Gooose26 wrote:orangeandblack5 wrote:Gooose, at no point was I attacking your presence in the community.
I'm just stating that the allegation that I have no idea what I'm talking about is provably unfounded, and that's a lot bigger than purely TG. Nowhere do I say you haven't done way more for TG, nowhere do I say you have less right to talk about it - ironically, that has literally been entirely you. I'm not out here to negate opinions, but I have no qualms about defending my own.
Side note, I wasn't even a founding member of TG. I was brought on after just like everyone else.
These are good points from your personal viewpoint, but I'd argue that from my personal viewpoint, certain comments can be interpreted differently. The point that matters is that I can tell that your points have intellectual thought behind them and that you aren't trying to ad hominem me.
Hopefully this is the end of this part of the discussion.
Gooose26 wrote:orangeandblack5 wrote:So yes, I have "the gall" to stand up to what amounts to petty bullying by pointing you towards my experience and status in the community. God forbid I imply I might not be a random nobody just because I've been doing this for years and have earned a solid reputation over that time. I'm literally not doing anything to attack you or your views, and yet you're acting like I'm using my status to wreak havoc. I hold no power over TG, and nobody holds anything over BMG, so I'm not sure what exactly you're scared of - but it really needs to stop.
Nobody is going to take my side in this because I've become something of an outcast in certain parts of these forums, and that's probably for good reason, but I don't like some of the ways you've referred to yourself. They seem elitist, and my response was probably a bit rash or headstrong, but I don't think that you need to build a reputation to be a good balancer. And I don't think a good reputation makes you a good balancer either. I'd make the argument that balancing is an art; it requires thought, creativity, a positive mindset, patience, logic, etc. Anybody can become a great balancer. The way you referred to your experience felt to me like you were justifying an intellectual authority. If that's not how you meant it, then I apologize for my careless response.
Yeah, I'm in no way saying that my opinion is any "better" than yours, just that writing mine off so easily is not okay - both in general to anyone, really, but also to someone who has put in plenty of time to thinking about these kinds of things but happens to hold a differing opinion on certain points. That's an echo chamber mentality and it really never leads anywhere good. However, I fully accept your apology. Lord knows I've certainly made mistakes and overreacted to things before, wouldn't hold it against you. Glad we can move on.
Gooose26 wrote:orangeandblack5 wrote:Regardless, however, I think your implication that only balance affects meta and the inverse is just wrong is, well, also unfounded. Things are rarely that simple. Game design certainly isn't one of those rare cases. Besides, it is not any less possible to balance a game with Citizens than a game without them, and in fact it's easier to do so because there is less swing. So if balance really trumps all, you should be on the side of Citizens.
I think it is a simple statement that summarizes a complex ideology. It's like saying E=MC squared, which looks simple, but looking at the math behind it, it's everything but simple. The size of our posts is enough to point that out. I believe you are defining balance different than I am. Obviously, (and this disclaimer because I don't want it to seem like I'm defining how you view balance, I'm just defining my side here and from my perspective it seems we aren't in the same spot) I don't know how you define balance, the idea in my mind is that we can can take two asymmetrical factions, evils and town, and give them equal (balanced) win rates, without allowing cheap metas to occur, exploitations of core mechanics, or anything that is not the intended way for the game to be played.
My point in saying this is that there is more to it than simply how powerful the faction is, it's also about the use of mechanics.
If we wanna get technical, it's actually E^2=(m*c^2)^2+(p*c)^2, which I think pretty much plays into my point lol - things are rarely that simple.
That being said, I pretty much agree with the rest of this statement, sans the fact that I don't think balance necessarily implies exactly equal winrates - and if it does, then I don't think we should strive for that part of the package. What is equal and what feels fair are often different (see how the RNG in games like Fire Emblem/XCOM tells you one number but the actual chance is significantly higher, to align with how players feel about the numbers on the screen).
