Matrix6 BP fix

[RadiantCowbells]

I have not seen a version that I thought was superior to the new matrix that I already proposed.

[Zachrulez]

So scum are in trouble if they

1) Lose a scum member early
2) Get targeted by the town PR
3) Fail to kill the town PR by say n2

... ok? Like, this all seems fine enough to me? In jk/goon/goon, town doesn't get to a dominant position until the first scum lynch AND scum failing to hit the JK, so to avoid that, scum need to not let any of their team get lynched or nail the jailkeeper first thing after said scum lynch.

It's not fine. Being at the mercy of a roleblocking role as scum is literally the worst situation you can be placed in as a player. It's worse than follow the cop.

It's fine if say you're in that situation in a large game because the odds of it happening are much lower. But it's completely possible to commonly be stuck in that kind of situation in a newbie game through no fault of your own. Just because the game size is too small to handle the negative town side swings of a jailkeeper role.

[mhsmith0]

It's not fine. Being at the mercy of a roleblocking role as scum is literally the worst situation you can be placed in as a player. It's worse than follow the cop.

It's fine if say you're in that situation in a large game because the odds of it happening are much lower. But it's completely possible to commonly be stuck in that kind of situation in a newbie game through no fault of your own. Just because the game size is too small to handle the negative town side swings of a jailkeeper role.

I mean, in general if a goon is getting lynched day 1 they'll fake claim tracker to draw out the cop/jk/tracker CC, and if scum #1 can't manage to pull that off, or if scum #2 can't even dodge the n1 jailkeep shot after a scum lynch, then the scum team deserves to lose. Still not really seeing the issue tbh.

[Zachrulez]

I wish you'd stop referring to dodging the Jailkeep like it's a skill. Its completely luck based.

[Ranmaru]

I agree. It's relying on power roles a little too much. I am fine with a balance/compromise though.

[mhsmith0]

It's skill based in the sense that the jailkeeper is likely to jail a scumread on n1 given a goon lynch, which means that the other goon needs to not be scum read by the jailkeeper, i.e. "dodge the jailkeep". I mean the JK COULD just roll a die and randomly jail, but that's fairly unusual I'd think. Which means that it is, in fact, skill based.

[Zachrulez]

Well I mean in the case of dodging a Jail you can be punished for looking too town as well. Say 5 players left and you're the sole remaining scum and the jailer targets you because they think you are town and think you're the most likely kill target. Now you've just lost the game because you looked too town.

[mhsmith0]

I agree. It's relying on power roles a little too much. I am fine with a balance/compromise though.

Did you know that town has under a 50% win rate currently both overall and in 5/6 setups? So if your proposal boils down to "let's nerf town power", I fail to see what's driving it beyond a personal preference for power roles being nerfed. Because it certainly isn't a proposal that would make the games more balanced.

[RadiantCowbells]

I think a lot of people making suggestions don't understand that the setups are currently scumsided and that part of reworking the newbie queue should be to make more townsided setups.

So many of the suggestions have basically boiled down to 'lets nerf towns'

[mhsmith0]

Well I mean in the case of dodging a Jail you can be punished for looking too town as well. Say 5 players left and you're the sole remaining scum and the jailer targets you because they think you are town and think you're the most likely kill target. Now you've just lost the game because you looked too town.

Any jailkeeper who jails to save instead of to block when there are five players left is a jailkeeper who doesn't understand his role very well.

I'd also note that if you're at night 3 with the JK alive then, as scum, you've failed to PR hunt effectively, which is something that's on you and your team (I mean, if we're talking about random odds, random night kills have decent odds of hitting JK n1 or n2, even more so if scum have identified any players who are clearly vanilla townies)

[Zachrulez]

Well I mean in the case of dodging a Jail you can be punished for looking too town as well. Say 5 players left and you're the sole remaining scum and the jailer targets you because they think you are town and think you're the most likely kill target. Now you've just lost the game because you looked too town.

Any jailkeeper who jails to save instead of to block when there are five players left is a jailkeeper who doesn't understand his role very well.

They're f---ing newbie games.

I think a lot of people making suggestions don't understand that the setups are currently scumsided and that part of reworking the newbie queue should be to make more townsided setups.

So many of the suggestions have basically boiled down to 'lets nerf towns'

What are the exact win rates? Getting to 50/50 is probably way too idealistic without making the games complete misery for scum. Keep in mind that F11 with it's scumsided winrate was considered balanced enough to play for years.

[mhsmith0]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=39739
45.8% town win rate overall

and apparently setup 1 (jk/goon/goon) is now back to 50%

[Zachrulez]

I'd be interested to see how these win-rates would do in a non newbie environment.

[mhsmith0]

they'd be higher almost certainly. overall the setup is structured to be friendlier to newbies who don't really know what they're doing, kind of like training wheels.

[Ranmaru]

Did you know that town has under a 50% win rate currently both overall and in 5/6 setups? So if your proposal boils down to "let's nerf town power", I fail to see what's driving it beyond a personal preference for power roles being nerfed. Because it certainly isn't a proposal that would make the games more balanced.

My suggestion I was throwing it out there, I admit that I'm not thinking about it too deeply. There is some personal preference. Yet I am fine with having both sides have 1-shot roles. So I guess the only thing that would be scum sided is the factional kill. At times it makes me wonder, if we focus on improving the win-rate, how does that help the newbies? I personally don't mind if the win rate is under %50 as long as they learn the game and fundamentals and can move on to a normal from there. It just makes me wonder: What is the purpose of newbies?

