Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[popsofctown]

How is it "an absolutely huge swing" for a one shot masonizer to be forced to claim? They're getting downgraded from a role worth 2 ICs down to 1 IC. The second IC effect was targetable and more powerful than an average clear, sure, but the first IC effect clearly was too: it was someone who would have been mislynched, but for the role. So, you're shifting from a role that, in a vacuum, is an average clear + an above average clear to instead be just an above average clear. So the swing is 1 average clear. That's gotta be about as small as swings get.

[popsofctown]

Well callforjudgement is making a quality-of-life argument, not a power argument. If they added a new gun to Grand Theft Call of the Overwatch: Reach that did 95% as much damage as the best gun in the game, but every time you reloaded the gun you had to type the Contra Code into your controller, someone could object to that gun because they don't mind losing to strong guns but they mind feeling obligated to punch in the Contra Code.

There's a colorable argument that vengeful still results in some lesser amount of leashing, I've never seen the role in action but the town could try to get consensus on slots that should be forced to claim until they locate a VT claim, and then lynch the vengeful townie and direct him/her to shoot the VT claim to avoid the risk of dropping some town power with the vengeful kill. The inconvenience is lesser or at least different, though, because it will never require players who are possibly in different time zones unvoting and revoting in a specific order so that a specific player gets a hammer.

Skimming open setup reviews and finished games I casually browse, I think vengeful is getting used very, very rarely these days and I think it would be a good candidate for being considered Not Normal.
pedit: Plum is a ninja

[popsofctown]

I think I really like the 'Announcing' and 'Loud' modifiers.

Is there any way to create the opposites of those modifiers, where the target is informed that and action or target targeted them?

'Announcing' and 'Loud' are on player A, and player A targets player B. I'd like to see another version that is on player B instead. Like 'Listening' and/or 'Careful.'

Reflexive Watcher is functionally identical to what you're suggesting as a counterpart to Loud. I rolled Reflexive Watcher in a recent large theme. It is not considered normal.
I've never heard of it being used, but stitching terms together, the counterpart to "Announcing" would Reflexive Voyeur.

Reading the wiki page for "Reflexive" just now, it sounds a lot more like the role I was given should have been called "Reflexive tracker", since I "tracked" people who targeted me, if I watched them I wouldn't necessarily have any actions to learn about. So similarly maybe the other one should be called Reflexive Follower.

Reflexive Watcher is the most common variant of this concept, I know I've heard of the role being used before the game I had it, with the questionable naming convention included.

I suspect the main thing keeping Reflexive Watcher off of normal queue greylist or whitelist is the complexity and rule-bending element of it, especially the way it's usually described, as though you are performing a night action somehow. Yet if you're targeted with a roleblock as Reflexive Watcher or Reflexive Tracker, you get a result. This complexity could be undesirable in the normal queue, if the town roleblocker roleblocks the town reflexive watcher, and the town reflexive watcher half fakeclaims, "I tracked <town roleblocker> last night, he did something, but his target didn't die. I think he's probably town." (possibly desirable over an overtly true claim to bait the mafia roleblock later) The town roleblocker might say, "he can't have gotten that result, lynch all liars", and it's the kind of interaction that mostly doesn't happen with the existing whitelisted roles I think.

I like your concept of describing it as a passive that modifies that actives that target that player, I think it's a lot cleaner than the standard way of describing it. Even with improved templating I'm not sure if it will ever be okay for normal queue, it might be better for normal queue to not have such a wide possibility space.

[popsofctown]

Also, could a modifier be made in which a Scum faction can't kill Town?

Like a Serial Killer that's given a modifier so it can't kill Town.

I think the variety of new PRs and modifiers is wonderful, and I'd like to see if any more could be created.

The Loyal and Disloyal modifiers overlap this design space a lot; they are normal and are very popular to use lately. They don't achieve the effect of creating an SK that can only kill mafia. That might be narrow enough not to warrant its own additional modifier.

It's already hard to win as SK so I'm skeptical it can be a good balance decision to give an SK a modifier that removes its ability to shoot a townie that badly wants to lynch the SK. You could probably design a reasonable multiball setup where scum can only crosskill, though. That'd be outside the purview of Normal Queue since currently Normal Queue is no multiball evar.

[popsofctown]

I think maybe a new Normal role should be tried.

Let's say the play could tap into a player who's part of a neighborhood, and could listen in on their discussions. Not sure if the other players being eavesdropped on would be able to tell. 'Wiretapper' would be neat, and would not be able to see Scum PTs with that ability.

I think this is literally not possible with our current forum software . Well, the version where the eavesdropped victims are notified works.

[popsofctown]

CFJ gave his opinion a while back and basically said they'd go unused and cited Follower's low usage as an example,

Vengeful is a fairly rare role to see but that isn't necessarily reason to remove it.

I call for a cagematch between callforjudgement and implosion starting immediately.

[popsofctown]

I'm not sure what is meant by layers.

[popsofctown]

Traitor shouldn't really be in normal queue.
Monkeying around with whether the game is an informed minority against an uninformed majority should be strictly not normal.

It's roughly about as offcolor as multiball, which is banned. They both make it possible for scum to push scum because they don't know the person they're pushing isn't scum. That's also true about SKs but SKs aren't groupscum and act differently whereas both a traitor teammate and an opposing multiball player

are

groupscum.

