Town of Salem Game Forums

So i've gotten back into playing recently after a period of absence, and I've started to play ranked again. And, I kid you not, it's HORRIBLE. Sure, some games are completely fine, but more often then not you have people leaving day 1 because they don't like their role, transporters transporting jailor claim night 1, or Godfathers who sit afk until voted up and hung. It's not just me, I was in a game recently where a lot of the dead people were talking about how ranked isn't what is should be. Ranked should be more experienced, skilled players rather then a mix of newbies and bad players. That's for Ranked Practice. What I'm asking for isn't a complete overhaul of everything, but instead tighten down the requirements to play in Ranked. My proposal is this: 150 Ranked Practice Games played with at least 75 wins, that way, it requires some skill whatsoever to join in and play ranked. I think this will eliminate a lot of the new/bad players from Ranked. Please, just do something to make it better, please.

Increasing the requirement of games played (or even including a wins requirement) won't really do anything. The problem is that this game is really bad at teaching new players how to play. There are people who still don't know what roles register as suspicious to Sheriff, or that Jesters can haunt abstainers, or that Arsonist bypasses TPs. Because the game never tells you any of this. If at the very least the role cards (which you can see all of at any time by clicking the role list) contained all the mechanics relevant to their corresponding role, the experience in low ELO/non-ranked games would be MUCH better. There'd be a lot less arguing about role mechanics.

The way I (and a lot of us probably) learned the game was through experience, which means trial and error (like learning about the abstaining jester rule after you abstain and still get killed, etc...). The issue is that people treat Ranked more like their trial and error phase as opposed to learning the game pretty well in RP, Classic, AA, etc... I agree the game could do a much better job at telling people more about the role mechanics, but I believe that a tighter requirement would be a better, easier option.

Both are necessary. I do agree that you need to play more than 50 games in order to learn strategy, but I still dislike that trial and error is basically the only way to learn a good chunk of things that should be essential for even half-decent play.

Yeah I honestly think a lot of it is probably returning players from a long time, who aren't used to changes like jest haunting abstainers and sheriff no longer showing sk or maf.

The one I get usually that pisses me off is when both rt and a town role is dead and someones fake claim excuse is "there can be two mediums in a game" or "there can be two docs"...as if YOU are the idiot there.

The worst one is "vampires register as sus to Sheriff". No they don't, they never have, and yet so many people believe they do.

MysticMismagius wrote:The worst one is "vampires register as sus to Sheriff". No they don't, they never have, and yet so many people believe they do.

Apparently Look Outs have astral visits too

kyuss420 wrote:

MysticMismagius wrote:The worst one is "vampires register as sus to Sheriff". No they don't, they never have, and yet so many people believe they do.

Apparently Look Outs have astral visits too

You’ve actually seen that? That’s amazing. I’m surprised they even knew what an astral visit was!

You can’t fix people, but it should be expected that people know this kind of shit before they start Ranked.

Sure there will always be people who just never learn. But the hope is that if you teach people basic shit that there should be no excuse for not knowing by the time you play Ranked, those people will be the only dumbasses left (besides the newest of noobs). You would find that dumb people in your games are significantly fewer and further between.

13ricity wrote:transporters transporting jailor claim night 1.

That is actually a tactic people use when Jailor claims D1 asking for TP/LO. It is to prevent Arsonists from dousing the Jailor N1 which will get them ignited on a later night and to confirm Spy claims through their bugs. But if their intentions was to not do this and to make the TP's and LO's to protect the Transporter instead, then yes I agree that it is a very idiotic move.

SparkingJayYT wrote:

13ricity wrote:transporters transporting jailor claim night 1.

That is actually a tactic people use when Jailor claims D1 asking for TP/LO. It is to prevent Arsonists from dousing the Jailor N1 which will get them ignited on a later night and to confirm Spy claims through their bugs. But if their intentions was to not do this and to make the TP's and LO's to protect the Transporter instead, then yes I agree that it is a very idiotic move.

Wait, the purpose of not transporting the Jailor is so you don't kill him by accident by transporting him with the person the Mafia picked to attack N1.

I guess it's nice that whether to transport the Jailor is a difficult decision now?

