. Your family has always been one of the smallest and least influential, as your father bemoaned in his deathbead, and despite your best efforts it looks like they will remain under the boot of the other families forever, as even your generalship wasn't enough to get you a seat in the house of lords. Still, you know enough of war and battle to survive the first hit aimed at you during the game. Now, quash the anti-monarchists, decisively, so that you will finally be noticed, rather than pushed aside as a cripple. (I guess I am allowed to post this, the game is over after all?) And if it's like that I have no issues at all with flavor. In contrary it spices the whole thing up, changed the whole thing and again, it just doesn't feel like one of those out of the box set-ups. I can understand if people are not going that way for newby games or minis because those are getting hosted so quickly but for normal games I don't see a problem at all with that.
Well yeah, personally I don't mind the flavour in any game and would prefer it.
But well, it adds something completely unrelated to the core of the game into the mix and may seem a little "too much" if we are setting "Normal Games" as these "Oh this should be a completely normal generic game just to analyze and shit".
But meh, if scum are given fakeclaims at the start, and there is no hidden information in the flavour, then it's fine.
The thing is that maybe some people may detour from playing the game and try to analyse the flavour and role names to see connections (Like the "Lord/Baron prefix/suffix" thing from LI);...well I know I would
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Question: Do people really want normal games? Or do they just think they want normal games?
I never play in bigger games (my biggest was 20 people I think?) so i can't really comment there. But here is something from my own experience:
The "I'm a cop you idiot" game was pretty standard - yes? It was small but very standard. A cop, a medic, 3 vts and 2 mafia goons. That setup was great. But would I play that kind of setup all the time (even with small tweaks to the roles)? Maybe the first 2 or 3 times but after that it would get kinda boring. My point being if we run games that are almost alike all the time it would get boring.
I know there are some wiggleroom within the guidelines in this thread but smaller twists in setup might make them more interesting going forward.
Besides that I'm against anything that put things in boxes.
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On April 25 2012 04:44 Dirkzor wrote: Question: Do people really want normal games? Or do they just think they want normal games?
I never play in bigger games (my biggest was 20 people I think?) so i can't really comment there. But here is something from my own experience:
The "I'm a cop you idiot" game was pretty standard - yes? It was small but very standard. A cop, a medic, 3 vts and 2 mafia goons. That setup was great. But would I play that kind of setup all the time (even with small tweaks to the roles)? Maybe the first 2 or 3 times but after that it would get kinda boring. My point being if we run games that are almost alike all the time it would get boring.
I know there are some wiggleroom within the guidelines in this thread but smaller twists in setup might make them more interesting going forward.
Besides that I'm against anything that put things in boxes. nothing is forcing people into only these games, themed games will be co-existing as well
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On April 25 2012 04:44 Dirkzor wrote: Question: Do people really want normal games? Or do they just think they want normal games?
I never play in bigger games (my biggest was 20 people I think?) so i can't really comment there. But here is something from my own experience:
The "I'm a cop you idiot" game was pretty standard - yes? It was small but very standard. A cop, a medic, 3 vts and 2 mafia goons. That setup was great. But would I play that kind of setup all the time (even with small tweaks to the roles)? Maybe the first 2 or 3 times but after that it would get kinda boring. My point being if we run games that are almost alike all the time it would get boring.
I know there are some wiggleroom within the guidelines in this thread but smaller twists in setup might make them more interesting going forward.
Besides that I'm against anything that put things in boxes.
I would mainly because there are only a few blue roles. Any game where there are lots of VTs, a few blue roles and Scum that may or may not have roles that need to deal with Town blue role is fine by me.
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I think that the set-ups on this forum are creative and fairly well balanced. I think that completely standardising normal games would do more harm than good at least where the players are concerned. It is nice to have small things that make games unique or interesting, and i do not think there is a need to remove them. The only problems i see are games with too many blues roles or mechanics that significantly change how you need to play such that standard play and analysis get pushed aside.
I think a game should not be considered normal if it has elements that significantly change how you should play. For instance in storm mafia there was a vig role that could only shoot if town had mislynched and they could only shoot into the players that voted for the mislynch. At the time we, the mafia team discovered it we were annoyed because we had all been on a wagon to mislynch redFF day1. I do not want to complain about the role, it's quite inventive in fact. What is significant about that role is that it punishes specific plays that a mafia team might make that are not necessarily good bad plays. The mafia were completely unaware of this role and by doing what we felt was a reasonable move, we actually took a massive risk that the game mechanics were designed to punish. I do not think roles that function like this belong in normal games.
I feel like a player should be able to sign up for a normal game, and be able to scumhunt without reading the OP.
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Actually I would say the cop game is on the edge of normal. It's still a normal game, sure, but the flow is completely different compared to even minis that are 12-14 players. Most games aren't always dominated by the cop claim (and rarely do you see almost a forced counterclaim) and the potential for a medic save.
But anyway I digress; I think more hosts should be looking toward minis and normals because the demand exists but isn't being met IMO.
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wherescumgo has a good point
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Its clear that there seem to be tons of different opinions of what a normal game actually is, so why don't we just introduce a new way to classify games where Normal is interpreted in the way Foolish is suggesting it and then introduce a new category for "normal with a twist" (and a better name obviously) so each player actually knows what he is getting into?
.o/
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On April 25 2012 04:44 Dirkzor wrote: Question: Do people really want normal games? Or do they just think they want normal games?
I never play in bigger games (my biggest was 20 people I think?) so i can't really comment there. But here is something from my own experience:
The "I'm a cop you idiot" game was pretty standard - yes? It was small but very standard. A cop, a medic, 3 vts and 2 mafia goons. That setup was great. But would I play that kind of setup all the time (even with small tweaks to the roles)? Maybe the first 2 or 3 times but after that it would get kinda boring. My point being if we run games that are almost alike all the time it would get boring.
I know there are some wiggleroom within the guidelines in this thread but smaller twists in setup might make them more interesting going forward.
Besides that I'm against anything that put things in boxes.
If people thought playing normal games was boring, we wouldn't have +50 games of them wouldn't we? >_> (assuming all TL Mafia I-LIII games were normal, or at least most of them).
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Blazinghand
United States25546 Posts
On April 25 2012 09:42 gonzaw wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 04:44 Dirkzor wrote: Question: Do people really want normal games? Or do they just think they want normal games?
I never play in bigger games (my biggest was 20 people I think?) so i can't really comment there. But here is something from my own experience:
The "I'm a cop you idiot" game was pretty standard - yes? It was small but very standard. A cop, a medic, 3 vts and 2 mafia goons. That setup was great. But would I play that kind of setup all the time (even with small tweaks to the roles)? Maybe the first 2 or 3 times but after that it would get kinda boring. My point being if we run games that are almost alike all the time it would get boring.
I know there are some wiggleroom within the guidelines in this thread but smaller twists in setup might make them more interesting going forward.
Besides that I'm against anything that put things in boxes. If people thought playing normal games was boring, we wouldn't have +50 games of them wouldn't we? >_> (assuming all TL Mafia I-LIII games were normal, or at least most of them).
I was under the impression the roman numeral increase wasn't directly correlated with number of normal games, but number of games overall? Like there was LI, then Spaceship, then LIII-- no LII. Though I could be totes wrong.
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I thought they were all numerical and normal games
But I never really understood those. What exactly makes a game "TL Mafia [roman number]" and not "Ace & Caller's Surprising Extravagant Mafia from Inside the Earth" or something?
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On April 25 2012 09:45 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 09:42 gonzaw wrote:On April 25 2012 04:44 Dirkzor wrote: Question: Do people really want normal games? Or do they just think they want normal games?
I never play in bigger games (my biggest was 20 people I think?) so i can't really comment there. But here is something from my own experience:
The "I'm a cop you idiot" game was pretty standard - yes? It was small but very standard. A cop, a medic, 3 vts and 2 mafia goons. That setup was great. But would I play that kind of setup all the time (even with small tweaks to the roles)? Maybe the first 2 or 3 times but after that it would get kinda boring. My point being if we run games that are almost alike all the time it would get boring.
I know there are some wiggleroom within the guidelines in this thread but smaller twists in setup might make them more interesting going forward.
Besides that I'm against anything that put things in boxes. If people thought playing normal games was boring, we wouldn't have +50 games of them wouldn't we? >_> (assuming all TL Mafia I-LIII games were normal, or at least most of them). I was under the impression the roman numeral increase wasn't directly correlated with number of normal games, but number of games overall? Like there was LI, then Spaceship, then LIII-- no LII. Though I could be totes wrong.
I think they're "supposed" to be normal.
LII was jubjub. It was just hosted before LI for some weird reason
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
Will try to answer everything here.
Someone already brought up the point that adding a semi-normal queue won't really solve the problem at hand but just push it to "what classifies a game as semi-normal". That and I don't really want to add another queue to the queue.
