A Mid-Scummer Night's Dream - D.S. al Fine

[drealmerz7]

I swear I'm being funny

[Regfan]

And yeah like you said town never really did stuff. It seemed like a constant theme of everyone saying LLD was probably scum and TWIE was probably scum but never really bothering to try to lynch either of them. I think that was a huge reason why you were able to coast so blatantly, you kind of fit in with town just sitting around passively not really gamesolving. I think you played really well though, you were town enough in the first couple of days to carry you through and you basically carried the team. I think if anyone with less of a commanding presence had been in your slot this would very possibly have been a town win.

Thanks but yeah, the night kills should have been a fairly big give away about our entire scum team, we were shooting people that were a) Fairly accurate with their reads, b) Had some sort of control of the day phases and c) Would mean leaving alive players that suspected each other, people brought it up a bit and Cephrir and Mhsmith as well as a few other players like MariaR brought up the "Why's Reg alive" and "He's not actually solving" which frankly was very accurate and very hard to respond to, I'd have played this

very

differently as town but again no one got together to lynch, we were just standing back a lot waiting for when we actually needed to chime in, your assessment of LLD mostly posting to push people scum reading her isn't off base at all and Syranas vote on Dreamlz was something he thought was actually the hammer. I don't think any of us scum members had a strong game here, all of us were strongly suspected by several townies throughout the game and none of us can really look in a mirror and say "Played that awesomely" but town being so passive, lurking so much at times and then turning up to spam post rather useless things made this game workable for us and we did decently with that.

Could just drop the conversation, don't think anyone's attempting to be malicious and it's just a disagreement/misunderstanding.

Instead lets focus on how much a noob Floodgates is, lynching mafia getting shot N1 and still losing, only

really

bad players can do that.

Truth hurts? What do you get when you put two noobs in one slot? Two dead noobs.

[Brian Skies]

Also, my day 2 hider claim was so tech, lol.

I thought your day 2 play was okay. I thought your day 3 hider play was atrocious. But you were able to capitalize on the random 'what if someone isn't dream receptive' speculation later on. I thought that was very well-played and worthy of a win.

Congratulations on your victory.

[Brian Skies]

Maybe it was your Day 4 hider play I thought was atrocious. Either way, congrats to the scumteam.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

I think it was just very hard to claim any target and still be fine. I just tried to sell what I thoguht would work, but yeah it wasn't a very good claim to say I targetted Smith.

[Brian Skies]

I don't know what happened on that night. But since you didn't know who had the watcher, I don't think you had a choice but to claim a different target.

[Floodgates]

Truth hurts? What do you get when you put two noobs in one slot? Two dead noobs.

Hey we're one body two heads, remember? We're twice the noob you'll ever be.

Oh yeah I think you forgot to change your avatar after Mini's Apartment? Remember you asked me to draw your still life?

[mhsmith0]

OK I just read setup stuff and basically everything I said was correct.

Like, the "townsided" dreams alone...

1-shot watch
1-shot rolecop
1-shot vig and 1-shot bus driver
Neighborhood
Full roleblock
1-shot lightning rod
1-shot governor
1-shot factional size identifier
1-shot dead actions identifier
1-shot Mass motivator
1-shot bodyguard
1-shot BP

in a world where every single slot is just as dream receptive as any other slot

You could literally guarantee nothing at all but protown dreams and this would have been ridiculously scumsided. The mass roleblock (WITHOUT BLOCKING THE FACTIONAL KILL ) as a "protown" dream in particular was pretty hilarious when scum have no night actions beyond their own global roleblock - pretty blatantly proscum dream there. The 1-shot factional size identifier (as if 13v4 was anything other than obvious) was also basically useless, but potentially damaging in the hands of scum if they wanted to fuck with things. Ditto the 1-shot lightning rod (since it can't even pick up the NK)

Some of the other dreams...

The assigned lovers bit was pretty hilarious, just a blatantly proscum dream since it guarantees extra KP for scum and if the dream touches scum, they just don't shoot.

Restless spirit probably a protown thing, strange to see it in neutral. The hider dream neutral at worst, and probably actually protown.


But if you were to ONLY pick from "protown" dreams every night (which is obviously WAY friendlier to town than what actually happened)...

