Cop is a terrible role.

[unwnd]

Cop loses his effectiveness immediately once he's outed, and he takes his results with him too. If you are a scumteam and feel a cop screwed you over, it's because you let him live long enough to do so. That being said, PR hunting is imo a trait that should be learned as with using a PR wisely

Cop teaches both

[Something_Smart]

Id take plain cop over x-shot even night compulsive amnesiac hated double voting [role] any day

If only there were a middle ground here...

[unwnd]

I got it

Make his abilities a switch that scum can turn on and off that activates each modifier of his role

This was supposed to be a joke but now I think that would balance roles like that for real lol

[Infinity 324]

You may be right that there are some good alternatives for cop, but tracker and watcher are not that imo. Tracker changes the swinginess from “does the cop die early” to “do a lot of scum get limmed early” since tracker basically becomes a cop once there’s only 1 scum left. The swinginess of a watcher dying early is huge and it’s generally broken when ungated. When it’s gated it’s a matter of “did you guess the NK target correctly”.

[TheGoldenParadox]

yeah sorry watcher is useless
i meant like
follower

[Infinity 324]

Follower is kinda cool but has the same problems as tracker

[MURDERCAT]

I think the ideas of swinginess and absolute information are being conflated here.
I think watcher and tracker are better because the info isn't absolute.

[Infinity 324]

I think s_s made a good point about the absolute information thing. Yes scum can get out of a track/watch, but it’s quite rare. I was trying to look at cop vs. tracker/watcher in terms of overall game design and I don’t think the latter 2 (esp. watcher) are much better.

[MURDERCAT]

I agree that is a good point, but I think I like the idea of information becoming more absolute as the game goes on. On N1, a tracker guilty allows for a decent amount of counterplay. A N1 tracker guilty also requires more skill from the town. Whereas a cop guilty doesn't require as much skill and is kind of static throughout the game.

[FakeGod]

Scare people with godfathers!

[Menalque]

Because towns suck

then they should lose

[Menalque]

i generally hate vig, with a passion, almost as much as i hate cop, but that's a story for another day.

no, no, vig is great

[TheGoldenParadox]

i generally hate vig, with a passion, almost as much as i hate cop, but that's a story for another day.

no, no, vig is great

you were in that fucking game menalque

[TheGoldenParadox]

[Menalque]

and that's a testament to how great vigs are that I still love it

[TheGoldenParadox]

MENALQUE DID YOU NOT DIE YOURSELF BECAUSE OF SAID VIG

[Menalque]

that may very well be true but god help me, I still love 'em

[northsidegal]

I think the ideas of swinginess and absolute information are being conflated here.
I think watcher and tracker are better because the info isn't absolute.

watching the nightkill is generally pretty absolute. for a watch result on the nightkill target not to be the scum kill requires both another PR targeting the nightkill and scum having a ninja or scum's actual kill getting blocked and you watching a vigilante shot, neither of which are very probable

[northsidegal]

anyways nuclear take, the only role better than cop is public cop

[OkaPoka]

the best role is vanilla town

and all other roles suck

everything should be vanilla nightless with flags

[Gypyx]

anyways nuclear take, the only role better than cop is public cop

the whole playerlist of mafiascum proceeds to commit spontanous combustion

[Jake The Wolfie]

I just typed out a full point-by-point response to the OP and then realized it was stupid.

tl;dr: Cops are not bad because they create innocents and guilties; all investigative roles with any strength at all can do that. Cops are bad because they're swingy. But people use cops because they're easy to understand and easy to balance, and they work in a variety of different contexts. These qualities do have merit, even though not everyone cares about them.

Any role is inherently swingy.

[Jake The Wolfie]

It has the potential to create mechanical guilties, giving a scumplayer absolutely no way out.

There are definite ways to get out of a cop guilty, such as throwing shade and suspicion on the cop, suggesting that the cop was not sane, crumbing to be a miller then revealing it when the time was right, etc.

It can be replaced with a multitude of better roles, such as a pair of Masons, a Neapolitan, a Tracker, or a Watcher.

By what measuring stick are you saying that those roles are "better"?

It's unfun to play with. The mechanical innocents and guilties that cops create limit dayplay, they limit the unique plays that scum can pull off, they limit essentially everything about the game of mafia that we care about on this site, and at worst they can reduce the game to little more than a dice roll.

..Which is why the scum need to take caution whenever they play. This would be true no matter if there was a cop, doctor, roleblocker, or any other power role.

They're swingy and unbalanced. Ungated cops dying early can have huge negative impacts on the game, and ungated cops (protected by a doctor after their first guilty) catching multiple scum can win the game for town when scum otherwise outplayed them in every way.

This is an issue with how the design is set up, not with cops. If a particular role needs to play out in a certain way or else the game becomes unbalanced, then that is a setup design issue, not an issue with the cop itself.

[Something_Smart]

Any role is inherently swingy.

I mean, semantics. All roles add some amount of swing, but what you're doing is like responding to me talking about fast cars by going "any car is inherently fast." Obviously I mean it has a high level of swing relative to other roles.

[Menalque]

ooi, where is the original of this from? it wasn't you, right, TGP?