In post 98, RadiantCowbells wrote:Being able to remove the best players in the game from play is really silly if we divorce the concept of it from the fact that it's how things have been done forever. It's not like you can just remove the enemy's forward in soccer.
I'm increasingly starting to think that all games should be played under reversed win conditions. Having inherent negative feedback in your core mechanic surely has to work better than having inherent positive feedback.
In post 98, RadiantCowbells wrote:Being able to remove the best players in the game from play is really silly if we divorce the concept of it from the fact that it's how things have been done forever. It's not like you can just remove the enemy's forward in soccer.
I'm increasingly starting to think that all games should be played under reversed win conditions. Having inherent negative feedback in your core mechanic surely has to work better than having inherent positive feedback.
I actually like this line of thought and would like to encourage this.
RC, there's too big gap between players skillwise. I agree that removing strongest town N1 is bad, but taking away ability to remove problematic towns makes games too townsided. Easiest solution obviously is using some sort of protectives to discourage scum from going after best town from get go and forcing them to remove protective first, but there might be other ways to discourage scum too
In post 102, Alisae wrote:I actually like this line of thought and would like to encourage this.
What would this look like?
The basic mechanic is that nightkills are either absent or else mandatory-and-must-be-aimed-at-town, and that during the day you still select a player to leave the thread, but that's a good thing not a bad thing. Scum win by all leaving; town win if the remaining players get to 50% scum.
Some power roles (e.g. Doctor) don't function correctly in this model, but many (e.g. Cop, Bodyguard) do.
In post 102, Alisae wrote:I actually like this line of thought and would like to encourage this.
What would this look like?
The basic mechanic is that nightkills are either absent or else mandatory-and-must-be-aimed-at-town, and that during the day you still select a player to leave the thread, but that's a good thing not a bad thing. Scum win by all leaving; town win if the remaining players get to 50% scum.
Some power roles (e.g. Doctor) don't function correctly in this model, but many (e.g. Cop, Bodyguard) do.
This just gates scum on their weakest member unless I'm missing something?
Like if one scum becomes obvscum, how does scum win this
Then cops and other scum check PRs shouldn't be used either, to make it really scale to strongest scum member and not just yolo check known strong scum players and get them out early on
In post 111, Ankamius wrote:This just gates scum on their weakest member unless I'm missing something?
Like if one scum becomes obvscum, how does scum win this
By getting the member in question townread again rather than bussing them. There's a strong incentive to persuade town to vote for your teammates, which likely makes the game better by making the entire team easier to read.
If it turns out to be a major problem, you could always use an inverse White Flag mechanic to help out (although that obviously has a major effect on the balance).
I feel like a middle ground between no nightkills and exactly as many nightkills as lynches might be where the ideal is. Scum get to use their best player but they have 3 people who might be that great outlier player each 10:3 that queues, while the town has 10.
You don't have to use protective roles to reduce the number of nightkills, you just have to specify that certain numbered nights don't exist.
I think it's definitely not offtopic here. Cfj is right that reluctant players end up in large themes a lot, and that's a force multiplier on a large theme having the most player list sculpting (I guess it might be the same by percentages but subjectively I think NKs in a large sculpt the "most")
Nightless is one of the few large themes town won this year although I was scum in that game and I'm bad
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
In post 98, RadiantCowbells wrote:Being able to remove the best players in the game from play is really silly if we divorce the concept of it from the fact that it's how things have been done forever. It's not like you can just remove the enemy's forward in soccer.
This is one of the reasons I like more nightless games than normal games.
It's also unpleasant as scum being town read to be suspected because you've not been NK'ed yet.
Good town play being rewarded with being eliminated from the game and good scum play being rewarded in later game with suspicious is kind of silly. If I ever mod a game the two rules about it is:
1) No cops or non-conditional alignment confirming roles
2) Scum can't just easily get rid of the best townies with NK
I feel ok about a day mechanic where scum
earns
the right to NK someone, but giving it as a given to them was always a bummer to me although I understand how it makes the setup faster/more playable.
I think the problem with removing the ability to NK completely really is about meta rather than having competent scum hunters in game?
Having players relatively easy to read because they can't play/don't want to play scum enough therefore almost any meaningful content they post makes them obviously town is...a problem. And I think that currently more than ever there are many players that either have problem with scum play or that absolutely hate playing scum and that breaks the game for town.
I don't think an anon nightless game is townsided at all. It's the purest form of mafia I would say because day play is all it's going to matter. But if you bring meta in a nightless game and people are just like "well, player X can't be scum because of Y" when Y really is too much of a low-standard for scum but even so X can't fake it, it's not going to be pleasant to play scum at all, because it's going to be less about you and more about easier sortable players being sorted and you getting PoE'ed .
Then yeah, I think NKs in the current state of meta are a good thing overall, but I think it would be interesting to have setups where scum can earn the right to NK instead of it being a given, or town can earn PRs instead of being given it for free.
Even if Z player that is super hot scumhunter nails you down, you can always try to flip the table on him in a 1v1
but if both A and B player that has a relatively weaker scum game does something outside of their scum range and you're in LyLo, you're just a sitting duck waiting to be killed mostly.
Your play would have literally little agency at that point, because all it would matter is that "A and B can't play scum like that". So...
I think a semi-nightless game with a day decided protective mechanic and that in certain number nights there is no NK is the best balance between not giving scum the easy way by killing good townies and still not making the game unplayable to scum because of easier sortable slots.
Since the protective mechanics or other similar ones would happen in day, it would also make scum or other townies able to influence that instead of a sole person with a PR role pm getting to decide such a thing.
In post 17, Alisae wrote:Even if you think the winrate should be 40% for town, 34% is still below what should be expected.
I think part of the problem in going off raw percentages is that it’s not taking into account play, really. If town play is consistently losing to scumplay, in set ups which have a reasonable EV, I’m not convinced the solution is to rebalance games vs for town to adapt to the situation if they want to start winning again. This may be hard for multiple reasons which have been touched on already in this thread, but I think it’s better than adjusting the base mechanics.
In post 119, Volpe14 wrote:Even if Z player that is super hot scumhunter nails you down, you can always try to flip the table on him in a 1v1
but if both A and B player that has a relatively weaker scum game does something outside of their scum range and you're in LyLo, you're just a sitting duck waiting to be killed mostly.
Your play would have literally little agency at that point, because all it would matter is that "A and B can't play scum like that". So...
Everyone plays past their scum range at some point.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
In post 119, Volpe14 wrote:Even if Z player that is super hot scumhunter nails you down, you can always try to flip the table on him in a 1v1
but if both A and B player that has a relatively weaker scum game does something outside of their scum range and you're in LyLo, you're just a sitting duck waiting to be killed mostly.
Your play would have literally little agency at that point, because all it would matter is that "A and B can't play scum like that". So...
Everyone plays past their scum range at some point.
The key here is how much effort them need to do to make that happen
Even skitter that I consider a great scum player in some points just blow off her scum meta yes, but she needs to put a lot of effort into the game.
It's different than a player that gets past their scum range not even really putting effort in the game, that's what I mean.
In post 123, Volpe14 wrote:It's different than a player that gets past their scum range not even really putting effort in the game, that's what I mean.
i've mislynched creature multiple times and nsg once
i don't think it's as clear cut as you think it is
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
