Another game from me soon...? - Page 3

On April 11 2010 04:31 Ver wrote:
Pro gaming one sounds like it would be a lot of fun. Games like Ace's with all the mystery and intrigue can be rather interesting since there is a lot of unknown potentials with how the game will turn out and plenty of room to make interesting plays. Though games where multiple individual townies can kill people without consent generally makes for a mafia favored game, so any future attempts of that style should tweak mafia counts and powers appropriately.

My issue with the bot games isn't the bot itself but more of the format. The low numbers require a very tight setup without much variation and the no pm'ing rule further restricts possibilities. What you end up with is a system with limited possibilities: there are only so many ideas (very few) that you can really pull off in such 9 person formats, even if you lift the pm'ing restriction. If it were possible to vary up the number of people (more people=exponentially more possibilities both in play and roles) who can play each time then yes it could become a consistent feature.

It's still a good idea to have the minigames going on sometimes for change of pace and such but I think that if the games are too frequent it will get stale very fast.

Also if anyone wants to double-check that their game is balanced properly and has no major loophole/gameplay issues just pm me.

On April 11 2010 08:50 BloodyC0bbler wrote:
Trying to improve on your own can be insanely daunting as well, TL vet players can be total d bags to newbie players.

I think a good example would be take RoL. Given his general read on players the last few games, he has picked out reds fairly quickly, yet is still considered shit generally(at least based off one of the game endings i read).

People just need to find a small group core and just stick to learning with them. Also, learning to decieve the people your learning with is a key skill at decieving the town

On April 11 2010 09:15 flamewheel91 wrote:

I agree with this statement, especially after watching XVIII. With the new influx of people playing in XVI (BC's and Incog's, of which I was one) the veterans that came back for XVIII were... well, not the most accommodating

Same thing with XX, vet players just owned the town. Granted, power roles are compelling, but from watching it through the mod's eyes, you could just see it was the same people taking control.

If I were to make a game now that was open to the TL public (i.e. newcomers, of which I'm sure there would be enough that would be willing to try this out/play), it'd be nice to have a game composed of new or semi-new people and some vet players that would be more willing to help them learn and play.

Also at this point tonight I'm going to start writing up probably a 25 person game, limited power roles but more diverse than just cop/medic/mafia, no elected roles, and will include clue sets. How does this sound?

On April 11 2010 10:33 BloodyC0bbler wrote:


Just make sure to talk to more than one person about balance, or at least one person who is more available to help. I think a bonus for one of the newer hosts would be to get an old one to co host just to help with the balancing of the game if nothing else. As for newer games with Vet players taking a back seat. It is honestly reallly hard to do sometimes. However, I can say easily, had I not been dt last game you hosted, I would not have been nearly as active in any sense. The role was just one that had to be used.

On April 11 2010 10:47 flamewheel91 wrote:

I'll be asking quite a few of you guys, unless you dawgs want to play.

On April 11 2010 10:50 BloodyC0bbler wrote:


Usually most people who help balance actually play as well. Which can kinda be bad since it gives us (imo) an unfair advantage. Id stick to snagging 1 co host then like 1 other who won't play and will help. Unless you stick by the purely randomized method and let roles stay where they drop.

On April 11 2010 05:19 L wrote:

They aren't mafia favored. Town just retards the fuck up intensely every game. If they're going to do that, they deserve to lose.

On April 11 2010 08:50 BloodyC0bbler wrote:
Trying to improve on your own can be insanely daunting as well, TL vet players can be total d bags to newbie players.

I think a good example would be take RoL. Given his general read on players the last few games, he has picked out reds fairly quickly, yet is still considered shit generally(at least based off one of the game endings i read).

People just need to find a small group core and just stick to learning with them. Also, learning to decieve the people your learning with is a key skill at decieving the town

On April 11 2010 10:47 flamewheel91 wrote:

I'll be asking quite a few of you guys, unless you dawgs want to play.

