The new ranked role list sucks

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Re: The new ranked role list sucks

Postby alex1234321 » Wed Jan 20, 2021 8:36 am

OreCreeper wrote: Spoiler:
alex1234321 wrote:
OreCreeper wrote:
alex1234321 wrote:
OreCreeper wrote:
alex1234321 wrote:
Paradox12 wrote:
alex1234321 wrote:I think this is actually a decent rolelist, but I would definitely prefer a 10 Town rolelist and possibly an NK (or even an NC if balanced NC roles were ever added). Neutral factions add more depth to the game, which I think is a good thing. The Town is supposed to be the uninformed majority, but with 9 Town and no Neutrals that oppose Mafia it's MyLo D2 assuming that Mafia gets an N1 kill. Also D1 lynches should be a thing and the phases should be extended. Mafia would be very weak with only three members, but Tactical Mafia Kills should absolutely be added and Spy should be reworked so that Mafia can actually use their abilities without essentially confirming people to a Spy. Also confirmability of Town roles needs to be reduced.

But let's just say that none of those balance changes become a thing. Even then, MyLo D2 is a bad thing to have and I think a 10-3-2 rolelist would fix this. I don't think it's good for Town to have an 80% winrate, but the Elos can be calibrated so that the expected change is 0 for all factions. Not all wins are created equal. The only problem with this is that nobody wants their winrate to be reduced to 20% because of RNG, even if that means that a win gives them a lot more Elo. But I still think a townsided 10-3-2 is more mechanically sound than a balanced 9-4-2.

In the current rolelist, it's only MyLo for town if the jailor metas. If they don't meta, they can still execute N2 to make it 7v6 on d3. Also no amount of mafia buffs or town nerfs would make a 10v3v1v1 fair for mafia unless you add stuff like citizen (which would make the game worse imo), especially if there's an NC in play (which has the chance to roll vampires) as well as an NK. Unless you make every mafia member unkillable, they will certainly lose the game, and it would make the problem with the old list of the NK randomly hitting mafia even worse. I feel like NKs shouldn't be in ranked, mafia should always have at least 4 members, and town should have at least 9 members. The current rolelist is definitely the most balanced winrate-wise and skill-wise, since there is a decrease in luck factors and generally speaking, the faction that played better will come out on top.


I meant balanced NCs (Vampires should be their own faction and don't belong in Ranked) and using it as an alternative to NK (although balanced NC+NK rolelists are possible imo). Besides that, balanced Mafia games usually involve Town winning if there are more scum lynches than mislynches, and the other way around for Mafia. Look at VFM. ToS is different, but even with Jailor/Vig Town isn't going to win most games if a slim majority of lynches are scum. And Jailor should be removed from Ranked or massively nerfed since the skill level of the player who roles Jailor can make or break the Town. Also, NK is a massive buff to scum because they make the game much faster, so having an NK more often than not increases the Mafia's winrate. NKs make Witch gameplay much more strategic while also requiring both Town and Mafia roles to prioritize. With an NK, scumreading for Town is much more interesting since it's possible for two scum roles to be completely opposed to each other. I don't think NK is essential for Ranked, but it's definitely a positive. While I think the current rolelist is decent, giving Town such a slim majority and not having an NK makes the game much more dependent on TKs and less about scumreading.t\

If NK is a mafia buff to scum, explain how mafia winrates have gone up since the removal of the NK? Having an NK does nothing for scumreading, they're usually pretty easy to catch and it's basically 14v1 and mafia usually have no problem throwing the NK under the bus to save themselves. Ranked is a competitive gamemode, so it would be the most fair to have only 2 factions since that makes the game more skill-based. I also believe that the current list makes the game more dependent on scumreading than the old rolelists, since town has less room to mislynch, which means they have to be more careful about who they lynch.

If you were Mafia, would you rather have two people dying every night, or one person? Maybe if there's an Arso I wouldn't want them as Mafia but SKs are very helpful to Mafia.

Since Town has less room to mislynch and all sorts of power roles, the game has more to do with the Jailor executing the right people or Mayor revealing and not being killed because TP happened to roll Bodyguard than actual scumreading.

I'd rather have one kpn if it means a reduced chance of mafia dying at night for no reason. NKs also make the game more luck-based, because something like an SK randomly killing one of your maf could really hurt mafia's chances, especially if they were doing a play that would out another maf (e.g. if the maf that got killed was doing a trans play). I don't know what you mean by "actual scumreading", but it takes scumreading to execute correctly as jailor or correctly shoot as vigilante. I agree about the mayor thing, but imo that's just bad role design. Mayors should be able to be healed by docs, I don't see why they changed that, since all that does is make mayor more unbalanced based on what the rolelist turns out to be (if all TPs are doc and there's no trans, mayor is screwed). But I don't really think that's a problem with the rolelist. Also, town having less room to mislynch doesn't necessarily mean they can't lynch, it just means they have to lynch correctly (which also requires scumreading).


NKs are proportionally likely to hit Town and Mafia, so the damage caused by an NK killing people is distributed evenly to Town and Mafia. However, the fact that they speed up the game strongly favors scum since the Town is uninformed and needs time to gather information about players. I don't think the possibility of an NK hitting a Mafia member doing a risky play outweighs this.

"Actual scumreading" probably wasn't the best way for me to describe what I was trying to say, but I meant that by having 10 Townies (and ideally removing Jailor from Ranked), coordination among Townies would have a much larger effect on the game than a TK hitting the right person since the game would depend more on lynching players than killing them at night. Without TK, Town is dead in a 9 Town rolelist as long as they mislynch unless TP picks the right person or something. This isn't to say that Town is too weak with 9 members or everything; I'm saying that with 9 members the game can fluctuate much more wildly and in ways that can often involve luck. Adding an NK to a 10 Town rolelist can compensate for the extra member.


