Playerlist concerns and why they're growing more redundant

[ZSSDistortion]

I originally posted a more incomprehensible version of this in the mod discord at midnight because I was bored however after I got a suggestion or two to post it here I'm posting a more (less?) readable version to get some opinions etc. This thread is based on my opinion regarding this topic however, it may not reflect the opinions of the rest of the mod team.

TL:DR at the bottom if you can't be bothered to read the wall

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So recently, I've noticed a growing trend of people being reluctant to join games due to a player list that doesn't seem like it could lead to a fun or interesting game. Whilst this is a perfectly valid concern to have, a few problems/points stick out when thinking about this which make worrying about player lists more redundant.

Now, it's not much surprise that our general player base has recently been declining to an extent. Whilst we're still able to fill up larger games, its becoming increasingly hard to do so, for instance GFM2.43/SFM43/whatever you want to call it had 40 players, and a lot of retired/infrequent players had to be convinced to join the game just to run it. Even though GFM2.43 is a special case due to its nature, it's still becoming more of a problem even in regular sized games.

If you take a look at the FM Playerbase Estimation Thread, you'll see only 20 players have said they play regularly, and of those 20 only about 10 or so are active. Its understandable that some other players who play often here don't put their name on it so the actual number is a bit higher however for the last Estimation thread we had about 30-40 people listing themselves as regular players, and at least 40 for the one before that.

So what do we make of this? Well for starters, several players considered "good" here by others have left the forums, are inactive or simply don't play FM anymore which is one of the factors that's creating these concerns about player lists here. Thankfully, we're still managing to get new players into FM who are interested in it, however since they're new these players may end up playing poorly due to a lack of experience or just playing sub-par in general. With these kinds of players joining games, other players have become more reluctant to join them due to concerns that the game will be shit. Those concerns may be true if the players end up tanking the games quality somehow, however with these players making up a good amount of our actual player base these days, it's inevitable that more of these games will be scrutinized by some players, who may choose not to join them.

However, despite new/less experienced players coming to play FM here the problem of the declining player base will only get worse. With the recent shift to Pay to Play in the actual Town of Salem game, it's more likely that players will be turned away from playing the game itself due to the price tag, and in turn the forums themselves. Even if the ToS devs keep their existing player base happy by listening to balance changes/adding requested features, it still won't lead to much growth here. This leads to even less newbies joining FM games here, which leads to more player list concerns despite those kinds of player lists gradually becoming more unavoidable as time goes on. Essentially, I can't see how the current situation is likely to improve much at the moment and as a result of that these concerns over player lists being poor will simply become more redundant as time goes on and players will most likely have to put up with these potential player lists.

If you actually read this whole thing for whatever reason, give yourself a cookie or whatever, maybe even critique this, ask questions or possibly suggest something in regards to this. I'm all ears.

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TL:DR: The playerbase is declining with less players than before leading to larger or even normal sized games taking a while to fill in some cases, and this means concerns over poor player lists by players are more likely to happen due to more new/inexperienced players playing games and potentially making them less enjoyable however with the shift to Pay to Play in the main ToS game it'll be even harder to get new players due to the price tag turning people away so growth will be stagnant, less people will play FM here and player list concerns may appear more whilst being more redundant. Critique this, ask questions, suggest stuff etc.

[Chemist1422]

Good post

As the host of possibly the best example of this (16F), can agree this is a serious problem

[EvanManManMan]

As somebody considered to be "good" who has mainly migrated away from the site, I can say that most of the issues here hold true

I would much rather play a mash with 40 or so other skilled players or a 17er on MU with about 10 good players than play what is essentially an NFM game that is not NFM

Another issue is thqt the games here are not worth playing either. VFM39 is the second multiball VFM in the past few months. That should be a red flag that setup designs are just terrible now. The rest of the recent VFMs have just been throwing random PRs into a vanilla setup. It's obvious when a host doesn't put care into their setup and it turns people like me away from the game. Typical standards are just poor quality games in general. I'm not playing NFMs either for reasons that should be relatively clear based on the first paragraph. That leaves exactly one type of game that is even in consideration for playing and those games are hit or miss. A big factor as to why people don't come back is that the games here have very little appeal and don't reel players in.

