dance games

[chennisden]

let's talk about dance games. I think they're really fun a la their central mechanic, the fact that people really just don't replace in dance games (we had ONE REPLACE in the last dance game which actually could've easily just been 0 if certain

things

happened), and their satisfying speed. I want to discuss ways that the setup could be improved/modified (such as gay pairings), how the game could be made more enjoyable for the scums, and how towns could play better because the discrepancy between theoretical winrates vs actual winrates is kind of astounding.

[pienyan]

and how towns could play better because the discrepancy between theoretical winrates vs actual winrates is kind of astounding.

Don't ever leave the dance and don't vote your pair until MYLO. It's a giant trap, people leaving en masse totally takes away a big part of town's scum hunting ability because you don't form wagons, get reactions from people or know how they commit to reads or why, and then you get barely any info from the flips. And then it also tends to make the mood of the game devolve because you get a bunch of people fighting for themselves and generally leaving to make a point which hurts extra when you consider how fucked things get after town pairs start leaving.

[popsofctown]

On top of that it's like -50% EV

[Ankamius]

I'm not sure there's an easy solution to this, since the mechanic behind it is complex and has a lot of moving parts that introduce swing towards one alignment or the other.

A competent playerlist that doesn't do a leave chain is extremely townsided in this type of setup, so the balancing factor for this type of setup would be to restrict the pools of people that they can pair with in order to reduce the amount of information you get from each pairing. But. By the same token, reducing the pools increases the odds of players making pairings that are suboptimal from their point of view or that they get a partner with somebody they outright do not work well with. Both of these increase the odds of them leaving, which drastically increases the odds of a leave chain forming. This swings the setup towards being scumsided.

And this is where the setup starts to become circular. To make the game less scumsided... you need to increase the agency of each player for which partners they have access to. This reduces the odds of players leaving, which reduces the odds of leave chains, which skews the setup towards being townsided.

It's hard to really define this type of setup as being 'balanced' along this scale since the balancing factor of the townsided swing of day play compared to regular mafia is inconsistently regulated by the mechanical scumsidedness of the leave mechanic.

I felt like Merchant's Daughter had the best 'mixture' for the average playerlist; it had more agency to players than gay dance did since gay dance has the huge disadvantage of pairings drastically restricting the potential pool of partners for everybody else within that pool (as evidenced by the gentlemen pairings being almost entirely set in stone

from the very first gentlemen pairing

.) It has less agency than the regular dance setup since you have one more factor to consider in your pairings than just... pick someone from the opposite pool. You want the more town players towards the top of the coin chain in MD-style dance setups, which is more difficult than usual to also allow strong potential TvT pairings. The one real issue I have with this setup is that it introduces a drastic level of swing if the highest coin total players are whimsical or don't really play strategically, since it's far more likely for scum or relatively weak town players to get that extra power where it's more difficult to strategize around.

Ultimately I think some mechanic like that being added in order to maintain player agency in choosing their partners while also avoiding just willy nilly pairing up all the most town players with each other and just lolflipping every other pairing is probably the best balancing factor for this type of setup. It increases engagement since there's more strategy involved, which decreases the odds of leaving, and it also maintains the ability for players to get other players that they are willing to work with or have traits conducive to the player's own specific goals.

[Ankamius]

I will actually go out on a limb and say that the gay dance version of this setup will end in leave chains almost every single game solely because of how restrictive the partner pools are with no real boon to town to make up for it.

[OkaPoka]

SECRET ALT DANCE GAME WHEN TO TEST THEORIES

[Ankamius]

Alternatively, give town a reason to find scum rather than town.

Every single dance setup I'm aware of so far has no real reason to hunt for scum rather than just looking to lynch the pairings with the least raw town equity. Best case, it's a pairing with scum in it. Worst case, it's still very informative to know that the two slots with the least combined town equity were both town.

Information is more important early on in these setups since you don't really need to find scum as much as you just need to find enough town to be safe just scorched earthing everyone else.

[chennisden]

and how towns could play better because the discrepancy between theoretical winrates vs actual winrates is kind of astounding.

Don't ever leave the dance and don't vote your pair until MYLO. It's a giant trap, people leaving en masse totally takes away a big part of town's scum hunting ability because you don't form wagons, get reactions from people or know how they commit to reads or why, and then you get barely any info from the flips. And then it also tends to make the mood of the game devolve because you get a bunch of people fighting for themselves and generally leaving to make a point which hurts extra when you consider how fucked things get after town pairs start leaving.

This is kind of obvious but how do we make the sort of cultural shift to do this

I think it's important to note this is how scums get the majority if not all of their mislynches in dance games too (hence why they're brokenly townsided: scum can't actually afford to MISLYNCH pairs.)

[chennisden]

Alternatively, give town a reason to find scum rather than town.

Every single dance setup I'm aware of so far has no real reason to hunt for scum rather than just looking to lynch the pairings with the least raw town equity. Best case, it's a pairing with scum in it. Worst case, it's still very informative to know that the two slots with the least combined town equity were both town.