I think that being able to scumread with only limited time to gather information is an important skill in TOS. Mafia's goal should also be to get as many townies killed as quickly as possible. With NK and 10 townies though, both of those get harder, and NK just makes gameplay more luck based. It's no doubt that NK hitting mafia is a 10x bigger blow to mafia than NK hitting town. Also, it's really annoying especially in SK games when the game gets down to a 1v1v1, it depends on the last townie/NE to determine who wins, which has nothing to do with skill. This is much less likely to happen in the current rolelist because it's much harder to reach a 1v1v1 and exes are more likely to side with mafia anyway.


Right now the game is more dependent on certain roles playing well, particularly Jailor but also other TKs. NKs limit the amount of time Town has to gather information, which seems like a good thing based on what you are saying. While they are slightly luck based, I don't think they're any worse than Town roles that can stop Mafia attacks. Should Bodyguard be removed since it can kill a Mafia member N1? I'm not saying that NKs are fine because existing Ranked roles have similar mechanics. I'm saying that those existing roles don't seem to be causing any problems so I doubt NKs would cause those problems. I agree that kingmaker situations are bad, but IK think there would be a detector to automatically resolve them like the current stalemate detector.
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Re: The new ranked role list sucks

Postby OreCreeper » Wed Jan 20, 2021 3:44 pm

alex1234321 wrote:
OreCreeper wrote:
alex1234321 wrote:
OreCreeper wrote:
alex1234321 wrote:
OreCreeper wrote:
alex1234321 wrote:
Paradox12 wrote:
alex1234321 wrote:I think this is actually a decent rolelist, but I would definitely prefer a 10 Town rolelist and possibly an NK (or even an NC if balanced NC roles were ever added). Neutral factions add more depth to the game, which I think is a good thing. The Town is supposed to be the uninformed majority, but with 9 Town and no Neutrals that oppose Mafia it's MyLo D2 assuming that Mafia gets an N1 kill. Also D1 lynches should be a thing and the phases should be extended. Mafia would be very weak with only three members, but Tactical Mafia Kills should absolutely be added and Spy should be reworked so that Mafia can actually use their abilities without essentially confirming people to a Spy. Also confirmability of Town roles needs to be reduced.

But let's just say that none of those balance changes become a thing. Even then, MyLo D2 is a bad thing to have and I think a 10-3-2 rolelist would fix this. I don't think it's good for Town to have an 80% winrate, but the Elos can be calibrated so that the expected change is 0 for all factions. Not all wins are created equal. The only problem with this is that nobody wants their winrate to be reduced to 20% because of RNG, even if that means that a win gives them a lot more Elo. But I still think a townsided 10-3-2 is more mechanically sound than a balanced 9-4-2.

In the current rolelist, it's only MyLo for town if the jailor metas. If they don't meta, they can still execute N2 to make it 7v6 on d3. Also no amount of mafia buffs or town nerfs would make a 10v3v1v1 fair for mafia unless you add stuff like citizen (which would make the game worse imo), especially if there's an NC in play (which has the chance to roll vampires) as well as an NK. Unless you make every mafia member unkillable, they will certainly lose the game, and it would make the problem with the old list of the NK randomly hitting mafia even worse. I feel like NKs shouldn't be in ranked, mafia should always have at least 4 members, and town should have at least 9 members. The current rolelist is definitely the most balanced winrate-wise and skill-wise, since there is a decrease in luck factors and generally speaking, the faction that played better will come out on top.


I meant balanced NCs (Vampires should be their own faction and don't belong in Ranked) and using it as an alternative to NK (although balanced NC+NK rolelists are possible imo). Besides that, balanced Mafia games usually involve Town winning if there are more scum lynches than mislynches, and the other way around for Mafia. Look at VFM. ToS is different, but even with Jailor/Vig Town isn't going to win most games if a slim majority of lynches are scum. And Jailor should be removed from Ranked or massively nerfed since the skill level of the player who roles Jailor can make or break the Town. Also, NK is a massive buff to scum because they make the game much faster, so having an NK more often than not increases the Mafia's winrate. NKs make Witch gameplay much more strategic while also requiring both Town and Mafia roles to prioritize. With an NK, scumreading for Town is much more interesting since it's possible for two scum roles to be completely opposed to each other. I don't think NK is essential for Ranked, but it's definitely a positive. While I think the current rolelist is decent, giving Town such a slim majority and not having an NK makes the game much more dependent on TKs and less about scumreading.t\

If NK is a mafia buff to scum, explain how mafia winrates have gone up since the removal of the NK? Having an NK does nothing for scumreading, they're usually pretty easy to catch and it's basically 14v1 and mafia usually have no problem throwing the NK under the bus to save themselves. Ranked is a competitive gamemode, so it would be the most fair to have only 2 factions since that makes the game more skill-based. I also believe that the current list makes the game more dependent on scumreading than the old rolelists, since town has less room to mislynch, which means they have to be more careful about who they lynch.

If you were Mafia, would you rather have two people dying every night, or one person? Maybe if there's an Arso I wouldn't want them as Mafia but SKs are very helpful to Mafia.

Since Town has less room to mislynch and all sorts of power roles, the game has more to do with the Jailor executing the right people or Mayor revealing and not being killed because TP happened to roll Bodyguard than actual scumreading.

