Patch 3.3.2 Ranked Season 5

[Togechu]

I've played over 50 ranked games since the season started, and here's my observation.

The new role list has one serious problem, and that's the fact that all evils in the game are able to side with each other.

The game starts 9v6. Mafia can easily kill a town n1 and n2, and all that needs to happen is a mishang (hanging a town) d2 or a jailor misexe n2 and the game is already 6v6 and town cannot vote.
If jailor reveals or the evils find the jailor, jailor cannot kill at night due to witch controlling.
I've had many games that have gone exactly like this: maf kills someone n1, someone accuses someone else d2 and gets them hanged (and they were town), maf kills someone n2, and now town can't vote. N3 maf kills another town, jailor fails to execute because of witch, and now it's 6v5 and evils start killing town in the day in addition to killing them at night.

3 town dead with no evil dead did not used to be a problem. Now town (very frequently) cannot make a comeback from it.

Solution? BRING BACK NK
NK is an evil yes, but NK does not instantly side with mafia. In order to win, NK has to kill mafia, just as much as NK has to kill town. NK was the balancing role that (ideally) stopped both sides from gaining too many numbers too quickly.

The old role list was very well balanced (apart from jailor meta maybe?), but the current one severely favors the evils (as long as the evils even slightly know what they are doing).

[Brilliand]

The new role list has one serious problem, and that's the fact that all evils in the game are able to side with each other.

That's the whole point! Far from being a "serious problem", it's a big step toward making the mode competitive rather than a game of chance or diplomacy (i.e. "convincing the kingmaker to let you win").

3 town dead with no evil dead did not used to be a problem. Now town (very frequently) cannot make a comeback from it.

I think you're remembering wrong. A Town that has lost majority has always been in a very bad spot and likely to lose.

----

If you're complaining that the evils in Ranked currently function as a 6-man Mafia, then that can be solved by changing the rolelist to 5 Mafia vs. 10 Town (which I've been arguing for for a while). However, I kind of doubt that the 6 evils are actually functioning as a 6-man Mafia in Ranked right now.

[Togechu]

If you're complaining that the evils in Ranked currently function as a 6-man Mafia, then that can be solved by changing the rolelist to 5 Mafia vs. 10 Town (which I've been arguing for for a while). However, I kind of doubt that the 6 evils are actually functioning as a 6-man Mafia in Ranked right now.

Except they are
One of my games today, maf hit exe n1, exe claimed spy (late, there were no other spies though), I was lookout and confirmed the exe to not be spy (he did not visit jailor n1), but then a mafia stepped in and posted a bs lo will saying the exe really DID bug jailor n1. So as a result, town hanged the exe target and jailor exed me n2, and it was 6v6 by d3 as usual

5 maf vs 10 town might be good, but without NE, maf will not have an opportunity to mishang a ti who found them, under the premise of "this is exe"

[Joacgroso]

Why would the jailor execute you after winning a 1 for 1?
Also, you don't need the possibility of a NE to misslynch an acuser. Just acuse them of being mafia trying to cause a misslynch, which as you said, is more beneficial now.

[Togechu]

Why would the jailor execute you after winning a 1 for 1?
Also, you don't need the possibility of a NE to misslynch an acuser. Just acuse them of being mafia trying to cause a misslynch, which as you said, is more beneficial now.

Cause evils were spamming chat with nonsense and jailor didn't pay attention. I guess it was ultimately the jailor's fault (and doctor's fault, since I had seen doc visit jailor n1 and doc didn't confirm me either)
It's still ridiculous how many games I've had that have gone pretty much the same way

Yesterday there was a game where someone said "get 12 up" d2 and town put them up, they claimed vet with just a tk cc and town hanged them just cause the evils were saying "guilty" with no evidence against them whatsoever

Idk maybe this is just what elo hell is

[Joacgroso]

That could have also happen with the former rolelist, which also had 6 evils. You are just getting good evils and bad towns.

[Soulshade55r]

I've played over 50 ranked games since the season started, and here's my observation.

The new role list has one serious problem, and that's the fact that all evils in the game are able to side with each other.