13ricity wrote:My proposal is this: 150 Ranked Practice Games played with at least 75 wins

Ummmm... what? 150 games of brain dead idiots who don't know what a LO is? That makes no sense. I get the idea, but I don't agree. I've only played 25-ish games of RP, and that's only because I had friends who were new to the game and I took the suffering to show them the ropes. And I hardly play it on my own anymore because I can't STAND the people in it. Anyways, I'm gonna end up turning this into a rant, so I'll just say this: No

ZackTheMaf666 wrote:

13ricity wrote:My proposal is this: 150 Ranked Practice Games played with at least 75 wins

Ummmm... what? 150 games of brain dead idiots who don't know what a LO is? That makes no sense. I get the idea, but I don't agree. I've only played 25-ish games of RP, and that's only because I had friends who were new to the game and I took the suffering to show them the ropes. And I hardly play it on my own anymore because I can't STAND the people in it. Anyways, I'm gonna end up turning this into a rant, so I'll just say this: No

The goal of playing 150 games BEFORE ranked is so that in those games, you actually figure out what a Lookout is. What do you propose?

I 100% agree. I don't think the game really has trouble teaching people. They are supposed to learn over time, watch the habits of the people familiar with the game. I mean when I played is casual even back in like 2015 or 2016 people didn't seem as brain dead as they did now. Having people play more practice games would be nice because clearly the players we have now need more observation time than they did in the past. Playing ranked feels like I'm playing casual these days.
Also mafia seems more unplayable than ever but I'm sure that's been addressed plenty elsewhere.

What I mean by the game being bad at teaching new players how to play, is that the game never tells you mechanics that are essential for decent play (Ranked or not). You aren’t told what roles ping as suspicious to Sheriffs. You aren’t told that Arsonists bypass TP roles despite being a killing role. You aren’t told the line between “good” and “evil” in a Psychic’s visions. You aren’t told anything about Unique roles. Knowing or not knowing these things (or having teammates who do/don’t) can and will mean the difference between a win and a loss. The reason that “back in like 2015 or 2016 people didn't seem as brain dead as they did now” is because back then, there weren’t as many mechanics that people are forced to learn the hard way. (And yet, the game goes out of its way to tell you some things, so it's not like you're meant to learn everything by trial and error)

The gaps in what the game tells you are especially egregious when you consider that Town of Salem is a team game, where everyone being on the same page as to how the game works is necessary for cooperation with your team. You should not be forced to either trial-and-error your way through basic mechanics or use outside sources like a wiki to learn how to play in any modern online game, especially not one like Salem. Every mechanic that a player needs to know should be explained in the game itself, and it’s not that hard to make it happen. Simply editing the role cards to fill in all the missing information about each role, as seen in this modded example, would be a good start.

MysticMismagius wrote:What I mean by the game being bad at teaching new players how to play, is that the game never tells you mechanics that are essential for decent play (Ranked or not). You aren’t told what roles ping as suspicious to Sheriffs. You aren’t told that Arsonists bypass TP roles despite being a killing role. You aren’t told the line between “good” and “evil” in a Psychic’s visions. You aren’t told anything about Unique roles. Knowing or not knowing these things (or having teammates who do/don’t) can and will mean the difference between a win and a loss. The reason that “back in like 2015 or 2016 people didn't seem as brain dead as they did now” is because back then, there weren’t as many mechanics that people are forced to learn the hard way. (And yet, the game goes out of its way to tell you some things, so it's not like you're meant to learn everything by trial and error)

The gaps in what the game tells you are especially egregious when you consider that Town of Salem is a team game, where everyone being on the same page as to how the game works is necessary for cooperation with your team. You should not be forced to either trial-and-error your way through basic mechanics or use outside sources like a wiki to learn how to play in any modern online game, especially not one like Salem. Every mechanic that a player needs to know should be explained in the game itself, and it’s not that hard to make it happen. Simply editing the role cards to fill in all the missing information about each role, as seen in this modded example, would be a good start.

The game should have a builtin info sorta thing or tutorial mode yannow.

I'd change it so they had to play more RP 10 games of RP isn't enough, Classic mode isn't really a great mode to train up for ranked...