The heavy flavor role PM is nice as it prevents players from trying to use the role PMs to deduce someone's role or fakeclaim. Also, I know that some hosts really enjoy writing out flavor like that; it seems silly to take away one of the things that hosts enjoy doing.
GMarshal has always talked about enforcing stricter rules on behavior allowed in games. I am all for that, and I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who isn't. But that is a topic for another day.
The roman numeral numbering is something that is just of tradition. If you look through the list of games you will notice some games don't have the roman numeral, and this is just because when the host put themself down on the queue they gave me a non-roman numeral name. If we do indeed standardize normal games I would probably make all the normal games have a roman numeral just so people know by the name and also because it makes them easier to reference.
Let me reemphasize a few points about what is trying to be accomplished. Yes there is that whole drama of figuring out whether a game is normal that I have to deal with. But that is not the primary reason I want this to be enacted (even though it may have spurred this). I would like to restate what syllogism said:
"A themed game just means to me that more attention has to be directed towards setup speculation, planning and forming strategies unrelated to actual analysis."
That is the kind of thing I envision when I think about the difference between normal and themed. In a normal game, the players should not have to worry about the setup affecting the game, nor should the players have to alter their analysis because of the roles. With recent complaints about the quality of games being low (whether or not this is true is a different story), I see this as a way to promote play entirely based on analysis, hopefully raising the level of play. Players won't have to worry about an all powerful blue circle, or whether or not this player getting lynched is a death miller (sorry only example I could think up right away). Instead a player just has to worry about whether a player is mafia based on his posts and past behavior.
A themed game should not be "crazy" like a few people label them as. DrH's game has shown that people expect those themed games to be just as balanced as a normal game. While that is obviously only possible in a perfect world, these themed games should not be crazy so that we are guessing and hoping that they will turn out okay. As syllogism said these games should have more attention directed towards setup speculation and planning and forming analysis based on the roles that might be in the game. This could mean anything from Qatol's number strategy from PYP1 to me inventing my own mafia team under the name House Chezinu.
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On April 24 2012 16:30 Acrofales wrote:While I think a "semi-normal" category seems like a good middle road between the strict rules of the OP and the current normal, it solves none of the problems Foolishness mentioned at the start. It just shifts the debate to whether it can be considered "semi-normal" rather than whether it can be considered "normal". It might give more leeway to the balancing team, but given foolishness' last post, the problem isn't even so much the definition of normal, but rather drama in the balancing team itself. Not gonna comment on that stuff @Curu: I'm quite surprised to read your opinion. Would you not consider your GoT game normal?
Well my game was normal except the inclusion of a new 3rd party that didn't have any direct outcome on the game itself (ie he had no powers or anything, just thread presence). But I would agree that that violates normal game standards, even with a 3rd party that could do absolutely nothing but talk look at how much people were guessing what his role did, how much not knowing the mechanics affected the game, etc. I think normal games should focus purely on analysis not on setup speculation.
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A random observation regarding the death miller role; as long as it is made clear which role will not truly flip, I don't see why you couldn't have one in a normal game if no flip games are also considered normal. This doesn't mean I actually endorse the role.
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On April 25 2012 13:58 Curu wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2012 16:30 Acrofales wrote:While I think a "semi-normal" category seems like a good middle road between the strict rules of the OP and the current normal, it solves none of the problems Foolishness mentioned at the start. It just shifts the debate to whether it can be considered "semi-normal" rather than whether it can be considered "normal". It might give more leeway to the balancing team, but given foolishness' last post, the problem isn't even so much the definition of normal, but rather drama in the balancing team itself. Not gonna comment on that stuff @Curu: I'm quite surprised to read your opinion. Would you not consider your GoT game normal? Well my game was normal except the inclusion of a new 3rd party that didn't have any direct outcome on the game itself (ie he had no powers or anything, just thread presence). But I would agree that that violates normal game standards, even with a 3rd party that could do absolutely nothing but talk look at how much people were guessing what his role did, how much not knowing the mechanics affected the game, etc. I think normal games should focus purely on analysis not on setup speculation.
wtf Curu I had powers!
Even the host doubts Littlefinger!
I shall seek my revenge, just you wait.
EDIT:
On April 25 2012 14:23 syllogism wrote: A random observation regarding the death miller role; as long as it is made clear which role will not truly flip, I don't see why you couldn't have one in a normal game if no flip games are also considered normal. This doesn't mean I actually endorse the role.
This is actually a pretty fair point. However I would say that if you are not interested in playing such a game then the inclusion of the role isn't so great.
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United States2186 Posts
On April 24 2012 12:34 EchelonTee wrote: we're all friends, and we're all BAMFs. No need to have so much tension. .
Don't worry about it. We're best friends after all. He just had a bad day and blew up over something that would normally make him laugh ^_^ I guess you can only call a bureaucrat a bureaucrat so many times before they get annoyed!
My thoughts more in depth:
1) This defined system will lessen the flow of interesting new ideas considerably for obvious reasons. For example, kurumi had a cool new idea of giving mafia several possible powers (godfather, roleblocker, medic, dt, etc) and letting them choose 2 of them or something. This would give them more options in planning and they could truly design their own team around their strengths (say they have a smooth liar who can lead the town astray, thus they choose to fakeclaim with a dt rather than grabbing a roleblocker) instead of getting handed whatever the hosts felt like. Whether its as good in practice as on paper will have to be seen, but in this rigid new system it couldn't ever happen.
2) The differences between roles allowed and roles banned in the OP is paper thin and arguments could easily be made for including or forbidding them. Frankly, in the actual discussion many decisions literally came down to "role x hasn't seen enough play for me to feel okay including it" which isn't even a reason, just an admission of inadequate basis for judgment. Why is pardoner allowed as an election prize but not actual role? Why so few mafia aligned roles which prevents you from punishing dumb play of thinking role=alignment? Why are so many different kinds of cops allowed but not sanities? Why no double lynch? No instant majority? Why no bodyguard? Why no kp cost abilities? Why no day vigis, especially for mafia? etc...
I'm not defending all of these aspects as important or good; double lynches, instant majority, and BG's are kinda yucky in general, but if someone can figure out a way to make them promote good play, then why ban them? If they can't make them work out and the setup looks problematic, then it can be addressed individually. Creating an arbitrary system to allow or ban these borderline roles on a broad scale, no matter who does it (though a forum-wide decision would be ideal), is going to leave a lot of unanswerable questions because it's just too difficult to firmly decide in isolation one way or the other.
3) Some of the more interesting recent normal games have been ones with rulesets that wouldn't fly at all under this new system. Specifically, Closed Casket, Jubjub, XLVIII, and Some Mafia Game, though I'm sure others would apply too. All these games either promoted interesting play or brutally punished atrocious play. So far as I saw these games are some of the most 'normal' of normals yet they all contained many banned roles, most of which should be below though I imagine im forgetting some:
Russian Vigi Janitor (Hides deaths while alive) Dreamflower Kingmaker Pardoner Double Voter Day Vigi (particularly mafia version) Jack KP cost abilities for mafia.
4) Other problem is that the theme queue is already the overstacked one. There are the staple, awesome, fan favorite setups like Pick your Power or Sleeper Cell, alongside a lot of unique ones like Personality, Insane/Aperture series, Caller games, World at War, Death Factory, or more dynamic/flavorful ones like Space Station or LOTR. Basically, there's a lot of competition here when as WBG said, normal games aren't being hosted enough relative to demand in the first place. If more innovative normal formats have to compete with the overcrowded theme slots, someone loses out and there'll be less innovation overall, while supply for generic normal games will still be low because frankly not many people seem to like to host games where you are extremely restricted in design. Gonzaw's idea might work but then I could see everyone just trying to host in the 'almost normal' category which kind of defeats the purpose.
As for an idea what should be done, I'm just going to echo GM and add on a bit.
1) We figure out guidelines of what constitutes a normal game here. Rather than hard and fast rules, go with general principles like what layabout said.
2) Host goes through balance crew as normal, except they actually can't just force it past objections. If host isn't happy with a decision they can go to other balance people (so long as the original communication is given to them too). If they still aren't satisfied they bring it up to forum at large. If it's a contested thing then Foolishness or Gmarshal or both cast the deciding vote or whatever. That way the latter two don't have such an annoying burden, but also everyone is held accountable and there's more transparency as to what is going on. Balance crew also needs more people cause of a lot people on it are afk most of the time and it'd be good to get fresh insight too, especially from people who play more regularly as of late. I see it as a ship correcting its course over time.
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@Ver:
Well, the point is that you can force people to not only host "semi-normal" games but also Normal games. If what you guys want (well, or what Foolishness wants) is having more Normal games to incentive people into making more analysis and improving the level of play in this forum, then just have more people host those and that's it.