The game starts 9v6. Mafia can easily kill a town n1 and n2, and all that needs to happen is a mishang (hanging a town) d2 or a jailor misexe n2 and the game is already 6v6 and town cannot vote.
If jailor reveals or the evils find the jailor, jailor cannot kill at night due to witch controlling.
I've had many games that have gone exactly like this: maf kills someone n1, someone accuses someone else d2 and gets them hanged (and they were town), maf kills someone n2, and now town can't vote. N3 maf kills another town, jailor fails to execute because of witch, and now it's 6v5 and evils start killing town in the day in addition to killing them at night.

3 town dead with no evil dead did not used to be a problem. Now town (very frequently) cannot make a comeback from it.

Solution? BRING BACK NK
NK is an evil yes, but NK does not instantly side with mafia. In order to win, NK has to kill mafia, just as much as NK has to kill town. NK was the balancing role that (ideally) stopped both sides from gaining too many numbers too quickly.

The old role list was very well balanced (apart from jailor meta maybe?), but the current one severely favors the evils (as long as the evils even slightly know what they are doing).

Are you forgetting the fact that with nk town can lose majority d2 lol?

Oh yes lets have games rely on fucking nk all the time.

No how about we actually look at the underlying issues and fix it from the ground up.

The game should be balanced around a 5v10 setting but you know theirs so many town and mafia balance problems. That would be unfair right now.

What actually needs to happen is major reworks to roles like Jailor, random mayors, Mafias kill system

NK fixes literally nothing and is not the right direction to go.

So it's not a solution to have a nk decide the game for you

Edit:
Also what planet are people on that evils win all the time? From my experience I see town win more still

[Jakinator178]

I absolutely detest this.

For context, I was at 2014 elo last season. I did my placement games yesterday, and between then and Friday (my days off) I dropped to 800s elo.

The big problem for town is witch. Mafia gets off way too easy and gains majority too soon.

Big problems for evils are nonexistent. The worst threat they have is maf killing being held hostage by jailor (a very sensible nerf to me would be prohibiting jailor from jailing the same person on more than two consecutive nights. If they jail same person a third night, the prisoner should learn jailors name).

A good buff would be giving spy back his old view whispers and mafia chat abilities (without the part of notifying mafia of spy presence). I also think maybe migrating psychic to classic would be a good way of stemming mafia

[Ezradekezra]

I absolutely detest this.

For context, I was at 2014 elo last season. I did my placement games yesterday, and between then and Friday (my days off) I dropped to 800s elo.

The big problem for town is witch. Mafia gets off way too easy and gains majority too soon.

Big problems for evils are nonexistent. The worst threat they have is maf killing being held hostage by jailor (a very sensible nerf to me would be prohibiting jailor from jailing the same person on more than two consecutive nights. If they jail same person a third night, the prisoner should learn jailors name).

A good buff would be giving spy back his old view whispers and mafia chat abilities (without the part of notifying mafia of spy presence). I also think maybe migrating psychic to classic would be a good way of stemming mafia

I literally experience none of these issues with maf gaining majority too quickly, and I'm relatively low ranked (silver, 1200s).

Also, I'm definitely not gonna support further gutting of the expansion by moving more roles to Classic.

[Joacgroso]

A good buff would be giving spy back his old view whispers and mafia chat abilities (without the part of notifying mafia of spy presence). I also think maybe migrating psychic to classic would be a good way of stemming mafia

I don't think bringing the old spy back would do any good. In fact, it would make the game a lot worse. Mafia would simply not use the chat because of the spy, which would make the game really boring for spies. It would also make mafia more reliant on role abilities instead of deception, since they wouldn't be able to coordinate at all. I think a competitive gamemode should allow the mafia to use advanced strategies and not just the basic stuff.
And also, pro mafia players wouldn't be able to teach new mafia players how to improve, which would be bad for the community. It's already very annoying that this still happens with vampires.

And reading whispers would allow spies to pretty much confirm themselves, which is just cheap. It doesn't matter that bmers can read whispers too, since bmers are way more rare than spies and are easy to disprove once RM are known.

[Soulshade55r]

I absolutely detest this.

For context, I was at 2014 elo last season. I did my placement games yesterday, and between then and Friday (my days off) I dropped to 800s elo.

The big problem for town is witch. Mafia gets off way too easy and gains majority too soon.

