Mini Normal 2181 | College Basketball Players | Game Over

[mastina]

Hi I reviewed this game.

Bork and I were quite salty about the game design, and that was before we knew there was also a doctor on top of the RB, JK, Vanilla Cop and Friendly Neighbor.

For the record:

For the record.

I will be livid if the setup is 3 contradictory PRs, a red herring investigative, and all goons.

An important part of setup design is making it a puzzle for town to solve and to reward them for correctly getting info/flips. One red herring is fine, but a normal setup that is exclusively red herrings so that the setup designers can laugh at the town is not. I will 100% blame the design and feel 0 remorse about it, this hypothetical setup should not have passed.

You are mistaken; Normals are NOT MEANT TO BE PUZZLES for towns to solve. Normals being that is

explicitly bad design

that the NRG is actively trying to fix.

This setup was designed to be

solved by dayplay

, not designed to be solved by power roles; the town's power roles here are designed to exclusively force the emphasis to be on dayplay. One conftown, three killstoppers, one fairly useless but nominally-useful investigative (can catch scum fakeclaiming/can verify town claims, but explicitly cannot catch scum claiming vt). The town's roles, aside from the friendly neighbor, have nothing to confirm them as town and do little to confirm others as town and are overlapped by design.

It's a setup feature--not a setup flaw.
/rant

(I feel obligated to mention: standard game balance in NRG is 3-4 moderately strong PRs against all goons, approximately. This game had 5 PRs, but most of them are notably weak: odd-night vanilla cop is almost useless, basically being just an extra PR for the sake of having an extra PR. Friendly Neighbor can conftown themselves, but only themselves. Roleblocker requires god-tiered luck to block a kill unless two scum die, and in this setup there's no way to distinguish between an rb blocking the killer, doctor protecting the kill, jk blocking the killer, and jk blocking the kill. The only two strong roles in the game are the doctor and the jailkeeper, but due to the ambiguity of what causes a kill to fail, some of their innate power is removed. Which I again would like to emphasize: this is a setup feature, not a setup flaw.)

I stand by these assessments.

This game was designed to be solved by dayplay in scumhunting for the town and the scum manipulating the town, not by nightplay (via the town solving with its power roles, and scum preventing this with their own). I stand by it being balanced--maybe slightly frustrating for the scum to deal with the heavy kill-denial, but balanced, and explicitly a game where if scum's nightkills didn't fail multiple times, scum could not be caught randomly via a surprise PR outing them as confscum and it'd be difficult to POE the game down. (Unless they fakeclaimed and DGB checked them, obv.)

[mastina]

None of the confusion that could have helped scum in this setup happened,

Sure, but is that something that's inherent in the setup, or is that something that's just what happened in this game which wouldn't happen in most iterations of it? The scum had no power roles, but the town had only one slot that was conftown and multiple power roles that do the same thing, killstopping--which could lead to them counterclaiming each other convinced there wouldn't be that many, and/or prevent them from telling what the source of a failed kill would be.

And it'd take two failed kills for the town to actually gain an elimination, so one failed nightkill wouldn't actually help the town.

The town had five power roles, but aside from the fairly-well-protected friendly neighbor, the town had no conftowns. Any of the town's roles could've been scum roles, and DGB's elimination was proof enough of that.

The game was designed to be played the way it was ultimately played--with minimal focus on setup speculation, puzzle solving from the power role claims, no generation of hard-guilties and literally only one conftown, and heavy focus on solving via dayplay and scumhunting.

This setup was far from townsided. The town's roles had incredible anti-synergy, and aside from the friendly neighbor, none of them were town by virtue of their claim alone. Any of them were, from claim, a viable elimination. By play, different matter altogether, and at the end for the friendly neighbor to die the doctor did need to eat the nightkill, but having powertown players rand PRs is not something you can take into account in the setup design.

The possibility of the scum having a rough time if two died too early was something we were aware of, but I felt that there was sufficient counterbalance to that in the form of the lack of hard confirmation of the source of a failed kill.

[mastina]

I'm looking forward to reading the original design and basis for the changes!