The problem isn't about "defining" and "categorizing" games, the problem is about creating setups that do the above (encourage good play rather than luck/mechanic manipulation/etc). If you don't make any "definitions" about Normal/Semi-Normal/Themed Games, then the above thing still won't happen, unless you guys incentive hosts into making those type of games.
If you can just tell everybody "Yes Normal games are just a guideline and kind of vague, but you guys should start hosting more "Simple" games without weird mechanics" then it's the same thing and you don't have to make any rules or anything.
Making these rules makes it easy to control that though.
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The other problem is getting veteran (read: good) players to sign up for normal games when they start getting picky and sign ups can fill up quickly. The unique games usually peak these players interest leading many of the normal games to end up being maybe 1 - 5 good players (getting them shot n1 if town) and a bunch of people who would rather yell, sheep and lurk rather then actually play a good solid analytical game.
I believe that you see the quality of good players games go extremely downhill when they know they are most likely going to die N1 because all their time and effort is barely worth it. This often leads to chaotic towns with no veteran leadership, so in all honesty I don't know if we should put the onus(is this the correct use of this word) of bad play on the setups but more on the players in games themselves.
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
On April 26 2012 03:55 Mattchew wrote: The other problem is getting veteran (read: good) players to sign up for normal games when they start getting picky and sign ups can fill up quickly. The unique games usually peak these players interest leading many of the normal games to end up being maybe 1 - 5 good players (getting them shot n1 if town) and a bunch of people who would rather yell, sheep and lurk rather then actually play a good solid analytical game.
I believe that you see the quality of good players games go extremely downhill when they know they are most likely going to die N1 because all their time and effort is barely worth it. This often leads to chaotic towns with no veteran leadership, so in all honesty I don't know if we should put the onus(is this the correct use of this word) of bad play on the setups but more on the players in games themselves. I think that encompasses the other problem of we need stricter rules about what behavior is allowed in a game. Unless you mean something else?
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Can't we bite it from the other side? Maybe make a list of roles which shouldn't be included in the game? Besides, I think that every setup which leaves people with only a couple of actions they can do (so things like "I'm a cop You idiot" in a bigger game would be a no-no) should have no place ever in a normal game. Leave this for minis.
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I wasn't saying decreasing the amount of possible actions people can do i/was a good thing. It worked in that small setup but I agree it wouldn't work in a big game. I just mentioned it to explain my point. Doing the same type of setup over and over will kill the fun (for players but even more so for hosts).
About behavior. People just have to stop thinking about this as the internet. I know thats hard because this is the internet, but really. Some of the things people write they would (i hope) never say in a skype call let alone real life. Just because its text based over the internet doesn't allow people to behave like dicks. And if you bring up "it's a game" or "I'm just playing my role", don't.
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On April 26 2012 04:29 Dirkzor wrote: I wasn't saying decreasing the amount of possible actions people can do i/was a good thing. It worked in that small setup but I agree it wouldn't work in a big game. I just mentioned it to explain my point. Doing the same type of setup over and over will kill the fun (for players but even more so for hosts).
About behavior. People just have to stop thinking about this as the internet. I know thats hard because this is the internet, but really. Some of the things people write they would (i hope) never say in a skype call let alone real life. Just because its text based over the internet doesn't allow people to behave like dicks. And if you bring up "it's a game" or "I'm just playing my role", don't. If I call Your case stupid and bad am I being a dick or what? Come on. We're role playing at least a little bit. Just remember what Palmar said. It's like sports. We might get really deep into the match but everything done here is because of emotion and us trying the best. When we're done, we shake hands and thank everyone for a good match.
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On April 26 2012 04:34 Kurumi wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 04:29 Dirkzor wrote: I wasn't saying decreasing the amount of possible actions people can do i/was a good thing. It worked in that small setup but I agree it wouldn't work in a big game. I just mentioned it to explain my point. Doing the same type of setup over and over will kill the fun (for players but even more so for hosts).
About behavior. People just have to stop thinking about this as the internet. I know thats hard because this is the internet, but really. Some of the things people write they would (i hope) never say in a skype call let alone real life. Just because its text based over the internet doesn't allow people to behave like dicks. And if you bring up "it's a game" or "I'm just playing my role", don't. If I call Your case stupid and bad am I being a dick or what? Come on. We're role playing at least a little bit. Just remember what Palmar said. It's like sports. We might get really deep into the match but everything done here is because of emotion and us trying the best. When we're done, we shake hands and thank everyone for a good match.
I feel that lately the "attack the play, not the player" guideline has been overstepped a bit. I also know that in more than a few cases the hosts have had to step in after the game is over and remind the players that the game is, in fact, over. What you describe is fine in my book, I just don't think that has been what's happening.
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I'm not taking almost anything written here personal or dislike people for writting stuff during a game. I'm pretty relaxed about stuff like that. But the atmosphere between other players and during games can get tense where you all know its no longer "just a game". People get truly angry over various reasons. Some are valid while others are the person getting angry over small things.
I'm just saying you can write stuff differently. I'm not saying we should all be "You sir, wrote a case I truely dislike and I would like to say that I'm mildly annoyed you can't see the true logic here" but there are no reason to go "FFS RETARD! WHY DON'T YOU JUST STOP PLAYING. GOD DAMMIT!"
Calling cases and logic stupid is not being a dick.
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kitaman27
United States9244 Posts
Need to add BM vig to the list of normal accepted roles.
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Sometimes you don't realize that you're being an asshole in the heat of the moment. I think host/cohost(/observers?) can help defuse situations by just PMing people who are out of line (I've received a few of those from GMarshal and I'm grateful for that 'cause I didn't realize that I was out of line and it was never my intention). Another thing that could maybe help with the problem is invitational games.
Banlisting people over behavioral issues should really be last resort and I think that people should be entitled to a warning first.
Anyway, I hope we can get back on track discussing what games should be considered normal? I like the solution where someone just decides "We're going to enforce that normal games can only use a specific subset of roles" and then people agree on those roles and everything else becomes themed. I'd talk about those roles but I have never even hosted a game and I know nothing about balance or setups or roles.
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On April 26 2012 04:34 Kurumi wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 04:29 Dirkzor wrote: I wasn't saying decreasing the amount of possible actions people can do i/was a good thing. It worked in that small setup but I agree it wouldn't work in a big game. I just mentioned it to explain my point. Doing the same type of setup over and over will kill the fun (for players but even more so for hosts).
About behavior. People just have to stop thinking about this as the internet. I know thats hard because this is the internet, but really. Some of the things people write they would (i hope) never say in a skype call let alone real life. Just because its text based over the internet doesn't allow people to behave like dicks. And if you bring up "it's a game" or "I'm just playing my role", don't. If I call Your case stupid and bad am I being a dick or what? Come on. We're role playing at least a little bit. Just remember what Palmar said. It's like sports. We might get really deep into the match but everything done here is because of emotion and us trying the best. When we're done, we shake hands and thank everyone for a good match.
Calling a case stupid or someones play bad is ok, if those who say these things actually do it for a purpose. For instance I am totally fine with scum doing it to discredit someone, or to in fact piss someone off to an extent that their judgement get clouded. I a also think it is perfectly fine if a townplayer do it to actually stop a misslynch from happening. But to do it after ten others have done it, what purpose does that really serve? At best it can force the player to play the game the way you want it, at worst you just make the player shut up and become inactive(and then everyone can complain in post game what an god awful non-contributing town this is). And in between these two scenarios you have alot of stuff that is bad for town (people fighting eachother instead of scumhunting, players getting ignored for beeing labeled bad or beeing dicks etc etc)
Some people think that taking a piss at someone is the only way to play the game - meaning if they post little call them bad for town and beat them into talking, if they post, and their post aren't to your liking call them bad or scum and force them to post better. While this kind of behavior might work on some of the players some of the time, it most certantly cause some players to become inactive and less contributing, and will lead to people missreading them. So while having a couple of "hardhitting" players in a game is good, having a majority of these kind of players just toally ruins the townatmosphere. I think a good player need to know when to push and when to pull.
On topic: I prefer normal games over themed games by a long shot. And until I master the normal games on a decent level I wills tay away from the themed ones. When some of the normal games have enoguh crazy roles in them, I stay away from those as well.
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On April 26 2012 03:55 Mattchew wrote: The other problem is getting veteran (read: good) players to sign up for normal games when they start getting picky and sign ups can fill up quickly. The unique games usually peak these players interest leading many of the normal games to end up being maybe 1 - 5 good players (getting them shot n1 if town) and a bunch of people who would rather yell, sheep and lurk rather then actually play a good solid analytical game.
