Can five-player games provide a good player experience?

[IceGuy]

As you might know, I enjoy designing five-player games because I think we need a more varied selection than vengeful for small games. I've also run and played in a few of them.

However, now I'm not sure whether five-player games actually provide a good player experience.

They all seem to end in one of two things:
1. General apathy. After a flurry of activity in early game, people somehow stop caring about the game and there is little activity. Wagons assemble only slowly and pretty randomly since there are few posts to work on.
2. Quickhammers. Days end quickly because LyLo votes or hammers are brought early in the day.

Here are some examples:
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=63678
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=62946
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=63339
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=63092
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=62918

I'm fearing that this isn't a matter of setup design or the player list. It looks like five players are simply too few to sustain scumhunting or activity in general.

[Ythan]

Never seen a good one. Tried lots of ways to play 5p face to face and never came up with anything good.

[BBmolla]

5p works best when it's only 5 minutes long in my experience.

Because they work when you play them back to back in succession.

[Ythan]

And when you don't have time to get too invested in a bad game. Serious comment.

[ZZZX]

5p works best when it's only 5 minutes long in my experience.

Because they work when you play them back to back in succession.

[Rob14]

The problem is that there's always a certain percentage of players that aren't active until others are active. You need enough spam-posting/active players to keep a game going. In a 5p game, it's unlikely you'll reach that threshold.

[Ythan]

Well no the problem is that 5p setups are inherently bad regardless of activity. Mostly because you have to choose between one scum, which is arguably not mafia, and two which is unbalanced obviously.

[BBmolla]

Well no the problem is that 5p setups are inherently bad regardless of activity. Mostly because you have to choose between one scum, which is arguably not mafia, and two which is unbalanced obviously.

I disagree wholeheartedly. There are multiple setups that allow for a mislynch with five players, which imo is all you need to have a real mafia game.

[BBmolla]

The issue isn't the five players, the issue is the forum. 5p doesn't translate well to forum.

Just like how 20p doesn't translate well face to face.

[Rob14]

Vengeful has two mafia and isn't unbalanced, so...

[Firebringer]

The problem with 5 player game is that if 1-2 players are inactive. The game is just dead in the water.
You need a player base that are going to be active posting, that are going to try to figure stuff out.

Take that game we just had, you were relatively inactive. The scum team was completely inactive.
It was just two players talking to each other trying to scumhunt with very little to actually work with because the scum didn't want to interact.

[Ythan]

Well no the problem is that 5p setups are inherently bad regardless of activity. Mostly because you have to choose between one scum, which is arguably not mafia, and two which is unbalanced obviously.

I disagree wholeheartedly. There are multiple setups that allow for a mislynch with five players, which imo is all you need to have a real mafia game.

I mean if you've ever played one that worked and you can share what it was

[BBmolla]

Well no the problem is that 5p setups are inherently bad regardless of activity. Mostly because you have to choose between one scum, which is arguably not mafia, and two which is unbalanced obviously.

I disagree wholeheartedly. There are multiple setups that allow for a mislynch with five players, which imo is all you need to have a real mafia game.

I mean if you've ever played one that worked and you can share what it was

WNAF and Vengeful are both really fun face to face, both of which I wouldn't say are super unbalanced?

[Majiffy]

The issue isn't the five players, the issue is the forum. 5p doesn't translate well to forum.

Just like how 20p doesn't translate well face to face.

Well large games suck any way you slice it so

[Majiffy]

Anyway try Resistance if you're looking for something interesting and new for a 5P.

[BBmolla]

5p Resistance is pretty shit though.

Also Resistance has this shitty thing where Town can get super fucking lucky if they succeed the first two missions without having scum on it and there isn't much scum could do.

I wish there was a good method in allowing the Mafia to choose who could be the first leader. Maybe allow for leader to be elected by votes day 1.

[Ythan]

Oh man vengefuls. We eventually stopped playing those for some reason. Not as fun to play a hundred of those as you'd think.

[Rob14]

A 9-15p game is ideal. Big enough to have variety and balance, small enough to where you can actually keep track of all reads.

[quadz08]

Oh man vengefuls. We eventually stopped playing those for some reason. Not as fun to play a hundred of those as you'd think.

we stopped playing vengefuls because we've mostly stopped playing mafia IRL at this point, not an issue with vengefuls and more an issue with an exceptionally stale meta arising from having the same dozen people play in dozens / hundreds of games together

[BBmolla]

I think the bigger issue at hand is we need a new Mafia-like game to be invented.

[Ythan]

Conspiracy is at least as good and scales well.

[Ythan]

Face to face, anyway. Doesn't seem like it'd be fun online.

[quadz08]

conspiracy is obnoxious as hell

[BBmolla]

conspiracy gets old fast imo

[BBmolla]

Also super fucking easy if the conspiracy is against you cause you just need to see how the weakest player is acting