I'd rather have one kpn if it means a reduced chance of mafia dying at night for no reason. NKs also make the game more luck-based, because something like an SK randomly killing one of your maf could really hurt mafia's chances, especially if they were doing a play that would out another maf (e.g. if the maf that got killed was doing a trans play). I don't know what you mean by "actual scumreading", but it takes scumreading to execute correctly as jailor or correctly shoot as vigilante. I agree about the mayor thing, but imo that's just bad role design. Mayors should be able to be healed by docs, I don't see why they changed that, since all that does is make mayor more unbalanced based on what the rolelist turns out to be (if all TPs are doc and there's no trans, mayor is screwed). But I don't really think that's a problem with the rolelist. Also, town having less room to mislynch doesn't necessarily mean they can't lynch, it just means they have to lynch correctly (which also requires scumreading).


NKs are proportionally likely to hit Town and Mafia, so the damage caused by an NK killing people is distributed evenly to Town and Mafia. However, the fact that they speed up the game strongly favors scum since the Town is uninformed and needs time to gather information about players. I don't think the possibility of an NK hitting a Mafia member doing a risky play outweighs this.

"Actual scumreading" probably wasn't the best way for me to describe what I was trying to say, but I meant that by having 10 Townies (and ideally removing Jailor from Ranked), coordination among Townies would have a much larger effect on the game than a TK hitting the right person since the game would depend more on lynching players than killing them at night. Without TK, Town is dead in a 9 Town rolelist as long as they mislynch unless TP picks the right person or something. This isn't to say that Town is too weak with 9 members or everything; I'm saying that with 9 members the game can fluctuate much more wildly and in ways that can often involve luck. Adding an NK to a 10 Town rolelist can compensate for the extra member.


I think that being able to scumread with only limited time to gather information is an important skill in TOS. Mafia's goal should also be to get as many townies killed as quickly as possible. With NK and 10 townies though, both of those get harder, and NK just makes gameplay more luck based. It's no doubt that NK hitting mafia is a 10x bigger blow to mafia than NK hitting town. Also, it's really annoying especially in SK games when the game gets down to a 1v1v1, it depends on the last townie/NE to determine who wins, which has nothing to do with skill. This is much less likely to happen in the current rolelist because it's much harder to reach a 1v1v1 and exes are more likely to side with mafia anyway.


Right now the game is more dependent on certain roles playing well, particularly Jailor but also other TKs. NKs limit the amount of time Town has to gather information, which seems like a good thing based on what you are saying. While they are slightly luck based, I don't think they're any worse than Town roles that can stop Mafia attacks. Should Bodyguard be removed since it can kill a Mafia member N1? I'm not saying that NKs are fine because existing Ranked roles have similar mechanics. I'm saying that those existing roles don't seem to be causing any problems so I doubt NKs would cause those problems. I agree that kingmaker situations are bad, but IK think there would be a detector to automatically resolve them like the current stalemate detector.

Bodyguard killing a mafia member is fine because it means he was able to predict who the mafia killed, and thus he should be rewarded by being able to stop a kill and kill the mafia killing. However, the difference between kill-capable townies and NKs is that townies have a limited method of killing, or have severe consequences for miskilling, while NK has no such limitations. This means that TKs will rarely kill based off of nothing, and TPs rely on mafia hitting their target to do any harm to the mafia, which can be avoided if the mafia simply does not choose the same target as TPs would, and if they attack someone who will obviously be protected, they deserve to be punished. However, NKs can easily kill mafia members who did nothing wrong, or were doing well. In fact, it's way more likely for a good mafia member to be killed by an NK because good players will try to lead the town, and NKs usually tend to target those players. I'm just gonna list off the negatives of NKs here:

1) Random kills, way more random that TK or mafia. This is because NKs are not directly punished for killing someone, and they don't have anyone on their team, which means that with an NK in the game, it's basically down to luck (who the NK kills) to determine the victor.

2) Swingy tide-turning. I see you complain a lot about jailors and mayors having too much of an influence over the game and being able to turn the tide easily, but NKs do what TKs, mayors, and transporters do but to a much larger extent. I daresay that actions of the NK have more of an influence over the game than the actions of the jailor.

3) Kingmaking. No, just skipping king-making situations won't fix the problem, because there will still be situations like the last townie being a mayor, jailor, transporter, veteran, or vigilante that can still win or draw the game depending on who gets lynched (e.g. a vigilante might lynch the SK with the mafioso, then shoot the mafioso at night for a draw).

4) NKs punish mafia for playing well. If mafia is leading the town/acting like a townie, they're much more likely to be targetted by an NK. This means that NKs encourage mafia to be quiet and act scummy so they don't get targetted. In addition, the presence of an NK discourages mafia from doing plays that require multiple mafia working together, since if the NK randomly kills one mafia member, the entire mafia could be outted.

5) Double-teaming. Double-teaming is generally bad for competitive play because it doesn't represent the skill of a faction when there are two other factions teaming up against them. For example, NKs might help mafia at the start, but later switch to helping town. This is pretty annoying and makes the game less skill-based imo.
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Re: The new ranked role list sucks

Postby alex1234321 » Wed Jan 20, 2021 9:12 pm

OreCreeper wrote: Spoiler:
alex1234321 wrote:
OreCreeper wrote:
alex1234321 wrote:
OreCreeper wrote:
alex1234321 wrote:
OreCreeper wrote:
alex1234321 wrote:
Paradox12 wrote:
alex1234321 wrote:I think this is actually a decent rolelist, but I would definitely prefer a 10 Town rolelist and possibly an NK (or even an NC if balanced NC roles were ever added). Neutral factions add more depth to the game, which I think is a good thing. The Town is supposed to be the uninformed majority, but with 9 Town and no Neutrals that oppose Mafia it's MyLo D2 assuming that Mafia gets an N1 kill. Also D1 lynches should be a thing and the phases should be extended. Mafia would be very weak with only three members, but Tactical Mafia Kills should absolutely be added and Spy should be reworked so that Mafia can actually use their abilities without essentially confirming people to a Spy. Also confirmability of Town roles needs to be reduced.

