Matt
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The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,811
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Post by Matt on Mar 24, 2015 22:50:07 GMT
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Post by HockeySam18 on Mar 24, 2015 23:27:46 GMT
This is exactly why I don't participate in mafia games, or post much in TC either for that matter. It's a huge timesink that I can't afford. TC is all arguments, inside jokes, and spamming. Every once in a while something nice comes up and I participate. There's no denying that I might enjoy part of it, but the time cost/benefit analysis doesn't check out for me. There's also the fact that newer folks like me basically have to go through a year or two of hazing to be accepted as part of the TC community, which is an utterly laughable prospect to me when I can have more socially fulfilling experiences in RL instead. Things might be different now that I'm staff, but I don't really feel like investing much time in TC anyway because it doesn't really interest me. As for the mafia game, if things are really happening as you're saying (and I have no reason to believe that they wouldn't be exactly as you say), then I just feel bad for everyone who invested time into what turned into such a train wreck. I've never actually participated in a AoKH mafia game, but I've never heard much good about them. To be clear, I like everyone in the TC community and I've had several skype text or voice conversations with most of them, enough to say that I know them rather well (or at least as well as you can know somebody that you met over the internet ), and they're all nice people (with a couple exceptions, but there have always been a few people in TC that nobody really likes). Most of the people in TC are perfectly good people - it's just the TC setting as a whole that is a little toxic. EDIT: Also, Matt, congrats on 666 posts
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Mar 25, 2015 0:03:23 GMT
AoKH mafia has never been that great (although there have been a couple of enjoyable games that I can remember). The level of skill is fairly low, and the quality of game set ups is worse. However, that does sound like a particularly poor bit of hosting, which surprises me because I've generally thought of Excelsior as being pretty smart. CK, as can be seen from his recent thread about mafia, has gone off the rails. He has always had a tendency to sulk when things in mafia don't go his way. I remember hosting a game where he was a player in which he got fed up because his role wasn't significant and then when I was a bit scornful he temporarily changed his mind about replacing out while still not really trying. You were in that game too actually: Murderous Masquerade Mafia. Popey is a bit annoying because he over-hypes his own brilliance (unlike me, obviously), but in fairness he wasn't primarily to blame with this one. But I think if the mod started confirming my suspicions on Day 1 my response would be to say something in the thread with a view to wrapping the game up as a failure and not wasting any more time on it. I might not do that if the game was further advanced, although I'd make it clear to the mod that this shouldn't happen. My favourite mafia game at AoKH was this one: aok.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=st&fn=22&tn=40631&f=22,40631,0,0&st=650 The setup was flawed, but it so happened that it worked up to an interesting end. Again, the skill level wasn't that high - aside from me, obviously. It's a shame our team mate NowhereT seems to have disappeared for good.
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NowhereT
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Nowhere 'left' T 'hide the Bodies'
NowhereT!
Posts: 79
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Post by NowhereT on Jul 5, 2015 21:22:42 GMT
Don't be so sure, Julius.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Jul 5, 2015 22:38:03 GMT
Haha, nice to see you around these parts, NowhereT!
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NowhereT
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Nowhere 'left' T 'hide the Bodies'
NowhereT!
Posts: 79
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Post by NowhereT on Jul 6, 2015 9:20:56 GMT
I've been looking back over a lot of the old threads - this is like a grown up version of AoKH! Some interesting thoughts about mafia - I've never been any good at it but I find it very good fun to be so completely in the dark during a game, it's a completely different dynamic to any other game I've ever played. Anybody able to link a game which was played well? The poor tactics at AoKH are kinda self-perpetuating; I, for one, have never known different.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Jul 6, 2015 16:02:06 GMT
I'd say this is pretty accurate
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 6, 2015 18:21:40 GMT
I am always happy to be proved wrong in this way. It depends a bit on what you're looking for. One that stands out as having a good overall level of play is this one. I recommend ignoring the topic post and reading it from start to finish, if you can spare the time. I could also link to a load of games where I think I played well and nearly everyone else was terrible.
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NowhereT
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NowhereT!
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Post by NowhereT on Jul 6, 2015 20:05:52 GMT
Yes, I've just reread Hostel Mafia where you and I were scum buddies. Fortunately, I have lost our email conversation - the game thread was sufficiently embarrassing!
With regard to my own play, I am too easily led by "the old hands" because I don't really recognise good or poor play, apart from howling contradictions or changes of tack. From a modding perspective, I am unsure how the host is sure the game is balanced.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 6, 2015 23:41:46 GMT
Like so many things, the risk is being led astray by superficially plausible advice that is actually bad advice. In this respect, some people are simply unteachable: trying to persuade Rotaretilbo that some of his conventional wisdom was wrong was like attacking a mountain with a needle.
