Open Setup Autopsies (HELP)
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Open Setup Autopsies (HELP)
Every single game I've completed in the Open queue since I got back from hiatus was blatantly biased, broken, swingy, or plain unfun.
So here's a thread to compile complaints about Open setups, because apparently complaining in the game thread on D2 or in the graveyard doesn't actually help anyone.
How you can help:
- Straight up agree/disagree with me (this helps build community consensus)
- Discuss the viability of various breaking strategies
- Discuss potential scenarios in terms of how a game could turn out
- Crunch the numbers for winrates
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY:
- End goal is to figure out how to save these setups, or, if unsalvageable, whether to decommission them altogether.
I'll keep a running list of the setups being discussed in this thread.
Equi told me to post it in the MD for the record since no one checks the OSD subforumLast edited by Mathdino on Fri Apr 06, 2018 5:00 am, edited 3 times in total.- wgeurts
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All of the multiball setups can go fuck themselves multiball is terrible.
How is town supposed to win Watchmen Wanted again? Also why is plurality splashed in here for like no reason at all? Like, I like plurality but it seems to be here for no reason lol.
Semi-Nightless? Go play Mountainous games instead.
Duck Duck Goose? HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT HEALTHY GAMEPLAY INVOLVES? GIVING TOWN 1 FREE SCUM FLIP. G O O D S E T U P D E S I G N. Fucking brilliant.
Faith +1. 3 Clears easily, Cop + Doc isn't really a good pairing, and percentage roles aren't fun like how they are currently designed here.
Town should always stomp Nightless Vanilla?
Polygamist - I think town only has one mislynch otherwise if they mislynch again they lose.
C9++ - I believe there is a better version of this somewhere, but fuck sks and scum don't really have much power here.
Diffusion of Power - More Cops, More Docs, Shit Setups.
Hard Boiled - atleast give scum a roleblocker, daytalk, and maybe a Rolecop? Otherwise its really townsided.
Hope +1 - play a Cop 13er on MU, its better.
Pick your poison - No reason to pick outside of the following: IC, {Tracker/Cop}, {The other out of Tracker/Cop OR Vig}| here.GTKAS- Mathdino
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This setup isinsanely swingy.
Going through the game history on the wiki page, town has never won a game in which 2 townies died on N0. The last iteration of this setup even had a cop get a N0 guilty. Town lynched 3 scum in 3 days, then mislynched a single time (in LyLo) and lost.
A nightstart game where the alignment of the killed completely changes the game isn't acceptable. In the case that cop and SK both kill townies every night (as is optimal play for both of them), town can only survive 1 mislynch. 2 if the vig shoots town. The win should never be completely outside the realm of possibility for a team.
Meanwhile, if SK shoots mafia N0, the win is practically guaranteed for town or SK.
On a second note this setup isunfun.
Nightstart with a cop ruins the game for both the cop and the caught mafia member, making this more about night play than day play. I was the cop.
Nightstart is also bad for the up-to-3 players that can die N0.
Fixing this:
Nightstart with a cop and 3 killers is straight up bad. But daystart messes with the switch mechanics.
Would it be better as just 14p Daystart?- Mathdino
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In post 2, Alisae wrote:All of the multiball setups can go fuck themselves multiball is terrible.
How is town supposed to win Watchmen Wanted again? Also why is plurality splashed in here for like no reason at all? Like, I like plurality but it seems to be here for no reason lol.
Semi-Nightless? Go play Mountainous games instead.
Duck Duck Goose? HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT HEALTHY GAMEPLAY INVOLVES? GIVING TOWN 1 FREE SCUM FLIP. G O O D S E T U P D E S I G N. Fucking brilliant.
Faith +1. 3 Clears easily, Cop + Doc isn't really a good pairing, and percentage roles aren't fun like how they are currently designed here.
Town should always stomp Nightless Vanilla?
Polygamist - I think town only has one mislynch otherwise if they mislynch again they lose.
C9++ - I believe there is a better version of this somewhere, but fuck sks and scum don't really have much power here.
Diffusion of Power - More Cops, More Docs, Shit Setups.
Hard Boiled - atleast give scum a roleblocker, daytalk, and maybe a Rolecop? Otherwise its really townsided.
Hope +1 - play a Cop 13er on MU, its better.