Big problems for evils are nonexistent. The worst threat they have is maf killing being held hostage by jailor (a very sensible nerf to me would be prohibiting jailor from jailing the same person on more than two consecutive nights. If they jail same person a third night, the prisoner should learn jailors name).

A good buff would be giving spy back his old view whispers and mafia chat abilities (without the part of notifying mafia of spy presence). I also think maybe migrating psychic to classic would be a good way of stemming mafia

Ok this is a joke right?

[Joacgroso]

I have another comment regarding this update. I think the role library should display all roles wheter players have the DLC or not. How will they be dragged to the DLC if they don't know how it works?
It would be a nice way of promoting it, and I don't get why you would hide its roles from vanilla players.

[Jakinator178]

This role list is unbalanced. I was at 2014 elo last season. And you wonder why I went down to the 800s?

Mafia gains majority way too fast because of guaranteed witch slot.

This is a bogus role list. I've been playing since 2015.


No one in bronze tier knows how to scumread or even put 2 and 2 together to make 4. (For real, how stupid do you have to be to not realize that one of three mafia visits on a night with no mafia deaths is immune???)

This is unfair. I want a placement redo. With intelligent people.

And for bmg to actually make a decent role list. I'd rather be nk last season.

[Ezradekezra]

I was at 2014 elo last season. And you wonder why I went down to the 800s?

It's because the last season's list was just "I hope I get Town" where you can just grind up to master elo with enough luck, while this season's role list is actually skill-based.

[Soulshade55r]

This role list is unbalanced. I was at 2014 elo last season. And you wonder why I went down to the 800s?

Mafia gains majority way too fast because of guaranteed witch slot.

This is a bogus role list. I've been playing since 2015.


No one in bronze tier knows how to scumread or even put 2 and 2 together to make 4. (For real, how stupid do you have to be to not realize that one of three mafia visits on a night with no mafia deaths is immune???)

This is unfair. I want a placement redo. With intelligent people.

And for bmg to actually make a decent role list. I'd rather be nk last season.

What about fixing the games balance issues before looking into new role lists lol

[Jakinator178]

I was at 2014 elo last season. And you wonder why I went down to the 800s?

It's because the last season's list was just "I hope I get Town" where you can just grind up to master elo with enough luck, while this season's role list is actually skill-based.

I am still at least a gold tier. Definitely not a bronze tier.

And there are a flummery ton of throwers and idiots who cant learn to put 2 and 2 together.

[Ezradekezra]

I was at 2014 elo last season. And you wonder why I went down to the 800s?

It's because the last season's list was just "I hope I get Town" where you can just grind up to master elo with enough luck, while this season's role list is actually skill-based.

I am still at least a gold tier. Definitely not a bronze tier.

And there are a flummery ton of throwers and idiots who cant learn to put 2 and 2 together.

Don't worry

Once you get out of bronze it'll be easy to get to Master if you're as good as you claim, seeing how well my games are going

[Cookazoo2]

I was at 2014 elo last season. And you wonder why I went down to the 800s?

It's because the last season's list was just "I hope I get Town" where you can just grind up to master elo with enough luck, while this season's role list is actually skill-based.

I am still at least a gold tier. Definitely not a bronze tier.

And there are a flummery ton of throwers and idiots who cant learn to put 2 and 2 together.

Don't worry

Once you get out of bronze it'll be easy to get to Master if you're as good as you claim, seeing how well my games are going

Problem is getting out of bronze.

If you, like me, won one game at the start of placements and then lost the next one, every game afterwards is automatically a loss.

Welcome to ELO hell, an inescapable pit of flummery Townies, inexperienced Mafia, and no way to go neutral and fuck up everyone.

[wozearly]

The new role list has one serious problem, and that's the fact that all evils in the game are able to side with each other.

3 town dead with no evil dead did not used to be a problem. Now town (very frequently) cannot make a comeback from it.

Solution? BRING BACK NK
NK is an evil yes, but NK does not instantly side with mafia. In order to win, NK has to kill mafia, just as much as NK has to kill town. NK was the balancing role that (ideally) stopped both sides from gaining too many numbers too quickly.

Are you forgetting the fact that with nk town can lose majority d2 lol?