But let's just say that none of those balance changes become a thing. Even then, MyLo D2 is a bad thing to have and I think a 10-3-2 rolelist would fix this. I don't think it's good for Town to have an 80% winrate, but the Elos can be calibrated so that the expected change is 0 for all factions. Not all wins are created equal. The only problem with this is that nobody wants their winrate to be reduced to 20% because of RNG, even if that means that a win gives them a lot more Elo. But I still think a townsided 10-3-2 is more mechanically sound than a balanced 9-4-2.

In the current rolelist, it's only MyLo for town if the jailor metas. If they don't meta, they can still execute N2 to make it 7v6 on d3. Also no amount of mafia buffs or town nerfs would make a 10v3v1v1 fair for mafia unless you add stuff like citizen (which would make the game worse imo), especially if there's an NC in play (which has the chance to roll vampires) as well as an NK. Unless you make every mafia member unkillable, they will certainly lose the game, and it would make the problem with the old list of the NK randomly hitting mafia even worse. I feel like NKs shouldn't be in ranked, mafia should always have at least 4 members, and town should have at least 9 members. The current rolelist is definitely the most balanced winrate-wise and skill-wise, since there is a decrease in luck factors and generally speaking, the faction that played better will come out on top.


I meant balanced NCs (Vampires should be their own faction and don't belong in Ranked) and using it as an alternative to NK (although balanced NC+NK rolelists are possible imo). Besides that, balanced Mafia games usually involve Town winning if there are more scum lynches than mislynches, and the other way around for Mafia. Look at VFM. ToS is different, but even with Jailor/Vig Town isn't going to win most games if a slim majority of lynches are scum. And Jailor should be removed from Ranked or massively nerfed since the skill level of the player who roles Jailor can make or break the Town. Also, NK is a massive buff to scum because they make the game much faster, so having an NK more often than not increases the Mafia's winrate. NKs make Witch gameplay much more strategic while also requiring both Town and Mafia roles to prioritize. With an NK, scumreading for Town is much more interesting since it's possible for two scum roles to be completely opposed to each other. I don't think NK is essential for Ranked, but it's definitely a positive. While I think the current rolelist is decent, giving Town such a slim majority and not having an NK makes the game much more dependent on TKs and less about scumreading.t\

If NK is a mafia buff to scum, explain how mafia winrates have gone up since the removal of the NK? Having an NK does nothing for scumreading, they're usually pretty easy to catch and it's basically 14v1 and mafia usually have no problem throwing the NK under the bus to save themselves. Ranked is a competitive gamemode, so it would be the most fair to have only 2 factions since that makes the game more skill-based. I also believe that the current list makes the game more dependent on scumreading than the old rolelists, since town has less room to mislynch, which means they have to be more careful about who they lynch.

If you were Mafia, would you rather have two people dying every night, or one person? Maybe if there's an Arso I wouldn't want them as Mafia but SKs are very helpful to Mafia.

Since Town has less room to mislynch and all sorts of power roles, the game has more to do with the Jailor executing the right people or Mayor revealing and not being killed because TP happened to roll Bodyguard than actual scumreading.

I'd rather have one kpn if it means a reduced chance of mafia dying at night for no reason. NKs also make the game more luck-based, because something like an SK randomly killing one of your maf could really hurt mafia's chances, especially if they were doing a play that would out another maf (e.g. if the maf that got killed was doing a trans play). I don't know what you mean by "actual scumreading", but it takes scumreading to execute correctly as jailor or correctly shoot as vigilante. I agree about the mayor thing, but imo that's just bad role design. Mayors should be able to be healed by docs, I don't see why they changed that, since all that does is make mayor more unbalanced based on what the rolelist turns out to be (if all TPs are doc and there's no trans, mayor is screwed). But I don't really think that's a problem with the rolelist. Also, town having less room to mislynch doesn't necessarily mean they can't lynch, it just means they have to lynch correctly (which also requires scumreading).


NKs are proportionally likely to hit Town and Mafia, so the damage caused by an NK killing people is distributed evenly to Town and Mafia. However, the fact that they speed up the game strongly favors scum since the Town is uninformed and needs time to gather information about players. I don't think the possibility of an NK hitting a Mafia member doing a risky play outweighs this.

"Actual scumreading" probably wasn't the best way for me to describe what I was trying to say, but I meant that by having 10 Townies (and ideally removing Jailor from Ranked), coordination among Townies would have a much larger effect on the game than a TK hitting the right person since the game would depend more on lynching players than killing them at night. Without TK, Town is dead in a 9 Town rolelist as long as they mislynch unless TP picks the right person or something. This isn't to say that Town is too weak with 9 members or everything; I'm saying that with 9 members the game can fluctuate much more wildly and in ways that can often involve luck. Adding an NK to a 10 Town rolelist can compensate for the extra member.