1-shot watch
1-shot rolecop (presumably goons get vanilla too? so basically ONLY at all useful for targeting the single scum PR)
1-shot vig and 1-shot bus driver (the most useful thing by far, but only if town get both roles, as scum can really fuck with things otherwise)
Neighborhood (traditionally the sort of thing that scum take WAY better advantage of than town)
1-shot governor (almost always low utility, and since people know it's out there, it's not like scum will scumclaim in MYLO or something)
1-shot dead actions identifier (nearly useless except in conjunction with hider, and good luck getting THAT combination in order)
1-shot Mass motivator (potentially useful in limited circumstances, probably getting only 1 use at most)
1-shot bodyguard (generally useless as a power role)
1-shot BP
1-shot hider
restless spirit

the whole thing was STILL just blatantly scumsided. The only powers on the whole list actually worth a damn were the 1-shot watch, the 1-shot vig/bus driver, the 1-shot hider, and the restless spirit, and anyone who thinks that THOSE roles can ever come close to carrying a town doens't understand anything about balancing games (from dead thread mod commentary I was expecting town to have just randomly stuff that was you know, ACTUALLY POWERFUL, like 1-shot cop, full nightskip, 1-shot masonizer, a random public peek on whatever slot sakura picked, etc etc etc). And again, that's if you CONCEDE the point that town somehow "should" have known which dreams were good and somehow actually consistently selected the best ones (I can't see the review thread so i can't comment on how "obvious" that shit was, but again, even if town always got the best possible dream setup still was completely broken).

Like I'm sure this is rude and all (and yes, I'm blatantly posting while very upset which yeah I shouldn't but w/e) but I can't even slightly imagine how any of you ever thought this was even remotely ok balance wise. If this wasn't the most blatantly scumsided single ball large theme that's been run in years I'd be stunned. Good job on flavor and all that, but every single person involved with OK'ing this setup owes town a really big apology.

I've reviewed MANY games on both MS (probably around 20-30?) and MU, and have designed a pretty decent number as well. I consider myself far from the #1 expert on balance on site, but I do consider myself highly competent and enough of an expert to have a trusted opinion on game balance. And my near-expert opinion is that this game desperately needed a reviewer who had some basic familiarity with the amount of factional power that is reasonably standard site-wide, and that this was a screwup of pretty epic proportions if any of you think you qualify as that.

Here's what town got PRwise this game:
1) Role semiclears on Sakura and Ceph
2) Some suspicion from the masons onto LLD (and ftr, that was pretty skeezy setup spec there - even a cop could EASILY have fit into this setup with plenty of room for more town power to spare)
(watcher and BP COULD have helped, of course, but in the end didn't, and it's just generlaly likely that stuff like that isn't going to really help)

Here's what scum got PR-wise this game:
1) A global roleblock
2) A free extra kill on the other half of the mason-lovers

Both of the scum points blatnatly supported LLD's fake claim, to the point where basically any reasonable townie would have given her a Texas-sized pass based on setup, REGARDLESS OF THE DREAMS THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED (barring 1-shot hider exactly showing up). LLD living to endgame in particular was 10% her executing the fake claim adequately, 20% town giving her a pass for 1-2 day phases too long, and 70% a completely broken setup.

[mhsmith0]

and that this was a screwup of pretty epic proportions if any of you think you qualify as that

^bad language

If you think you qualify as experts, then this game was a screwup of epic proportions. And if you DON'T think you qualify, please in the future. I mean PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE find someone who is an expert. You tried on flavor, and I DO appreciate that. But you can't run a broken setup. You just can't. Players who actually care deserve a setup that is reasonably balanced, where the outcome is fundamentally governed by skill and not by who lucked into randing the OP faction. People put months into games on this site. They deserve better. They just do.

And yes, I'm just beyond sick and tired of randing the "fuck you" faction. And yes, some of my saltiness is not just this game but game after game after game after game after game after game when things are just totally broken and I'm on the boned over side. Like, it's reached the point where the ONLY defense against just getting boned over completely by setup rand is just avoiding the hell out of a mod that I can't trust to run a setup that's reasonably balanced. And right now... I can't trust any of you guys that way. Sorry but I just can't. This was too big of a fuckup. Trust is earned, and trust is lost... and this game lost you my trust. Again, I'm sorry, and you guys seem like nice enough people. But this was fundamentally unfair, and if my only recourse is to complain about it publicly, then that's what I'm left with. Please don't let this happen agian.

[Brian Skies]

I don't think this game was that scumsided and it's why you shouldn't try to outguess the mod.

[Sakura Hana]

actually the BP was kind of like a doctor no?

