Unmasked Ferret
Member
Isn't that the goal for half of the teams in this game?
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Isn't that the goal for half of the teams in this game?
Septimus Prime
Member
Ice to meet you.
Lone_Prodigy
Member
Whoo princesses. Time to brush up on my dancing.
better late than never, smeghead.
Xamtheking
Member
Yo thread, I got some questions about balance
Don't worry if you actively want to play my game because the information will be public to everyone at game launch anyway
Is something like a 10 Town, 5 Scum, 2 Neutral setup too much in Scum's favor? Too much in Town's? Again, this information will be made public in the first post of the game thread (just like how ToS works) but I wanted to pick people's brains about it. I don't want another Volcano Island.
Don't worry if you actively want to play my game because the information will be public to everyone at game launch anyway
Is something like a 10 Town, 5 Scum, 2 Neutral setup too much in Scum's favor? Too much in Town's? Again, this information will be made public in the first post of the game thread (just like how ToS works) but I wanted to pick people's brains about it. I don't want another Volcano Island.
Just from a numbers standpoint, that seems hugely in scum's favor. If there are killing roles on the neutral and town side, the game could end N1 with a scum win.
That's a little bit to much in scum favor. You want scum to be between 20-25% of the full roster. More towards 25% if the neutrals will be more likely to gravitate towards town-aligned and more towards 20% if the neutrals will be more likely to gravitate towards town-aligned. 17 is a small roster though so it's a bit easier for you. 4 is the correct number of scum. 3 is too low at like 18% and 5 is too high at almost 30%.
Xamtheking
Member
Oh yeah um
Scum's win condition is to kill everyone else, not just be equal or greater to town, just like how Town of Salem normally works. There is no possible way Scum can win n1 with that setup.
Originally spoiler tagged but thought better of it because it would need to come out anyway.
Again, I really don't want another Volcano Island.
Still same idea. The reason that we end when scum makes up half the list is because the rest of the game doesn't really matter (except for neutral win conditions) because once scum controls the majority vote they can just end the day phase as they please.
Edit: Unless town has two killing roles or one killing role and a roleblocker. Then the two teams are in stalemate until one runs out of numbers or town loses those roles.
Xamtheking
Member
This is a 12 on the Crab Scale.
Everybody is a PR (again, common knowledge).
Role Madness is an understatement.
I'm asking Retro to give me access to your board so I can help a little bit better. Will probably look at it a little later today when I'm bored at work.
Xamtheking
Member
Fairness?The thing with salem though is that the games there are very short time-wise, but forum games can last even two months, so there should be more resemblance of fairness.
What is this, a game for babies?
(It's a fine line.)
Kaaayyyyy
I think you're way overestimating the numbers here, even if you're trying to avoid VI (which personally I don't think was inherently imbalanced towards town, scum team just got REALLY unlucky the first few nights and it fucked us over). Like Sorian said, unless your town/not-scum-players has a way to work around Scum's numerical advantage, and that workaround exists when scum team ties, there's not really a way for scum to lose once they get to 50%. They'll control every day vote by majority (or at least be able to make it null if a tie), then get the kill of their choice at night. I still think you're swinging way too high in the way of the scum here, especially since any SK neutral type role is going to be at least somewhat aligned with them at some point simply due to their survival requirement.
Xamtheking
Member
Town will have boatloads of utility, don't worry.
Giving town a shitload of powers to compensate for a high number of scum is very dangerous. That was kinda the way HP was balanced, and even though we had a lot of scum in there, it was still nearly impossible for us to win with town having so many ways to confirm other townies or find scum.
Hyperactivity
Banned
This is an impossible set up. Bump town up to 13-15 and it may be somewhat better, but even still eh
Xamtheking
Member
I still don't fully understand HP. I think it might have suffered from complexity.
I think I might bump Scum down to 4 then. Balancing is not fun at all.
It suffered because of too many types of cops for town. Some were by design, some were not.
YesNOnoNOYes
Member
TheWorthyEdge
Member
When does Ace Attorney begin? My hype is unreal.
Welcome to my hell.
Xamtheking
Member
Noooooo I'm trapped here foreeeeveerrrrrrrrrr
Goddamnit I'm going to have to run Ghost Trick Mafia later
TheWorthyEdge
Member
YASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSs
Lone_Prodigy
Member
I think HP was fairly balanced. Scum could've had a chance if they didn't get unlucky one night.