Oh yes lets have games rely on fucking nk all the time.

a) For Town to lose majority D2 required certain roles to be in play and several things to both happen and not happen. It was hardly commonplace.
b) Even in situations where Town lost an absolute majority early on, the presence of the NK meant they retained a relative majority. NK is not allied with the other evils, and has no interest in handing a win to the Mafia by openly voting against the Town and confirming themselves as either NE or NK to the Mafia. In practice, NK would typically be a Town-sided voter if there was any chance of the Mafia gaining effective voting control, and then a Mafia-hunting equaliser that night.

NKs tended to apply headaches to Town trying to dominating using blocking roles like Escort or Jailor on the MK, or to Mafia making an early rush to remove Town's majority. They also introduced a less predictable element which I appreciate some Ranked players, who've been calling for a purist Town + Mafia/Witch roleset for some time, weren't fans of.

Personally, I feel ToS has taken Ranked too far down the purist route of technical balancing, and made another misstep in terms of gameplay. Having played since Legacy Ranked, this is regrettably the first season it looks like I'll be sitting out; while I like that Town isn't quite such an effective steamroller, I didn't enjoy the bumrush to voting control strategy that seems to be the emerging go-to approach for half decent evils; it wasn't particularly satisfying on the evils side, and was even less so on the Town side because it piled hideous pressure onto a handful of roles early on to get lucky.

The only Town antidote so far has been to double-down on variants of the Jailor Meta along the lines of "If you are [x] role, you must take [y] action on [z] night as that's the only realistic way we can attempt to confirm you from the evils quickly enough. Do not dare to attempt anything else, or we'll mislynch you and blame you for our defeat." This was effective without being fun in previous seasons, and while the NKs had started to get the tools to disrupt it, we've u-turned and gone back to the Witch-only disruption route which can be risky for the Witch and annoying rather than fatal for the Jailor.

Personally, I'd rather see a dynamic, varied ranked experience where the best players win 60 to 70% of the time rather than see the game mode slip ever more rapidly toward being a solved game because there's zero freaking variance, but heaven forbid anyone ever lose a game that they deserved to win, or vice-versa.

This; a thousand times this. But, sadly, the winners of the argument to date have consistently been the technical balancers. Perhaps the pendulum will swing the other way in future seasons...

[Cookazoo2]

a long message that I trimmed

A solution would be to be more vocal about this. Currently technical balancers frequent these forums, the subreddit is unofficial and unchecked, and steam's a crapshoot. Devs listen to forums, ergo, they believe technical balancers are in the majority.

Also to add on to your point, I think that Hypnotist and Ambusher were attempts to fulfill the hole that NK left: making it much harder for the "meta roles" (Jailor, Veteran, BG) and easily confirmable roles like Transporter and power roles like Escort to out successfully. However, I'd also like to point out that by attempting to so heavily screw over the Jailor meta, which is a noble cause and I know not of a single soul above Silver that agrees with the meta in principle and practice, BMG has inadvertently made it ten times worse.

Now, Town has to meta hard or have decently good players (a rarity for the most of us since we lost that one game) to stand a chance at lower ranks, otherwise get steamrolled by the Mafia, since there are no third-party evils that oppose it. It's a 9v6 in a 1.5 kpn game that accelerates over time, as opposed to a 9v4v1v1 which was the old list.

Serial Killer countered Escort/Consort, Vigi, Mafia, and Transporter.
Arsonist countered the meta by simply threatening to show their face. It became the primary evil that balanced the game.
Werewolf also countered the meta and Veteran (suicidally).

Ambusher is a weak replacement, being both a Mafia member with bonus KPN (something some technicals are saying no to) and a suicidal meta counter. Werewolf barreling into the Jailor N2 since there's a 50/50 they die to BG but still frag the meta team was a valid strat. Arsonist calling TP/LO N1 and igniting earlier than N5 countered the meta by simply making Jailor claims distrustworthy. Serial Killer being a consistent KPN that could remove Mafia while also countering its own weakness and the single most powerful ranked role countered the meta.

What does Ambusher do?

It can't kill Jailor from inside the jail, it can't destroy the meta team in one go, it can't make Jailor claims distrustworthy, it can't pick off Mafia to give Town (and by extension itself) a fighting chance.

