Conception | Design Thread

[jjh927]

I'll wait to see what the specifics of some of these are before making any overall statements on balance, but my immediate take based on information available to me right now is that town power basically centres entirely on the tracker/watcher and that's both on the weak side and very swingy for 9-1-3

Not sure how the average town or mafia team is performing on site at the minute but I think this leans heavily scum at the moment.

[jjh927]

Could you elaborate on the IC VIP? That's probably the thing in the setup right now causing me the most concern

[jjh927]

Could you elaborate on the IC VIP? That's probably the thing in the setup right now causing me the most concern

It is VIP hat is confirmed to be Town.
(VIP, according to the wiki, uses its target as a human shield.)

I thought you might have more to it. I think that combination exists just to punish scum for going after the IC which is something they have to do at some point, so I'm not sure how I feel about it. In terms of how it's implemented on the wiki, I would very much hesitate at the idea that they can just target each night until it gets used up. Would be fairer in this case if it was gated so that the IC at least had to try and guess which night they would be going down on. It does give town more power than I saw in my initial evaluation though

[jjh927]

I'll wait to see what the specifics of some of these are before making any overall statements on balance, but my immediate take based on information available to me right now is that town power basically centres entirely on the tracker/watcher and that's both on the weak side and very swingy for 9-1-3

Not sure how the average town or mafia team is performing on site at the minute but I think this leans heavily scum at the moment.

Would it be a good idea to swap

Elucidation

and

Extroversion

?

Elucidation is net nothing and has minimal value to either alignment. The epicurean is basically just a named VT in this setup? Not sure what purpose it's supposed to serve

[jjh927]

Maybe, but worth noting it'd still be very much on the strong side

Are you specifically aiming for this setup to have 2 particularly strong town roles while everything else is neutral or negative?

[jjh927]

I was gonna ask about the 3p later as I figured you were going for a truly neutral 3p so would make sense to get everything else more stable first, but might as well ask now

What exactly does it do?

[jjh927]

What does combining concepts into a single action actually do

[jjh927]

I don't think this works as a concept for a 3p, particularly not with this set of roles
On paper it's too powerful and in practice it's incredibly weak.

I would think that generally speaking, complete setup information is too powerful to give to anyone. That's definitely the biggest thing the role gets. You may not know alignments but it really doesn't take much to learn them when you have that context. While the 3p may not be motivated to use that information in any particular way, it stands to reason that any decision they make regarding it will completely blow the game up.

Conversely, if you consider the utility available to them for achieving their wincon. . . what exactly do they have that would help them achieve their wincon?

[jjh927]

Multiball would be better, yeah

You could design some roles around interacting with the two teams qnd their different kill methodologies easily enough

[jjh927]

Indecision / Determination
Exasperation / Placation
Competition / Cooperation

There's a few opposite pairs

[jjh927]

Sort out the town first, then give scum kit to find rough balance

[jjh927]

That's probably tricky to balance in multiball

[jjh927]

That's still functionally flipless

If you're already doing multiball and throwing in a load of uncommon roles then I'd think things are already complicated enough

[jjh927]

Consider what happens if a coroner dies early if you throw this in

I would think the setup would fall apart. It's also reasonably likely that with 2 nightkills that a coroner would die in the first couple of nights


You've got a basic idea for a multiball setup. Pick out some roles you definitely want in, then build up a core that supports that. If you just keep coming up with things out of left field and expecting it to mesh then it's not gonna end up being good game design

[jjh927]

Could you do me a favour and write what these do

I know most are on the wiki but you're making some very unconventional choices

[jjh927]

Think I might have an idea for factional mechanics but I'll need a bit of time to think it through

[jjh927]

How about giving both factions the same ability
They can target a player and if that player is not aligned with the other scumteam, then at the start of the day they get publicly cleared as not being a member of that scumteam. If they are aligned with the other scumteam, nothing happens. It also fails if it targets someone who has already been cleared of being part of either scumteam. If both teams try to target the same player with the ability in the same night, both actions fail and any subsequent attempts to target the same player will also fail.

So, examples
If Malediction target Townie A and Benediction target Townie B, then at the start of the day phase;
A dark cloud surrounds Townie A. They are confirmed not to be aligned with Benediction
A golden light envelops Townie B. They are confirmed not to be aligned with Malediction

If Malediction target Benediction A and Benediction target Benediction B, then at the start of the day phase;
A golden light envelops Benediction B. They are confirmed not to be aligned with Malediction

If Malediction target Townie A and Benediction also target townie A, then at the start of the day phase;
Nothing of note happens

[jjh927]

Main thing you get from that is that both scumteams get a factional ability that exists to hunt for and generally inconvenience the other scumteam, which lends itself to balancing the teams together with town despite the inherent difficulty of balancing multiball

and the mechanics work thematically in the way you wanted with cancelling each other out etc