Xamtheking
Member
That's cause cabot is drunk
And Blarg is probably in a mental asylum / the White House
No, it really wasn't, we lost almost all possibility to win on night 1 when voldermort got discovered, the only reason we still had a chance was because Burb died while he shouldn't have died and because you guys didn't want to lynch Crab for some weird reason. With all those town PR, the chance of us getting unlucky was just way to high, the game almost became a 50/50 lottery instead of an actual game.
1. crab magic
2. wrong role actions created a magic ninja killer
Yeah, I think that me killing Burb through your block ended up being a good thing for everyone involved. If that night went completely correct, that would probably have lead to us having to forfeit on like day 3, which would suck for all the players in the game, even town.
Too many cops was the real issue IMO. Ignoring what happened with Voldemort, a regular cop is already the strongest role town can have and HP had them coming out of every orifice with so many different styles.
Since i have to study a lot i did not have the time to do the banners up to this point.
Thank god i used my short break to make them though.
Sneak peek right here and on outer GAFia
Beams Februaru 13th!
when you're making these games you need to remember that the core of mafia is people lying to each other. this is a game about talking, not submitting night actions. everything learned from a role should take second place to the gains of discussion from that night action itself. games should be designed entirely to encourage discussion every step of the way.
roles allow players more expressive outlets to lie rather than showing your poker faces. that's the primary reason for being included in mafia, imo. not so much the results and interactions of the roles themselves, but the ability of players to make use of those interactions to further their agenda.
harry potter is a good example of a game that wasn't designed to help players lie to it's best capacity. i told salva to change the names, for example, from Harry Potter characters to something more generic. the names of the players matching actual characters isn't a mechanic designed to help players lie in that game when all of the main characters are accounted for and their roles are fitting. i was blown away at that crab fakeclaim in harry potter because i was astonished, based on the role list, that anyone found a way to fakeclaim at all. it shouldn't be that hard to do in a game that's so focused on being character heavy.
if you want to up the craziness of the game, there's always mechanics outside of roles. neighbors in AC, missions in archer, etc. someone raised the idea of a 4chan-esque anonymous message board awhile back, which i think has the potential for hilarity.
roles allow players more expressive outlets to lie rather than showing your poker faces. that's the primary reason for being included in mafia, imo. not so much the results and interactions of the roles themselves, but the ability of players to make use of those interactions to further their agenda.
harry potter is a good example of a game that wasn't designed to help players lie to it's best capacity. i told salva to change the names, for example, from Harry Potter characters to something more generic. the names of the players matching actual characters isn't a mechanic designed to help players lie in that game when all of the main characters are accounted for and their roles are fitting. i was blown away at that crab fakeclaim in harry potter because i was astonished, based on the role list, that anyone found a way to fakeclaim at all. it shouldn't be that hard to do in a game that's so focused on being character heavy.
if you want to up the craziness of the game, there's always mechanics outside of roles. neighbors in AC, missions in archer, etc. someone raised the idea of a 4chan-esque anonymous message board awhile back, which i think has the potential for hilarity.
Darryl's advice is just good in general. For anyone worried about Xam's comments earlier though, he's very much overstating his game. While it is role madness, I would hardly consider it full on bastard. It's hard to really assign it a number that makes sense for us because it isn't a closed set-up. That being said, it needs a few more balance patches before it leaves beta phase.
15th February !
^___^
Role PMs will be sent out W E D N E S D A Y
Pfft
Septimus Prime
Member
Let it go.
Don't pretend you aren't excited for your new dress.
The game will be fun, don't worry, flavor is just flavor. The core game is the fun part.
I generally agree with this, but I do think named roles could work as long as you give scum a decent amount of fake names they can claim (us not getting any in HP was a big mistake IMO), and make it so that names don't necessarily relate to the power they got. That way, scum would still have the possibility to make up fake claims.
Alternatively: Throw in some wacky OCs for some roles. Now your sonic game can feature a town cop named "SpinyBlue The Hedgehog" and your true villain is Tails who was mad that SpinyBlue stole his BFF Sonic from him. And don't forget "Blammo the HedgeGOD" Shadow's twin brother.
But in all seriousness, I agree there. I think the danger in the names is that we tend to rely too heavily on them in defining strategies, which works for some players but puts people who are less fans of a theme at a severe disadvantage, particularly if a theme has less named characters to begin with.
Septimus Prime
Member
Archer was great when it threw in Robin Hood, the Archer, from out of nowhere.