[SETUP] Modernizing Pick Your Power X/Y

[Something_Smart]

Hi hello I've been obsessed with Pick Your Power X/Y recently. A run of it just ended, it was a town stomp via catching two scum on dayplay and entering autowin on D3. The setup seems to me to be somewhat townsided overall, although the history doesn't support that. And I feel like some of the draft choices are not terribly interesting (most notably Neighborizer/Fruit Vendor, where there doesn't seem to ever be a reason to pick Fruit Vendor).

I'm not the first person to have the idea of trying to tweak the setup; last year I played in a test run of Venrob's PYP X/Y which fixes some of the problems but introduces plenty of its own (i.e. Neighborizer is no longer paired with the useless Fruit Vendor, instead it's paired with the vastly better Gunsmith). But after the recent run of the setup, I was discussing this with the worst, and we came up with a small change, which he is going to run, that would make the setup a little more fair to scum and give scum more room to be mechanically creative-- namely, that scum got to choose during the number draft between having their members be multitasking and getting a factional Informed of one role pair that no player received during the the draft.

When we floated this idea to Hoopla, the original designer of the setup, she expressed some interest in possibly modifying some of the roles. So I figured I'd make this thread so we could talk about it. For reference, the original role pairings are these:

Pick Your Power X/Y: Original Flavor

Night 3 Vigilante/Vengeful
1-Shot Vigilante/1-Shot PGO
Cop/1-Shot Redirector
1-Shot Commuter/1-Shot Watcher
Doctor/Roleblocker
Universal Backup/Role Cop
Neighborizer/Fruit Vendor
Jailkeeper/Tracker

No multitasking.

Here are Venrob's pairings, which seem to be intended to make some of the boring roles more interesting:

Pick Your Power X/Y: Spicy Venrob

Night 2 Vigilante/Vengeful
Perfectionist Vigilante (can shoot until they kill town)/1-Shot PGO
Cop/2-shot Redirector
Conditional-Commuter (one-shot, regains shot if attacked while commuting)/1-Shot Watcher
Doctor/Roleblocker
Universal Backup w/ 1-shot override (can choose not to inherit the first PR to die)/Role Cop
Neighborizer/Gunsmith (Positive result on Mafia, Vigilantes, PGO, & JOAT if vig shot is unused)
Jailkeeper/Tracker
1-Shot Governor/JOAT (Cop, Doctor, Roleblocker, Vigilante, Commuter)

No multitasking.
Role drafting includes two choices (a first and a second choice), so that players have the opportunity to get their second choice if the first is taken.

I was messing around with some ideas today, and I came up with these, which I quite like:

Pick Your Power X/Y: Hint Of Something_Smart

Night 3 Vigilante/Vengeful
1-Shot Vigilante/2-Shot PGO
Ascetic Cop/Bulletproof
Draft Cop (learns what role pair target tried to draft)/1-Shot Watcher
Doctor/Roleblocker
Universal Backup/Rolecop
Neighborizer/Voyeur
Jailkeeper/Tracker

During the number drafting, the mafia have a factional choice between multitasking and informed (of one role pair that nobody received).

Part of the point of this is just to see how people feel about the setup. Is it enough of a classic that we should just accept its flaws (which are relatively minor) and keep playing it as-is, or would be people be interested in trying to improve it?

[the worst]

ego

[lilith2013]

~not good at game-design~ but I like 2-shot PGO paired with 1 shot vig. draft cop sounds really fun/interesting but maybe it should be x-shot instead?

[Something_Smart]

The reason I had draft cop as ungated was because most of its actions are likely to be duds; as town, finding out someone's bracket only matters if they fakeclaim outside of their bracket (rare, but more likely to happen with informed), and checking a vanilla only matters if they lie about their pick (again, unlikely). For scum it serves as a vague and unreliable rolecop.

[lilith2013]

Do you see whether that person received the role they tried to draft?

[Something_Smart]

No, just the pair that they submitted.

[DrDolittle]

SS can you stop dragging my loss all over mafiascum.com.net please

[lilith2013]

I think it’s more useful as a “I know this role exists in this game” than anything else. ungated seems fine then.

[Something_Smart]

SS can you stop dragging my loss all over mafiascum.com.net please

I'm actually trying to draw attention to the fact that you shouldn't have lost that way :/ One of the things I want to do is give scum more room for good mechanical play because right now they have very little and town has a lot.

[the worst]

SS can you stop dragging my loss all over mafiascum.com.net please

you were in a PoE of like. 2 that could have been a PoE of like 5.
you had misplays but generally did not deserve the literal tank that was rolled over you on d3-4

[Isis]

You can make the draft cop more powerful if you force people to choose which of the a side b side role they would want if they won the draft, then make that visible later, right? Cause scum would want certain roles?

It probably doesn't matter whether there's a correct a/b in the choices vs. whether people disagree about whether there is, so I have one that seems better to me on a few but they seem within spitting distance. The exception is tracker/JK, that just seems so egregious. Are people drafting tracker anyway? I would think they do not actually just draft tracker anyway.

