You had a cop--the strongest town role available--and a rolecop, which in this game got a clear on the Miller (because mafia Millers are not a thing and are explicitly blacklisted) and a guilty on 1.5 scum roles (Encryptor is a scum role but has on some occasions been graylisted as a town role which makes sense since you can call the role Daytalk Enabler and have it be whitelisted as a town role; I talk about this more right here).In post 2242, Gamma Emerald wrote:How did this setup get passed...
...But that's it. Two strong investigatives, zero other power. The miller can't be investigated by the cop and must be investigated by the rolecop to be verified.
Against that, you were facing a Roleblocker, capable of blocking said two investigatives and which could NOT be nightkilled. (This lack of being able to be nightkilled is vital, as it MASSIVELY boosts the power of the traitor.)
PLUS the scum had a nightkill capable of taking out said investigatives (and hey guess who they killed once said investigatives had claimed their results?), which they could use with impunity. No risk of protectives. No risk of failure.
This game diverged from the standard PR mold by quite a bit, via having essentially two much stronger roles + a net-zero role (neighborizer as town is net-neutral balance wise and is considered nothing) + a SECOND net-zero overall role (Miller overall balances out to have this effect) against a scumteam with one SUPER role which also had one SUPER nerf (being a traitor), plus the double-edged sword of their second role (Encryptor allowing for daytalk which is in fact +EV for the scumteam, but also as an assumed-guilty for the rolecop).
In short, both sides were simultaneously MORE powerful than the standard...
...And yet, LESS powerful than the standard as well. They had things which increased their power, but traded off for things which decreased their overall power rating and left them more vulnerable. (Miller + Neighborizer are technically roles, but again, they are considered as adding nothing to the town; traitor is an obvious nerf but with bulletproof as an obvious buff; encryptor giving an obvious edge to scum yet also being something almost assuredly going to be treated as a guilty.)
Given that, game was overall balanced--swingy, yes. Undeniably so. But that's always going to be the case when you diverge from the golden formula. This game might not have diverged from the formula in the TYPICAL way (
technically speaking
, it has 4 PRs vs. one scum PR which is close to the golden formula), but it still did, so swing was still inevitable. This was, however, more or less the setup Screenplay originally wanted to run. Aside from formatting of PM changes, the main difference between the initial setup and the final setup was adding the rolecop.If a mod wants to run a setup and the setup is balanced, then it's not the job of the NRG to shut it down thanks to swing. And I'd even argue that in spite of how early the game could end in a town sweep, the game
wasn't
that extremely swingy. The town would need perfect play in order to crush the scum; the scum needed reasonably competent play (blocking/nightkilling investigatives) in order to crush the town. Neither happened (though the latter came closer to happening, thus the outcome of the game), and if either had, my stance would more or less be that if the scum/town let themselves get in that position, they probably deserved what was coming to them.