Petition to remove Town (Power) and Citizen
Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:15 amI've had many talks all over the TG Discord about this subject, and it continues to amaze me on how Town Power and
Citizen can continue to be supported so thoroughly. These roles may be balanced, but that doesn't mean they have good mechanics.
So what do I mean by this? Well here are the dictionary definitions:
Balance - Defined as everything being in correct proportion. This is to say that every aspect of a game of mafia is completely fair for all sides.
Mechanics - The mechanic, or ability, of a role, is the skin and bones of it. It is what the role does rather than how well it does it.
These are 2 very important things to remember, as they are the pinnacle of creating a good game of mafia. With a balanced game and a good mechanical game, there would be no more games where you get completely screwed over, but rather you lose because your opponent played well. That is why it is so important to look at the mechanics of a role, rather than just the balance.
Now don't get me wrong when I say Town Power and Citizen are absolutely terrible. They aren't all too bad, and they are completely balanced. You could build a rolelist around them with a fair winrate for all sides.
With these points out of the way, let's get into the main mechanics, starting with Town Power. The problem is the way it distributes skill. A faction needs to be a combination of all the player's skill put together. If you are the mafia, and all 3 players know what to claim, when to claim, who to visit, and how to make a great fake will, then you should win over a town who is built upon 1-2 good players who scumread the mafia with the rest of the town not voting at all. However, with Town Power, this isn't always the case. If one of these so-called "good players" gets Jailor, they kill out the mafia. But if one of these so-called "nubs" gets Jailor, you get a dead townie and a murdered Jailor. Just think about the amount of damage a Jailor does in each of your games personally, have you ever won a game by killing the evils as Jailor, or have you ever lost it all because the Jailor couldn't even write a will? This is what we call swing, where the amount of skill in the role completely changes the game. Now think, how many games have you won because there was an amazing Medium in the game who played out the mafia and talked to the right people? Outside of some double Medium Retributionist on Jailor games, you probably can't think of very many. This is an imbalance of skill distribution, and who, or should I say what gets to decide what is given out? Well, the answer to that question is the Rolelist RNG. Yes, RNG. The fate of the town rests on the shoulders of RNG to determine if 2000 elo gets Jailor or 1200 elo.
So what do we do with the current Town Power roles? Welp, let me give you my personal rundown of each one:
Jailor - Delete it. You combined Ghost with a strong Vigilante and gave it the ability to talk to its target. You did not make a new role, so it is not salvageable.
Mayor - Delete it. You took confirmability, the essence of all evil to town, and made it a role. The idea of town is to find evils, not find all town, so it is not salvageable.
Retributionist - Delete it. Unless you are willing to make lynches clean so that you don't get confirmability when resurrecting, then you will have a problem with confirmability. Same as Mayor, so it is not salvageable.
Psychic - Delete it! Confirmable, nuff said.
Now for Citizen. It has the exact same problem as Town Power, but it is found on the opposite end of the spectrum. A term I have often used is "3-Tiered Town", where there are 3 parts to Town: On top, we find Town Power, the most powerful of the Town alignments. In between, we find the average alignments, including Town Investigative, Town Killing, Town Support and Town Protective. At the bottom, we find CItizen, being the basis of the basic mechanics with no unique abilities. We need to make the Town 1-tiered, in order to ensure that RNG does not determine skill distribution, as talked about with Town Power. I urge you to consider that Citizen is just as bad as Town Power. Think of yourself knowing who the mafia is due to great scumreading, but not being able to do anything about it. You could investigate them if you were Town Investigative, you could attack them if you were Town Killing, or maybe you could roleblock, vote them up, etc. as Town Support, but you are stuck as merely a Citizen, wanting to lynch somebody with no proof. It isn't a fun role to play and has bad mechanics, please get it out of TG immediately.
Do you agree with me on everything here? Of course not, I'm insane! Well, at least tell me why with a *helpful* comment as to why you agree or disagree. Also, don't forget to vote in the petition! I hope with enough votes that we can make a real change! Thanks, I am open to debate!
Rebuttals:
A common argument I've heard is that we should assume that everybody is of similar skill level, but this is not a good assumption. ELO does NOT mean skill, a good player could easily find themselves to busy to play after years of grinding to the top and would be stuck at the bottom of the ELO spectrum, thus allowing this diverse spectrum of skill to exist, with no fault of his/her own. Or what about the beginning of the reset, when everybody is brought back to the bottom, they will be forced to play with players above their level or below their level, and with the usage of Town Power and Citizen, we cannot ensure proper skill distribution. We cannot compensate for situations like these, meaning that we cannot assume that everybody would be of an equal skill level within a game.
Now an argument that I have been given many times is that this is found outside of Town Power as well, and that argument is followed up by the question of "Why should we care about it when it is found in Town Power, but not in the rest of the alignments?" Well, the accusation here is completely true. A Medium does not do near as much as an Investigator for the town. But here we are getting back into the territory of balance. You see, Town Power is made to be overpowered when overpowered roles in other town alignments are the way they are due to a lack of balancing. The point of the Testing Grounds is to find exactly what is overpowered and how to fix it. And keep in mind, no matter how unbalanced a role is, as long as it has good mechanics it can be a good role. The effects of bad balancing can be reversed, the only way to fix a bad mechanic is to delete it, essentially deleting the role with it.