On April 11 2010 06:59 Ver wrote:


Normally all the retards don't have the power to alter the game as they see fit, especially on days 1/2. So there is more room for better players to take the lead since each individual player only has so much power. It's not like a one time thing either i,e caller going "i got half drunk and vigied ace lolol." All it takes is one person and not only does the town have to deal with that person but they also have to deal with the expanded chaos which is for the most part going to be very bad for the town as now everyone else can and will start doing it too. The amount of influence one bad player has over the game is gigantic in the 'everyone has a day kill power' format. Not nearly as much in normal games no matter what their role.

Even in a much higher skill level game I could see things going awry simply because one person isn't playing that well or they get duped or something and take matters into their own hands and set off a massive chain reaction.

Another way to look at it though is that we need to improve people at playing (town usually) but honestly I have no idea how at this point. The stickied thread has enough good advice to get people to quite a solid playing level but it seems nobody really follows it that well. Anyone have ideas?

On April 11 2010 10:50 BloodyC0bbler wrote:


Usually most people who help balance actually play as well. Which can kinda be bad since it gives us (imo) an unfair advantage. Id stick to snagging 1 co host then like 1 other who won't play and will help. Unless you stick by the purely randomized method and let roles stay where they drop.

On April 11 2010 10:37 citi.zen wrote:

Agreed. Someone will always propose a "no snapping policy" yet you damn well know someone will be thrown off tilt / manipulated / want to be a hero / get bored, etc. will pretty much set off a chain reaction and distract the town with useless "policy lynches" for a long time.

As far as improving people... honestly there are very very few players I can say have actually improved since I started playing here. Most start with a certain skill-set and come constraints that never change: attention span; time commitment; critical thinking ability; etc. Experience in and of itself is overrated and can sometimes even be detrimental. So I am not very optimistic on this front.

On April 11 2010 11:15 flamewheel91 wrote:

I tried the entirely random thing. Made it a bit too imbalanced, so there miiiiiiiiiiiigggggggggght be some selectivity. Of course, you never know. I could let my cat roll the die.
I'll definitely be bothering Qatol and Ver about this. I'm still looking to get two games down to get two co-hosts.

On April 11 2010 11:31 L wrote:

It isn't the format that's the problem, its the players.

Period.

Some of the players that we have playing with us in our games are very bad and go beyond refusing to improve; they actively try to fuck their team over if they're vanilla townies. If that's the case, town will and should lose barring a herculean effort from other parties.

These players will be day 1 lynch targets in every game they join, as they should be. If they decide to learn, maybe they can move past that stage.

Edit: you can claim this is about our methods of teaching new players, but the majority of large issues are with older players who have been here for months and refuse to step it up. Some of our newer players and mods are absolutely fantastic. Flamewheel's awesome. Haster plays very well, etc. Some people, by contrast, have been dog-shit terrible since mafia 1.

On April 11 2010 11:48 Qatol wrote:

Generally, you don't want a completely random setup, though giving yourself a randomly generated framework and then tweaking it can be quite useful. I'll be happy to help if I have time, but expect me to be around pretty rarely for the next 3 weeks until my exams are over.

On April 11 2010 12:00 flamewheel91 wrote:

I love you L. Indian food sometime?
Also yeah... I don't want to name names, but for some games, when I read the role list, I can pretty much tell how the game will go just from where the good players, lurkers, spammers, and fail are. I really should have re-rolled for XX, though I didn't think the mafia did a bad job.

Yeah, I'll be looking at that once the signups are done. I won't need much help, I feel, beyond the original balancing of the game, and maybe if I find a 'tweak' in there. Browsing through MS, I found the Notfia game... damn, that would be a bitch.

Also wait what? Who was the smurf...
I'm too lazy to go back and read >.>

On April 11 2010 12:18 Qatol wrote:

I'd advise against getting too far into this mindset. You have to remember that sometimes players will improve even though nobody really talks about it. For example, Malongo's skill level improved pretty dramatically between Mafia VII and now. RoL is another example. The tweaking really should just be so you don't wind up with a mafia like mafia 4-5 where none of them have any experience at all so they are totally disorganized because they don't know what they're doing. Also avoiding giving really important blue roles to inactives is probably a good idea (though those have mostly disappeared in recent games).


Big secret! (I promised not to tell. Go bug Incog or df if you really want to know.)

On April 11 2010 12:58 BloodyC0bbler wrote:



There were two smurfs actually