I believe that you see the quality of good players games go extremely downhill when they know they are most likely going to die N1 because all their time and effort is barely worth it. This often leads to chaotic towns with no veteran leadership, so in all honesty I don't know if we should put the onus(is this the correct use of this word) of bad play on the setups but more on the players in games themselves. This problem doesn't have a very high correlation with vets dying night 1. It has more to do with in thread behaviors and the trend of current games. Besides the overarching umbrella of "bad play", I think the primary reasons have to do with a bad atmosphere due to spam, a tendency for people to look at what is right in front of them rather than looking at everything as a whole, and the increasingly prevalent attitude that "this is a game, so I can do anything I want". We know its a game, but I think the explanation that "its a game, its natural to get emotional, but after the game we are all friends" is becoming increasingly a meaningless sentiment. Its becoming the politically correct way to excuse your bad behavior in games. I mean, even in this thread, we have an emotionally charged angrypost. Ya, Foolishness and I are friends, so we're all good there, but it doesn't mean we run around flinging mud at each other just because we know its all good in the end. Being in a "game" doesn't give you the license to ignore common decency. The number of players we have lost because of this atmosphere is astonishingly high. Of course, if you are newer to this forum, it doesn't look like as big of a deal, but that's because you just don't know who these people are.
It's ridiculous to add another "category" for games. In fact, its already doesn't even make sense to split the queue into themed and normal games, except for the fact that the hosting supply of normal games is so low because every host wants to host their crazy themed game. The normal game queue is just a crutch to support host supply of normal games, and allow hosts a back door into hosting themed games, since that queue basically fills up the instant a spot is available.
The problem here is that there is this tension between hosts vs. players that isn't being addressed. The queue is set up solely for the favor of the hosts, and the players basically have no choice on what games are offered. When the supply/demand gets imbalanced like it appears to be now, people yell at The Man, but the response is slow.
First thing we need to do is to refocus and collectively decide where our priorities lie. In an environment comprised of players and hosts, which do we value more? Currently, I'd say that the whole focus of the queue has been filtering the hosting process to accommodate all potential hosts. Any host that gets on the queue has a mandate to run his game whether or not people are interested in the setup. But it is clear that if a host puts time and effort into a setup and nobody wants to play it, or nobody takes it seriously, the game doesn't end up as well as hoped. This results in lost value for both the hosts and the players. It doesn't make sense to favor the hosts because the players are what make the game. The host and setup are just the framework where play occurs. Which means that yes, a good setup should make the game enjoyable and result in good gameplay, but we need to realize that good gameplay doesn't happen without high player interest. And you can't force players to be interested in a game, so focusing on the host side of things doesn't make sense.
Right now, we have an inefficient hosting system. We know that we have a higher demand for normal games, but we dont even know how many players are in this pool. We don't even know what people mean by "normal" when they check the "I want more normal games" box. As this thread shows, the views of normal are wildly different. On top of that, we don't even know what our player base is generally, and the TL Mafia Census thing didn't really help. We are constantly forced to make decisions off of old (inaccurate) data, or guesses. Furthermore, its not simply a matter of "normal" game demand or "themed" game demand. A lot of other factors also play into people's decisions, such as the player composition, the timing of the game, etc.
We need a system that allows us to prioritize games based on player interest, not host demand. This means we need to be able to track the size of our active player base (this changes rapidly, as we have a fairly high turnover rate) and get feedback on the demand for individual game setups (categorizing doesn't help because of the large discrepancies in definitions). Such a system would eliminate the need for categorizing games and eliminate the need for a queue (the hosting order would naturally be determined by interest numbers), which would give us more time to do other less useless things.
I have some ideas, but they will take time to implement.
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@kurumi: the problem with an exclusion lust is that it can never cover everything.What if I decide tomorrow to host a game with a lynch-kill-immune cop-watcher-nosy-mille lynchmaster role. This role is not in the exclusion list, because nobody else has come úp with it before. Now this role is clearly quite ridiculous, but who is really in charge here?
@mattchew: agree 100%, but it's a different discussion how to get. eterans peaked for a game. DrH did a really good job of getting alarge numbers of vets to play.
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On April 26 2012 04:12 Foolishness wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 03:55 Mattchew wrote: The other problem is getting veteran (read: good) players to sign up for normal games when they start getting picky and sign ups can fill up quickly. The unique games usually peak these players interest leading many of the normal games to end up being maybe 1 - 5 good players (getting them shot n1 if town) and a bunch of people who would rather yell, sheep and lurk rather then actually play a good solid analytical game.
I believe that you see the quality of good players games go extremely downhill when they know they are most likely going to die N1 because all their time and effort is barely worth it. This often leads to chaotic towns with no veteran leadership, so in all honesty I don't know if we should put the onus(is this the correct use of this word) of bad play on the setups but more on the players in games themselves. I think that encompasses the other problem of we need stricter rules about what behavior is allowed in a game. Unless you mean something else? I think we need more behavior and more post game analysis. I would go so far to say that new players should have to play their 3 newbie games before signing up for any other games
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This is obviously somewhat off topic, but the discussion has gone there, so: To be completely honest, ever since the newbie games became more popular, the quality of play declined hella fast (IMO)
Personally I attribute that to newbies not actually learning anything at all by playing with other newbies. I just don't see what they learn about analysis or finding scum when pretty much no one around them knows how either. Isn't the record for newbies in the past 15 games something like 2-13 in the favor of mafia? One of those games was the one where Palmar smurfed and found all the scum n1 iirc.
Most of these games were clean wins for mafia too, where townies didn't even have even the remotest of hopes in finding scum.
I think forcing newbies to "play their 3 games" is pretty harsh and honestly doesn't make sense to me. I'd actually much rather prefer new players to take an active stance in moving away from the sandbox and actually taking time to play with experienced players, to learn the game as almost everyone did before the newbies became popular.
I may be the only person with this opinion but I think if people want to change the quality of play then we need individuals to actually take the lead to improve their own play instead of sheeping vets 24/7 and doubting themselves because they don't know what they're doing (if you feel that way, then read games and ask questions so you do improve!) Making friends is pretty easy and the better players WILL help you if you're genuinely interested and it's clear you want to improve.
Edit: also, I'm going to put this bluntly, but as is pretty obvious my opinions are fairly strong.
Re:the postgame analysis issue brought up by Mattchew, I think hosts simply either need to stop being lazy or not host if they do not intend to do standard stuff like that. One of the reasons I really like Ace's games is not necessarily because of his setups (though his setups tend to be interesting) but actually because after the game I feel like I can take at least some of his observations postgame and learn from them. I may not agree with everything that is said postgame but definitely I can see the merit in nearly all of it.
I think if more hosts actually did postgame analysis (as they're supposed to, IMO) then we might start on the right path to end the complaints about bad play.
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On April 26 2012 11:15 wherebugsgo wrote: This is obviously somewhat off topic, but the discussion has gone there, so: To be completely honest, ever since the newbie games became more popular, the quality of play declined hella fast (IMO)
Personally I attribute that to newbies not actually learning anything at all by playing with other newbies. I just don't see what they learn about analysis or finding scum when pretty much no one around them knows how either. Isn't the record for newbies in the past 15 games something like 2-13 in the favor of mafia? One of those games was the one where Palmar smurfed and found all the scum n1 iirc.
Most of these games were clean wins for mafia too, where townies didn't even have even the remotest of hopes in finding scum.
I think forcing newbies to "play their 3 games" is pretty harsh and honestly doesn't make sense to me. I'd actually much rather prefer new players to take an active stance in moving away from the sandbox and actually taking time to play with experienced players, to learn the game as almost everyone did before the newbies became popular.
I may be the only person with this opinion but I think if people want to change the quality of play then we need individuals to actually take the lead to improve their own play instead of sheeping vets 24/7 and doubting themselves because they don't know what they're doing (if you feel that way, then read games and ask questions so you do improve!) Making friends is pretty easy and the better players WILL help you if you're genuinely interested and it's clear you want to improve.
Edit: also, I'm going to put this bluntly, but as is pretty obvious my opinions are fairly strong.
Re:the postgame analysis issue brought up by Mattchew, I think hosts simply either need to stop being lazy or not host if they do not intend to do standard stuff like that. One of the reasons I really like Ace's games is not necessarily because of his setups (though his setups tend to be interesting) but actually because after the game I feel like I can take at least some of his observations postgame and learn from them. I may not agree with everything that is said postgame but definitely I can see the merit in nearly all of it.
I think if more hosts actually did postgame analysis (as they're supposed to, IMO) then we might start on the right path to end the complaints about bad play.
I think its important to have setups where newbies can learn the game in a fairly standard enviorment. At the time the best way we thought of this was to host newbie games.
However, I have noticed what you have bugs, and I am beginning to think that the best option is to have 1/5 of the availible slots in newbie games be open to known players.
While this does bring about the possibility of "sheeping the vet", that is in and of itself a thing that newbies should learn not to do.
Having 1 or 2 known players in a newbie game would also increase activity in the thread, which in some games is atrocious.
Just my two cents as a host.