[ZSSDistortion]

As somebody considered to be "good" who has mainly migrated away from the site, I can say that most of the issues here hold true

I would much rather play a mash with 40 or so other skilled players or a 17er on MU with about 10 good players than play what is essentially an NFM game that is not NFM

Another issue is thqt the games here are not worth playing either. VFM39 is the second multiball VFM in the past few months. That should be a red flag that setup designs are just terrible now. The rest of the recent VFMs have just been throwing random PRs into a vanilla setup. It's obvious when a host doesn't put care into their setup and it turns people like me away from the game. Typical standards are just poor quality games in general. I'm not playing NFMs either for reasons that should be relatively clear based on the first paragraph. That leaves exactly one type of game that is even in consideration for playing and those games are hit or miss. A big factor as to why people don't come back is that the games here have very little appeal and don't reel players in.

(spoilers just me going on about games I'd like to play it can be ignored)
Spoiler: Speaking from a personal experience, there hasn't been a game that I've been really eager to play since SFM44. However, this is probably just due to the fact that I don't have a lot of time for playing FM games these days due to dealing with university stuff, so smaller games like that appeal a lot to me these days. I'd personally like to see more games like BNHA FM or VFM34 run - in my opinion both had good appeal due to theming/role madness stuff or interesting mechanics that I might've played if it weren't for me being busy/running the VFM queue. Smaller games would be nice too.

You have a point regarding player retention and game quality. Personally I'd like to see more variety in closed rolelists for standards instead of slightly modified episodic rolelists, or even just reduce the predictability in it by using setups such as Matrix's to provide an example. NFM's are more situational, they can either have many new players or end up being mainly non-new players to be honest so its harder to comment on that. I would like some more interesting setups to be submitted for VFM as I think there's good potential for some amazing rolelists that can be simple yet exciting for players and the hosts alike but there have been some nice ones submitted recently in my opinion, its just a matter of them appealing to players honestly.

[ICECLIMBERS]

I spent the last 40 minutes or so making a post here and the forums deleted it, hooray.

I'm going to try to condense it succinctly:

• "Bad playerlist" is something everybody says so don't put stock in it, as people who would be called bad by a lot of others are also using it
• If anything, it means "unfamiliar playerlist"
• I've been in 'bad playerlist' games that turned out fine, and seen good ones that were train wrecks
• game types can be a reason why people are less active, maybe queue system is to blame but I wouldn't say that for sure right now
• hobbies fade over time, this is natural, and it's hard to pick up something again once you stopped
• People have stopped playing all the time, just now those who are less active still stick around in forums/discord
• in 2016 few people from my first game (in 2015) were still even on the forums
• playerbase peak was in 2016
• survivorship bias is important- we didn't talk about this in the past when a lot of people would stop playing but we had new arrivals and a lot of people still active
• lack of new players is bigger but we will not see an improvement there by the nature of this site being tied to ToS
• also we will never match the nfm queues of 2016
• we need to focus on how to adapt

I can flesh out on any of these since I wrote this nice essay but the forums logged me out THANK YOU FORUMS.

edit

Speaking from a personal experience, there hasn't been a game that I've been really eager to play since SFM44. However, this is probably just due to the fact that I don't have a lot of time for playing FM games these days due to dealing with university stuff, so smaller games like that appeal a lot to me these days. I'd personally like to see more games like BNHA FM or VFM34 run - in my opinion both had good appeal due to theming/role madness stuff or interesting mechanics that I might've played if it weren't for me being busy/running the VFM queue. Smaller games would be nice too.

yes, this, just for different reasons (ie graduating from uni, work) and not as interested in the same type of games as you

[ZSSDistortion]

Spoiler:

• "Bad playerlist" is something everybody says so don't put stock in it, as people who would be called bad by a lot of others are also using it
• If anything, it means "unfamiliar playerlist"
• I've been in 'bad playerlist' games that turned out fine, and seen good ones that were train wrecks

Good alternative way of describing it. Agreed with the third point, not all games with "good" player lists go well.