It can, however, kill TPs indirectly. That's kind of cool.


The solution here is that it's not that the game needs homogenization to balance the big factions against the meta, it needs diversity to counter the meta such that it is no longer viable to use. Hell, even most MafiaScum lists had a Serial Killer in them, and they got along fine for eighteen years.

also on a side note they have a pretty cool role selecting thing called newd3, its worth investigating more than reworking invest

[wozearly]

A solution would be to be more vocal about this. Currently technical balancers frequent these forums, the subreddit is unofficial and unchecked, and steam's a crapshoot. Devs listen to forums, ergo, they believe technical balancers are in the majority.

Also to add on to your point, I think that Hypnotist and Ambusher were attempts to fulfill the hole that NK left: making it much harder for the "meta roles" (Jailor, Veteran, BG) and easily confirmable roles like Transporter and power roles like Escort to out successfully. However, I'd also like to point out that by attempting to so heavily screw over the Jailor meta, which is a noble cause and I know not of a single soul above Silver that agrees with the meta in principle and practice, BMG has inadvertently made it ten times worse.

The solution here is that it's not that the game needs homogenization to balance the big factions against the meta, it needs diversity to counter the meta such that it is no longer viable to use. Hell, even most MafiaScum lists had a Serial Killer in them, and they got along fine for eighteen years.

Believe me, I've been making these arguments pretty consistently every since the switch from the Legacy rolelist to the first Ranked Season. If there are a large group of silent people with similar views on the forums, they never came out of the woodwork. The people most interested in Ranked balancing, by volume, are the technical balancers.

I've made the case that replayability requires leaning on the random elements as a beneficial factor and that removing random aspects is not something to be cheered at every turn, but seen as a direct trade-off in gameplay vs balance. I've gone back and forth with many of the esteemed forumites (or at least, those I hold in esteem at any rate) who typically worship to greater or lesser extent at the altar of technical balance. Some shifted their views a little after Flake's epic exercise to demonstrate what a truly balanaced ToS could look like, which concluded you'd pretty much need to rewrite the game from the ground up as ToS isn't designed to achieve that particular utopia, but not many. And many discussions ended with both sides conceding it's just something that would have to be tested - none of us had the evidence to show what the long-term effects on balancing and replayability would be.

They mean well, and they'll doubtless enjoy the new Ranked list more than the previous. It's just not for me.

Where we agree is that pretty much all of us want to see the Jailor meta consigned to the dustbin of history, and would prefer to reduce the frequency that games fall to kingmakers - although we part ways whenever the suggestion "just remove any role which could potentially be a kingmaker or problematic for balancing in any way" comes up.

Hypnotist and Ambusher coming over into the 'main' Ranked wasn't specifically about dealing with the Jailor meta, but part of a broader revisit of the Mafia roles. Several had ended up underpowered compared to Town and struggled to cause disruption in practice as they'd originally been intended, and too many Town roles were too easily confirmable. This was where the introduction of Hypnotist and the rework of Forger and Disguiser were coming from. Ambusher helps to create some potential risks to an overly predictable TP meta, but it's too soon to really know how well that'll play out; my initial reading is that it's still worth the risk for Town to reveal the Jailor and metaphorically roll the dice against the odds of there being only a single TP and an Ambusher waiting to murder them and no Lookouts to reveal the Ambusher, but we'll have to see.

[Joacgroso]

Is it really worthy to reveal as jailor day 1? Now that there is a confirmed witch, the jailor won't be able to execute until the witch dies, which can be really problematic if the executioner gets his misslynch day 2.

[Brilliand]

Now that there is a confirmed witch, the jailor won't be able to execute until the witch dies

This isn't necessarily true, because the Witch puts her life on the line by witching the Jailor nonstop: she's likely to get executed, even if no one else is, and she can't win while dead.

No defense works in jail if the Jailor can test whether you're witch by just pressing Execute and seeing what happens.

[superboytim]

I have been Master elo for the last few years and I am back to 1100 from 2800? I know the meaning of hard reset, but really? Not even 1400-500? Nah, I'm out.

tos ranked players stop complaining about a meaningless rating challenge

they should just get rid of that rating system altogether if they're not going to make it functional

[superboytim]

The new role list has one serious problem, and that's the fact that all evils in the game are able to side with each other.