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I think letting them play non-newbie games is fine. I mean what's the worst that can happen? They can learn from the players playing the game while getting a taste of what it's actually like.
And it's not like they're going to be scared off or anything. In fact I'd say there's a much higher chance someone stays and learns about Mafia after playing a non-newbie game than one of those 4-cycles-in-13-pages newbie messes.
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On April 26 2012 11:31 Curu wrote: I think letting them play non-newbie games is fine. I mean what's the worst that can happen? They can learn from the players playing the game while getting a taste of what it's actually like.
And it's not like they're going to be scared off or anything. In fact I'd say there's a much higher chance someone stays and learns about Mafia after playing a non-newbie game than one of those 4-cycles-in-13-pages newbie messes. The worst that can happen is they sign up for LIII and SNMMX and then are completely inactive in both.
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kitaman27
United States9244 Posts
On April 26 2012 11:15 wherebugsgo wrote: Re:the postgame analysis issue brought up by Mattchew, I think hosts simply either need to stop being lazy or not host if they do not intend to do standard stuff like that. One of the reasons I really like Ace's games is not necessarily because of his setups (though his setups tend to be interesting) but actually because after the game I feel like I can take at least some of his observations postgame and learn from them. I may not agree with everything that is said postgame but definitely I can see the merit in nearly all of it.
I think if more hosts actually did postgame analysis (as they're supposed to, IMO) then we might start on the right path to end the complaints about bad play.
The one problem with a postgame analysis by a host is that they have complete knowledge of everyone's alignment for the entire game. By having complete information, it provides them with an unnatural viewpoint. Setup discussion is usually fine, but when they say things like "player x was obviously scum and should have been lynched", they may be making connections that an actual player are incapable of making. I'm usually much more interested in the post-game analysis that are provided by players or observers.
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On April 26 2012 13:35 kitaman27 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 11:15 wherebugsgo wrote: Re:the postgame analysis issue brought up by Mattchew, I think hosts simply either need to stop being lazy or not host if they do not intend to do standard stuff like that. One of the reasons I really like Ace's games is not necessarily because of his setups (though his setups tend to be interesting) but actually because after the game I feel like I can take at least some of his observations postgame and learn from them. I may not agree with everything that is said postgame but definitely I can see the merit in nearly all of it.
I think if more hosts actually did postgame analysis (as they're supposed to, IMO) then we might start on the right path to end the complaints about bad play. The one problem with a postgame analysis by a host is that they have complete knowledge of everyone's alignment for the entire game. By having complete information, it provides them with an unnatural viewpoint. Setup discussion is usually fine, but when they say things like "player x was obviously scum and should have been lynched", they may be making connections that an actual player are incapable of making. I'm usually much more interested in the post-game analysis that are provided by players or observers.
yeah, I agree, but I think that you can point out certain things even with complete knowledge.
Despite Ace having complete knowledge of his games I don't think his advice in the postgames have been bad. Same for Incog+Ver when they do it.
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i think a big issue is making sure we know they're active before they're sent into "bigger games". But it's only some people that cause that issue. I haven't played in a newbie game and I'm super new but I do actually put effort into the games I play in and I am very active in them. For the reasons bugs stated, I didn't want to play in a newbie game. I felt it would be better to start with people who knew what they were doing.
Personally I think there shouldn't be a pre-defined limit to modkills, it's up to the mods discretion on how much posting in a game is acceptable.
I like the idea of having 1/5th of the slots in newbie games reserved for people who know what they're doing. It teaches posters how to play as town or how to play as scum. It's very likely whatever team the majority of the experienced players are on will win almost every time, but it'll teach the newbs how to play better at least.
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Since this thread is now so far off-topic I might aswell continue.
About newbie games with 1/5 (or whatever) amount of players who have tried it before; Who would be allowed to be the "vet" in the games? Me? Bluelightz? Palmar? Ace? Is 1/5 correct? Why not 10 "vets" and 5 newbies? Would remove the "follow the vet" and "Kill vet N1" thingies. It just opens up for a whole new series of question that I don't think we can find collective answers to.
In my opinion you should remove the newbie games and just run more normal minis (which we have way to few of anyway) with open signup for everyone.
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On April 26 2012 16:48 Dirkzor wrote: Since this thread is now so far off-topic I might aswell continue.
About newbie games with 1/5 (or whatever) amount of players who have tried it before; Who would be allowed to be the "vet" in the games? Me? Bluelightz? Palmar? Ace? Is 1/5 correct? Why not 10 "vets" and 5 newbies? Would remove the "follow the vet" and "Kill vet N1" thingies. It just opens up for a whole new series of question that I don't think we can find collective answers to.
In my opinion you should remove the newbie games and just run more normal minis (which we have way to few of anyway) with open signup for everyone.
instead of something that drastic, simply making more normal minis (or slightly fewer newbies and more normal minis) works too.
Basically even the normal minis are being filled up with newer players, so we might as well be hosting more of them.
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What is exactly the problem with the "newbies"?
There's a batch of "newbies" that are pretty good (or not as bad as you guys state). For instance sloosh/MidnightGladius/Probulous/DoYouHas/EchelonTee/Cephiro/maybe me (if I forgot someone else then sorry, those are just from the top of my mind ).
If there was a game where only those played, I don't think it would be a "bad" game or have "bad quality" as some of you are expressing. And most, if not all of them started playing in Newbie Games.
Is there any specific examples of newbies having "bad quality play" because they play Newbie Games? And would "discarding" Newbie Games really improve this? How do you know it will make a difference at all, or it if it doesn't actually worsen their play a little bit by either: sheeping the vets and doing nothing, or not caring about the game because of the usual flamefests that happen in games with "experienced" players, and other similar actions?
I'd like to hear a well thought out argument of what's wrong in the first place, and then a well thought argument about why changing the system will actually make it better before trying to do anything.
I agree about having some sort of Post-Game analysis by the hosts every game:
There are perks about having all the information about the game: -They can fully analyse how scum played, and the host is basically the only player that witnessed scums play knowing who they were since the beginning. Other observers just tried to find scum on their own and "extrapolate" how scum are playing in said game, and then make a "backwards" analysis once all scum are known. But the host experiences the game as it goes, and he experiences scum's play as it goes too, and it gives him more insight about it so he can make better analysis'.
-I don't see how him knowing who is scum and who is town (and night actions, etc) can make him less worthy of making analysis about town play or about specific town players. Sure, observers and like may vouch for that player or not in specific issues, like about how much "townie" that townie looked, etc. But the host knows other things too. For instance he knows who is scum, and therefore knows if that townie's reads are right or wrong, and as the game goes on he can make an analysis of said townie depending on his actions, etc and how they relate to the actual setup and the actual scum.
To be honest though, there should be Post-Game analysis both by the hosts, and by observers and town/scum players so it takes a broader approach and people can take advice from each point of view (I suck at making analysis, or I'm just lazy to post them so don't ask me to do them >_> )
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On matters of post game analysis.
I'm not the strongest town player in the game. It's pretty much widely known that my reads are sub-par. I'm not surprised that my meta isn't "Let's see who Jitsu accuses of being scum, and then confirm that person as town."
That being said, I also don't feel like there is much in the way of improvement when I have nothing to bounce ideas off of. I've recently changed the way I scum-hunted, hoping to be able to better my play, with only mildly ok returns. (The one time that stands out is when I subbed into Game of Thrones and got two scum when I came in, yet was killed shortly thereafter.)
I think post-game analysis can help with this a lot, not only for me, but for other people that are looking to better themselves as town players. I usually ask for people to critique my play afterwards, but only receive criticism in the way of "don't tunnel so hard," if I can even push it out of someone in the first place.
I'm not sure if Newbie games are a help. I mean, unless there are large amount of people want to coach, or have a few good known vets come in as smurfs, I don't see how it can help. It'd be like watching a group of kids in Pop Warner football running around not knowing what to do because they don't have a coach.
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woops i de-railed the thread. sorry
standard normal games is something i agree with
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On April 26 2012 15:21 wherebugsgo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 13:35 kitaman27 wrote:On April 26 2012 11:15 wherebugsgo wrote: Re:the postgame analysis issue brought up by Mattchew, I think hosts simply either need to stop being lazy or not host if they do not intend to do standard stuff like that. One of the reasons I really like Ace's games is not necessarily because of his setups (though his setups tend to be interesting) but actually because after the game I feel like I can take at least some of his observations postgame and learn from them. I may not agree with everything that is said postgame but definitely I can see the merit in nearly all of it.
I think if more hosts actually did postgame analysis (as they're supposed to, IMO) then we might start on the right path to end the complaints about bad play. The one problem with a postgame analysis by a host is that they have complete knowledge of everyone's alignment for the entire game. By having complete information, it provides them with an unnatural viewpoint. Setup discussion is usually fine, but when they say things like "player x was obviously scum and should have been lynched", they may be making connections that an actual player are incapable of making. I'm usually much more interested in the post-game analysis that are provided by players or observers. yeah, I agree, but I think that you can point out certain things even with complete knowledge. Despite Ace having complete knowledge of his games I don't think his advice in the postgames have been bad. Same for Incog+Ver when they do it.