Gooose26 wrote:orangeandblack5 wrote:As it is, balance is not the end-all-be-all of game design. If you actually evaluate your own arguments against Citizen, they are all either relating to the concept of even mechanics or the subjective idea of "fun", so you are clearly aware of this. There are many many answers to any game design question, and they're each going to have their own pros and cons. To out-of-hand dismiss somebody for a perceived focus on an area that is in your personal opinion not the most important is just childish.
I probably have said that some people don't find the role fun, but I typically only say that as a counter-argument to people who say they find the role fun. If you asked me why Citizen is unbalanced, I would not bring up anything about how fun it is. Really my only main argument is about distribution of skill across unequal roles, which applies to Town (Power) just as much as Citizen, which is why I roped both of these concepts into the same thread.
To be fair, your OP literally does bring up how "not fun" it is, so I think it's game.
That aside, however, I don't think that every role needs to be roughly equivalent in power. There are many facets of player skill that relate to managing the power dynamics between various roles, and although you can say that the difference between your Town's best and worst player rolling Jailor may be huge and be correct, it is just as true that the evil player that can correctly determine which town players are stronger roles without them having claimed yet to eliminate them early should be rewarded. Similarly, if we assume that Citizen does exist, then a heavier emphasis is placed on scumreading, a skill central to the core conceit of Mafia, and managing the power dynamics of the game, whether that be baiting a kill as Citizen or finding the real PRs as scum. So while I get where you are coming from, I would argue that a game that tests a more diverse range of skills is ultimately going to be more interesting than one where everyone is on a roughly even playing field.
And while this may seem sacrilegious to the idea of balance, it is important to remember that A balance is not the only factor and B the game is inherently uneven. This is not a 1-on-1 test of skill, nor is it two evenly-sized teams competing, nor is it even two asymmetric but roughly even teams (via the presence of Neutrals [which I will get to in a minute]). The game is already inherently going to be unbalanced by virtue of having unclearly defined lines and a heavy dosage of RNG when randing the role list. While we should strive to maintain balance to a healthy degree, we should not let that fool us into thinking a more balanced game is always better. Flipping a coin is pretty damn balanced (usually), but it's not particularly interesting, nor does it test very many skills or even require all that much from the player. Indeed, gambling is significantly less balanced, yet is significantly more popular, because the people designing these games know that being on an even playing field is not their players' number one priority (although they obviously don't want to skew things
too far in the house's favor either - again, it's a balancing act [pun unintended]).
Gooose26 wrote:Kirize12 wrote:orangeandblack5 wrote:Honestly treating NK as a full-fledged faction is a mistake in my eyes. They exist to speed up the game, not truly to win. Sad but true, and also the reason I'd support removing Neutrals from Ranked entirely.
Agreed
This is what I call “loser theory”. If you are here accepting that a 15th of the rolelist is simply going to ruin somebody’s experience every single game, I’d argue that you don’t have the mindset to problem solve or work with others to build solutions. You’re simply accepting that Town of Salem will never be balanced and that it is people like you who derail every balance discussion that takes place.
Balancing isn’t a yes or no question, it is a question of how. The start of every suggestion is a belief that the game can be improved from it’s current state, whether physically in the game or just in theory on the forums. At the very least, this is me, a realist, trying to convince you, pessimists, that there is an underlying meaning. You guys aren’t visionaries.
Gooose26 wrote:There are plenty of ways to fix something, I agree, but I would argue that not everything can be fixed; bad ideas need to be scrapped. One common argument against the Blackmailer is that hearing whispers is a bad mechanic, and chat blocking is a bad mechanic. Rather than go off on another discussion, let's just assume that is true for the sake of the argument. At that point, we can't fix the Blackmailer, because the entirety of its core is bad. We just have to make a new role. In other words, there are concepts in Town of Salem that will not be balanced no matter what we suggest to improve it, they simply must be removed and replaced with better ideas, or reworked to a point that they are no longer recognizable.