3 town dead with no evil dead did not used to be a problem. Now town (very frequently) cannot make a comeback from it.

Solution? BRING BACK NK
NK is an evil yes, but NK does not instantly side with mafia. In order to win, NK has to kill mafia, just as much as NK has to kill town. NK was the balancing role that (ideally) stopped both sides from gaining too many numbers too quickly.

Are you forgetting the fact that with nk town can lose majority d2 lol?

Oh yes lets have games rely on fucking nk all the time.

a) For Town to lose majority D2 required certain roles to be in play and several things to both happen and not happen. It was hardly commonplace.
b) Even in situations where Town lost an absolute majority early on, the presence of the NK meant they retained a relative majority. NK is not allied with the other evils, and has no interest in handing a win to the Mafia by openly voting against the Town and confirming themselves as either NE or NK to the Mafia. In practice, NK would typically be a Town-sided voter if there was any chance of the Mafia gaining effective voting control, and then a Mafia-hunting equaliser that night.

NKs tended to apply headaches to Town trying to dominating using blocking roles like Escort or Jailor on the MK, or to Mafia making an early rush to remove Town's majority. They also introduced a less predictable element which I appreciate some Ranked players, who've been calling for a purist Town + Mafia/Witch roleset for some time, weren't fans of.

Personally, I feel ToS has taken Ranked too far down the purist route of technical balancing, and made another misstep in terms of gameplay. Having played since Legacy Ranked, this is regrettably the first season it looks like I'll be sitting out; while I like that Town isn't quite such an effective steamroller, I didn't enjoy the bumrush to voting control strategy that seems to be the emerging go-to approach for half decent evils; it wasn't particularly satisfying on the evils side, and was even less so on the Town side because it piled hideous pressure onto a handful of roles early on to get lucky.

The only Town antidote so far has been to double-down on variants of the Jailor Meta along the lines of "If you are [x] role, you must take [y] action on [z] night as that's the only realistic way we can attempt to confirm you from the evils quickly enough. Do not dare to attempt anything else, or we'll mislynch you and blame you for our defeat." This was effective without being fun in previous seasons, and while the NKs had started to get the tools to disrupt it, we've u-turned and gone back to the Witch-only disruption route which can be risky for the Witch and annoying rather than fatal for the Jailor.

Personally, I'd rather see a dynamic, varied ranked experience where the best players win 60 to 70% of the time rather than see the game mode slip ever more rapidly toward being a solved game because there's zero freaking variance, but heaven forbid anyone ever lose a game that they deserved to win, or vice-versa.

This; a thousand times this. But, sadly, the winners of the argument to date have consistently been the technical balancers. Perhaps the pendulum will swing the other way in future seasons...

i'm not going through what you're saying point by point because that would be too much effort but it sounds like a lot of the issues you are saying now exist have always existed but are now more prevalent because aspects of the game are no longer clouded by the chaos that NK caused

ranked has always been absolute garbage in terms of game-to-game variety via non-chaotic elements because it wasn't necessary when there was a huge amount of game-to-game variety via chaotic elements, mainly brought about by NK. now that NK has been stripped from the mode, the mode's lack of game-to-game variety via non-chaotic elements becomes glaringly apparent; certain metas will now be even more centralising than they previously were. however, in the context of ranked the "fix" to that issue isn't introducing something that entirely goes against one of the main aspects of the mode (competition), it would be to make changes so that certain metas are not overly prevalent and there is an increase in game-to-game variety via non-chaotic elements, which would be far more consistent with the ideals of competition

your argument of 'technical balancers always win the argument' is correct in the scope of ranked, and rightfully so considering the mode is designed around being competitive. competition ideally rewards the better player/team and punishes the worse player/team, so naturally changes for ranked should gravitate towards better and more consistently fulfilling this ideal. outside the scope of ranked, almost all if not all of the game modes largely or entirely appeal to casual game ideals rather than competitive game ideals, so i really don't understand why people think that casual game ideals should be the main focus in the one mode where it absolutely shouldn't be when there is a large selection of casual game modes and zero competitive ones