Indeed but thats why I encourage other people to discuss stuff. I can only try and give "this should have happened since player A knew this piece of information" so many times. I'm also going to guess that's one of the reasons Observer QTs are popular.
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United Kingdom35820 Posts
On April 26 2012 11:15 wherebugsgo wrote: This is obviously somewhat off topic, but the discussion has gone there, so: To be completely honest, ever since the newbie games became more popular, the quality of play declined hella fast (IMO)
Personally I attribute that to newbies not actually learning anything at all by playing with other newbies. I just don't see what they learn about analysis or finding scum when pretty much no one around them knows how either. Isn't the record for newbies in the past 15 games something like 2-13 in the favor of mafia? One of those games was the one where Palmar smurfed and found all the scum n1 iirc.
Most of these games were clean wins for mafia too, where townies didn't even have even the remotest of hopes in finding scum.
I think forcing newbies to "play their 3 games" is pretty harsh and honestly doesn't make sense to me. I'd actually much rather prefer new players to take an active stance in moving away from the sandbox and actually taking time to play with experienced players, to learn the game as almost everyone did before the newbies became popular.
I may be the only person with this opinion but I think if people want to change the quality of play then we need individuals to actually take the lead to improve their own play instead of sheeping vets 24/7 and doubting themselves because they don't know what they're doing (if you feel that way, then read games and ask questions so you do improve!) Making friends is pretty easy and the better players WILL help you if you're genuinely interested and it's clear you want to improve.
Edit: also, I'm going to put this bluntly, but as is pretty obvious my opinions are fairly strong.
Re:the postgame analysis issue brought up by Mattchew, I think hosts simply either need to stop being lazy or not host if they do not intend to do standard stuff like that. One of the reasons I really like Ace's games is not necessarily because of his setups (though his setups tend to be interesting) but actually because after the game I feel like I can take at least some of his observations postgame and learn from them. I may not agree with everything that is said postgame but definitely I can see the merit in nearly all of it.
I think if more hosts actually did postgame analysis (as they're supposed to, IMO) then we might start on the right path to end the complaints about bad play.
To the bold: ah, I feel so good right now
To the bit in red: is that actually policy? I played Newbie VI and then replaced into Mafia LI as my 2nd game.
Generally, I would not have signed up for a regular game without playing a newbie game first - too intimidating for me - I only found this forum by accident towards the end of March with no concept of what Mafia even was.
Obviously the quality in Newbie games is generally low, but if I take up chess/Starcraft/tennis whatever, I don't want to be playing competitively against GM standard players. When I started out in Starcraft, I started in the basement of bronze playing other basement bronze players, and found learning from outside sources off my own back.
As far as I know, there's still no postgame analysis for my Newbie VI game, which by now is a tad disappointing.
I also agree that veteran players are also quite willing to help noobs if they ask. VE most of all, but to some extent as well wbg/sandroba have all helped me out willingly and spent time they didn't have to talking to me.
Sorry, I know this is a little bit tangential, but it's just my opinion as a pretty recent comer to this forum so it may be generally relevant.
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Wow, running mafia games sounds complicated
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As for newbie games the reason they are there is because no one wants to host a game where unproven players (read: bad) ruin the game and/or show little activity. Finding the next Cephiro is a rare thing.
Also MidnightGladius isn't new? I think he played Mafia here years ago.
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If you count me being a horrible inactive newb back in high school when Chuiu first started the TL games, then yeah, I was here years ago.
I'm actually kind of surprised that you had remembered :3
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On April 26 2012 22:35 Ace wrote: As for newbie games the reason they are there is because no one wants to host a game where unproven players (read: bad) ruin the game and/or show little activity. Finding the next Cephiro is a rare thing.
Also MidnightGladius isn't new? I think he played Mafia here years ago.
While this may be true, but I am sure those hosting the normal games for newbies wouldn't mind hosting normal games for everyone (with newbies in them). The newbiegames serves as a buffer against getting inactive players in games open to everyone, but the real purpose of it is to let new players try the game without veterans completely dominating them.
I think the newbiegames works perfectly fine as they are. Town losing horrible should be a good sign, as the players should know they have alot to improve on when comming into a real game.
So newbiegames should definatly be run as they are to:
1. Give new players an introduction to forummafia without the intimidation factor. 2. Serve as a buffer against people who thinks they want to play forummafia, but who don't (modkills and bans). 3. Teach the new players a lesson in humility (Alot of us still haven't understand that we aren't the best ting that happend to TLMafia yet. Give us time though, and we will understand this and hopefully start to improve). 4. Give new hosts a chance to host a low expectation game.
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
We are really off topic here guys. This is not about behavior or newbie games and whether or not they should be changed.
To Incognito, I know you have ideas to change the queue and I'm ready to do so to, but until we have a better plan/idea of how to do so will this suffice? You have always been a bit down about the level of play around here, how would you get players to learn and focus on analysis? A game where players have to spend time asking questions such as "is this blue claim valid? Is this player lying about night actions? does this setup make sense from a balance perspective?" means that much less time analyzing behavior and writing up strong posts.
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Have you guys ever thought about free market? It solves a lot of problems in the real world..
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On April 27 2012 09:00 Foolishness wrote: To Incognito, I know you have ideas to change the queue and I'm ready to do so to, but until we have a better plan/idea of how to do so will this suffice? You have always been a bit down about the level of play around here, how would you get players to learn and focus on analysis? A game where players have to spend time asking questions such as "is this blue claim valid? Is this player lying about night actions? does this setup make sense from a balance perspective?" means that much less time analyzing behavior and writing up strong posts. Its hard for people to improve unless they take the initiative to do so. Institutionally there's not much you can actually do to improve the level of play . To get better you need to make the effort to go through old games, see how good players play and why they do things the way they do, and discuss with them on how to approach things. There is too much in-the-moment thinking and not enough stepping back to see the whole picture. Being around bad players reinforces bad play.
Generally what makes a game good is not necessarily the setup, but the players in it. Of course, setup matters, but if you want to increase the level of play you need to attract good players.
Playing tons of games doesn't make you good. Thinking about the game from an outside perspective and then applying that knowledge and then reflecting again is a faster way to get better. Of course, you can certainly learn by playing many games, as some people have, but I don't think that's the most efficient way to do things.
Its not just as simple as getting rid of the "crutches" of blue roles to force people to learn for themselves. A game of mafia is not real life, and there are different reasons why people play the game. Not everyone will get motivated to improve when they realize they can't rely on blue roles. Throwing a baby bird out of a nest might be a good way of getting them to learn to fly, but the analogy doesn't hold for mafia.
A game of mafia is like a sandbox. Reducing the complexity of the sandbox makes it harder to find direction unless there are some real power players in the game. When an inexperienced player is thrown into this sandbox, the most popular question probably is "so now what do we do?" People often simply don't know what the important issues are in a game, and don't know how to get meaningful discussion going. What people need is more direction, not more moments of sitting there waiting for something to happen. Sometimes, someone will bring up a topic. Most of the time for day 1, it will be a useless policy question that really won't lead to any meaningful results. But since they haven't experienced anything else, people start to think that's what you're supposed to talk about.
Mafia is one of those games where norms and common conceptions of good play come by following the leader. Make sure you have the right leaders, or nothing will get better.
A while ago, we had a small trend to weakening blue roles and severely nerfing information roles. I'm not convinced it has had any meaningful positive impact on gameplay. If people want some more straight up vanilla games, then host them, but I see no reason to adopt a rigid form for normal games. I agree with GMarshal and Ver that the current system works. You just need to give the balance team the final say so we don't have hosts basically ignoring the balance team. Then just let hosts take discussion to the community if it they have an issue. Keeping this list as a guideline is nice, but it shouldn't be a hard rule.
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Disclaimer:
I think it's dumb to try to define normal and themed. It should be up to each host what he classifies his own game as.
I also think we're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, I can't remember ever being annoyed by how a game was defined.
Started thinking about this topic after a short argument in the Game List thread.
I guess I never gave my opinion, and as one of the most active players here I probably should.
I completely agree with syllo's definition of normal vs themed games. I also agree with almost everything GM, Ver and Incog have said.
This is just an estimation, I would never even try to put down actual rules on what is normal and what isn't.
