People talk about how fun can be more important than actual balance, but what is it about some closed setups that makes for a more fun game than others? Ignoring balance and player list, what is it that gives some closed setups that fun-ness?
Or flip that, what makes a relatively balanced, Normal-ish game unfun? (i.e. don't just list Bastard roles or breaking strategies, I'm wondering about the subjective stuff.)
Last edited by Akarin on Wed Oct 28, 2020 6:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
when the setup gives enough information for the players to combine everything into a reasonable narrative but also leaves room for the players to incorrectly invent the missing pieces
To me it's the unknown. I mean, in closed setup you have no idea what roles are in play, sometimes you don't know how many members informed minority team have, or if there is some 3p. Also, I feel like closed games are more creative setup wise, mods want to do something new, they want to surprise and catch of guard their players with unusual mechanics and role choices
In post 2, Ramcius wrote:Also, I feel like closed games are more creative setup wise, mods want to do something new, they want to surprise and catch of guard their players with unusual mechanics and role choices
this is good when the players are caught off guard and think 'ah that makes sense! didn't think of that!' but not good when players had no way of possibly anticipating or any reason to consider it a possibility - and i guess it doesn't have to be apparent up front but after the fact it should be at least
red herrings are mentioned in the balance thread as solely an unwanted thing but i think red herrings can be very good! or very not good! depending on how they are used - if a player is led to a false conclusion about the setup based on their role, then there should be a different conclusion that they could have reached about the setup which isn't as apparent, not simply as a gotcha! mechanic
In post 2, Ramcius wrote:Also, I feel like closed games are more creative setup wise, mods want to do something new, they want to surprise and catch of guard their players with unusual mechanics and role choices
this is good when the players are caught off guard and think 'ah that makes sense! didn't think of that!' but not good when players had no way of possibly anticipating or any reason to consider it a possibility - and i guess it doesn't have to be apparent up front but after the fact it should be at least
red herrings are mentioned in the balance thread as solely an unwanted thing but i think red herrings can be very good! or very not good! depending on how they are used - if a player is led to a false conclusion about the setup based on their role, then there should be a different conclusion that they could have reached about the setup which isn't as apparent, not simply as a gotcha! mechanic
Design flaws are mods/reviewers responsibility, so if something is out of place, that's not because setup is closed, just bad design
Red herrings are bad. Closed setups are already complex and cause a lot of guessing, adding more to it with useless roles to keep your setup hidden is effectively hurting players. When players are aware of possibility of red herrings, they're less interested in trying to figure setup and that's big part of in game discussion
In post 4, Ramcius wrote:Design flaws are mods/reviewers responsibility, so if something is out of place, that's not because setup is closed, just bad design
This thread is meant to be
about
design flaws though. And design brilliancies.
Not closed setups in general, but what goes into making one closed setup better than another.
Games are worse if they are balanced around one side playing optimally.
Like, 'town has two bulletproof players and scum have two strongman shots" -- even if scum are informed of the two bulletproof players, in a closed game this can be more disruptive than helpful and 'just do nightkills normally until one fails' isn't an interesting gameplay mechanic
I think red herrings are more important for third parties than scum. Third parties need some game elements that they can spend mech narratives out of. Scum have a team to help create narratives so they need red herrings a bit less.
In general I think in forum mafia as a slow paced kind of thing generally you don't want to build around any one role. If a game is lost because 'town had one op role but the guy who got it was dumb'that goes against the whole idea of collaborative action being the most important thing
I also think 'overly complex' setups make it hard for backup mods to takeover and create a lot of pressure for mods. Closed setups should seem 'kinda simple' from the mod's pov because the range of possibilities for players will always be much more complex
People in several different threads recently have mentioned games feeling more fun when they're actually scumsided. Is that more because, as scum, the scumteam feel like they have more options, more possibly approaches to the game? Or that people just get masochistic joy out of being town when it's a very small chance to win?
Or is it just that people don't like hard mechanical guilties/innocents? Because I'm not sure that's inherent to balance, but I could see people thinking about it that way. Like are Masons more fun than cops to people?
Is having a whole bunch of Motion Detectors and Complex Fruit Vendors up to the point of actual balance more fun, or does that cross the line into what people consider too complicated?
Scumsided setups become a lot less fun when you're playing with good players. The good players roll scum and have an incredibly easy win condition, just distract everyone for a few days and don't bus each other.
well i think its easier to identify a blatantly scumsided setups than a blatantly townsided setup which is probably a part of the problem
nrg and reviewers want to strive for a 40-60/60-40 balance or whatever etc. etc. but usually it means they look at it and see if it feels one-sided, if it's not then it's passed. it's a lot easier to glance at a very scum-sided setup and be like yeah that's disgusting no then look at a town-sided setup and be like yeah that's disgusting because the town-sided setups in question usually are a result of pr interplay and require effort in simulating the games and night actions blah blah
another way to put it: scum-sided setups are usually a result of town having no power, that's almost always something you can identify by a cursory glance
town-sided setups can come in two forms, too much power on paper which is identifiable with a glance
and 2) enough power on paper but simulate the game 1000 times and you realize the powers synergize more than they do or the antisynergy was less significant that you expected. this requires you to process the game out to at least day 3 and ask yourself did town create too many clears and guilties?
which is why i think most of us hate townsided setups, because well we've all experienced the grossness of townsided setups probably from both sides. if we experienced gross scumsided setups we'd hate it too but i don't recall the last time i've played a grossly scumsided setup.
Isis and hoopla argue that scumsided setups tend to be more enjoyable on average, because the ways to increase power for the town generally involve limiting the scum’s options significantly. Whereas town still has a lot of agency in scumsided setups.
yeah there is definitely the factor where its nearly impossible to design a setup where town has very little agency/options to win so designing with a scumsided metric in mind just means dayplay is more emphasized which everyone likes