• game types can be a reason why people are less active, maybe queue system is to blame but I wouldn't say that for sure right now

Whilst I can understand game types turning people away (for instance people may want more wacky bastard games instead of playing a relatively straightfoward VFM), I don't think the queue system itself is to blame that much. If we're digging deeper into it, I'd say its more the types of games that are run by people. Some tend to fill up really fast whilst others end up taking ages to fill. To my knowledge, I don't believe the queue system has been too big of a problem in terms of inactivity, unless I ended up forgetting about something.

• hobbies fade over time, this is natural, and it's hard to pick up something again once you stopped
• People have stopped playing all the time, just now those who are less active still stick around in forums/discord
• in 2016 few people from my first game (in 2015) were still even on the forums
• playerbase peak was in 2016

Agreed. Its similar nowadays for me - I didn't really see people who played often back in 2016 play in 2018, with a few notable exceptions of course.

• survivorship bias is important- we didn't talk about this in the past when a lot of people would stop playing but we had new arrivals and a lot of people still active
• lack of new players is bigger but we will not see an improvement there by the nature of this site being tied to ToS
• also we will never match the nfm queues of 2016

Survivorship bias is probably one of the bigger problems causing the complaints in my initial post. It feels as if newer players are relying on "good"/older players a bit to make a game good despite that not always being the case. And with you mentioning how players from 2015 when you started weren't around in 2016, it's a similar case here - sooner or later the players who started this year may not see a bunch of players they're used to seeing in games here next year so they'll be in a similar situation. The site being tied to ToS definitely hinders growth, though without completely migrating somewhere else (which wouldn't solve the issue much imo) there's not a lot we can do at the moment. The NFM queues point ties into this as well.

• we need to focus on how to adapt

If we want to get growth back up then definitely. At the very least it might be worth looking into. Do you have any ideas for adapting?

[RAmcius]

tbh, i think you should improve games quality first - people won't stay, if games won't be enjoyable. That's mainly about balance (or lack of it) in a lot of games

Next, how much new players are shown how to play properly? When i open this part of the forum, i very rarely see topics about actual FM theory, so it's no surprise new people lack of knowledge and ruin games for more experienced players

[Parallax7]

tbh, i think you should improve games quality first - people won't stay, if games won't be enjoyable. That's mainly about balance (or lack of it) in a lot of games

Next, how much new players are shown how to play properly? When i open this part of the forum, i very rarely see topics about actual FM theory, so it's no surprise new people lack of knowledge and ruin games for more experienced players

This.

The main issue would be quality of games, and lack of appeal to partake in them. I’d also say, you need to figure out a way to find people, and get them involved. If people aren’t coming to FM, bring FM to them.

Edit:

I hope it has occurred to the moderation team, as well as yourself, that over the summer I myself was a regular in FM games, I’d imagine as were several other individuals. Once the school year started, I started losing the energy/time necessary to dedicate to an FM game. Or even my moderation duties in TG, lol. So just be patient. I think it has to do with the fact with people are busy, as well.

[Kmenx]

I've been in 'bad playerlist' games that turned out fine, and seen good ones that were train wrecks

SFM15 haunts me till this day

[Kmenx]

For a serious post though ''good'' people bullying newbies hinders our playerbase growth as well I can show you multiple examples of newbies getting bullied out of games because they fucked up once on their first games which is a common occurance because people fuck up to learn how to play good I mean if people bullied me after SFM9 I probably would not play any FM games(I am guilty of this as well to some extent)

[Parallax7]