To me, a normal game roughly looks like this:
Cycle: Day or Night start, normal cycles Information: Closed, Semi-Open, Open Lynch: Standard lynching mechanics (majority, plurality or extended majority) Flips: Standard flipping mechanics (no-flip, alignment-only-flip, normal flip) Balance: Balanced. Roles: Roles that don't change the flow of the game excessively Mechanics: No complicated mechanics (items, currency, selecting roles etc) Teams: Town, Scum (maybe two families), 3rd parties (probably not multiple)
To me anything that breaks these would probably be themed, I'll take some examples of things that would break each category, making the game themed, although this is more of a guideline to me, than actual rules.
Cycle: Nightless games (Resurrection), Strange Cycles and timings (Real Time Mafia). Information: Nothing really breaks this Lynch: Complicated lynching rules (Liar Game, Death Factory, Werewolves, Kingmaker) Flips: Bastard flips Balance: Experimental Games Roles: Very strange roles or roles that severely change the flow of the game (Cultists who recruit every night and change people's win condition, Texas Cops that can affect the cycle etc) Mechanics: This is the broadest category, think weird game mechanics (Swedish House Mafia), alternate win conditions (World at War 2), items (merc mini), Role picking (PTP/PYP), Player identities (Team Melee. Experiment, Territorial (Sengoku) Teams: Anything that has alignment changing stuff (merc mini - lovers) or very complicated family setups.
To me if you want to use a CPR doc (doctor who kills his target if he doesn't save it, essentially a vigilante), an Operator (a Mason-esque role that connects two people other than himself for the cycle), a Janitor (Mafia role that hides the flip of someone), or a Busy Paramedic (a medic that cannot protect the same target twice in a row), then you should go for it. It's not a problem at all in a normal game.
Would anyone really consider something like this themed?
Macho Roleblocker Veteran Busy Paramedic Vanilla Town Vanilla Town Vanilla Town Vanilla Town Vanilla Town Vanilla Town Vanilla Town Mafia Role Cop Mafia Vigilante Mafia Goon
Mafia KP = 1 If only Vigilante remains, KP = 0
The obvious point in this setup being that mafia has an extra KP in their vigilante compared to normal 12-ish player setups, but in turn Town has 4 ways of dealing with this extra KP (Medic, Veteran, Roleblock the vigilante and the fact it's a 13 player setup). To stop the town from repeatedly fucking with mafia, the Roleblocker is macho (cannot be protected), and the mafia has a role cop to help find town blues.
Most situations town would have to lynch correctly three times to win, and scum would need to force 3 mislynches (although with extreme luck/bad blue play they can do it with 2), which would make this probably a fairly balanced setup.
Now, of course I got carried away designing that, but the point remains, this is not a themed setup. This is a normal setup, and should always be so in my opinion.
Now, I don't think anyone is arguing that most of the numbered games, and most BC games etc, are normal, and that caller games, PTP/PYP are themed. The grey area are the games that fall somewhere in between, Ace is very fond of those, and so am I.
Some Mafia Game (Unusual roles, closed setup) Closed Casket Mafia (No flips, unusual roles, closed setup) JubJub Mafia (Alignment only flips, unusual roles, closed setup) Storm Mafia (role name only flips, Unusual roles, closed setup)
I played in three of those games and hosted one. Every single one of them played out almost completely like a normal mafia game. The roles were all in check, every single one of those was a fun game (most of them came down to 3 person lylo/kingmaker), and they all worked out great.
Where do we want to put these games?
My suggestion: Leave it up to the host.
Now, I personally solved this in storm mafia by adding this to my OP:
This is a closed normal setup. There are however variations of roles that can be considered non-normal. Thus you should treat this game as something of a borderline themed/normal. The distinction is somewhat hard to make, so just keep it in mind as you enter the game.
If the game feels like a normal game, plays mostly like a normal game, and is quite fun, I don't really see the point in calling it a themed for the sake of there being a random weird-ass role in it. Even the flips aren't hard to deal with.
Conclusion:
I think it should be up to the hosts themselves how to categorize their games.
I think we don't have a problem with people misrepresenting their games.
I think most people realize that closed games, even when categorized as normal, are more likely to have surprising bits in them.
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Your suggested setup, with the Macho Roleblocker, while it looks balanced, has two blues that I would consider non-standard. The busy medic is a borderline case, while the Macho Roleblocker looks much worse, town roleblockers are very unusual, and I never heard of Macho roles before, which easily qualify it for non-standard.
I disagree with what you call normal on three major points.
First normal games must be Semi-Open or Open, or we´ll have endless discussions about irrelevant things. If the players can´t see that it´s a normal game it´s not normal, because not knowing changes the game too much.
Secondly normal games should have simple roles. Vigis are either limited-shot or unlimited-shot, they are not also paranoid-gun-owners or checks as red. Alignment-Cops and full Cops are normal, weak or insane Cops are themed. It doesn´t have to do with wether or not the roles change the game a lot. Having townies that can´t be protected change a lot for the medic but so do roleblockers, but we consider roleblockers normal because they are a simpler and more staple part of games. IMO Standard roles are these: vigi, doctor, miller, cop, veteran, framer, godfather, roleblocker, mason, survivor and SK, and their most common variants (1-shot vigi, investigation-immune SK), nothing more.
Finally I think this matters because there is a difference between normal and themed, and that is when they are run on this forum. Roughly, every other game is supposed to be normal, and every other is supposed to be themed, that´s more or less what this forum wants. Therefore it´s important to define which game is themed and which is normal, and that definition should be based on what the players think. The host may make any kind of game he wants, I would never dispute that, but wether or not the game is called normal or themed according to this forum, that´s not up to the host, that depends on what kind of game he´s made. If it´s a themed game then he can´t call it a normal game.
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I'll respond cause I'm bored.
On May 21 2012 23:41 Forumite wrote: Your suggested setup, with the Macho Roleblocker, while it looks balanced, has two blues that I would consider non-standard. The busy medic is a borderline case, while the Macho Roleblocker looks much worse, town roleblockers are very unusual, and I never heard of Macho roles before, which easily qualify it for non-standard.
You not knowing about something doesn't make it non-standard. In addition, Town Roleblockers are a pretty damn normal role.
On May 21 2012 23:41 Forumite wrote: First normal games must be Semi-Open or Open, or we´ll have endless discussions about irrelevant things. If the players can´t see that it´s a normal game it´s not normal, because not knowing changes the game too much.
Again, I've played tons of closed setup games (some mafia game, closed casket, xlviii, jubjub). Them being closed changed almost nothing in how the game was approached. I completely disagree with forcing semi-open or open setups, as I see it as irrelevant.
On May 21 2012 23:41 Forumite wrote: Secondly normal games should have simple roles. Vigis are either limited-shot or unlimited-shot, they are not also paranoid-gun-owners or checks as red. Alignment-Cops and full Cops are normal, weak or insane Cops are themed. It doesn´t have to do with wether or not the roles change the game a lot. Having townies that can´t be protected change a lot for the medic but so do roleblockers, but we consider roleblockers normal because they are a simpler and more staple part of games. IMO Standard roles are these: vigi, doctor, miller, cop, veteran, framer, godfather, roleblocker, mason, survivor and SK, and their most common variants (1-shot vigi, investigation-immune SK), nothing more.
Everyone has their definition of simple. Note that for example foolishness's original suggestion didn't include survivor 3rd parties, but did include a traitor, which you didn't include!!!
As long as the roles don't change the game they're fine. Would you also consider lurker-vigis themed?
On May 21 2012 23:41 Forumite wrote: Finally I think this matters because there is a difference between normal and themed, and that is when they are run on this forum. Roughly, every other game is supposed to be normal, and every other is supposed to be themed, that´s more or less what this forum wants. Therefore it´s important to define which game is themed and which is normal, and that definition should be based on what the players think. The host may make any kind of game he wants, I would never dispute that, but wether or not the game is called normal or themed according to this forum, that´s not up to the host, that depends on what kind of game he´s made. If it´s a themed game then he can´t call it a normal game.
There has never been a problem with the hosts deciding it. So why fix it if it aint broken?
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Forumite your definition is just that, your own. It is not the definition TL mafia games use and will not be that. Not to sound rude but your assertive tone in the active games thread makes it sound like you are in charge of what constitutes normal and what doesn't.
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On May 21 2012 23:58 syllogism wrote: Forumite your definition is just that, your own. It is not the definition TL mafia games use and will not be that. Not to sound rude but your assertive tone in the active games thread makes it sound like you are in charge of what constitutes normal and what doesn't. I probably did come across as rude, that wasn´t my intention.
I still want to know which definition TL mafia games.
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On May 22 2012 00:49 Forumite wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2012 23:58 syllogism wrote: Forumite your definition is just that, your own. It is not the definition TL mafia games use and will not be that. Not to sound rude but your assertive tone in the active games thread makes it sound like you are in charge of what constitutes normal and what doesn't. I probably did come across as rude, that wasn´t my intention. I still want to know which definition TL mafia games.
There is no definition for TL mafia games at the moment.
I don't think there should be one, and a few people agree with me, although some probably disagree too.