Here is my setup for my new 13p mini normal:
Town:
8x VT
1x odd night vanilla cop
1x 2 shot roleblocker

Mafia:
2x goon
1x rolecop

This needs way more town power

Town:
6x VT
1x odd night vanilla cop
1x roleblocker
1x roaming annoucning visitor
1x2 shot hider

Mafia:
2x goon
1x rolecop

Still way way way scumsided--hider as a Normal role is not an investigative; it is a much much weaker version of a commuter. The game with a 2x hider and a roleblocker barely has kill denial at all, has an incredibly weak investigative role (a full vanilla cop for the town would still be a C-tier investigation role, at best; I'd rate vanilla cop in this setup as even worse, a D-tier town investigative that does almost nothing), and the visitor doesn't give the town any value.

Basically the town PRs don't actually give them any advantage; it'd still be scumsided even against an all-goon scumteam.

If you want the game to focus on kill prevention you'll want to have more powerful variants like a doctor rather than a hider, maybe a jailkeeper, and lots of it.

If you want to have a large number of VTs, at least a couple of your roles will need to be heavy hitting investigatives.

Town:
6x VT
1x odd night vanilla cop
1x roleblocker
1x roaming annoucning visitor
1xdoctor
1xjailkeeper

Mafia:
2x goon
1x rolecop

I think if the visitor was more explicitly an FN and the rolecop was dropped the setup would be ok, but I wouldn't be surprised if mastina wants to add more than that.

And then on the final setup:

I'd say it's in the balanced realm. The town has incredibly strong kill-denial potential (the scum won't have the best of times until 2/3 of those prs are dead with less scum deaths), but they've got only one conftown player and their investigative does nothing to catch scum, aside from verifying or disproving claims. It's a good way to force the game to revolve around dayplay--the scum's only night power is somewhat limited due to the town PRs, but they won't be caught by the town PRs, so I quite like it. It feels like a fairly low swing setup overall, all things considered.

[mastina]

Also, general stance on power roles:
The inherent nature of the forum game of mafia in this format means the base game, at mountainous, is scumsided.
Town power roles are designed to bridge the gap, to give the town a compensation for the immensely strong tool of the scum nightkill and allowing them to generate extra information and protect key players from the scum nightkill.

Scum power roles are, explicitly, meant to compensate for the town's power roles going too far: giving the town too much information without the scum's PRs offering them a denial, and to prevent a D1 breaking strategy with no scum deaths to be formed (e.g. scum roleblocker to break up a town cop and town doctor).

In a game where the town's power roles are designed to not give the town too much information, the scum inherently do not need power roles, because the base game in its mountainous state is scumsided and town power roles that don't give the town too much information lead to a more neutral gamestate where the town has more information than they would in a mountainous game (and in this game in particular, multiple methods of preventing the scum from eliminating the biggest town players) but are still forced to scumhunt off of dayplay in order to win.

Normal Games that're designed as puzzles are poor design, because they lead to excessive removal of the importance of dayplay and emphasize nightplay. Setup speculation should give the town competent at it a slight advantage--it should not break the game wide open to the point where the town off of setup speculation can singlehandedly win the game.
Also, investigatives add severe swing to the game if they offer a tangible benefit. The difference between a 1-shot cop and a vanilla cop is huge; the former will always be strong but how strong depends on its use, and it introduces swing as a result, whereas the latter is situational in its usefulness, and usually is fairly low on swing as a result.

This game could probably have lost the odd-night vanilla cop, but ironically I feel like that'd have made the game MORE townsided, by virtue of "town needs all of these PRs to be real, or else the game's scumsided". (3-4 power roles is the standard, so having exactly 4 would mean it'd be unlikely any would be doubted.)

[mastina]

This game gave scum no control at all over the night game.

The presence of town power roles makes this inevitable--there will never be a setup where town have power roles where scum have unlimited control during the night, unless the scum have perfect counters to every scum role--which is inherently bad design and hugely scumsided.

you deliberately jerked town around and gave scum nothing to interfere with them with, just their own interference and not realizing that's what it was

To the contrary: that's exactly what we realized it was.

like this is obviously nonsense, if you really want what you say you want just give scum an NK only on odd nights or some crap

Not gonna lie: pretty sure that a mountainous game where scum could only nightkill every other night? Which you're saying is comparable to this game? Probably close to the balanced range. So I don't see a problem with that.