If people intend to use power roles and such as training wheels maybe there should be a consideration for a next step after the newbie: normals with low number of PR's / 1 shot prs. Something like that. That way they can be weened off bit by bit. Also not sure if my newbies influence my personal choice, since they were F11 at the time. (We lost our games though hahaha)

[Zachrulez]

Personally I'm more interested in teaching good scumhunting vs deception for scum when it comes to newbie games. Find balance more important for normals, themes, ect once newbies have developed the skills to play.

Newbie balance isn't necessarily telling you the right story when newbies by their nature are still learning how to play optimally.

[mhsmith0]

Teaching is (theoretically) why we have IC roles. I'd certainly agree there needs to be a better job done on that front, which is a separate topic of discussion entirely.

As far as win rates go, people tend to be pretty unhappy if they get stuck in a situation with a very low win rate and a "anyone can win" setup is inherently more interesting and fun (so you don't need exactly 50%, but it really ought to be pretty reasonably close, especially when you have enough of a large sample size to say that the win rates are legitimately representative). Part of the issue with BP setups is that both of them have town win rates close to 40%, which is about as low as I think is at all reasonable for this kind of setup. The more compelling reason why we're discussing changes to the structure is that a d1 BP claim strategy has messed with the learning experience to the point where a change is needed to eliminate that particular issue.

What we're not really doing, and I don't think that the people in charge (I'm not one of them fwiw) really want, is a major, radical departure from something that, as a whole, works. So, for instance, "I don't like JK setups because they can fuck over the scum team potentially" when the actual win rate is 50%, isn't really I think a valid objection. I'd even go further and say that JK as a role is more interesting and compelling than cop, and that it more directly rewards effective play and punishes ineffective play, both from the jk and from the scum team. Whereas cop is just "push a button, get a result unless you or your target dies", much less useful for learning IMO.

[RadiantCowbells]

What are the exact win rates? Getting to 50/50 is probably way too idealistic without making the games complete misery for scum. Keep in mind that F11 with it's scumsided winrate was considered balanced enough to play for years.

No man please stop. Playing 50/50 setups as scum does not feel at all miserable. There's this strawman here where getting a 50% winrate requires making setups have too much town power.
Cop/Doc/Roleblocker is about 50/50. Tracker/Doctor is about 50/50. Tracker/Doctor only started feeling bad in recent days because the Tracker claiming day 1 makes it a lot harder.
Neither of them have disproportionate amounts of town power.

You know what does feel miserable? Knowing that when you join a game as town and get nightkilled that statistically your team is going to lose most of the time.

[Toto]

List3 has average 49.6% town win rate based on historical stats.

[RadiantCowbells]

List3 is not imbalanced but I don't like the setup because they're all very swingy and there's no tracker setups

[Toto]

BTW does anyone else think we should have a simpler newbie set up (i.e. list3), and a separate SE+ set-up where we can experiment a bit more.

For example, RC's matrix looks good on paper but some of the setups need to be tested and stats need to be gathered to check WR balance.

[BTD6_maker]

List3 is not imbalanced but I don't like the setup because they're all very swingy and there's no tracker setups

Setups should ideally be at least somewhat swingy. If a Townie is lynched Day 1, the game should become harder for Town. If a Mafia is lynched Day 1, it should become harder for scum. Too much swinginess (e.g. Vig) can be bad.

Cops are not that swingy. A Cop might get a Guilty, which is good, or it might not get a Guilty and instead only get Innocents, which is still good.

Trackers are not essential. They are relatively new to Newbies (Matrix6 was the only setup to contain them). If you want Trackers, try List4 instead of List3 (Cop, Doc+Tracker, Cop+Doc+RB, Cop+Tracker+RB) which does not contain Jailkeepers. I may run that one later.

[Gamma Emerald]

BTW does anyone else think we should have a simpler newbie set up (i.e. list3), and a separate SE+ set-up where we can experiment a bit more.

For example, RC's matrix looks good on paper but some of the setups need to be tested and stats need to be gathered to check WR balance.

This actually sounds decent minus the List3 thing. We need to speed up testing and a special queue for that purpose would be good.

[Zachrulez]

What are the exact win rates? Getting to 50/50 is probably way too idealistic without making the games complete misery for scum. Keep in mind that F11 with it's scumsided winrate was considered balanced enough to play for years.

No man please stop. Playing 50/50 setups as scum does not feel at all miserable. There's this strawman here where getting a 50% winrate requires making setups have too much town power.
Cop/Doc/Roleblocker is about 50/50. Tracker/Doctor is about 50/50. Tracker/Doctor only started feeling bad in recent days because the Tracker claiming day 1 makes it a lot harder.
Neither of them have disproportionate amounts of town power.

There's a difference between getting empirical data that reaches 50/50 and a setup that is actually mathmatically 50/50 balanced. That's why you're never getting there, and with newbie games specifically the game is probably going to actually be a little bit more townsided to actually get there.

You know what does feel miserable? Knowing that when you join a game as town and get nightkilled that statistically your team is going to lose most of the time.

I take that as a compliment if it ever happens to me. Also it takes the town as a team to win, you're never going to be more than just one player.

[mhsmith0]

a setup that is actually mathmatically 50/50 balanced