Pick your poison - No reason to pick outside of the following: IC, {Tracker/Cop}, {The other out of Tracker/Cop OR Vig}I'm not going to use this thread as a means of trashing multiball in general.I personally don't play multiball but some people do, and their setups should be balanced with respect to other multiball games.
If you can go more in-depth into Watchmen Wanted, Duck Duck Goose, Faith+1, Hard Boiled, and Pick Your Poison, I'll add them to the autopsy list.
I'm not getting the impression that your critiques of Semi-Nightless, C9++, Diffusion of Power, and Hope+1 are being made in good faith, since it seems like you just dislike the roles or don't personally find the ideas fun. Feel free to prove me wrong. This is more for deconstructing objective problems with setups though.- Mathdino
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Lot to dig into here. To start off, I would argue that there's little value in NOT claiming your lover on Day 1, and it seems like everyone who's played this game has done the same. If anyone has a strategy for this that involves not claiming, do tell.
So if everyone does claim (with scum dividing in 2 and claiming 2 pairs), that makes this essentially a 2:4 Nightless White Flag setup with 6 non-consenting hydrae.This makes the setup extremely unfun. Furthermore, any given townie has only 5 other "slots" to sort.
As played normally,this setup is scumsided. In theory, White Flag means scum can't bus. In practice, scum just runs each other up to L-1 all the time and claims they're totally okay with bussing. Scum's ideal strategy is to distance their pairs as much as possible (or at least treat each other as town). Doing so almost completely removes town's ability to scumhunt. Plus, since the game ends after 2 mislynches,most towns will screw up. This setup is unforgiving.
However, FURTHERMORE,this setup has a breaking strategy. Literally random lynching creates a 60% winrate for town. Why is the actual town winrate 36%? Because in reality, lynches are not random, and scum's high volume of players means they can control the narrative much better. Just one town lover pair not voting for scum is a loss for the other 6 townies.
Now if lynches were random (which people say is against site rules but I can't find this), you'd get 60%, but suppose the town agreed on a single lover pair as a town king (to just decide or dice roll 2 lynches). This leads to a winrate of 70%. Town's optimal strategy is just to find one pair that's being townish and have them roll 2 lynches. Done.
I recently won this setup by reading a low-experience lover pair as newbtown and then sheeping their RVS vote the entire game. Lucked out and we won. When correct play as town is to leave everything in the hands of chance,this is even more unfun for the players involved. You could argue "well don't do that", but then that punishes players playing to win.
Fixing this:
One player from that game said they were trying to rework it, but I don't think this is salvageable. I don't think this setup should run again, and the majority of players from that last game agreed.- Alisae
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Alisae lolbalance
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Um, I don't really need to go more in depth I kinda just explained the problem with them in one sentence? I don't really understand where I need to be more in depth.In post 4, Mathdino wrote:In post 2, Alisae wrote:All of the multiball setups can go fuck themselves multiball is terrible.
How is town supposed to win Watchmen Wanted again? Also why is plurality splashed in here for like no reason at all? Like, I like plurality but it seems to be here for no reason lol.
Semi-Nightless? Go play Mountainous games instead.
Duck Duck Goose? HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT HEALTHY GAMEPLAY INVOLVES? GIVING TOWN 1 FREE SCUM FLIP. G O O D S E T U P D E S I G N. Fucking brilliant.
Faith +1. 3 Clears easily, Cop + Doc isn't really a good pairing, and percentage roles aren't fun like how they are currently designed here.
Town should always stomp Nightless Vanilla?
Polygamist - I think town only has one mislynch otherwise if they mislynch again they lose.
C9++ - I believe there is a better version of this somewhere, but fuck sks and scum don't really have much power here.
Diffusion of Power - More Cops, More Docs, Shit Setups.
Hard Boiled - atleast give scum a roleblocker, daytalk, and maybe a Rolecop? Otherwise its really townsided.
Hope +1 - play a Cop 13er on MU, its better.
Pick your poison - No reason to pick outside of the following: IC, {Tracker/Cop}, {The other out of Tracker/Cop OR Vig}I'm not going to use this thread as a means of trashing multiball in general.I personally don't play multiball but some people do, and their setups should be balanced with respect to other multiball games.
If you can go more in-depth into Watchmen Wanted, Duck Duck Goose, Faith+1, Hard Boiled, and Pick Your Poison, I'll add them to the autopsy list.