For a serious post though ''good'' people bullying newbies hinders our playerbase growth as well I can show you multiple examples of newbies getting bullied out of games because they fucked up once on their first games which is a common occurance because people fuck up to learn how to play good I mean if people bullied me after SFM9 I probably would not play any FM games(I am guilty of this as well to some extent)

+1 FM often doesn’t have hospitality

[chitownmvp01]

For a serious post though ''good'' people bullying newbies hinders our playerbase growth as well I can show you multiple examples of newbies getting bullied out of games because they fucked up once on their first games which is a common occurance because people fuck up to learn how to play good I mean if people bullied me after SFM9 I probably would not play any FM games(I am guilty of this as well to some extent)

+1 FM often doesn’t have hospitality

I agree with this.

For me, I don't play anymore because there isn't much time to play while in college and I think several others from the 2016 peak left due to loss of interest or moving on with their lives (school, job, etc.). I lost a little interest as well, but I come back occasionally. In 2016, it was the same players basically carrying the site, and now with many of those gone, that's not the case anymore.

As somebody considered to be "good" who has mainly migrated away from the site, I can say that most of the issues here hold true

I would much rather play a mash with 40 or so other skilled players or a 17er on MU with about 10 good players than play what is essentially an NFM game that is not NFM

Another issue is thqt the games here are not worth playing either. VFM39 is the second multiball VFM in the past few months. That should be a red flag that setup designs are just terrible now. The rest of the recent VFMs have just been throwing random PRs into a vanilla setup. It's obvious when a host doesn't put care into their setup and it turns people like me away from the game. Typical standards are just poor quality games in general. I'm not playing NFMs either for reasons that should be relatively clear based on the first paragraph. That leaves exactly one type of game that is even in consideration for playing and those games are hit or miss. A big factor as to why people don't come back is that the games here have very little appeal and don't reel players in.

I agree with you. There's a lot of redundancy. But that's based on what people submit for the queues. We can't control that.

tbh, i think you should improve games quality first - people won't stay, if games won't be enjoyable. That's mainly about balance (or lack of it) in a lot of games

Next, how much new players are shown how to play properly? When i open this part of the forum, i very rarely see topics about actual FM theory, so it's no surprise new people lack of knowledge and ruin games for more experienced players

This.

The main issue would be quality of games, and lack of appeal to partake in them. I’d also say, you need to figure out a way to find people, and get them involved. If people aren’t coming to FM, bring FM to them.

Edit:

I hope it has occurred to the moderation team, as well as yourself, that over the summer I myself was a regular in FM games, I’d imagine as were several other individuals. Once the school year started, I started losing the energy/time necessary to dedicate to an FM game. Or even my moderation duties in TG, lol. So just be patient. I think it has to do with the fact with people are busy, as well.

Yeah I'm in the same boat as you. I barely check Discord while I'm at school, so I'm out of the loop on what's going on in TG.

[EvanManManMan]

We can control what people submit

It's called submitting unique and cool games

[Metrion]

We can control what people submit

It's called submitting unique and cool games

I refuse.

[RAmcius]

it's interesting idea, but with such limited assortment of roles in standard and VFM you can't really come with much of interesting and unique games

[EvanManManMan]

it's interesting idea, but with such limited assortment of roles in standard and VFM you can't really come with much of interesting and unique games

Incorrect

[RAmcius]

it's interesting idea, but with such limited assortment of roles in standard and VFM you can't really come with much of interesting and unique games

Incorrect

so, most hosts are terribly incompetent and can't come up with interesting and unique setups?

[ZSSDistortion]

Spoiler:

tbh, i think you should improve games quality first - people won't stay, if games won't be enjoyable. That's mainly about balance (or lack of it) in a lot of games

Next, how much new players are shown how to play properly? When i open this part of the forum, i very rarely see topics about actual FM theory, so it's no surprise new people lack of knowledge and ruin games for more experienced players

Improving the quality of games is definitely important. I've tried to encourage better VFM setups by putting a few guides on making VFM's into the VFM Queue. I can't comment on other queues however. As for FM theory-related stuff, we're certainly not stopping anyone from making any, and I'd encourage it.

tbh, i think you should improve games quality first - people won't stay, if games won't be enjoyable. That's mainly about balance (or lack of it) in a lot of games

Next, how much new players are shown how to play properly? When i open this part of the forum, i very rarely see topics about actual FM theory, so it's no surprise new people lack of knowledge and ruin games for more experienced players

This.

