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.

[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.

[chennisden]

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

[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

[chennisden]

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.

u dont even have to play close to optimal tbh

the setup is hard for scum

[chennisden]

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.

I know for sure you posted it and I think it was merchant's dance.

[chennisden]

viewtopic.php?p=8152734#p8152734

[chennisden]

Disregard EV

imo this

[chennisden]

the setup is

1) batshit townsided if town dont throw
2) encouraging town to throw

how do we fix this?

[chennisden]

2) is harder to fix.

as for 2) this might be a starting point:

take out the ic

. i think this gets town out of the "make a towncore when it's way too early" mindset. like it's technically +EV duh but overreliance on the IC gives scum a kill they don't have to explain. so i think in reality removing the IC won't change winrates that much, while it will give the IC and their partner a chance to participate in the game which makes it more fun, and gives scum some freedom (and some skill required) when submitting the nightkill.

as for 1) in addition to taking out the ic, maybe make it 16 players and 4 scum, but scum's wincon is that they have to have a pair of 2 scums alive. maybe genders can be randed and scum can choose how many scum to allocate per gender (as in, 1/3 or 2/2?) this may also take out a part of the paranoia/lolleave factor or disencourage it (fixing 1) a little i guess). because

in theory

endgame should be rly hard as T/S vs T/T means they have to get the T/T to lynch themselves which should be hard. and T/S vs T/T & T/T should be REALLY hard. i guess this punishes bad scumplay more but also rewards good scumplay while also incentivizing good townplay?

[chennisden]

make everyone a secret alt so u dont get to use meta as a way to locktown a few people and suddenly this game is very fair

i would think that it might encourage people to say "you should KNOW who i am and LOCKTOWN ME" and it doesnt matter if there's substance behind the claim - it gets toxic.

regardless YEA we should DO THAT

[chennisden]

ill give u $10 and an ice cream if u make it gay too.

[chennisden]

tbh the only way to do this is to have strict standards on who u let in.

but i think it'd probably be mostly obvious the kind of playerlist that would in. there are different groups of players i guess and there's a very distinct group of people who play this type of weird theme game with way different central mechanics. so it'd end up being obvious who'd sign up for the most part

[chennisden]

Aside from balance, the setup has major issues with how meta plays into it. Apparently from what I skimmed Croag got left out in gay dance, she's a very new player on site. I'm sure that it didn't have totally zero to do with her play, but it's not fair for it to be a factor at all. "8 townies, 2 mafia, each night the player with the lowest score in the SUPP dies" may or may not be balanced but it's not a good thing to do.

totally agreed. it becomes even more disheartening when you have to play around that as scum.

i knew it was going to happen the moment i saw my role PM and it was miserable.

[chennisden]

otoh town have to play in a perpetually low information state which is the argument for why the setup is scumsided.

[chennisden]

Protip: most deepwolves have Pichu in their avatar

[chennisden]

This is interseting.

[chennisden]

I've designed a dance game, here's the rough draft

18 players 4 scum.

no IC.

scum's wincon is that 1) there must be no T/T pairs left and 2) there must be an S/S pair alive.

during pre-game, scum may choose their own genders. the genders of town are randed. (you can let scum choose town's genders too but that seems like too much work for scum? and this might lead town down an unfun path of speculation)

first dance - two lynches

intermission - two NKs

2nd dance - keep lynching until all T/T are dead or all S/S pairs are dead.
---
i think this is a pretty fair setup. if scum choose to go S/S, S/T, S/T, that means there are 6 T/T pairings remaining. you get to kill two of them, so you have to ML 4 pairs before your S/S pair is MLed.

if scum choose S/S, S/S, they must ML 5 pairs. lmk if you think it's scumsided, then the fix would be easy - either downsize to 16p and remove a NK (so they can't kill as much leading town) or remove an NK outright if it's too scumsided.

[chennisden]

eh, that's w/o considering that 1) town lolleaves and 2) scum have lots of control early game.

it should not be townsided

[chennisden]

Ugh. Should I remove one townie (and have a pregame flip)?