Gooose26 wrote:orangeandblack5 wrote:To then claim that others can't see the full picture? That they're "pessimistic" or closed-minded because they think there are different solutions than your own? That's my problem here.
The point that I made here that you are referring to was about NK. You've accepted that it can't be fixed. To me that's just lazy. My question to you is,
what part of NK is unfixable?
I haven't accepted that NK cannot be fixed - I have reached the conclusion that it is a bad mechanic at its core, and the game would be better off with it gone, as you suggest may be ideal for Blackmailer.
It is a fact that this game could be changed to give NK a more fair shot at winning. Hell, Throne of Lies, probably the largest competitor to Town of Salem, has the opposite problem - their Neutral Killer classes win
too much. Skilled ToL players report NK winrates of 40-50% or higher, which is just insane to think about. So I'm very aware that, if the two extremes provably exist, then there is probably a way to find a middle ground.
I just don't think it's worth it. Even from a pure opportunity cost standpoint, taking the time to try and balance this game to give NK a more fair shot without being too strong is something that, frankly, I don't think the game will realistically achieve if they prioritize it for the next year. There is no track record here that gives me confidence it will realistically be done right, much less in any reasonable time-frame. So from that point entirely, we're probably much closer to a more balanced game sans NK than we are with one.
Furthermore, however, there are more gameplay opportunities revolving around scumreading, finding connections between players, analyzing why certain kills were made, and making coordinated plays when there is not a NK to throw a wrench in things. In the NK's case, I'd argue that the types of skills it promotes and the new opportunities it presents to players is a net loss for the distribution of skills required by the game.
Without getting too off topic from the thread we're in, the idea that this is a "Loser's Theory" misses the point entirely. The idea isn't to accept that NK will ruin that 15th player's game at all, as it is to instead make the large-but-ultimately-positive (in my opinion at least) change of
removing the NK, allowing more focus to be placed on the central Town vs. Mafia conflict. This is a win for that 15th player, and, at least in my eyes, a win for the focus of the game.
So yes, I understand that the game can be improved from its current state. I'm not being pessimistic, nor am I giving up - I am making the suggestion to remove NK from Ranked, with the idea that the benefits it brings can be built off of to ultimately better the experience for every player.
In a way, I'd argue that makes me more of a visionary than if I were arguing to keep NK in Ranked just because it has existed to this point, with the promise that we could balance it. Sure, we can - but I think that's trading potentially much larger benefits just to maintain a status quo, when either one is just as balance-able in the long run.
Gooose26 wrote:orangeandblack5 wrote:At this point you probably would be unable to explain my thoughts on having Cits in TG/ToS to a satisfactory level, and I am in fact pretty sure that if you tried to explain my views you'd get a lot of fundamental things wrong. And that's kind of the point of having a discussion - but that's really hard when you're out here dismissing people out of hand in a show of flagrant hypocrisy.
Citizen is a necessary evil for games like Forum Mafia. If every role had abilities in a setting where discussion takes place at a very high level, and every action gets analyzed to some extent, then the mafia would simply be overwhelmed by a town that can confirm itself way too quickly. Literally any information in these games is milked to the maximum. Luckily, Citizen allows a rolelist to feature a majority faction without giving everybody power roles that can potentially devastate a mafia game.
Citizen is also great because it brings the game back to a state of how the game should be played.
It defines a proper culture. I remember returning to Town of Salem a year ago, after not playing for a long time, and I simply couldn't respect the game anymore because I'd been exposed to Forum Mafia. Whenever I would use a scumread, or I wouldn't immediately appeal to the massclaim meta, I was assumed to be evil. If we were to introduce Citizen to this format, you would find that those playing Citizen will start to scumread a lot more.
The use of abilities should be a result of proper scumreading, deception, etc. It should not work as a replacement for these things. In Town of Salem, abilities have become a replacement. Whenever I play(ed) Forum Mafia, I would look for VFM games for this reason. I love the culture of these games.