Citizen can continue to be supported so thoroughly. These roles may be balanced, but that doesn't mean they have good mechanics.
So what do I mean by this? Well here are the dictionary definitions:
Balance - Defined as everything being in correct proportion. This is to say that every aspect of a game of mafia is completely fair for all sides.
Mechanics - The mechanic, or ability, of a role, is the skin and bones of it. It is what the role does rather than how well it does it.
These are 2 very important things to remember, as they are the pinnacle of creating a good game of mafia. With a balanced game and a good mechanical game, there would be no more games where you get completely screwed over, but rather you lose because your opponent played well. That is why it is so important to look at the mechanics of a role, rather than just the balance.
Now don't get me wrong when I say Town Power and Citizen are absolutely terrible. They aren't all too bad, and they are completely balanced. You could build a rolelist around them with a fair winrate for all sides.
With these points out of the way, let's get into the main mechanics, starting with Town Power. The problem is the way it distributes skill. A faction needs to be a combination of all the player's skill put together. If you are the mafia, and all 3 players know what to claim, when to claim, who to visit, and how to make a great fake will, then you should win over a town who is built upon 1-2 good players who scumread the mafia with the rest of the town not voting at all. However, with Town Power, this isn't always the case. If one of these so-called "good players" gets Jailor, they kill out the mafia. But if one of these so-called "nubs" gets Jailor, you get a dead townie and a murdered Jailor. Just think about the amount of damage a Jailor does in each of your games personally, have you ever won a game by killing the evils as Jailor, or have you ever lost it all because the Jailor couldn't even write a will? This is what we call swing, where the amount of skill in the role completely changes the game. Now think, how many games have you won because there was an amazing Medium in the game who played out the mafia and talked to the right people? Outside of some double Medium Retributionist on Jailor games, you probably can't think of very many. This is an imbalance of skill distribution, and who, or should I say what gets to decide what is given out? Well, the answer to that question is the Rolelist RNG. Yes, RNG. The fate of the town rests on the shoulders of RNG to determine if 2000 elo gets Jailor or 1200 elo.
So what do we do with the current Town Power roles? Welp, let me give you my personal rundown of each one:
Jailor - Delete it. You combined Ghost with a strong Vigilante and gave it the ability to talk to its target. You did not make a new role, so it is not salvageable.
Mayor - Delete it. You took confirmability, the essence of all evil to town, and made it a role. The idea of town is to find evils, not find all town, so it is not salvageable.
Retributionist - Delete it. Unless you are willing to make lynches clean so that you don't get confirmability when resurrecting, then you will have a problem with confirmability. Same as Mayor, so it is not salvageable.
Psychic - Delete it! Confirmable, nuff said.
Now for Citizen. It has the exact same problem as Town Power, but it is found on the opposite end of the spectrum. A term I have often used is "3-Tiered Town", where there are 3 parts to Town: On top, we find Town Power, the most powerful of the Town alignments. In between, we find the average alignments, including Town Investigative, Town Killing, Town Support and Town Protective. At the bottom, we find CItizen, being the basis of the basic mechanics with no unique abilities. We need to make the Town 1-tiered, in order to ensure that RNG does not determine skill distribution, as talked about with Town Power. I urge you to consider that Citizen is just as bad as Town Power. Think of yourself knowing who the mafia is due to great scumreading, but not being able to do anything about it. You could investigate them if you were Town Investigative, you could attack them if you were Town Killing, or maybe you could roleblock, vote them up, etc. as Town Support, but you are stuck as merely a Citizen, wanting to lynch somebody with no proof. It isn't a fun role to play and has bad mechanics, please get it out of TG immediately.
Do you agree with me on everything here? Of course not, I'm insane! Well, at least tell me why with a *helpful* comment as to why you agree or disagree. Also, don't forget to vote in the petition! I hope with enough votes that we can make a real change! Thanks, I am open to debate!
Rebuttals:
A common argument I've heard is that we should assume that everybody is of similar skill level, but this is not a good assumption. ELO does NOT mean skill, a good player could easily find themselves to busy to play after years of grinding to the top and would be stuck at the bottom of the ELO spectrum, thus allowing this diverse spectrum of skill to exist, with no fault of his/her own. Or what about the beginning of the reset, when everybody is brought back to the bottom, they will be forced to play with players above their level or below their level, and with the usage of Town Power and Citizen, we cannot ensure proper skill distribution. We cannot compensate for situations like these, meaning that we cannot assume that everybody would be of an equal skill level within a game.
Now an argument that I have been given many times is that this is found outside of Town Power as well, and that argument is followed up by the question of "Why should we care about it when it is found in Town Power, but not in the rest of the alignments?" Well, the accusation here is completely true. A Medium does not do near as much as an Investigator for the town. But here we are getting back into the territory of balance. You see, Town Power is made to be overpowered when overpowered roles in other town alignments are the way they are due to a lack of balancing. The point of the Testing Grounds is to find exactly what is overpowered and how to fix it. And keep in mind, no matter how unbalanced a role is, as long as it has good mechanics it can be a good role. The effects of bad balancing can be reversed, the only way to fix a bad mechanic is to delete it, essentially deleting the role with it.