The town had five power roles, but aside from the fairly-well-protected friendly neighbor, the town had no conftowns. Any of the town's roles could've been scum roles, and DGB's elimination was proof enough of that.

who gives a fuck? it's entirely in town's hands and that's the whole point

Because it's an important centerstone of balance: if the town's power roles when claiming become unlynchable, it's bad design. Scum's agency shouldn't be exclusively in the night--they should have agency during the day to push players and have the ability to eliminate them. The ability to eliminate town PRs during the day during the night is something which

should

be possible for the scum to do in any given mafia game; this game gave a particularly strong ability for scum to do exactly that.

I saw 5521 coming from a mile away. The only reason I even considered two goons was that I saw you were the primary reviewer, and instead I chose to place my hope that Isis would object.

Isis was the one who did the heavylifting in the review, not me--this was Isis's balance-zone, with Isis expecting that I'd want more town power.

It did so by being swingy as hell, by balancing around deliberately misleading town in multiple ways and punishing them for correctly utilizing their night actions, and giving scum no active mechanical counterplay. Red herrings are inherently bad design but one is acceptable. The entire setup being comprised of them is not.

The setup has no true red herring. A red herring would be something like a ninja with no action-investigation, or a nurse with no doctor. All the roles here functioned exactly as advertised, indicating their purpose: vanilla cop is a role designed to check for fakeclaims OR to check for scum PRs claiming VT. In this setup, it could not do the latter, but it explicitly was designed to do the former. The doctor can stop a kill; the jailkeeper can stop a kill; the roleblocker can stop a kill. None of them were saying they'd do something they wouldn't be able to do.

The town's power roles have extreme anti-synergy from blocking each other to not being able to discern for sure how a successfully-foiled kill was foiled, but that ambiguity gives scum counterplay, yes, mostly in the day but it's still possible to use mechanical counterplay in the night. The town isn't punished for using their roles correctly here, it just takes them two successes to be rewarded.

-the scum's only night power is somewhat limited due to the town PRs

what are you even fucking talking about in this post? what power? lol

The scum have three universal factional powers:
They are informed, having information the town does not.
They are the minority, being statistically less likely to be eliminated.
And they have a nightkill, to remove the largest threats to the scumteam.

There's no such thing as a non-mountainous game where the largest threats to the scumteam do not include power roles. (Heck even in a role madness game, some roles are larger threats than others.) Inherent to the game of mafia is the need to remove power roles, and the requirement that this removal being at least partially from nightkills.

The three kill-denial power roles limit the scum's ability to kill the power-town players and the friendly neighbor is conftown that ideally needs to die before lylo (but is not technically mandatory because even in a worst case scenario of it living into lylo it just produces a 50/50 at worst), but while killing the town power roles makes this game much easier for the scum, it is not strictly speaking necessary, especially if the town eliminates them instead of the scum.

If the scum were to have any role here, it'd have been Informed, something along the lines of, "there are multiple kill-stopping roles in this game". Something that'd keep them as effectively goons, but increase their information. So in hindsight, that's a possible way to let the scum have some compensation for their weakened nightkill (tho an Informed for scum would if claiming VT be a guilty to DGB so less sure), by strengthening their information.

But in a game meant to revolve around dayplay, I would not give the scum a role allowing them to overwhelm the town here.
I will acknowledge that the game might not have been FUN to play--but the game was balanced.

Fun is not something we're required to review for.

[mastina]

@mastina: basically don't feel like you're even arguing in good faith here

Oh I absolutely am, tho I do confess 5535 was rushed; I had another obligation to attend to, so I didn't have time to more eloquently put my thoughts in a coherent, structured form.

I'll stand by my assessment tho: no, I don't think this game was townsided. Yes, I feel the game was balanced. If this setup were run 100 times over and over again, I genuinely believe it would, approximately, be as close to 50:50 as is humanly possible. I don't think town wins this a disproportionately high amount of times; I don't think scum win a disproportionately high amount of times.

The setup might improve with some tweaks, e.g. scum being informed of the multiple killstoppers (with the tradeoff of an Informed being a guilty to the vanilla cop, resulting in a net-neutral tradeoff in balance that doesn't shift the expected winrate because the scum's extra information is at the cost of them being slightly more vulnerable), tweaks which'd keep it at 50:50ish but make it feel more fair.

But scum didn't need power here for it to be balanced. For it to be fun, well...see this:

It really should be part of your review criteria, though it's not easy to predict or reproduce what makes some games fun and others not so much.