I think that being able to scumread with only limited time to gather information is an important skill in TOS. Mafia's goal should also be to get as many townies killed as quickly as possible. With NK and 10 townies though, both of those get harder, and NK just makes gameplay more luck based. It's no doubt that NK hitting mafia is a 10x bigger blow to mafia than NK hitting town. Also, it's really annoying especially in SK games when the game gets down to a 1v1v1, it depends on the last townie/NE to determine who wins, which has nothing to do with skill. This is much less likely to happen in the current rolelist because it's much harder to reach a 1v1v1 and exes are more likely to side with mafia anyway.


Right now the game is more dependent on certain roles playing well, particularly Jailor but also other TKs. NKs limit the amount of time Town has to gather information, which seems like a good thing based on what you are saying. While they are slightly luck based, I don't think they're any worse than Town roles that can stop Mafia attacks. Should Bodyguard be removed since it can kill a Mafia member N1? I'm not saying that NKs are fine because existing Ranked roles have similar mechanics. I'm saying that those existing roles don't seem to be causing any problems so I doubt NKs would cause those problems. I agree that kingmaker situations are bad, but IK think there would be a detector to automatically resolve them like the current stalemate detector.

Bodyguard killing a mafia member is fine because it means he was able to predict who the mafia killed, and thus he should be rewarded by being able to stop a kill and kill the mafia killing. However, the difference between kill-capable townies and NKs is that townies have a limited method of killing, or have severe consequences for miskilling, while NK has no such limitations. This means that TKs will rarely kill based off of nothing, and TPs rely on mafia hitting their target to do any harm to the mafia, which can be avoided if the mafia simply does not choose the same target as TPs would, and if they attack someone who will obviously be protected, they deserve to be punished. However, NKs can easily kill mafia members who did nothing wrong, or were doing well. In fact, it's way more likely for a good mafia member to be killed by an NK because good players will try to lead the town, and NKs usually tend to target those players. I'm just gonna list off the negatives of NKs here:

The goal of an NK is essentially to keep a match even between Town and Mafia without getting caught. So if an NK kills a member of the side that's losing, they are going to be punished by shifting the balance of the game further in one side. This may not be severe as the punishment for a Vig shooting Town or something, but a single extra player on one faction is often enough to cause the NK to lose. The fact that they make one decision every night as opposed to a limited number means that an NK that consistently chooses the wrong players will be severely punished. If the NK kills a Mafia member who they think is Town, they will be punished because this would make a Town victory much more likely. I agree that NK misplays can swing the game for other factions, but by that logic it's problematic for you to be punished if a member of your faction messes up.

1) Random kills, way more random that TK or mafia. This is because NKs are not directly punished for killing someone, and they don't have anyone on their team, which means that with an NK in the game, it's basically down to luck (who the NK kills) to determine the victor.
But they are punished. If an NK keeps hitting one faction, the other faction will probably win easily, and the NK would have a hard time winning. Maybe the N1 kill is essentially random, but almost all plays are random N1 other than maybe a Jailor meta (which shouldn't exist).

2) Swingy tide-turning. I see you complain a lot about jailors and mayors having too much of an influence over the game and being able to turn the tide easily, but NKs do what TKs, mayors, and transporters do but to a much larger extent. I daresay that actions of the NK have more of an influence over the game than the actions of the jailor.
I would agree that NKs are swingy because a bad NK can shift the balance of the game heavily toward one side. But that is normally the side that is already winning. As an NK, you want to kill members of whichever faction is winning. So a good NK will make the game more even while a bad one will make it more one-sided. An NK may change the margin that one side is winning by, but it will very rarely shift the outcome of the game.

3) Kingmaking. No, just skipping king-making situations won't fix the problem, because there will still be situations like the last townie being a mayor, jailor, transporter, veteran, or vigilante that can still win or draw the game depending on who gets lynched (e.g. a vigilante might lynch the SK with the mafioso, then shoot the mafioso at night for a draw).
The detector would have to ignore situations with those roles present. Your example is not a kingmaker scenario, and the game would play on.

4) NKs punish mafia for playing well. If mafia is leading the town/acting like a townie, they're much more likely to be targetted by an NK. This means that NKs encourage mafia to be quiet and act scummy so they don't get targetted. In addition, the presence of an NK discourages mafia from doing plays that require multiple mafia working together, since if the NK randomly kills one mafia member, the entire mafia could be outted.
For an NK to be consciously trying to target Town members, the Mafia has to already be losing, so it is unlikely that its members are playing well and blending in. Even then, I doubt that the threat of being killed by an NK is ever even close to the threat of being lynched. Usually, NK roles will have higher priorities than an unconfirmed player who is probably claiming a weak role.
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Re: The new ranked role list sucks

Postby OreCreeper » Wed Jan 20, 2021 10:54 pm

alex1234321 wrote:The goal of an NK is essentially to keep a match even between Town and Mafia without getting caught. So if an NK kills a member of the side that's losing, they are going to be punished by shifting the balance of the game further in one side. This may not be severe as the punishment for a Vig shooting Town or something, but a single extra player on one faction is often enough to cause the NK to lose. The fact that they make one decision every night as opposed to a limited number means that an NK that consistently chooses the wrong players will be severely punished. If the NK kills a Mafia member who they think is Town, they will be punished because this would make a Town victory much more likely. I agree that NK misplays can swing the game for other factions, but by that logic it's problematic for you to be punished if a member of your faction messes up.

1) Random kills, way more random that TK or mafia. This is because NKs are not directly punished for killing someone, and they don't have anyone on their team, which means that with an NK in the game, it's basically down to luck (who the NK kills) to determine the victor.
But they are punished. If an NK keeps hitting one faction, the other faction will probably win easily, and the NK would have a hard time winning. Maybe the N1 kill is essentially random, but almost all plays are random N1 other than maybe a Jailor meta (which shouldn't exist).

