Frustratingly, I just wrote a huge post to get timed-out and lose it all.
I'll summerize. As I said, many of your opinions may be true for a Ranked-based game, however as I said I was focusing on the role as a whole and for Chaos in my opinion. I do know there are many roles that have been changed to benefit Ranked in the past, however, without consideration of how it would affect any other game mode. Considering Ranked is only one of many, it's a bit frustrating.
For example, Arsonist needed a buff in terms of Ranked, due to the 1 and rarely 2 Arsonists that might appear in the game I can understand the low W/L ratio. However, the changes for Arsonist were absolutely dreadful for Chaos as there are 15 "Any" spots, and with the presence of any more than 1-2 Arsonists, (sometimes 3-4) the role became very OP in certain situations. Despite this, we too got the changes.
My point in short is that it will be interesting to see if BMG decides to limit the presence of certain roles in Ranked mode in the Coven expansion, as this may possibly be the best way to satisfy all parties without having to rework or completely take away some of the roles. I am still not denying that there are some if not many of the roles that need to be reworked or improved, but perhaps only time will tell how they deal with all the mixed reviews of some of the roles. Even I have many suggestions in what could improve the Pirate as a whole.
With all opinions, it is important to keep in mind nobody is forced to play Coven Ranked, and being that it's a paid expansion, many people likely will not. BMG could completely decide to ignore all suggestions of Ranked and Chaos gameplay in terms of the new roles; again, only time will tell.
Trusting that we can have a neutral and friendly conversation, onto a new subject which was really the whole premise of this post.Tigerleap wrote:A Neutral Benign role is a role that can win with potentially anyone.
I agree with this in theory, but not in practice. ToS has been a bit controversial in their word choice for some factions. Given that the name of the game is Town of Salem, which is obviously suggesting the Salem witch trials, the game has until now been mafia-town based--it's understandable for them to stretch definitions, perhaps even expected. NB is currently home to 3 roles: GA, Survivor, Amnesiac. Of all of these roles the only truly benign one is Survivor. My understanding of the Neutral factions is this:
Neutral Evil: Roles that *usually* require killing to fulfill their primary goal, but can win with anyone/everyone.
Neutral Chaos: As in the name, complete chaos; no definable boundaries.
Neutral Killing: Roles with the ability to kill at night, can only win with NB.
Neutral Benign: Roles that do not require killing and have the potential to win with anyone*.
*note: I say anyone and not everyone because the only truly benign role to win with everyone is Survivor.
Using these guidelines it makes some sense that he is a NB, as he does have the potential to win with anyone. He doesn't have guidelines to kill any specific faction(s) to fulfill his primary goal, so long as his target lives, which could also be a Survivor. I understand the debate due to the fact that his faction heavily affects this, however if GA is not acceptable for NB, neither is Amnesiac, as he doesn't win with eveyone either, and in fact will lose completely if he doesn't choose a role. The obvious argument here is that he gets to chose his faction, however the problem with the argument of benign is just that: he doesn't have the ability to win with everyone, ever, unless he chooses Survivor, coming back to Survivor being the only truly NB role. In short, the term benign is being stretched by BMG, and this is all just a problem of exact definition.
There is some difference, I will agree, in that Amnesiac gets to choose his faction, however unless he waits for quite awhile or it is apparent that one faction has an advantage over the other, he doesn't necessarily have the knowledge to know the best faction to join. Further, he then can only remember roles which have died so there are often times when he doesn't have the ability to win at all.
For example, if it is apparent mafia is going to win but no mafia have died and he is the NB, he doesn't have a role to choose to ensure his win with mafia. He would be forced to either join a losing battle, or forfeit a win entirely by not choosing.
I wouldn't disagree that perhaps this is all a problem of categorization, and he could instead perhaps be put into the NC faction, however seeing as he does have the potential to win with everyone, I can see the dilemma. Again though, anyone/everyone is the key, here. Benign being ideally everyone, when in reality (in ToS) it's just anyone. He is NB in terms of ToS definition.
Then again, I would argue for the same reasons that Witch (not Coven) should be NC, and not NE due to the fact it is not necessary for her to kill and she doesn't win with everyone and only evils, but then that brings further problems and again is really just a matter of interpretation of each faction's boundaries.