I'll do some detailed analysis on role balancing in the next few days. Today isn't the best of times as had some IRL shit happen yesterday evening

[jjh927]

How set are you on having both maledictions / benedictions being exact opposites of each other? I think you could probably get away with 1 pair but two might be pushing it, both in terms of functional ideas and the possibility that people draw conclusions about it

[jjh927]

I'd suggest reworking it a bit to that end

Maybe throw in a pair of opposites in the town as well to make sure that the whole opposite thing is definitely NAI

[jjh927]

My gut reaction is that's not gonna work

Try giving them 2 different things

[jjh927]

Probably on the high power end
These should probably be low power and not highly impactful roles

[jjh927]

Anything that can cause a kill or a false inno is probably too strong unless you wind up giving town an absolute ton and then the game approaches a super swingy and unpredictable state

You want actual net null things here

[jjh927]

Although if you do want to go in that high swing direction I can probably help steer you there too

[jjh927]

Yeah- goon or functionally equivalent to that is what I'm suggesting.

If you give them a role that is unlikely to have an effect on the game in any meaningful sense, that's best- as it gives something to claim

[jjh927]

Technically yes, but in practice that draws attention to both of them. You need to keep in mind with your setup design that some players are going to try and outguess the mod, and this is probably too straightforward as a result

Have you designed many closed setups before? I might be able to track down some guides for you if not. I feel like I'm saying "That won't work" a lot at the moment and as a reviewer I don't like doing that

[jjh927]

I've got a lot of questions about how the various roles which cause actions to fail or not fail would interact, but other than that;

Maybe swap the absorber out for something else?
Not sold on mass fruit vendor (pedit: or moonlight dancer) as the scum role, and definitely not for both. I think both teams should have a different net-neutral role that doesn't point to being scum with basic level setup spec or make a big show of being what it is


Are you still running with the factional poisoner/purifier or doing what I suggested in 43? Because that obviously changes balance somewhat

[jjh927]

I think the setup might also benefit from some other things that could cause actions to fail/succeed, since that seems to be the gimmick you're going for here.

So, stuff like loyal/disloyal

[jjh927]

You don't strictly need a VT since you have a few VT adjacent roles in there

My current thought on the second role for each scumteam is that it would be funny if it was 2 roles that could work together for pro-town benefit

For example, one is a role that checks another player to see if their action succeeded. The other is a loyal fruit vendor


In terms of your modification on 43- giving the "their alignment is uncertain" feedback is literally just a guilty if that's revealed at the start of the day along with something else. I'd steer clear from giving feedback in the situation where it fails for either possible reason

[jjh927]

Oh right yeah, disloyal would be the way it would be a scum role

[jjh927]

I'd say swap out the purifier for a non-consecutive activated bulletproof and this is reasonably balanced for a 13p multiball

[jjh927]

You might want someone else to take a look to sensecheck me here as multiball is a difficult art I haven't got much experience with, but it looks to be in a good place

Passes the fun check with various interesting interactions
Don't think it's breakable by massclaim, or that anything is particularly obvious by claim
Doesn't have too many confirmable town roles- particularly given multiball means more deaths
Game won't just end in like 2 days

I think it all works

[jjh927]

I for one was very much under the impression both factions had nightkills

[jjh927]

The main reason for the disloyal stuff in the 2 scum roles was to give them a serious nudge for fakeclaims, but that could very easily be something given to scum anyway

[jjh927]

Just to confirm, how would the parity cop interact with the godfather?

[jjh927]

I'm a bit worried this has gone back to the "throwing roles into the setup and seeing whether they mesh" approach rather than synergising with what's there

[jjh927]

I think more than anything this change just really fucks the town roles into not acting how anyone would reasonably expect, except one of the scumteams needs both their players alive to do it and the other one just needs a specific one

[jjh927]

I think MegAz was steering you in the direction of either something resource-based, so that scum had to make active decisions around their counterplay, or something more indirect- such as a means to identify the key roles in order to best prioritise who to NK.

Whereas that most recent change basically just passively invalidates most of the town power without any need for thinking about counterplay

[jjh927]

Redirective stuff would increase the general amount of chaos in the setup, but would also allow for some scum counterplay

I'm not sure if there's an established role/modifier that guarantees a player will always target their original target, but a town role that targeted someone to do that would be interesting. Probably instead of the peacekeeper

[jjh927]

I think that if you want to introduce some scum redirective power, then a new role that just has the "make actions unable to be redirected" without the block protection bit would;
A. Tip off town that scum have redirective abilities
B. Give that neat back and forth of counterplay between town and mafia

[jjh927]

I think this now looks fine balance-wise- town winrate should be somewhere beteen 33% and 50%, and it doesn't have any glaring issues outstanding.

[jjh927]

I think this now looks fine balance-wise- town winrate should be somewhere beteen 33% and 50%, and it doesn't have any glaring issues outstanding.

[jjh927]

All looks fine to me