2) Swingy tide-turning. I see you complain a lot about jailors and mayors having too much of an influence over the game and being able to turn the tide easily, but NKs do what TKs, mayors, and transporters do but to a much larger extent. I daresay that actions of the NK have more of an influence over the game than the actions of the jailor.
I would agree that NKs are swingy because a bad NK can shift the balance of the game heavily toward one side. But that is normally the side that is already winning. As an NK, you want to kill members of whichever faction is winning. So a good NK will make the game more even while a bad one will make it more one-sided. An NK may change the margin that one side is winning by, but it will very rarely shift the outcome of the game.

3) Kingmaking. No, just skipping king-making situations won't fix the problem, because there will still be situations like the last townie being a mayor, jailor, transporter, veteran, or vigilante that can still win or draw the game depending on who gets lynched (e.g. a vigilante might lynch the SK with the mafioso, then shoot the mafioso at night for a draw).
The detector would have to ignore situations with those roles present. Your example is not a kingmaker scenario, and the game would play on.

4) NKs punish mafia for playing well. If mafia is leading the town/acting like a townie, they're much more likely to be targetted by an NK. This means that NKs encourage mafia to be quiet and act scummy so they don't get targetted. In addition, the presence of an NK discourages mafia from doing plays that require multiple mafia working together, since if the NK randomly kills one mafia member, the entire mafia could be outted.
For an NK to be consciously trying to target Town members, the Mafia has to already be losing, so it is unlikely that its members are playing well and blending in. Even then, I doubt that the threat of being killed by an NK is ever even close to the threat of being lynched. Usually, NK roles will have higher priorities than an unconfirmed player who is probably claiming a weak role.


1) NKs are punished yes, but so are is the faction that the NK is wrongly killing, and NK is not part of that faction. So basically the faction is being punished for something that another faction did wrong. This is not the same as a member of your own faction misplaying, because they are part of your faction, so them playing bad should be detrimental to your team. However, NK misplaying should not screw over town/mafia because NK is not part of either of those factions. With only 2 sides, it is much harder to lose because someone on an opposing team played badly (witch and exe are technically on mafia's side and are essentially part of the same faction, so if they misplay, it's basically the same as a mafia member misplaying).

2) My point is that if one side is winning, it probably means they played better, unless they just had ridiculously good luck, but that's very rare. It would be unfair for, say, mafia to play well and make it a 5v5, but suddenly town and NK ally together against mafia and they lose. Also, "well they should've taken out the NK sooner" is not a good counterargument because that's basically implying that NK is harmful to evils since mafia has to get rid of them early, which is basically proving my point.

3) Even the scenarios I listed are kingmaker scenarios. Why? Because the last townie is still choosing who gets to 1v1 them, even if an evil might not necessarily win. For example, the veteran can choose to lynch the SK with the mafioso, reducing the SK's chances of winning to 0% while both the veteran and mafioso still have a winning chance, even though the SK also lived to the endgame. This means that there will still be many games (more than with the current rolelist) where "diplomacy" will come into play, which is not healthy at all for the game, especially not a competitive gamemode.

4) I mean, NK usually tries to target townies at the start anyway because they start with majority. Only a stupid NK would start by targeting mafia, since each mafia kill swings the game in town's favor way more than a town kill swinging the game in mafia's favor (1/4 vs 1/9). Also, again, the threat of being lynched cannot be compared to the threat of being killed by an NK, because you can, to an extent, control whether or not you get lynched, but with an NK, there is no way to control it. You can make yourself appear townie to discourage town from lynching you, or you can push for mislynches to distract the town from finding the mafia, but there is no way to prevent an NK from killing you (it's not like you can just say "hey NK, I'm mafia, don't kill me pls" to the entire town). This means that getting killed by an NK as mafia has very little to do with skill. Also, you seem to think that it's easy to figure out who's town and who's not as NK, but with no faction members, sometimes that's hard. Like, how are you supposed to know that the transporter claim with 2 transports is actually a hypno with a mafia member in his will? Sometimes you try to kill players from one side but you end up killing players from another because they played too well or too poorly. Either way, this doesn't sound like skill-based gameplay to me.
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Re: The new ranked role list sucks

Postby alex1234321 » Thu Jan 21, 2021 7:52 am

OreCreeper wrote:1) NKs are punished yes, but so are is the faction that the NK is wrongly killing, and NK is not part of that faction. So basically the faction is being punished for something that another faction did wrong. This is not the same as a member of your own faction misplaying, because they are part of your faction, so them playing bad should be detrimental to your team. However, NK misplaying should not screw over town/mafia because NK is not part of either of those factions. With only 2 sides, it is much harder to lose because someone on an opposing team played badly (witch and exe are technically on mafia's side and are essentially part of the same faction, so if they misplay, it's basically the same as a mafia member misplaying). If the Town is winning, you can think of the NK as forming a temporary alliance with the Mafia. The NK will try to kill scum and the Mafia members will prioritize Town over them (for example by not outing them as immune). So if the NK misplays and kills a Mafia member, it is similar to a member of their faction misplaying because they are in an alliance. Either way, why is it okay for me, a Townie, to be punished because a Vigilante decided to randomly shoot another Town member? The only reason I can think of is because ToS is a team game and is about which team plays better. But if you think of an NK as temporarily part of the same "team" as one of the main factions, I think this logic still holds.