The main issue would be quality of games, and lack of appeal to partake in them. I’d also say, you need to figure out a way to find people, and get them involved. If people aren’t coming to FM, bring FM to them.

Edit:

I hope it has occurred to the moderation team, as well as yourself, that over the summer I myself was a regular in FM games, I’d imagine as were several other individuals. Once the school year started, I started losing the energy/time necessary to dedicate to an FM game. Or even my moderation duties in TG, lol. So just be patient. I think it has to do with the fact with people are busy, as well.

Fair enough.

For a serious post though ''good'' people bullying newbies hinders our playerbase growth as well I can show you multiple examples of newbies getting bullied out of games because they fucked up once on their first games which is a common occurance because people fuck up to learn how to play good I mean if people bullied me after SFM9 I probably would not play any FM games(I am guilty of this as well to some extent)

If people are being bullied out of games then I'd encourage the newbies or other players to report it to the mod overseeing the game, or even just any FM Mod if necessary.

it's interesting idea, but with such limited assortment of roles in standard and VFM you can't really come with much of interesting and unique games

Regarding VFM's - you can use many other roles not listed as standard for our VFM's on this site - for example I used Mafia Doctors in VFM36. Not terribly unique of course, but it's not listed in our standard VFM rolecards. Same with Standards I believe - excluding my gripes with closed rolelists usually lacking creativity, other roles outside of our sites ones can be used. And as for hosts coming up with interesting setup designs, I disagree with them being incompetent, but I'd certainly welcome more nice VFM setups that stand out more.

[RAmcius]

Well, you should decide who is your targeted auditory of standards - if it's veteran players, then it's ok, but if you think standards should be next step after NFM for newbies, they should be actual standards, use only standard roles. Newbies having to deal with roles they never heard before intimidate them and reduce chances they would sign for more games.

Also, something i told quite a few times already - get rid of this rolling rolelist idea, you can keep public semi open setup, but host should make their own. Only actual argument against that i remember was Var telling it would be too much, if maf knew what TI they are against, if they get framer/disg.

[xUltiix]

+1

many people who joined at a younger age or before big changes in their lives are also unable to play as much or at all now due to graduation, more things, etc
I fall under this and I know many others do too

(I also had a nonfunctional monitor for a while but that's more of an unusual case)

[Metrion]

There's three reasons why anyone stays/leaves:

Time
Community Ties
Fun

There's nothing we can do to influence time, that's 100% rooted in the individual player at not reflective of the site. Lets skip that one.

Community ties can keep people coming to the site. If you know people and people know you then you're part of something. Being engaged with the community and a part of it is a factor that keeps a player-base beyond whatever they get out of being here. Habit, and familiarity keep people in places. Having people you like, talk to, and share stuff with keeps people in places. Discord, and events push this axis. Toxic behavour/alienating would be the opposite end and something that we need to work on removing.

Finally fun. This can be expanded to output. People are here because they get something; fun, an experience, hosting, arguing, etc. No one is here because they just are. Making sure whatever that element is is present keeps people.


Now to get to a problem regarding the last axis. What people want or find fun is completely subjective. (Just make fun games 4Head.) You can make stuff to cater to a person but at the end of the day you can't cater to everyone at once. We can make a system that gives the community more power over what is hosted, but people will still complain that games they want aren't ever being hosted. We can make games more grass roots, but players will complain about nothing interesting. Or the reverse. It's incredibly easy for me to say that because it's probably been said by many people in similar positions before. I'm honestly not sure what the solution to making more balanced games is. I'm not sure how to make the output of our games more in-line with what the majority wants when we have open queues already. Do we take away the openness of some queues and force setups? I can rant on about potential solutions or complications to said solutions, but what should be communicated is it's been frustrating to hear complaints when anyone has the power to change what's being hosted.