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On May 22 2012 01:09 Palmar wrote:Show nested quote +On May 22 2012 00:49 Forumite wrote:On May 21 2012 23:58 syllogism wrote: Forumite your definition is just that, your own. It is not the definition TL mafia games use and will not be that. Not to sound rude but your assertive tone in the active games thread makes it sound like you are in charge of what constitutes normal and what doesn't. I probably did come across as rude, that wasn´t my intention. I still want to know which definition TL mafia games. There is no definition for TL mafia games at the moment. I don't think there should be one, and a few people agree with me, although some probably disagree too. I agree with you on most games, some are obviously themed (votetrading and item mechanics) and some are obviously normal, but I think the current gray area is way too big. You say we shouldn´t fix something that isn´t broken, but if we call the same game different things, then I think there´s a problem. Adding a semi-normal category wouldn´t help, but an unofficial definition might, more or less what this thread was about.
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Palmar your game isn't balanced - Macho RoleCop + Busy Paramedic in that setup means the top 2 Town PRs can never interact in a low PR game Just make the Rolecop normal since the BP can't consecutively prot him anyway
1.) I agree with that post - I consider a setup like described as completely normal since there are no surprise mechanics or game changing twists that you need to read the OP for.
2.) However, the people taking care of the lists need someway to classify the games. While I may consider some things normal, if we have an overflow of Normals and not enough Themes, then the queue gets backed up and people start creating crap Theme setups just to host.
3.) I'm fine with the way things are for the most part anyway. As long as there are enough games being hosted to satisfy demand I think Foolishness and whoever else is running the Active Games thread have done their job.
/exits thread without reading anything else
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ace it was a roleblocker lol
I think Palmar makes a good point. Having a few uncommon roles doesn't make it themed. It really doesn't take much to understand what Macho means, or what Busy means. Even if you don't list those modifiers in the thread OP, the only people who will have to contend with those mechanics are the blue roles; everyone else won't know about those and just treat the game as a normal game. Which makes it seem pretty normal despite a few off beat roles.
However, I think the crux of the problem was that because there aren't any set rules, the panel of TL judges had to continuously make judgement calls on whether or not a game was Themed or Normal, and the reason why it needs to be determined if it's themed or normal is because of the Queue and what not.You say that the host should just determine that, but then opinions clash, insults fly, and an innocent iGrok is alienated. We don't want things like that.
I honestly don't have a good solution in mind, but it's important to remember that just leaving things nebulous will just lead to more arguements. There either needs to be set rules (they can be loose or whatever), or some sort of agreement needs to be met.
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Yea I meant roleblocker, same effect
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For me, the disconnect is in your "Roles" definition of Normal - roles that don't "change the flow of the game excessively".
What does that mean? Like, depending on the circumstances, a key ROLEBLOCK can "change the flow of the game excessively" in my opinion - maybe our definition of "flow of the game" is different, but that's the problem isn't it?
For my part, I'd be okay calling anything "balanced" Normal - that is to say, the setup has been designed, discussed and approved by someone I trust to know whether or not a game is balanced. Honestly, that's subconsciously how I differentiate between Normal and Themed: Normal = Balanced, Themed = Imbalanced. I realize this is a broad generalization and probably mostly incorrect, but when I'm deciding what to play, I tend toward Normal games because I assume they're balanced. I don't care about what roles are in it - there could be a 3rd Party Deus Ex Machina in the game, but if it's balanced, I'm okay with it being called Normal.
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Flow of the game to me would be something like a Bus Driver or Redirecter: 2 roles that altar the target(s) of players' actions with or without them finding out.
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I mean, I can see those roles being labeled as "non-Normal", but if the game is balanced around them do they remain non-Normal? That's what I'm saying, like those are powerful, drastic roles, but they're not impossible to balance are they?
I mean, I don't know how it would be done, but you guys are like, good at this shit.
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I dont think you can balance a game around them without creating some role modifiers to make the game even more annoying. They are among the worst roles I've ever seen including Mad Hatters that set bombs off by suicide or lynch.
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To clarify, my definition of a role that changes the flow of the game is anything that messes with the cycles, victory conditions, game rules etc.
Cultist that changes people's alignment is one example. A lyncher that can immediately end the day is another.
However, there are certain roles that are borderline non-normal in closed setups, while they're ok in open or semi-open. Bus Drivers, Janitors, Virgins and Death Millers come to mind as roles that are very difficult to deal with in closed, but if accounted for they're not a problem.
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On May 22 2012 17:15 Ace wrote:Palmar your game isn't balanced - Macho RoleCop + Busy Paramedic in that setup means the top 2 Town PRs can never interact in a low PR game Just make the Rolecop normal since the BP can't consecutively prot him anyway
It's hardly unbalanced, but yeah, I changed the roleblocker to macho for an emphasis on it being an unusual role, it's not something like a finalized setup, just an example.
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On May 22 2012 20:01 Palmar wrote: To clarify, my definition of a role that changes the flow of the game is anything that messes with the cycles, victory conditions, game rules etc.
Cultist that changes people's alignment is one example. A lyncher that can immediately end the day is another.
However, there are certain roles that are borderline non-normal in closed setups, while they're ok in open or semi-open. Bus Drivers, Janitors, Virgins and Death Millers come to mind as roles that are very difficult to deal with in closed, but if accounted for they're not a problem. Weird roles that are accounted for with other weird roles doesn´t make it a less weird game. It can still be balanced though.
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*bump
this thread was awesome
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I want to know what a dreamflower is...
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It seems to me that the rules set out last year are no longer followed---For example he says no paranoid variants for any role and yet we had LXI.
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On August 02 2013 04:15 WaveofShadow wrote: It seems to me that the rules set out last year are no longer followed---For example he says no paranoid variants for any role and yet we had LXI. Someone's mad
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On August 02 2013 04:15 WaveofShadow wrote: It seems to me that the rules set out last year are no longer followed---For example he says no paranoid variants for any role and yet we had LXI. There are no set rules for normal games. No one was able to agree on criteria and the general consensus was to just leave it as is (host discretion). The ruleset that Foolishness brought up for discussion was never followed at any point.
On August 01 2013 15:12 cDgCorazon wrote: I want to know what a dreamflower is... It's a compulsive vigilante (must shoot every night) that dies if they hit town.
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What's a mad hatter? I've never heard of that role before.
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You can either place a bomb on someone at night (usually up to 2) or move a bomb to a different target. When you die, the bombs blow up. Depending on the game/host, they may only blow up if you get nightkilled (and not if you get lynched), and the bombs may be lost/refunded if the target is lynched or killed.
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On August 02 2013 04:51 jrkirby wrote: What's a mad hatter? I've never heard of that role before. There was one in LX if you're interested in reading.
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Really sorry to bump an old thread, but this seems to be the most recent/clear resource for TL Mafia's definition of "normal" games/roles/etc. Is the list in the OP still the standard for normalcy in mafia games? Asking b/c most(/all?) of the games active right now are closed and at least one is normal, so I'm trying to get an idea for what roughly to expect if I sign up for it.
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On July 18 2014 17:51 Eden1892 wrote: Really sorry to bump an old thread, but this seems to be the most recent/clear resource for TL Mafia's definition of "normal" games/roles/etc. Is the list in the OP still the standard for normalcy in mafia games? Asking b/c most(/all?) of the games active right now are closed and at least one is normal, so I'm trying to get an idea for what roughly to expect if I sign up for it.
There never became a standard, it is mostly for the host's discretion. If you're talking about storm mafia, that game (and the Storm series of games) is explicitly borderline normal/themed, as per my definitions of my own games in this thread. Most normal games are more normal than Storm Mafia, and most are not closed either.
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Ah. I was looking at the Titanic one in particular to sign up for, and I think I peeked briefly at Storm, but then realized I didn't know what "normal" meant exactly lol. So what does normal mean then if it's up to host discretion? I can make some guesses at a reasonable baseline, but if there's a resource somewhere that's already spelled out that'd be great to see.
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Normal just means the game is relatively normal, as per the judgement of experienced hosts.
In practice, I guess the definition of a normal game would be something you can play without really thinking about it given that you know the rules of mafia. Things like multiple threads, abnormal cycles or lynching mechanics etc are all definitely not normal. The borderline is games that are 100% normal in structure, but may include roles you haven't encountered before.
So yeah, we never enforced hosts to follow guidelines on what is normal, and instead we rely on the hosts and the balance committee to make sure things are ok.
IF a game is called normal, you should not have to worry about mechanics.
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In fact inexperienced hosts will often ask more experienced ones for setups, and contribute nothing but running the game.
+ Show Spoiler +ergo, me (Alakaslam) always bugging Blazinghand and Foolishness, with an occasional poke at GreYMisT. + Show Spoiler +That being said I have a themed game in the works; see you in October...
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