But anyway as i was saying to mhsmith before, i dont think that there should've been one role to govern where all the town power goes, as you can see that didnt end up well and town ended up getting vastly less power than they could've had to, and that's even saying something considering there's not much to get the short end of the stick as a bunch of them are pretty short to begin with, dont think that you deserve as much as mhsmith was implying, as i have more trouble in with that dream choices were not obvious at all in what they would do.

Put yourself in my position if im given a "A random player will get a 1-shot ability" who am i supposed to target?

Will they get a 1-shot BP? what about a 1-shot inspect? or maybe a 1-shot doc? or maybe they'll get a 1-shot vig and shoot me coz im a scumread? What kind of power would even scum get if i choose wrong? A double kill? A roleblock? A role cop? A commuter?

Like... that's... a lot of pressure to put on a single slot tbh.

[Brian Skies]

as i have more trouble in with that dream choices were not obvious at all in what they would do

^My only complaint.

[mhsmith0]

If this was a large normal it could have been (pulling roles blatantly out my ass)

Town
2 Masons (not lovers)
Cop
Vig
9 VTs

Scum
Odd night roleblocker
3 goons
daytalk

That's just an ass-pulled vaguely sort of balanced large normal setup and it's not even slightly comparable to this since you're talking meaningful killing and investigative power on town's end, and relatively limited night power from scum (odd night roleblocker vs 1-shot global roleblock... idk which is stronger, probably depends on context).

I dunno. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm blind. But that's what I think. Like, you give town even a single actual PR that can carry like cop or vig (and large normals usually get more than 1), and this is a far different game. A cop clearing nulls, or a vig clearing out the POE (much less shooting the hider claim to verify), makes this game completely different.

[Brian Skies]

I think the difference is that I'm not really thinking about how a Normal Closed Setup should look like, because this isn't one.

The main mechanic is the dreaming mechanic, which is largely protown. Just based on probability, it's very unlikely for scum to get their hands on one since they're vastly outnumbered by town. Add in a role that takes the RNG completely out of the equation, and you end up with a setup that can easily swing heavily in the town's favor depending on how good the person's reads are. In order for scum to tilt the game back in their favor, they would either need to play well or the person who received the role to play poorly (or some combination in between). In exchange, Mafia were only given a single 1-Shot Global Roleblock.

To me, this game feels more mountainous rather than anything, and that's how I was treating it. And town mostly ended up losing because of relatively poor play and getting a bad draw on dreams.

My only complaint is that the game advertised that things would be spelled out as they were happening, and I felt that they were rather vague instead.

The mods didn't include a hider fakeclaim in the setup. Scum added that in and people were fooled by it. That's not the mods' fault. Nor is it their fault that people were assuming roles were non-dream-receptive or that scum couldn't receive dreams, speculation scum were able to take advantage of.

This game was also advertised as 'Non-Beginner-Friendly,' and if you wanted your hand held, you could have signed up elsewhere.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

Yeah the hider fake claim was something I crafted on my own...

[mastina]

For what it's worth, mhsmith rants with a greater strength than I ever would have, but I echo his sentiment in thinking this not even remotely balanced and definitely scumsided. I may not exact with his precise calculations. But this isn't a setup which is even 40/60 town/scum. Realistically, this setup is "luck of the gods gives the town a chance at victory if the stars align and they play perfectly".

I'm also not too sad losing to Regfan. Even if this setup had a significantly stronger town role-wise, I think that Regfan here probably still wins given the overall strength of the town. With greater difficulty, but pulling through all the same. However, I maintain that he should have actually HAD that challenge, as it were. There's no town player combination which will, with the roles we had, have a remotely high chance of success. And if a game favors a faction, my stance is that the scum absolutely don't need the help that they got this game.

[mastina]

To me, this game feels more mountainous rather than anything, and that's how I was treating it.

Yeah the thing about mountainous games is.

...They're scumsided as fuck.

[mhsmith0]

This game was also advertised as 'Non-Beginner-Friendly,' and if you wanted your hand held, you could have signed up elsewhere.

This point in particular I take issue with (to say nothing of the tone of it which is a whole other issue).

The thing is, challenges are fine. If as a game designer you want to make a really complicated with difficult ot deduce mechanics, that by itself is fine. But the thing is, if you do that, you need to create commensurate rewrads for overcoming said challenge.