2) My point is that if one side is winning, it probably means they played better, unless they just had ridiculously good luck, but that's very rare. It would be unfair for, say, mafia to play well and make it a 5v5, but suddenly town and NK ally together against mafia and they lose. Also, "well they should've taken out the NK sooner" is not a good counterargument because that's basically implying that NK is harmful to evils since mafia has to get rid of them early, which is basically proving my point. Once the Mafia is clearly winning and doesn't need the extra KPN, they should try to find and kill the NK. But if it's a 5v5 situation (assuming NK is one of the scum), it is in the best interest of the NK to side with Town, and the Mafia should know that and play accordingly. The Mafia is still going to win more often than Town, but some of their winrate will be taken up by the NK. If Town starts winning again, then the NK can side with Mafia to make the game closer.

3) Even the scenarios I listed are kingmaker scenarios. Why? Because the last townie is still choosing who gets to 1v1 them, even if an evil might not necessarily win. For example, the veteran can choose to lynch the SK with the mafioso, reducing the SK's chances of winning to 0% while both the veteran and mafioso still have a winning chance, even though the SK also lived to the endgame. This means that there will still be many games (more than with the current rolelist) where "diplomacy" will come into play, which is not healthy at all for the game, especially not a competitive gamemode. That is one scenario that can't really be resolved easily. You can give the Town a draw and the Mafia and SK the Elo halfway between a draw and a loss, which would be weird but wouldn't be a problem. Either way, I would be surprised if there are many kingmaker scenarios involving an NK like this that don't resolve into an easy draw. Even if there are scenarios that can't be resolved at all, these scenarios are not common enough to be a problem.

4) I mean, NK usually tries to target townies at the start anyway because they start with majority. Only a stupid NK would start by targeting mafia, since each mafia kill swings the game in town's favor way more than a town kill swinging the game in mafia's favor (1/4 vs 1/9). Also, again, the threat of being lynched cannot be compared to the threat of being killed by an NK, because you can, to an extent, control whether or not you get lynched, but with an NK, there is no way to control it. You can make yourself appear townie to discourage town from lynching you, or you can push for mislynches to distract the town from finding the mafia, but there is no way to prevent an NK from killing you (it's not like you can just say "hey NK, I'm mafia, don't kill me pls" to the entire town). This means that getting killed by an NK as mafia has very little to do with skill. Also, you seem to think that it's easy to figure out who's town and who's not as NK, but with no faction members, sometimes that's hard. Like, how are you supposed to know that the transporter claim with 2 transports is actually a hypno with a mafia member in his will? Sometimes you try to kill players from one side but you end up killing players from another because they played too well or too poorly. Either way, this doesn't sound like skill-based gameplay to me. Just like anyone else, the NK has to scumread. Has the "transporter" been actively voting with Town and contributing in a positive way? If not, don't kill them. Again, ToS is a team game, and the team that plays best wins. When Mafia and the NK are in a temporary alliance, they will both lose if one of them plays poorly. Even if they don't win together in the end, they are going to work together and take mutually beneficial actions. If one of them plays badly, they are both harmed.
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Re: The new ranked role list sucks

Postby OreCreeper » Thu Jan 21, 2021 9:02 am

alex1234321 wrote:
OreCreeper wrote:1) NKs are punished yes, but so are is the faction that the NK is wrongly killing, and NK is not part of that faction. So basically the faction is being punished for something that another faction did wrong. This is not the same as a member of your own faction misplaying, because they are part of your faction, so them playing bad should be detrimental to your team. However, NK misplaying should not screw over town/mafia because NK is not part of either of those factions. With only 2 sides, it is much harder to lose because someone on an opposing team played badly (witch and exe are technically on mafia's side and are essentially part of the same faction, so if they misplay, it's basically the same as a mafia member misplaying). If the Town is winning, you can think of the NK as forming a temporary alliance with the Mafia. The NK will try to kill scum and the Mafia members will prioritize Town over them (for example by not outing them as immune). So if the NK misplays and kills a Mafia member, it is similar to a member of their faction misplaying because they are in an alliance. Either way, why is it okay for me, a Townie, to be punished because a Vigilante decided to randomly shoot another Town member? The only reason I can think of is because ToS is a team game and is about which team plays better. But if you think of an NK as temporarily part of the same "team" as one of the main factions, I think this logic still holds.

2) My point is that if one side is winning, it probably means they played better, unless they just had ridiculously good luck, but that's very rare. It would be unfair for, say, mafia to play well and make it a 5v5, but suddenly town and NK ally together against mafia and they lose. Also, "well they should've taken out the NK sooner" is not a good counterargument because that's basically implying that NK is harmful to evils since mafia has to get rid of them early, which is basically proving my point. Once the Mafia is clearly winning and doesn't need the extra KPN, they should try to find and kill the NK. But if it's a 5v5 situation (assuming NK is one of the scum), it is in the best interest of the NK to side with Town, and the Mafia should know that and play accordingly. The Mafia is still going to win more often than Town, but some of their winrate will be taken up by the NK. If Town starts winning again, then the NK can side with Mafia to make the game closer.

3) Even the scenarios I listed are kingmaker scenarios. Why? Because the last townie is still choosing who gets to 1v1 them, even if an evil might not necessarily win. For example, the veteran can choose to lynch the SK with the mafioso, reducing the SK's chances of winning to 0% while both the veteran and mafioso still have a winning chance, even though the SK also lived to the endgame. This means that there will still be many games (more than with the current rolelist) where "diplomacy" will come into play, which is not healthy at all for the game, especially not a competitive gamemode. That is one scenario that can't really be resolved easily. You can give the Town a draw and the Mafia and SK the Elo halfway between a draw and a loss, which would be weird but wouldn't be a problem. Either way, I would be surprised if there are many kingmaker scenarios involving an NK like this that don't resolve into an easy draw. Even if there are scenarios that can't be resolved at all, these scenarios are not common enough to be a problem.