Fortunately, it's possible to reach a good level of play if you observe certain basic rules. I don't say that there aren't any exceptions to these. But I do say that if you think you know what the exceptions are, the chances are that you're wrong. Most true exceptions arise in odd-ball scenarios, such as where a townie might choose to leave a known scum member alive because of the need to lynch a more dominant scum faction.
1. Lynch All Liars. I can't believe how many times I've had to fight about this. People fell over themselves again and again to forgive liars. I'm not sure I can think of a single time when I've regretted applying this rule too harshly. Read the game I linked to in my previous post while bearing this rule in mind, as it is an instructive example of the power of this rule.
2. The corollary of the above is that if you're town you should not lie. The classic is an Iron Townie claiming to be vanilla, which so many people claim to be an exception to the rule - it is not.
3. Night plans are almost always a terrible idea. If you really can break the game with night actions, then go ahead and do it. But it's incredibly easy for everything to blow up in your face: suddenly your key townie is dead and the two people you were expecting to confirm one way or another remain mysteries.
4. An early mass claim will either win the game for the town or cripple it. The first category of games are barely worth bothering with, because by definition the host has messed up.
5. Don't give up. Don't throw tantrums. Don't joke about being scum.
6. Don't hold out for proof. This isn't criminal justice, and players don't deserve a chance to prove themselves. Unless someone screws up, your Day 1 lynch is not going to be a solid choice. Never mind. Agree a limit on the number of claims you'll get and then just lynch the dodgiest of those, unless something significant happens.
7. If someone did something that hurt the town, don't write it off. Lynching townies is suspicious even if each lynch apparently had decent reasons at the time.
8. If someone supported the scum, that is probably even more important. It matters a little bit whether the reasons for defending them looked decent, but it matters less than you might think.
9. A convenient role-claim is a suspicious role-claim. This is particularly true later in the game. Just look at Hostel Mafia: Popey's role-claim was a gilt-edged invitation to get us all lynched. I can't believe he thought that was good play. We were pushing the boundary of credibility as it was and then he pulls a damn fool move like that.
10. If you're scum, limit your scummy actions and maximise your townie actions. If the town seems certain to mislynch, express moderate (but not compelling) reasons to doubt whether it's a good idea. If you have no realistic chance of saving your partner, aggressively push for their lynch.
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NowhereT
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Nowhere 'left' T 'hide the Bodies'
NowhereT!
Posts: 79
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Post by NowhereT on Jul 7, 2015 5:32:28 GMT
*bookmarks thread*
Wow, thanks! That's a lot more detailed than I expected!!
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Matt
Stormwind Member
The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,811
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Post by Matt on Jul 10, 2015 12:44:55 GMT
I think I play a lot better as scum than town, actually.
This is the only point I am not sure I totally agree on. In a game of extremely high level players probably that is true. But fake claiming is hard. It's hard even if you have a safe claim. Making all your actions not contradict is tricky, and then all that needs to happen is a tracker or a watcher catches you doing something that doesn't fit. I am pretty sure on the level mafia is played at AoKH, that more claims are always better than less claims.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 10, 2015 18:17:16 GMT
A fair challenge.
First of all, a mass claim is clearly a good idea when the host has made it stupidly difficult to make a false claim. The fundamentals are that the scum must be provided with safe claims that are on par with the actual town roles and role emails should not be contain anything that the town can use as a shibboleth. Second, a mass claim is clearly a good idea when the host has included obviously true roles or roles that can prove each other to the town at large. Third, a mass claim is clearly a good idea when the host gives powers to the town that allow strong night-plans, like a combination of an Iron Doc and a Cop. I'm not commenting on games which are defective in these ways.
When fake-claiming, achieving the level of basic plausibility isn't difficult. It's not at all difficult to make sure that your claim is consistent with known facts, by avoiding claiming fewer night actions than there have been nights and that sort of thing. That's just basic checking. It also doesn't take much intelligence to figure out that claiming Miller Vigilante is a bad idea.
What can make fake-claiming hard is when there's something you're trying to worm your way out of, like a guilty result or being tracked to a victim or needing to explain some anti-town behaviour during the day. Here though, it's not the skill of fake-claiming that is hard - rather, the situation you find yourself in is hard. Those are evidence-based difficulties.