As a simple example, in Virtuoso's recent u-pick deity flavor large theme, drealmerz and commknight (both town) were randed night 1/4/7 town roleblockers. This is the epitome of a challenge presented to town, because it's just incredibly easy for it to look like a CC where they basically end up with one lynching the other or boht lynching each other. As it happens, commknight claimed and drealz decided to finish powerlynching him. But the thing about that challenge was, had town overcome that challenge, they get a pretty decent reward of two roles that have substantial odds of blocking kills every third night. It wasn't game-winning if they met it, it wasn't game-losing if they didn't (though town did lose), but it in particular was an aspect of game design that reflected the philosophy of presenting difficult challenges that, should they be overcome, result in material rewards.

Here, the challenge presented by the mods was interpreting the dreams. They seemingly expected town to invest substantial time and energy in "solving" the dream "challenges" (I think they wildly overestimated the clarity in which any of this was presented but w/e). That, by itself, is annoying, but acceptable. What is NOT acceptable is the almost utter lack of reward for meeting said challenge.

Taking a step back, dead thread commentary suggested that somehow town had missed out on a bunch of really awesome powers, and that was some mix of bad luck and "oh well town sucked at solving the challenge". At that point, my headspace was "well there were probably really cool powers, but I think the mods probably just engaged in major wishful thinking about how easy/likely it was for town to end up with those powers".

That... is not what actually happened. The theoretically really awesome powers that town missed out on were basically just trash powers (and, frankly, really obviously trash powers too for the most part). Fundamentally, it violates the premise of challenge/risk vs reward. If you present a faction with a major challenge that must be overcome through effort, insight, or just plain luck, then you must present that faction with a reward reasonably commensurate with the effort involved. "This game is really complicated and/or not beginner-friendly" is not (or should not be anyway) remotely the same thing as "this game is really scumsided".

It is fundamentally a design flaw when basically everyone is wondering during late game where the hell all of town's power is. When Ceph is constantly theorizing that it's really 14/3; when I'm talking in dead thread about LLD probably being a traitor who in that case was almost always just saving scum!hebi (which by the way would have been a really ballsy play to claim hider with a green check on your scummate while already down a man); when Math is talking about the flavor posts indicating specific people as scum; etc etc etc. When basically EVERYONE is playing games with "ok where the hell is the town power that would make this game remotely reasonable"... sorry, that's not on the players, and that's not "I guess you just want your hand held".

[Sakura Hana]

"This game is really complicated and/or not beginner-friendly" is not (or should not be anyway) remotely the same thing as "this game is really scumsided".

This is very true actually, coz then the game's not a challenge for whoever rolls scum, only for those who roll town.

[Sakura Hana]

The one thing im mad about is still my role tbh.
It feels like the one thing i believed in that should never be done when making a game, concentrating all or most of the town power on a single role, happened anyway.
The lack of knowledge about dreams and what they could potentially do put a lot of pressure on me, thinking that a single correct or wrong action could heavily swing the game made me play more into scum's hands or subotpimally by targeting the obvious NKs.

[Sakura Hana]

Btw, dont get me wrong.
I like the mods, i like the effort and love they put into this, and i thought the mechanic was an interesting concept.

I just feel bitter coz i think in practice it ended up being way worse than it was in theory, i dont have an issue with the mods, mistakes happen anyway, i just think it needed much more polishing and reviewing.

[mhsmith0]

Another example that comes to mind:

on MU, the Mortal Kombat mash. It was I think like an 80 player game, where town had a LOT of power, including two every night alignment cops, and there were in-day events that could be won by various players with various prizes including vigs and alignment peeks. It got to the point where people were openly mocking inside the game thread how many seers and peeks there were, see this pic posted in thread as an example


Working against that, scum had a couple roles that could be conditionally used as godfathers (one weird JOAT-like where he COULD use his godfather power but other abilities were better; a chameleon that could target someone and role or alignment peek as them [but could be blocked]; and an actual godfather).

Want to guess what happened? The godfather was the last scum alive at like 10/1 with no more events, basically just a vanilla game from then on, and he'd been peeked town. He won (in a game state where everyone kept wondering why the fuck all the townies seemed so villagery to boot).

Town saltiness postgame aside, that was an example of a game mechanic where there was a challenge and a reward. Or in this case, almost the reverse. Town got a LOT of direct solving information (all those free peeks), but at the same time, wolves got the counter of multiple chances to get fake clears off of those roles. And town was presented with the late game challenge of disbelieving or at least seriously questioning their existing seer peek, and ultimately they failed that challenge.

[beeboy]

I think this setup was scum sided by a lot but I think scum deserved to win much more then the scum this game.

[beeboy]

scum deserved to win much more then the town*

[beeboy]

Regfan and LLD both played really well and I don't recall seeing a lot of traction heading in the direction of TWIE either.