4) I mean, NK usually tries to target townies at the start anyway because they start with majority. Only a stupid NK would start by targeting mafia, since each mafia kill swings the game in town's favor way more than a town kill swinging the game in mafia's favor (1/4 vs 1/9). Also, again, the threat of being lynched cannot be compared to the threat of being killed by an NK, because you can, to an extent, control whether or not you get lynched, but with an NK, there is no way to control it. You can make yourself appear townie to discourage town from lynching you, or you can push for mislynches to distract the town from finding the mafia, but there is no way to prevent an NK from killing you (it's not like you can just say "hey NK, I'm mafia, don't kill me pls" to the entire town). This means that getting killed by an NK as mafia has very little to do with skill. Also, you seem to think that it's easy to figure out who's town and who's not as NK, but with no faction members, sometimes that's hard. Like, how are you supposed to know that the transporter claim with 2 transports is actually a hypno with a mafia member in his will? Sometimes you try to kill players from one side but you end up killing players from another because they played too well or too poorly. Either way, this doesn't sound like skill-based gameplay to me. Just like anyone else, the NK has to scumread. Has the "transporter" been actively voting with Town and contributing in a positive way? If not, don't kill them. Again, ToS is a team game, and the team that plays best wins. When Mafia and the NK are in a temporary alliance, they will both lose if one of them plays poorly. Even if they don't win together in the end, they are going to work together and take mutually beneficial actions. If one of them plays badly, they are both harmed.

You're forgetting that NK and mafia aren't part of the same faction. Even a "temporary alliance" is over-glorifying their relationship. It's more like a temporary agreement not to go after each other. In the end, NK and mafia are still enemies, since they don't win with each other. And even during their "agreement" period, NK and mafia have little incentive to support each other, and each side will probably be happy to throw the other under the bus to save themselves. This does not represent an alliance at all, and neither would it make sense for one side's mistakes to harm the other, since NK and mafia are nowhere near part of the same team or even an alliance.

Also, it's not always possible to see if someone has been "actively voting with Town and contributing in a positive way" based on one day. And even if they act suspiciously, they could simply have made an error of judgement or isn't the best scumreader, but they could still be a transporter nonetheless. Transporters are still powerful town roles that would make sense for an NK to eliminate early.
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Re: The new ranked role list sucks

Postby alex1234321 » Thu Jan 21, 2021 9:39 am

OreCreeper wrote:You're forgetting that NK and mafia aren't part of the same faction. Even a "temporary alliance" is over-glorifying their relationship. It's more like a temporary agreement not to go after each other. In the end, NK and mafia are still enemies, since they don't win with each other. And even during their "agreement" period, NK and mafia have little incentive to support each other, and each side will probably be happy to throw the other under the bus to save themselves. This does not represent an alliance at all, and neither would it make sense for one side's mistakes to harm the other, since NK and mafia are nowhere near part of the same team or even an alliance.

Also, it's not always possible to see if someone has been "actively voting with Town and contributing in a positive way" based on one day. And even if they act suspiciously, they could simply have made an error of judgement or isn't the best scumreader, but they could still be a transporter nonetheless. Transporters are still powerful town roles that would make sense for an NK to eliminate early.


If you're NK and the Town is winning decisively, you have almost no chance of winning unless you are quickly able to turn the tables in favor of the Mafia. Sure, if an NK had to choose between dying or killing a Mafia member, they'll save themselves, but the NK would try to defend either themselves or the Mafia member to prevent this from happening, since either way it's almost an instant loss. If you're Mafia and you're losing by a lot, you have almost no chance of winning unless an NK is able to take out a few more Townies. Given this dynamic, it makes sense for one to be punished for the other's actions. Plus, the Mafia probably played badly early in the game, so the risk of being killed by an NK can also be seen as a punishment for playing badly earlier.

While it is hard to scumread based on a single day, it's more important to kill any Townie than to kill someone with a specific role because the voting balance is ultimately what decides who wins. If you're NK and the Town is winning for whatever reason, you are going to kill the player who is the most likely out of anyone to be a Townie. Even on Day 2, the most likely Town member shouldn't be scum. If that is the case, the NK deserves the punishment of killing a Mafia member, and the Mafia deserves a punishment for playing against its win condition. While Mafia members should do their best to look like Townies, they shouldn't actually act like Townies because they would have to push to get each other lynched. The whole point of scumreading is to distinguish Town from scum based on this fact. I'm not saying that NKs should encourage scummy behavior. The goal of scum is to blend in with the Town while pushing mislynches. NKs raise the punishment for failing to achieve the second part of this goal. This is a good thing because it encourages Townies to scumread by increasing the distinction between Town and scum. An implication of this is that NKs make it easier for Town to find scum (only when Town is winning but that's beside the point) based on the day chat. By speeding up the game, NKs make it harder to find scum based on night abilities. So they encourage scumreading over night abilities, which is something that is very needed in ToS.
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Re: The new ranked role list sucks

Postby Emily372 » Mon Apr 19, 2021 10:30 am

I prefer the Legacy List.
Serial Killer has killed the TT Jailor... and now the Town has congratulated that serial killer for no reason.
That TT Jailor has a will covered in blood, making it unreadable...
Since there is no medium, the town lost to the SK.
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Re: The new ranked role list sucks

Postby Cookazoo2 » Tue Apr 20, 2021 3:09 pm

any ranked list except the current one is better
Hiya. I'm a Tactical Mafia Kills supporter.

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