Citizen is also easy to balance (Obviously this is throwing away all of my arguments against Citizen, but I'm taking your perspective when saying this). A role with no abilities would work as a standard for where the line can be drawn for a balanced game. Let's walk through it, starting with the basics. Where is a healthy game? 8 citizens vs. 4 goons? 9 citizens vs. 5 goons? Now that we've established this, we can add in a few power roles. We can gauge the effect that this has on the game. Now we can add in a few more, and a few more. And that's how we'll be able to build a balanced environment. That's why TG held tests, it allowed us to study how each role effected the game and determine what changes needed to take place.
For those who say it is not fun, this is also not a great argument. It is my opinion that these people often do not know how to scumread. Just because you have no abilities in your role card does not mean that you do not have an ability to do anything. You can read in between the lines. I would make the argument that having abilities is a distraction; you have to worry about those dang abilities instead of scumreading the game. In a game that lasts what, 20 minutes or so? There is at least enough content for a few hours of analysis.
This is basically parroting my exact feelings (sans the "necessary evil" bit, I suppose). So clearly you get where I'm coming from.
Which is why I really don't understand where this comes from:
Gooose26 wrote:orangeandblack5 wrote:Sounds like you haven't played Citizen ever lmao
It's definitely a great role, is super fun to play, and lets you do a lot that you can't really justify doing with many other roles
That being said
I think you're in the wrong part of the forum lmao
Name one ability that you are given when you roll the Citizen that you are not given when you roll any other Town role in Town of Salem. Your argument is based on meta play that you’ve experienced. You’ve built a bias to how the game of mafia should be played based on this experience, and it may be an effective style, but it’s not a standard of balance. You’re now indirectly enforcing this bias on others because you are using it as a standard of balance and it is not getting the whole picture from an aggregate perspective. That’s where FM and TG split on the topic: FM looks at meta while TG looks at balance.
You think it is a great role,
you think it is super fun to play. Lots of others do not think it is a great role and lots of others do not think it is super fun. These are both entirely subjective statements that have no relation to the balance of the role. You also haven’t defined what “great” means. Does it mean great as in powerful? Citizen is not nearly as great as Jailor then. Does it mean great as in balanced? Well I’d argue that it is simply too weak. Does it mean great as in useful? Well, it definitely is useful for hosts who can’t make a balanced rolelist. All of this to say that this argument is irrelevant, at least to this section of the forums.
One ability you're given when you roll Citizen but not as any other PR? The ability to die. If you roll a PR in a game with anything but a small handful of citizens, your life is now intricately linked to the success of your faction. There's a reason that PRs often give off many of the same tells as scum - they are also trying to hide from the spotlight, trying to live as long as possible, while a Citizen is well within their rights to put all their cards on the table from the start. Additionally, you yourself note that the buttons and abilities can be distractions from actually scumreading in the game, and that is exactly correct. While you could in theory ignore your abilities completely as a PR, you'd be amiss to do so in most cases. Citizen has by far the most
freedom of any role in setups where it is known to exist, and that is certainly worth something and undoubtedly a place where skilled players will shine. That much isn't subjective, and is devoid of any reliance on meta. These are universal constants in any game where players are actually trying.
What
is subjective is how valuable those aspects are, and if they're worth the associated downsides.
So when I say Citizen is "great", I am referring to my own thoughts of it being largely positive, yes. But that's not unsubstantiated, and you clearly know and understand this. Not sure why there's such a visceral reaction to me saying as much, especially given I wouldn't even push for Citizen to be added to Town of Salem, for a number of reasons. I think it is certainly a powerful tool when used right, and I have faith that the TG can make use of that tool for testing purposes to positive results. Beyond that, I clearly weight which aspects of the game are more important a bit differently than you do, but at the end of the day no one person really has direct control over any of this, so all we really ought to do is talk about it. That's much more productive than just assuming the other is wrong.
![[Forum Mafia VII] Winner](./images/ranks/flair-fm7.png "[Forum Mafia VII] Winner")