It is true that evidence-based difficulties are more likely when you have to commit to a claim earlier rather than later. You don't get the chance to respond to a watcher result by claiming to be a mistaken Vigilante, for example. However, this isn't very important. No one sensible gives much credit to claims like that. I think the skill threshold where this sort of flexibility ceases to be important is really quite low.
On the other hand, when every town member has to commit to a claim earlier rather than later that is very important. I would say its importance out-matches the importance to the scum of retaining their own flexibility even at low skill levels. This is easy to illustrate. Suppose that a town consisting of 1 Cop, 1 Doc, 1 Vigilante and 3 Vanilla Townies does a mass claim. What happens is that the scum shoot the Doc, then the Cop, then the Vigilante. The chance of such optimal shooting without a mass claim is low. Moreover, by enabling the scum to be so effective you significantly reduce the chance that the scum will ever face the evidence-based difficulties which are so hard to deal with.
For a mass claim to cripple the town in a decently constructed game, all you need is for the scum to do the basic work to make claims that are basically plausible. That leaves you with no good leads for a lynch, and gifts the scum an ordered hit-list of important townies.
There is one more relevant point. A mass claim actually gives the scum an additional opportunity for some sharp tactics. Precisely what these are will depend on the prevailing attitudes. For example, if people generally believe counter-claims if all else is equal, then once the Cop claims one of the scum can immediately counter-claim and trade themselves for the Cop before the Cop has the opportunity to build up credibility. The problem of giving the scum extra tactical options will arise with any predictable approach, like early mass-claiming. The only predictable approaches that should be adopted are those which are nevertheless a net benefit - I believe that all Millers declaring themselves at the start is one good example.
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Matt
Stormwind Member
The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,811
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Post by Matt on Jul 11, 2015 15:51:00 GMT
Interesting. And a good explanation. Bringing up the cop also makes me think of another theory I have that is somewhat controversial (and probably wrong). I feel cops should claim early. First thing day two I feel is ideal, or day 1 with a guilty. If there is no sanity questions, The cop can bring the town a group of three confirmed townies (himself and two others). Even if neither of his investigations are in danger of a mislynch, it makes a massive difference. Three people in a 10 or 12 person game that can be trusted is a huge difference. Going any longer risks providing no useful info anyway. Essentially, I think the cop should avoid claiming day 1 and then claim as soon as possible after that. As far as safe claims, how do you recommend constructing them? I've been working on a setup, and I've never hosted before. It's also a complicated one, which is probably ambitious. My current strategy was to create 15 town roles from a flavour perspective, whittle it down to 12 (the amount of players in the game) by getting rid of the three roles that clashed with other roles the most, and then assigning some to town and the rest as safe claims to scum. I also provide the scum with a few additional flavour names not included in the setup, in case they choose to go off script and create their own claim. The setup is also probably crazy. A lot of one shot actions and restrictions on normal power roles. And at least one or two straight up weird roles. I very much dislike pure investigation roles (cop, watcher, tracker) as they introduce a huge amount of luck into the night 0 start. But, I also hate sanity issues in over half the setups I see them in. So I don't know how annoying some of these roles will be, but I want to try them out anyway, haha.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 11, 2015 21:18:14 GMT
Cop strategy depends a huge amount on the setup. The value of two confirmed innocents is huge if there are six players left alive and worth very little if there are sixteen. The judgment depends on three vague factors: (1) the value your revelation will bring to the town, (2) the risk that even if you keep quiet you will be shot and the town will not ever get the benefit of your revelation, (3) your future prospects once you're in the open, including your prospects of being protected. Obviously things like sanities will affect your assessment of those factors, but that's the basic equation. Making the judgment in a particular situation will often be tricky, and I wouldn't lay down too many rules of thumb. In general though, you should assign a high value to lynching anyone you have a guilty result against and a (slightly less) high value to preventing the mislynch of anyone who has claimed a power-role or anyone at all after the first day or so.
When constructing safe claims there are a number of considerations: 1. Flavour on its own. Your approach sounds good. Make sure that, as a minimum, there is at least one good flavour safe claim for every single scum. Additionally, most themes will have a spectrum ranging from characters who are heroic and important all the way to the arch-villains. Don't be tempted to give the scum safe claims which are minor characters, unless all the townies are also minor characters. 2. Flavour connected to roles. Some flavour safe claims are fine on their own, but limiting. You should make sure that the scum have safe claims which give them a wide range of roles that they could plausibly claim. Very often, this will mean giving each scum multiple safe claims. The other side of the coin is that you shouldn't over-explain why townie characters fit perfectly with their roles, because the scum will struggle to match that sort of precision. 3. Roles on their own. Hosts are sometimes tempted to give the town a full roster of standard power roles, pushing the scum into claiming obscure and unimportant roles or risking a counter-claim. You should seriously consider telling the scum some of the standard roles which you aren't using, although this is less important than giving them flavour safe claims. It is also only fair to give them some indication of the kind of roles that will appear: if scum are randomly forced to claim first they shouldn't be lynched because they claimed Tracker when everyone else is Post-Restricted Alternate-Nights Semi-Iron Redirector with One-shot Lie Detecting. 4. Email text. By and large, you want to stick to a structure with a fixed order. For example: character name, flavour text, role name and alignment, description of how role works, win condition. It is absolutely essential that any text which appears in multiple town emails is either publicly disclosed (ideally) or disclosed to the scum privately (alternatively).