[popsofctown]

Oh yuck thanks for the correction. I'll probably stay out of large normals then

[popsofctown]

The general rule of thumb is that if it exists as an active ability it should be present only in active form unless the passive form is a personal immunity. This preserves an environment of direct player agency which is prioritised in the current approach to Normal games.

What about the Compulsively Reflexively Self Targeting Framers in Normal Queue? Based on this rule, Framer ought to be normal and Miller ought to be nonnormal. Cops worrying about the risk that the person they're thinking of checking would be targeted by the framer is a risk based on player agency. Cops worrying that the person they're targeting was randomly given the Miller role by the mod isn't based on agency. And I wouldn't really consider inverting the result "immunity", the outcome in practice definitely isn't the same as if the cop never did the check at all.

I actually think it's a good rule of thumb and want to take the edgy position that Miller is a bad role. In cop check scenario doesn't happen due to Day 1 Miller claims, but the game play of Day 1 Miller claims themselves are pretty yucky to me. It can't be meaningfully different from day 1 IC unless scum day 1 Miller fakeclaims are an option, and regardless of whether you want to argue it's a good or bad play in your next normal the amount of success to that is -random-. You see your role and the other scum roles and you do it or don't do it and then if the setup isn't amenable to a Miller fakeclaim you're in trouble.

[popsofctown]

I agree with Plum's post.

Compulsive Visitor is considered normal, Wake88, that might be close enough to what you're looking for. I think that role casts doubt on watcher/tracker results in a healthy way.

[popsofctown]

Can suicide bomber be normal?

I was actually thinking like a minute ago "would like, night desperado be ok to be normal" but suicide bomber is even lower swing, so maybe it should be? I think I like.
This is a vig that dies after shooting right.



I strongly agree that multitasking shouldn't be a modifier that attaches to specific player slots. I'm kind of iffy about it attaching to "the mafia faction in general" too, actually, but I think that's just an aesthetic objection and I'd be ok with "factional actions can always be performed by a player even if the player perform another action the same night" which restores some symmetry but is way different conceptually from how things usually work.

Really if you use the current rules of the normal queue to add a mafia multitasking fruit vendor to the setup I'm not sure how you have a design intent that is "fun social deduction" rather than "get in the mod's head".


Watcher that can't see NK sounds like a super cool role. MariaR put that in her last minitheme.

[popsofctown]

Whitelisted personal seems good.

There was a bizarre frustrating conversation in the open forums about whether "backup" is a modifier or a role itself the verdict being that universal backup is a role but backup applied to a specific role is a modifier (?).
Standardization on what backup means would be great. It's like so unclear conceptually whether backup is supposed to be like the Russian Army in World War 1 where if the guy you're partnered with is the one with a gun because the army is too poor, you pick up his gun if he dies, or if it's supposed to be like, you're a 68 year old detective in a small town and it's ok for you to take some naps but if something happens to the spry new 33 year old detective you are not too infirm to go deliver some justice.

[popsofctown]

I think the criticism in 373 is so unrelated to the topic of the thread that it is offcolor. I think it should be chided for being inappropriate rather than layered under a stack of memes.

[popsofctown]

If the distinction directly resolves the X-shot question and other modifiers, Russian rifle guy does not get extra bullets and old detective has no reason to be Indecisive like the young whippersnapper was.

[popsofctown]

I think a Disloyal N1 Town Vanilliser is an ok role for a normal

[popsofctown]

vanillaizer is a very strong scum role and a pretty weak town role

It's almost as strong as giving scum a vigilante, but town might see it as negative utility.

I disagree about the degree of strength, but I think an ungated vanillizer would be exceedingly rare anyway. Just because something is difficult to balance doesn’t make it not normal - that’s what reviews are for.

That's true, but simply putting unbalanced roles on the whitelist encourages people to (mis)use the role when designing setups.

Maybe the Normal Queue should go back to having a greylist, but with the possible greylist roles explicitly specified.

As long as all normal are going through the Normal Review group this doesn't make sense to me at all. You can water down the approved roles to nothing but stronger than doctor and someone can still submit "7 doctors, two mafia goons" to the NRG. What actually ensures players get a balanced setup is the NRG's review, not the list of approved roles.

If you think people are going to submit "1 Mafia Vanillizer 1 Goon 1 Tracker 1 Fruit Vendor 5 VT" to the NRG over and over again if Vanillizer is available and will always just submit a more reasonable Mafia Rolecop in its place when Vanillizer is blacklist, devoid of any understanding of the balance of the roles, like, I don't think the harm is that great and we can nudge people to mod an open until they're more familiar with balance if needed. I don't think longer/more frequent reviews is this huge cost.. I'm not even sure it's obvious this increase the number of rejected reviews, like I said, people can submit 2 Goon 7 Doctor an indefinite number of times if they don't understand balance.


I think vanillizer should be a town-only role if it is added to normals, but that's not because I think more imbalanced setups will be designed, it's because I'd prefer the lesser increase in the possibility space (I'd rather towns not ever have to evaluate a Mafiosi who claims he was a watcher n1 and right now he's vanillized).

[popsofctown]

Having to worry about uncommon roles that place a lot of undue influence on a Normal just by possibly existing is not Normal.

Agreed, and Ninja should be removed from the whitelist and Miller has less direct need for that but probably should as well.

[popsofctown]

I think it's Reflexive Watcher, though it's not an "opposite" exactly.