Phase Lengths

[Firebringer]

I am getting opinion some sort of system where game gets progressively faster pace as game goes on.
For instance when 100% of player base is alive 14 days.
When game reaches 75% alive then it's down to 10 days.
At 50% alive its down to 7 days and stays there till end of game?

[Dunnstral]

For me it would be more like 14/12/10
For days 1, 2, 3+

[Firebringer]

I am thinking of getting UTL to put in a progressive faster phase lengths for Hunger Games...

Would like more thoughts on this from players.

[Dunnstral]

My thought is that going to 7 days is too steep

Curious how 10 days would work

[Firebringer]

My thought is that going to 7 days is too steep

Curious how 10 days would work

What if by 25% of players left it is 7 days?

In say a 16 player game, thats only 4 players left or less. And usually the players don't need ALL that time (at least I don't think so).

[Zachrulez]

I know site meta is 2-3 week long day phases and 48 hour nights.

Are there ever shorter phase length games? Are they allowed and just not run due to lack of interest? Or disallowed?

I know there are people who are on here multiple hours a day, every day. I'd love to see the occasional 36/12 or 48/24 games but that might be too large a leap. Maybe 5d/2d or 6d/1d though?

Shorter games aren't common, but people are certainly allowed to run them. I've done so in the past.

[Dunnstral]

Seems reasonable. Personally I'm interested in what people are comfortable with, so any form of that in Hunger games 2 would be useful to see

[Ranmaru]

I have come from a board with 7-10 day deadlines. I really liked them. I think it's a good balance.

[callforjudgement]

I think scaling phase lengths should probably be based mostly on the number of scum rather than the number of players. A 6:1 doesn't normally need much discussion, especially compared to a 5:2, and a 4:3 can last for ages. Day 1 often needs a longer deadline, though, because you have to allocate time to have the RVS as well (plus theory discussions in games that are mechanically unfamiliar to the players, either because the mechanics are experimental or because the players are newbies). By the time a game reaches 2:1 (assuming it's still going at that point), the reasons for a deadline have mostly changed (players no longer have much of a reason to post in thread, but may legitimately take a very long time to make their decision, especially if the game has been going for a long time); in particular, it's hard to work out the optimal deadline for 2:1 because you can't really base it on activity levels like you can with most deadlines.

Interestingly, some mechanics I've seen run have a tendency to be fairly deadline-proof, ending days well before any reasonable deadline. Typically this seems to happen when the setup has reverse (i.e. town) skew. (I need to write a post about skew someday, but the summary is that a skewed setup is one in which gains for one faction as a result of game events tend to be minor but likely, and for the other faction tend to be major but unlikely; most setups naturally have scum skew, because the most probable event is a mislynch which mildly helps scum, but the rarer lynch on scum helps town significantly.)

On the other subject being discussed here, very short phases – 72/24 is possibly the most popular ­– are legal here but often have trouble finding players when run in the regular queues. We had a separate queue for them as an experiment at one point but it didn't catch on.

[mhsmith0]

My now standard day length rule:

The first two day phases will last a maximum of 14 days. Day Three will last a maximum of 12 days, Day Four a maximum of 10 days, and all subsequent Days Phases no more than 8 days.

I've found it works pretty well, and I think I've tended to draw people who like a somewhat faster level of play as a result, and I've consistently had games that run FAST compared to the norm (including a micro, True Love, that lasted less than a week)

[Gamma Emerald]

I played in that Micro, and the reason that game ended so quickly was we broke the frikking game.