There's room for variation in the exact approach you use, but those are the main points you should bear in mind.
I agree with your prejudice against standard investigative roles. They can be a crutch for the town and a frustrating bolt from the blue for the scum. I have experimented with using weaker investigative roles, and think that they can be just as interesting for the player without being as disruptive as standard investigative roles.
I'll take a look at your setup, if you like.
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Matt
Stormwind Member
The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,811
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Post by Matt on Jul 12, 2015 4:23:44 GMT
Yes, I'll definitely send it to you when I have it finished. I'm not going to pretend I invented a lot of these roles, but they are definitely not typical, so being sure the game is balanced is kind of hard.
That's pretty much what I am doing for the safe claims. I'd like to save a few big name characters as safe claims, and include at least one or two minor characters as town, so as to keep the pool of names very wide.
How do you feel on randomized investigations? For example, a tracker that gets two results, one correct and the other a randomized player x targeted player x. Or a cop who randomly gets either flavour or an alignment, but not both.
Also, is it tacky to have roles that mess with the votes?
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 12, 2015 9:54:12 GMT
I'm not a fan of any randomisation in roles, personally. I feel that the game should be deterministic aside from the actions of the players. One exception is that I will randomise night actions for players that haven't sent in a night action whose role states that it must be used.
The golden rule though is that if any information you give to the players is or may be wrong, you have to notify them of the possibility. If you say that there's a 50% chance of getting a false result randomly produced, that's fair game even though it's not something I would do myself.
Roles that mess with votes (or lynching) are definitely something to use with caution, because they interfere with the most important power of the town. There are two things you want to watch out for. The first is that it may well have more of an impact on the balance than you think. One of the most important balance considerations is how many mislynches the town can get away with on unfavourable assumptions; taking away a townie's vote can effectively cost the town a day, so bear that in mind. The second thing is the effect on the player who is affected. Much like post restrictions (I've never seen a post restriction I liked) messing with players' ability to participate in the game by voting can be detrimental to their interest and activity.
I don't think I have ever used a role which interfered with voting directly, but that's not to say a well-designed game couldn't have such a role. The closest I've come is including a Survivor who could earn "money" through carrying out night actions for other players; the most expensive thing the Survivor could buy was one-day immunity to lynching.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Jul 12, 2015 13:14:52 GMT
I'm loving this discussion. One of you should port it to the University as a pro guide on how to play Mafia
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Matt
Stormwind Member
The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,811
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Post by Matt on Jul 12, 2015 14:38:04 GMT
The problem is I hate when a cop randomly picks a night 0 target, and gets a guilty. Or a tracker tracks someone to the night 0 kill. Most games only last a few day/night cycles, and that's just such a huge balance swing one way or the other based on something that took no skill. In that sense it's pretty random already. Making things 50/50 or something like that, it weakens the role. But I do see the downside.
I was thinking of having roles that could sell their vote at night for certain actions or abilities, or a role that could steal another players vote, giving them two and another player none.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 12, 2015 15:33:10 GMT
You're quite right about Night 0 investigation results being very annoying. One method I usually favour is to have a day-start. If you really want a night-start though, you could just make it a rule (publicly) that no investigations will take place on Night 0. More elegantly, you could have a Delayed Cop who gets his results a night late, or some other kind of investigative role that is not immediately effective. A favourite of mine is what I call a DNA Cop, who can investigate living players to find out their unique code and can investigate dead players to discover the code of the killer.
I would be very reluctant to include either of the vote-interfering roles you've suggested. Far too many players would rather have a night action or some other gizmo rather than a vote, which isn't something I would encourage. Having voteless players would also risk days stalling, with the town unable to muster the numbers to lynch efficiently. It would also be very difficult to balance. The problem with vote-stealing is its sheer power, being significantly more powerful than a Noble role.