[Gypyx]

You can make the draft cop more powerful if you force people to choose which of the a side b side role they would want if they won the draft, then make that visible later, right? Cause scum would want certain roles?

It probably doesn't matter whether there's a correct a/b in the choices vs. whether people disagree about whether there is, so I have one that seems better to me on a few but they seem within spitting distance. The exception is tracker/JK, that just seems so egregious. Are people drafting tracker anyway? I would think they do not actually just draft tracker anyway.

That would be almost like a full cop i think, and even then what would be the point of going for 1-shot watcher?

[Isis]

it would only function like a full cop when there is a pairing where scum always want side a and town always want side b, and there shouldn't be any of those anyway.

[Something_Smart]

You can make the draft cop more powerful if you force people to choose which of the a side b side role they would want if they won the draft, then make that visible later, right? Cause scum would want certain roles?

Yes I could, but I don't really like that change because it reduces the ability of scum to fakeclaim, which is the opposite of what I wanted to do. Plus, it's in a pretty weak pair anyway (1-shot watcher is not all that great), so I don't think it needs to be stronger as it currently stands?

It probably doesn't matter whether there's a correct a/b in the choices vs. whether people disagree about whether there is, so I have one that seems better to me on a few but they seem within spitting distance. The exception is tracker/JK, that just seems so egregious. Are people drafting tracker anyway? I would think they do not actually just draft tracker anyway.

Tracker/JK feels fairly close to me. JK is the stronger role in general, but in this setup, there are a lot of things that the tracker can see, which will soft-clear it because JK is a much more useful pick for scum. And the protection isn't as great when it's mostly PR's that you'd want to protect. (Also, since it's a pretty big setup, there are probably going to be a lot of nights where more than one scum is alive, during which JK cannot get a unambiguous guilty but tracker can.)

[Isis]

Why does the number of scum affect the ambiguity of JK guilties

[Something_Smart]

Because if there's only one scum you can keep jailing the same person and if they're not scum then scum will have to eventually kill elsewhere.

[Isis]

The main thing is I didn't realize how this was a small town and tracker selfclears slot some it seems fine

My lack of enthusiasm for PR setups probably degrades the quality of my input I was just attempting contribute

[Something_Smart]

So I did a thing

This thing has convinced me even more that the setup could stand to be reworked.

Role 1	Town	Mafia	Role 2	Town	Mafia
Night 3 Vigilante	5	0	Vengeful	5	4
1-Shot Vigilante	7	4	1-Shot PGO	1	1
Cop	12	0	1-Shot Redirector	0	1
1-Shot Commuter	0	0	1-Shot Watcher	8	1
Doctor	6	0	Roleblocker	1	7
Universal Backup	9	2	Rolecop	2	2
Neighborizer	13	0	Fruit Vendor	3	0
Jailkeeper	7	5	Tracker	2	0

This has confirmed most of my intuitions about the setup:

- PGO is garbage
- redirector is garbage and it's not worth it for scum to take considering they probably will have to claim cop and get PoE'd
- commuter is garbage (0 picks in 16 runs of the setup! damn!)
- I am a special snowflake, being the only person to ever pick roleblocker as town (and I stand by it being a good move!)
- fruit vendor sucks (but 3 people still took it for some reason, those were all old games so it's not TERRIBLY surprising)
- jailkeeper is more popular than tracker, but also way more likely to be taken by scum-- though Isis, it looks like you might be right that people see jailkeeper as much better than tracker, even if that isn't objectively the case.

Also, something I didn't expect: holy shit those neighborizer/fruit vendor results. That slot was taken in every single game (compare to cop which was missed 3 times!) and EVERY TIME by town.

[Isis]

Why would you pick doctor over rb as town
I totally pick rb
I will not have s_s feeling special I won't stand for it

[Something_Smart]

Probably because doctor is a Town Role™ and roleblocker is a Scum Role™.

And I know a way you can remedy that...

[Isis]

Whichever one I pick is a town role because I'm a townie brownie even when the mod accidentally puts red text and PT links in my role pm

[the worst]

It does go against conventional wisdom. But conventional wisdom is terrible. I like grinned irl when SS claimed it that time.

Those results are..... unsurprising but ouch.

[Isis]

But like it's easier to guess who is scum than who scum will kill if you have Smart reads

[the worst]

Yeah absolutely; doctor is cool in theory but the % chance of actually getting something useful out of them is kinda slim.

[Kerset]

Very interesting part of X/Y is possibility of fakeclaiming. It is already difficult thing because of inevitable massclaim, so i would rather recommend removing powers similar to rolecop. Sure scum can be simply honest about draft in order to counter flavor cop but it makes things less interesting. Gunsmith does better job here.

I don't think that FV is useless in setup without mutitasking. It is just lesser, because Neighborizer confirms your inactivity anyway.

Ascetic Cop/Bulletproof looks tricky, because someone could bait a kill with it. However is it really worth it? Cop is so powerful, two clears are already better then prevented kill :/. Maybe

Macho Cop/Bulletproof Checker

, so he could catch roleblock attempts?

Venrob is still my favorite one, because it has interesting roles. It just lacks multitask and some pairings are unbalanced.