Also if we're going to talk about balance:
Spoiler:

Code: Select all

16G | C9# | End (Town Win)
16B: Change of Pace | Game Over (Town win)
Episode XVI | The Reroll | Game Over [Town Win]
15D | KH:FM | Keyblade Graveyard (Town and Phantom Win!)
15B: Treacherous Temple II: Town Win
13I: Rustic - Town Win
Episode XIV | Town Wins

16E | Dragon Age FM | Mafia Win
16D | For All Intents and Purposes | Game Over [Mafia Win]
Episode XV | Game over! | Mafia/Witch WIN | Last Santa Game
14F-The New Testament(5/15)GAME OVER-Mafia and Witch Win
14E - A Toast to Coolway99 and hippophant (MAFIA WIN)
14D | Revolutions | Mafia Win
14C: Pride Rock | Long Live | Mafia, Traitor, Warlock Win

16C | Pokemon FM 3 | Arso win
15C: TNS | Game Over! Detonator/Shade win (The Biggest Bang)
 
15F | Terrorist FM | Game Over - Bomber Wins
14G: Vanilla the Secondth | Game Over [Bomber Wins]

Town Wins: 7
Mafia Win: 7
Neutral Killing: 2
Bomber: 2

Take-away: bomber is a disgusting role.
Over roughly the last year, we've had a pretty good run statistically in standards. Figures lie and liars figure, but I'm not convinced that balance is the largest issue.

At the end of the day we're a subsection on a flash game that went P2P. We can't expect to pull much until BMG makes something new. While that's an excuse, it still means we do have to put effort into keeping what we have.

[Parallax7]

Now to get to a problem regarding the last axis. What people want or find fun is completely subjective. (Just make fun games 4Head.) You can make stuff to cater to a person but at the end of the day you can't cater to everyone at once. We can make a system that gives the community more power over what is hosted, but people will still complain that games they want aren't ever being hosted. We can make games more grass roots, but players will complain about nothing interesting. Or the reverse. It's incredibly easy for me to say that because it's probably been said by many people in similar positions before. I'm honestly not sure what the solution to making more balanced games is. I'm not sure how to make the output of our games more in-line with what the majority wants when we have open queues already. Do we take away the openness of some queues and force setups? I can rant on about potential solutions or complications to said solutions, but what should be communicated is it's been frustrating to hear complaints when anyone has the power to change what's being hosted.

If I recall correctly, Creator’s Spotlight will be discontinued ~ replace this with a system that seeks to establish upcoming games that the community can vote for/propose things for. This will be hosted by a FM Moderator for quality assurance.

Role list, potential game mechanics, and roles/role changes can all be proposed, submitted, discussed and voted upon. Subsequently leading to a new era of FM games, bimonthly, Community Inspired Forum Mafia (CIFM) games will be played. Obviously ranging anywhere from a standard, to SFM.

Some things the community could decide, would be:

• Role list
• Number of players in game.
• Gameplay alteration, (last wills, death notes, whispers, or entirely different/new game mechanics.
• Roles that can be in this game

Other things could be added.

Those are my thoughts off the top of my head.

[TheDebil]

Well, you should decide who is your targeted auditory of standards - if it's veteran players, then it's ok, but if you think standards should be next step after NFM for newbies, they should be actual standards, use only standard roles. Newbies having to deal with roles they never heard before intimidate them and reduce chances they would sign for more games.

as a new player,i disagree to an extent - its not the roles that are intimidating, but other players judging you for not understanding how the game works, and generally giving yourself a bad image and fear of lowering the quality of the game for others.
Different and new roles are actually exciting for me personally - it's fun playing something that i dont understand, it keeps it fresh for me. Im guessing even more so for the more experienced, as they have played more and seeing something new could be really exciting.