I'm not getting the impression that your critiques of Semi-Nightless, C9++, Diffusion of Power, and Hope+1 are being made in good faith, since it seems like you just dislike the roles or don't personally find the ideas fun. Feel free to prove me wrong. This is more for deconstructing objective problems with setups though.
And okay
Here is the problem with multiball games.
A. It throws off scumhunting completely and throws a wrench in how you normally play mafia.
B. Multiball has a larger focus on night play instead of Day play.
I'm just saying Multiball is not fun.
And they are.
Semi-Nightless just go play Mountainous 9:2 instead its a better setup.
C9++ SKs are antifun and in general mafia has little power vs towns billions of power roles they can get.
And Cop + Doc is generally not a good combination.| here.GTKAS- Alisae
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Alisae lolbalance
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I'm going to base this on the argument that C9++ is, in practice, balanced. Its history seems to suggest so. However,town has only won 1/8 JK9++ games before I won the last one. The most recent iteration had an extremely imbalanced playerlist (D1 non-bus scum lynch) and only 2 mafia.
Here's why this is way more scumsided:
- Trackers are objectively worse than cops. Trackers are worse than 1-shot Cops. The likelihood of a tracker guilty is absolutely minimal. Tracker innos mean nothing.
- JKs lead to more night action WIFOM than docs and can't protect investigative roles. C9++ has the option to gamble on follow the cop.
- Vengeful is useless. Fakeclaiming is almost impossible for scum (because it's easy to figure out the setup by massclaim) so Vengeful is just a named townie.
- Hider is an okay role, but D1 confirmed townies are insanely powerful, especially with the possibility of a doc.
- Roleblocker is objectively way more powerful than Town Rolecop.
- Mafia JOAT has a roleblock in it, and is thus stronger.
- 1-shot Bus Driver fucks over the "leash the vig" strategy.
That's about it. I think the setup is fun and all, and it's hard to break except in very particular scenarios, but it's massively scumsided.
Fixing this:
- Any ideas for giving town more power here? Be sure to read the setup first.
- Vengeful needs to be removed, as no one will actually lynch them.
- Rolecop should be changed to Gunsmith.- Mathdino
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Mathdino Survivor
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Alisae this thread is about fixing and improving setups in good faith.
If people want to play multiball, they will. You saying that multiball is unfun doesn't help anyone.
This thread is explicitly not for talking about the merits of multiball/SKs OVERALL.
I recommend making your own thread for that.- Bicephalous Bob
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Oh yeah
This is a setup made by Visorslash on MU
(Atleast I think he made it)
It's called D6.
It's as follows.
13p setup
D6 Mafia is a 13-player Semi-Open Variable setup designed to offer a more balanced experience compared to C9++.
Town Power Roles:
To determine the town power roles, roll a die six times and mark down the numbers. Each roll corresponds to a grouping below.
1-3: Investigative
4-5: Protective
6: Killing
Mark down the number of each grouping and add the corresponding roles from the table below.
Invest
1 IC
2 Role Oracle (Target someone. If you were to die, that person's role is revealed publicly)
3 Role Cop
4 Tracker
5 Parity Cop
6 Cop (With a N0 Random Green Peek)
Protective
1 BG
2 Doc
3 RB
4 JK
5 JK + BG
6 RB + Doc
Killing
1 1-shot vig
2 2-shot vig
3 vig
4 vig
5 vig + 1-shot vig
6 vig + 2-shot vig
Mafia Power:
For the mafia power roles, take the number of town power roles minus one, then roll a die that many times and add the role(s) it lands on. Mafia Goons are added to bring the number of mafia up to three.
1 rb
2 rb
3 jk
4 rolecop
5 tracker
6 watcher| here.GTKAS- Mathdino
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Not bad. Why not write up a wiki page for it?- Alisae
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Alisae lolbalance
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I am posting in good faith I'm sorry you just don't believe me.In post 9, Mathdino wrote:Alisae this thread is about fixing and improving setups in good faith.
If people want to play multiball, they will. You saying that multiball is unfun doesn't help anyone.
This thread is explicitly not for talking about the merits of multiball/SKs OVERALL.
I recommend making your own thread for that.
--
That doesn't stop the fact that essentially scum will be no killing out of fear.
Your setup is townsided if you are making your scum faction no kill out of fear.| here.GTKAS- Mathdino
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Duck Duck Goose statistics suggest more mafia wins. 80%.
I actually think DDG is pretty good and balanced. Town's inability to coordinate or out-guess the scum is its weakness.