Information is more important early on in these setups since you don't really need to find scum as much as you just need to find enough town to be safe just scorched earthing everyone else.

this works in 90% of scumteams across average playerlists but town is screwed the 10% of the time that there's a good powerwolf.

and the powerwolves will kinda conveniently not get doubted till it's too late while town can't play with such an agenda in mind

[chennisden]

also town thinks the ~10% chance of there being a powerwolf way too often and end up leaving and taking out a really good townpair.

[pienyan]

This is kind of obvious but how do we make the sort of cultural shift to do this

Even though it is sort of obvious, I think it's quite sufficient to make the game simple. I wouldn't know for sure though since I've never got a dance game where people actually take that approach.

I do agree the hard part is actually making sure it gets done.

[Blake Belladonna]

Alternatively, give town a reason to find scum rather than town.

Every single dance setup I'm aware of so far has no real reason to hunt for scum rather than just looking to lynch the pairings with the least raw town equity. Best case, it's a pairing with scum in it. Worst case, it's still very informative to know that the two slots with the least combined town equity were both town.

Information is more important early on in these setups since you don't really need to find scum as much as you just need to find enough town to be safe just scorched earthing everyone else.

this works in 90% of scumteams across average playerlists but town is screwed the 10% of the time that there's a good powerwolf.

and the powerwolves will kinda conveniently not get doubted till it's too late while town can't play with such an agenda in mind

That's another reason why you need to eliminate the pairings that have the least combined town equity. It's a lot easier to parse whether a powerwolf exists and to hunt it out when most of the 'easier' slots are already sorted.

[FakeGod]

Some stats for you all...

Starry Night - IC (Kagami) paired with town. Shot during intermission -

2

pairs left the dance - Town win.
Witches' Halloween Ball - IC (RadiantCowbells) paired with town. Shot during intermission -

3

players did not pair,

4

pairs left the dance - Town win.
Valentine's Dance - IC (Antihero) paired with scum -

4

pairs left the dance - Town win.
Midsummer Night's Revelry - IC (hebichan) paired with town. Survives to endgame. -

3

players did not pair,

5

pairs left the dance - Town win.
New Year's Eve Masquerade Ball - IC (Nahdia) paired with town. Shot during intermission -

4

pairs left the dance - Scum win.
Summer Waltz - IC (farside22) paired with town. Shot during intermission -

6

pairs left the dance - Scum win.
Spring Waltz - IC (pirate mollie) paired with scum -

4

pairs left the dance - Scum win.

[Blake Belladonna]

This is kind of obvious but how do we make the sort of cultural shift to do this

Even though it is sort of obvious, I think it's quite sufficient to make the game simple. I wouldn't know for sure though since I've never got a dance game where people actually take that approach.

I do agree the hard part is actually making sure it gets done.

Starry night had exactly two leaves.

The first one was when there were four pairings left. Ultimately, it didn't impact the game since they were always going to be the next lynch, and them leaving over being lynched allows for more time to sort through the last three pairings.
The second one was when there were three, and when the game was essentially solved since one pairing had essentially confirmed themselves to be a TvT pairing with only one remaining scum alive. The game ended after this leave.

All other pairings were either intermission killed or lynched.

Pre-dance engagement was very likely a major factor in why this happened.

[pienyan]

FG where was the math for the dance setup? Or am I mistaken that you had posted it somewhere.

[RadiantCowbells]

the real win condition is to make towny people pair with other towny people

[Blake Belladonna]

the real win condition is to make towny people pair with other towny people

[popsofctown]

I think the amount of leaves matters more than than who the IC pairs with, and the tiny sample size shows a slight skew of if you leave, scum will win, with Midsummer Night being anamolous.

[chennisden]

if i did go through and tried to powerpair with pie or something, the game might've gone very differently.

[FakeGod]

FG where was the math for the dance setup? Or am I mistaken that you had posted it somewhere.

I don't remember.

I edited in the identities of the IC players.

[pienyan]

if i did go through and tried to powerpair with pie or something, the game might've gone very differently.

Tbh probably not. I read you too wrong -_-

[Ankamius]

if i did go through and tried to powerpair with pie or something, the game might've gone very differently.

(queue starry night where the entire dead thread thought mariar did the exact same thing to me even though we hashed that entire angle out in our PT before endgame)

[pienyan]

I have an extreme tendency to get snowed in these damn dance games. First it was IAI, then SAD then you.

P-edit: @chen

[chennisden]

if i did go through and tried to powerpair with pie or something, the game might've gone very differently.

Tbh probably not. I read you too wrong -_-

just by virtue of sakura scumreading me and thinking you were partner, she probably could've driven the lynch on me in that case

[RadiantCowbells]

if you play the dance setup optimally and town's top townreads are even slightly more likely to be town than average then the setup is absurdly hard for scum.