Precisely the problem--how can, non-omniscient, reviewers, predict what makes a game be fun or not be fun? Fun is something that is also largely subjective in that it's something specific to players.

In MD recently, you can see both topics of players saying "I wish there were more PR-heavy games so that we could solve a mechanical puzzle" AND topics of players saying "I wish games weren't so power role heavy so that players can solve more on dayplay"--games that are fun to the former will be less fun for the latter, and vice versa. It's impossible to conform to one crowd completely without alienating the other; the best solution is to try and, overall, strike a balance between the two.

I will say that I genuinely believed that a game with a heavy focus on dayplay due to the town having no truly impactful investigation role is one that I thought would be fun--this is the sort of game where scum couldn't be caught by the town PRs claiming, not outside of extreme situations. (By my estimation: scum stomps this 1-2 times out of ten by the town's PRs interfering with one another and them being mislynched; town stomps this 1-2 times out of ten by the scum's early deaths and the town repeatedly killstopping and poe-eliminating with full trust in all their PRs to be town; in the remaining 6-8 games, the results are some mixture of the two. And while either extreme happening would, obviously, be unfun with the town not enjoying getting stomped and the scum not enjoying getting stomped, I fully believed that in the 6-8 mid-ground games, the game would be fun.)

With the obvious focus on dayplay strength rather than nightplay strength, the scum would have agency to pull manipulations during the day, to powertown without fear of an investigative role fucking them over, to put up a good show and give the town a run for their money; with the obvious focus on dayplay strength rather than nightplay strength, the town would be forced to not rely on their power roles to win, to focus on their scumhunting, to pin down town not from roles but from play, almost never having an autowin and almost always having to earn it by identifying and eliminating the scum through sheer deduction.

That was something that I believed would be fun, because it gives the town a minor puzzle to solve (they can try to solve for which killstopper stopped a kill for instance), while still giving them a primarily play-oriented solve; it gives the scum freedom to not be caught by power roles, while still giving them a need to not utterly ignore the PRs altogether and giving them actual risk-reward analysis in their nightkills.

With the benefit of hindsight, my opinion has changed and shifted, into realizing that this heavy of kill-denial is a little overkill, and can easily generate an unfun environment. But even with my opinion having shifted to the game in hindsight having been unfun in design, I do stand by my statement that fun is not something we're required to review for. And it's for good reason: fun is subjective and hard to gauge; this is a game that easily in the review stage looks theoretically fun, but which with hindsight it becomes easy to identify as not fun. It's much harder to review for fun in advance due to how much variance in fun there is and how few things are universally unfun.

[mastina]

Both alignments should feel like day AND night play is a result of their choices, not something that the cosmic powers that be have inflicted upon them.

A setup where both alignments have this is in my opinion impossible to create.

Any town investigative that gives concrete results, for instance, instantly creates a situation where the scum feel at the mercy of the cosmic powers, where they had little in the way of choice.

And on the opposite side, any setup lacking town investigatives that give concrete results instantly creates a situation where the town have little in the way of nightplay choices, so they won't have it.

And if you give the town an investigative giving concrete results but give the scum a role dominance in stopping that, the town are instead the ones at the mercy of the cosmic powers, where they had little in the way of choice.

This is literally a "you can't have your cake and eat it, too".
You cannot give scum AND town good control over day AND night.
You can create a setup which is 2-3 of the four:
Scum control over night, scum+town control over day; town control over night, scum+town control over day; scum control over night, town control over day.

You cannot create a setup which is all four at once.
A setup that focuses on nightplay cannot also revolve around dayplay unless you count "setup speccing which roles are which alignments and what results to trust, trying to solve the puzzle" as dayplay (which I do not, that's still nightplay).

If you feel otherwise, that it IS possible:
Go ahead and try; /in to mod a Mini Normal where you design a setup that you think allows for all four. And then, when that game is over, go back and look at it and see if you accomplished the goal. (I'd be happy to be proven wrong with you having succeeded, but because I do genuinely think it's impossible to be all four at once, I would expect it to not have succeeded.)

Reviewers tend to give a lot of agency to game moderators; we try to work with the moderator's vision and try to get the setup balanced to the vision of the game moderator. In reviews, when we see a setup isn't balanced, we ask the setup designer what their vision for the setup is and try to tweak it to fit that vision while fixing the imbalance of their initial setup.

So you'd be able to get a setup through fairly quickly.