Morning Tweet's Normal Review, August 2020

[mastina]

so on first glance i don't think it's terribly scumsided although i think some of the concerns you just mentioned might be kinda valid, for instance the gunsmith taking the real doctor as a mafia doctor (although this might arguably be an example of a good red herring)

i like a lot of your thinking in your design logic (and i appreciate you including that a lot – i always end up asking people for it anyways because it helps me know what direction to try to take the setup in). if you want a gunsmith / maf doc combo, i think having the gunsmith be informed of this is a pretty good idea. weak friendly neighbor is a cool role, although personally i consider the "weak" part as less of a downside than you seem to – you say that if one scum is doing well enough that they essentially disable the friendly neighbor, but i think that in a lot of scenarios (at least with a halfway competent FN), that really just means a guilty on that scum member. again, kind of depends on whether a newbie or more experienced player is the WFN, but still

i think the setup is at its weakest with the strongman and the 2-shot commuter, although it being the relative weakest (i.e. compared to the rest of the setup) doesn't mean that it's bad

honestly i think that it's probably passable as is? of course, the evil NRG bureaucrat in me wants to tweak it around and not just pass it as is, but i honestly don't think it's really necessary. of course, if you'd like to talk it through a bit more and if you feel like you might want to change your mind on it i'm open to hearing different ideas, but i

think

that it's passable as is. would like to hear mastina's opinion as well.

Honestly, my thoughts mirror nsg's here. I love your design logic, don't think the setup is massively scumsided, but I do understand the rather valid concern involving the town doctor and the informed gunsmith about a mafia doctor. I'm not as concerned about a weak friendly neighbor, that's an inherent double-edged sword built into the role where it is a considerably strong role with a known drawback to it, and is not a role that takes considerable knowledge/experience/skill to pilot. (Just about any given player given that role can have an idea on how to use it competently. Well-used, the role could snowball to victory off of just surviving and clearing itself and its target, but also gives utility for breadcrumbing a guilty. Poorly used, and it can create a false-innocent* or with bad breadcrumbing, a false-guilty. The latter is much less likely than the former.)

I do think that, thanks to the mafia doctor and the town doctor and the informed gunsmith and the scum 1x strongman, the game

is

slightly scumsided, but as nsg said, within the passable margin of error. (Ideal balance is 50-50. There's a 10% margin of acceptable deviation from a perfect 50-50, where a game can be up to 60-40 town-scum or 60-40 scum-town, and I'd place this at somewhere in the 58-60% scum margin, passable but still scumsided.)

If the setup were to be tweaked, the tweaks would need to be

very very minor

, minuscule ones, because the setup is beautiful, the setup is elegant, the setup is nice, is wonderful, and not atrociously balanced. But I am currently too tired to make any suggestions on any tweak of this nature, if it's even desired. (Soonest I'd be able to do this, if you want it, is Sunday.)

Because as I said above, it's passable in my opinion as-is. Slightly scumsided, scumsided enough to

almost

be outside the acceptable margin of balance, but to just be inside the region. So I'd mostly defer the judgement to the setup designer/mod, if they're okay with the running the setup knowing that it's slightly scumsided. If they are, if you are, then it's fine, but if you're not quite happy with it as it is, then yeah, needs some form of very minor tweak/adjustment.

Oh, also I have a question: If the Weak Friendly Neighbour is killed by visiting a mafia-aligned player, can the doctor save them, or is the death unpreventable?

*This is the source of the aforementioned improbable, but not impossible, false-innocent, because the answer is yes, a doctor can save a Weak role visiting a scum player.

[mastina]

the wiki actually says otherwise

I'm pretty sure the wiki's wrong on that, though, and that the correct interaction of when a Weak role visits nontown and is protected by a doctor is at least

meant

to be that the doctor saves them, though I suppose it would depend on the wording of the doctor PM. (The doctor's PM specifying "one attempt on their life" or something to that effect should still save the Weak player, because the Weak's visit to nontown would be an attempt on their life; the doctor's PM specifying "one nightkill" or something to that effect shouldn't still save the Weak player since the Weak player wasn't targeted by a nightkill.)

Might be something to get an executive call from implosion on. I've always been under the impression that, traditionally, one of the established known weaknesses of the, well, Weak modifier, is that you could get false innocents by visiting scum and being saved, that the design intent of the modifier was for it to have that built-in potential for the unlikely, but still theoretically possible, false innocent, just as the role can produce a false guilty by being nightkilled and/or vigged.

But that aside.

For balance tweaks. There's multiple options.
-Increase the power of existing town. Options include:
*Turning the commuter into a full commuter (effectively making them, in practice, an ungated town bulletproof) (other roles are already as strong as they can get, so the only role which could get stronger is the gated commuter)
*Turning the town doctor into a different town protective, such as rolestopper or babysitter, to avoid the informed gunsmith from running into that issue
*Overlapping with the below, give an existing role some extras.

-Decrease the power of existing scum. Only option here is removing the 1x strongman.

-Introduce extra power to the town. Either give the town's existing roles something extra (e.g. the town doctor being informed scum have a 1x strongman, as an example), or introduce an entirely new, but minor, extra role for the town. Something that gives some tangible benefit, but is not a huge boon.
The stereotypical example is a Voyeur--can't get a hard guilty/innocent, and whose main purpose is to validate existing claims.
Something like a Fruit Vendor or Neighborizer would be other options, though they probably don't add much (aside from helping the Weak Friendly Neighbor hide better).

Basically, roles that don't swing the balance the other way.

These are the options that come to my mind immediately.

I'd think removing the strongman wouldn't be the best, and buffing the commuter probably wouldn't be the best, so the options there would be to change the town doctor into another protective or to add another minor town role. Would like nsg's feedback there as well tho.

[mastina]

Do you think the setup is more balanced with or without the rolestopper knowing about the strongman's existence?

I'd love to have nsg's thoughts on that, but imo that actually swings things in the other direction, towards townsided. Rolestopper and not doctor = no longer contradicts with the gunsmith's info. Info of their own = corroborates the gunsmith's info, and limits the scum. Having both gives the town virtually all of the info in the game while letting them have strong PRs; having only one of the two would be better overall.

[mastina]

I am good with running the original setup with the doctor swapped out for rolestopper, if you think that's reasonably balanced (´･ω･`)

I do!

[mastina]

Technically, should list the rolestopper role, but yes, the setup is good to me.

[mastina]

/pass