Mini Theme 2022: Trapped! [Gameover]

[Enigma]

mutant would you like to receive any feedback on the game?

[mutantdevle]

Yeah but I want to make a post first when I'm not so busy which will be in the next 1-3 days.

[mutantdevle]

So everyone I just want to apologise for letting you all down with the overall quality of this game. I had this expectation of myself when I entered this game into the signup queue that I would have prewritten and developed all of the challenges before the game had begun. I did not meet this expectation. Instead, whilst I had an idea of what I wanted all of the challenges to be, many of the details of some of the challenges were decided literally just before I posted them and I think this is clear in the game. Many of the challenges ended up unbalanced by either being too easy or too hard. Had these challenges been properly balanced, I'm not too sure the outcome would have changed. However, I do think the outcome may have changed had the challenges themselves been more engaging. Eg. more things to read into and solve. A few of the challenges just lacked the content needed to properly read into who may have been mafia and who may not be.

I had a much higher expectation of this game and let both you and myself down. The reason that this game did not live up to what I wanted it to be was a mixture of a lack of foresight and things in my life abruptly taking a turn for the worse. I don't really want to go into too much detail, but these events in my life lead to me lacking motivation and time for hosting a mafia game as well as put me under a lot of stress. Whilst the events themselves are, for the most part, off my chest, I'm still facing repercussion stress due to now being behind on my college work and not getting the grades that I want and used to be capable of. This has all caused me to be fairly inactive on this site in general and I expect things to stay that way for a while. However, I do believe that had I planned out the game more and actually had the opportunity to pre-write the challenges and develop them properly, then this game could have still been much better than it was.

I don't think this game was all bad though - at least not in regards to the development of my modding. I've learnt a lot during this game. First of all, I'm never going to host a game again without properly pre-writing every aspect of the game before joining the moderation queue (where applicable). That way, should anything go bad for me, it shouldn't impact the game in any noticeable way (at least, not gameplay wise). Next, I really don't think that I'm going to include much flavour in my games anymore unless it's relevant. The games I host will always likely have flavour in their roles and their mechanics, but some of the flavour that I forced myself to write in this game just put me off of progressing the game and I just found it tedious. Things like the poems and original flavour post just aren't needed and caused a little confusion initially. I enjoy writing poetry, but I've always found that it's more fun when I just let the words come to me rather than force myself to write something - even if that something is just mafia flavour which doesn't need to be any good. The decision to stop writing the flavour was definitely a weight lift as it gave me more freedom to progress the game. I also wish that I had conversed with BTD6_maker a little more during a lot of development of the game. He was most definitely the MVP of this game and any aspect of the game you had fun with he probably had strong input on. There were some things in the game that he helped to change including swapping out a challenge for a much better one. Co/backup mods are definitely something that I think are incredibly useful because had I talked with BTD6_maker more before posting challenges the game would have been so much more balanced.

I do plan to host this game again at some point (but obviously better). I talked to BTD6_maker about this and I think that when this game does get re-hosted it will finally be on the level that I expected it to be. There are already new challenge ideas that I can't believe I didn't think of before starting this game because they really are just so much more fun and engaging than the challenges seen here and are basically just perfect for this style of game. For that reason, we have agreed that we will not be releasing the mod PT for this game. But, I would like feedback on this game so that I know what I should keep and what should be removed. I don't expect there to be many repeat challenges, but if there are they will certainly be developed to be more balanced and engaging. So if you have any questions or feedback, then feel free to either post them here or PM me.

I hope that you all enjoyed this game despite its obvious flaws and I thank you for the patience you've had with this game as it definitely went on for longer than it needed to.

Dead PT: viewtopic.php?p=10358892#p10358892
Mafia PT: viewtopic.php?p=10326100#p10326100

[GuiltyLion]

aw mutant don't be hard on yourself! I had fun playing this game and while not all the challenges were maximally engaging, I felt the game experience itself was run well and I had no issues or frustrations with how it was modded! I really appreciate the effort you put into hosting the game and the flavor, it was enjoyable and I'm glad I got to play

As far as feedback on the challenges I liked, I think the counting one and the riddle were good and similar challenges could work in the next setup. The minefield one was good but a bit easy, I'm not sure how scum could reasonably sabotage that. Maybe consider something closer to the game Saboteur https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9220/saboteur where players have private tiles they can play and so you can plausibly deny that you have useful moves to be making.

The word dictionary one and the number guessing one I found less compelling because players didn't have any agency whatsoever in those, like Irrelephant called out at one point.

My one other piece of feedback is to think about whether there's a way to shorten the voting/night phases? I know not everyone (including myself) was on the ball with responding to the questions/vote in a timely matter and that mafia needs time after the vote to decide who to kill, but having two 2 b2b night phases without day play always felt like a bit of a wrench in the game's momentum.

Also no hard feelings Mylo, that was a tough decision. Kokichi played well, he's got a strong scumgame by tone/ease of posting. I should have done more to pull it out on 5p, but I didn't work hard enough to resolve my ofrhz paranoia.

[Kokichi Oma]

It was a fun game. Mutant. I would join your next modded game.

[Irrelephant11]

having two 2 b2b night phases without day play always felt like a bit of a wrench in the game's momentum.

this is a really good point!

It sounds like you know a lot of what you could fix with regards to the challenges. If you're interested in having more help coming up with challenges, I'd gladly volunteer!

[Enigma]

I think the same bit of feedback as GL. Some of the challenges could be improved. The night phases were a bit too long and it kinda made me forget what was happening - several times they went over a week. I thought the fortunate mechanic was not as useful/rewarding for town as it could have been .. it is very niche and essentially ended up like a mountainous set-up a bit.

Why wouldn't you delete the words in the posts that were lagging everyone's pages?

Shame this felt like one of the few games I actually caught scum ahaha but still lost.

[mutantdevle]

Why wouldn't you delete the words in the posts that were lagging everyone's pages?

The reason I didn't really want to do that was that I felt there was a small chance that the words that the players posted could have impacted the game. Eg, if someone wanted to make sure they weren't posting the same words or later down the line someone wanted to analyse the words that people posted in an attempt to find mafia. I was doubtful that any of these scenarios would occur but I felt that, as long as there was that slither of a chance, I didn't think it was right to delete them. Furthermore, I thought it would be best to have a record of all the words anyway in regards to post game where you can find the list of words in both the dead and mafia threads so that it can irrefutably be seen that the list wasn't completed.

I think it's fair to say that this challenge won't be in the eventual rerun.

[ofrhz]

thanks for modding mutant! The effort you put into formatting the modposts was impressive, and I really enjoyed the flavor.

[Myloninja13]

Aw... y'all had so much hope for me in the dead thread. Sorry

Onto reading the mafia thread!

[Myloninja13]

Mafia thread was cool to see too. Apparently, everyone had the same idea as me to force a tie in the final 3 though lol.

This was fun though, thanks guys!

[MariaR]