The only way all townies arm on the same night is if everyone agrees to do that (or the meta becomes quietly doing that). Then scum spend one no kill and it's 3:8 Mountainous the next day, which is strongly scumsided.
And AGAIN, this is not about multiball as a concept. If you have critiques of specific multiball setups outside of "multiball is bad" then go ahead and post them.- Alisae
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Alisae lolbalance
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Dude
All multiball setups suffer from what is basicly the same problem of being swingy and ruining dayplay aspects.
if there is not a multiball setup that doesn't focus on that, pleases let me know ty <3| here.GTKAS- Mathdino
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I've asked you multiple times to please stop. I don't want this thread derailing into a discussion on multiball. This always happens in discussions about setups on MD.- Alisae
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It won't derail into a discussion about multiball.
However, if you want to dissect what is wrong with some of the setups in the open queue, multiball is going to be a topic that you cannot avoid.
Plus, people like complaining and multiball is a really easy thing to complain about| here.GTKAS- Gamma Emerald
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Whilst I do not have a prejudice against most multiball setups, I'm of the mind that all jungle setups should be nuked. The only fun one is Jungle Anarchy and mafia still sucks as an alignment in that one.<Embrace The Void>
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Anecdotal evidence for what it's worth, but when I first came to this site I remember prs having a bit of an aura of being a necessary evil. Hearing some of mastina's experiences with the nrg sound like they're now being treated more like a commodity. I wonder if that's contributed to setup swing at all.- Flubbernugget
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The biggest problem with opens to me comes down to trying to compromise between two things
1) Game breaking or game optimization tactics. Essentially saying that the correct move for town is to do X, which eliminates at least in part elements of scum hunting because not doing it technically can be argued as anti-town in nature.
2) Swingyness through variable setups. To prevent things from being optimized, setups need to have some level of variability. With variability though comes the risk of certain rolls of setups being blatantly town or scum sided in nature.
If you have a completely variable setup, its not able to be optimized effectively, but it is likely more swingy than normal. If you have a setup with no swing, you can probably optimize in some way shape or form, its just a matter of how much.
Worth noting that two of your examples (Switch and Polygamist) are not approved open setups, and more one off gimmick setups that are at time ran to break up the common cycle of about 10 setups that mods like to run and players sign up for. Those types are not supposed to be completely balanced, and heavy optimization can come into effect if town is willing to roll with it. JK9++ (and C9++) are gain quite a bit of town EV with proper massclaim tactics as well, its just very rarely used because its just not known enough.- Mathdino
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I appreciate your response! I actually agree with you on a lot of those points. I don't think I made the accusation that any setup was swingy on variability in the design; in fact, I really enjoy most of the semi-open setups available!
The problem to me with Switch (and most nightstarts) is that the alignments and identities of those removed from the game early on can essentially predict the winners, while also not allowing a couple people to play at all. I don't think a nightstart version of it is salvageable, but I'm wondering how a daystart version would play out.
When it comes to JK9++, I'm coming it at it from the assumption that C9++ is balanced (I could be wrong because of massclaim tactics), and then arguing that JK9++ is more scumsided at every opportunity. I like the variation in the roles, but, for example, the tracker lineup is significantly worse than C9++'s cop lineup, while the mafia JOAT is better than the mafia roleblocker. For JK9++, I'd like to preserve that initial variability (it is what makes the setup fun) while bringing down to C9++ levels.- LlamaFluff
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C9++ is somewhat optimized based on the massclaim tactic I like that instead of claiming outright you claim one of "VT", "Tier one - role that can exist with only one of your letter" or "Tier two - role that needs at least two of your letter" and then you circle back to PR claim. It makes it nearly impossible for scum to safely fake claim because they have to gamble on what town is and if town locks down what the setup is fast, they win rate jumps very quickly.In post 22, Mathdino wrote:When it comes to JK9++, I'm coming it at it from the assumption that C9++ is balanced (I could be wrong because of massclaim tactics), and then arguing that JK9++ is more scumsided at every opportunity. I like the variation in the roles, but, for example, the tracker lineup is significantly worse than C9++'s cop lineup, while the mafia JOAT is better than the mafia roleblocker. For JK9++, I'd like to preserve that initial variability (it is what makes the setup fun) while bringing down to C9++ levels.Copyright © MafiaScum. All rights reserved.
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