If I wanted to experiment with voting mechanics, I'd implement something game-wide. Perhaps casting the final vote on the lynch of a townie could mean losing your vote for the following day. Something that requires players to make a decision.
Another idea that I've heard of but never seen, and which might be interesting, is to allow the town to make unlimited lynches in a single day - but with information about the lynched players only being revealed after a no lynch is voted for to bring an end to the day.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 25, 2015 17:39:26 GMT
I've been following the game hosted by CK. What an absolute shambles.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Jul 26, 2015 3:05:20 GMT
I don't understand Mafia enough to have a worthwhile opinion, but judging by some of the comments throughout the thread it seemed like a total train wreck. I only saw it today, actually, after Popey sent me the link because he was curious about how I would react to the role description my character had. I was frankly surprised I made it into a TC themed Mafia game at all, considering that outside of the hockey thread I've had about 10 posts in TC so far this year
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Matt
Stormwind Member
The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,811
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Post by Matt on Jul 26, 2015 5:51:23 GMT
That might be the last game I play there in some time. Mostly I am playing because I win every game basically, which is fun in a way. I think I'm like 8-2 there now. Frankly, that game was pathetic. The role of a double voter who can give his vote away? Why? There is no reason to ever do that. Just use the double vote yourself. I'm not even getting into the iron jester survivor, which is literally the worst role I've ever seen. Mason cop was a dubious role as well. I didn't play well that game. I started fine but being fed bogus information really threw me off. CK basically rigged an entire game around his idiot survivor role, and then tried to manipulate us all with hints to play around that one stupid premise. He wrecked the game that started this thread as well. I don't think I'll play another game he is in. I did get a chuckle out of my role email when I saw your description, Sam.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 26, 2015 13:38:27 GMT
I'm going to give Coldviper's game a try. He seems like he might actually know what makes for a good game.
There is actually a use for the double voter who can give one of his votes away. It is potentially useful if you have good reason to believe you will be killed that night and can be sure that you are giving your second vote to a townie. Admittedly, that is very much a niche situation. Mason Cop is a very bad idea indeed, because it's a Cop that cannot be effectively counter-claimed and which doesn't even need to claim in order to feed results to the town. The Iron Jester Survivor is ridiculous, but for what it's worth I have seen at least one role that was definitely worse.
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Post by HockeySam18 on Jul 26, 2015 15:10:07 GMT
As did I, Matt I found it hilarious how he got immediately apologetic after seeing Sipia's and my comments, as if he thought I would actually be offended or something
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 26, 2015 16:40:58 GMT
Amazing. I cannot fathom how giving hints to the players outside the game can possibly be "laissez-faire".
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Post by HockeySam18 on Jul 26, 2015 19:20:26 GMT
Agreed. Aside from the gameplay issues you both mentioned, I've gathered from looking through the thread that a fundamental issue was the characters and their premises. When more emphasis is on the comedic aspect (see things like Stroke and Moff's descriptions) than making the game run well, there is a problem. That setup would probably have been better suited to a comedy write-up or a satirical entry to next year's writing competition.
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Matt
Stormwind Member
The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,811
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Post by Matt on Jul 27, 2015 21:39:26 GMT
Iron reviving jester survivor single shot day vig. That's honestly the only thing that needs to be said of that game.
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Post by Julius CMXCIX on Jul 27, 2015 22:08:24 GMT
Yeah, but it's not as bad as this role: Just read that, and take a moment or two to let it sink in. This was a creation of Rotaretilbo, by the way. It's the top reason why I've never understood why his opinion on anything is highly rated. He does seem to have become more sensible since 2008 and I doubt he would do anything so plain stupid now, but still. If you want to see the monstrosity in full, for some masochistic reason, it's here: ee.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=st&fn=12&tn=37444&f=12,0,0,0&st=0
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Matt
Stormwind Member
The Come And Go Man
Monsieur Mercredi
Posts: 1,811
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Post by Matt on Jul 27, 2015 23:01:57 GMT
That's ...nuts.
I never played with Rot except in Murderous Masquerade. In retrospect my strategy was poor that game as well, but Rot's was idiotic. He wanted the guards to all come forward and pretend someone was king to get the assassin out. It was incredibly stupid and basically cost us the game on day 1. My plan was to make certain I didn't seem like a guard, so at least we would only have 4 players doing this dumb strategy, and the king didn't necessarily have to be one of them. If I had joined all five would have obviously been guards and the king, and it wasn't hard to figure it out from there.
He doesn't seem particularly flexible. I make a lot of mistakes but I am pretty good at guessing a setup and adjusting on the fly. He seems like he just does the same things all the time.
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