Hey devs. I've been playing Town of Salem for a few years now, logging in over 600 hours. It's my most played game on Steam. Great job on everything you've done so far.
I have an important suggestion based on a recent game. I'm cross-posting from a Facebook group where I posted this.
"I think we need to do better as a community.
Whenever I wanna play a relaxed game, I go into classic. It's typically a braindead game mode for someone who has logged hundreds of hours. Last night I had a really frustrating game there.
I died N1 to SK and asked for LO to be on me because I was spot 1 and investigator and no one else had asked for TP. So, the LO was on me and saw who killed me. They told the town (who didn't listen) and the following night the LO was killed.
I'm sure you know where this is going... SK was one of the last 4 standing (with GF, RT Doc who claimed on D2 and medium.)
Throughout the entire game, the dead LO kept telling medium to write in their will what they said, and be forceful in chat with the evidence, and that the LO said it, hoping to convince the rest that the other person was really SK. SK actually admitted D2 that he was SK because he thought there's irrefutable evidence since the LO was watching me. Most of the town thought he was jester, instead.
Look, none of this is what frustrated me...
What frustrated me was at the end of this game, the entire dead chat flamed the medium SO hard. They kept saying "I didn't know what to do" and so I asked them if they're new? They said yes, I'm new... After they said that I tried telling them that it's okay and they should watch videos to learn how things work, or read wikipedias, etc. but their next message said "I don't think I'll play again." and they immediately left. I tried friend requesting them on the game to let them know that the community is full of fucking degenerates like this from time to time, but I really think they aren't coming back. =\
It annoyed me because TOS can be really fun and mentally stimulating once you get the hang of it. I hate the idea that this person was immediately chased out by mob mentality calling them stupid and telling them to kill themselves, etc. It was disgusting behavior. Happened last night and it's still bothering me.
Just like Ranked games, why the hell isn't there an off-limits "beginners" mode? You can say that's what classic is for, but I mean strictly beginners - that way all of those assholes wouldn't be telling someone just learning to go kill themselves because they cost the town a game in, well, a fucking game.
I get it; It's the internet. People say hateful things, blah blah blah. I understand flaming a person when they *should* know better and don't, but flaming noobs just makes people look like dipshits. Everyone was new at some point. I'd ask why patience and understanding is so hard to have in this game but I've routinely seen the types of people that spawn up and I get these people have nothing better to do with their time than make others feel like shit. I just don't understand it.
TL;DR Stop being toxic to new players. If you're so much better, actually teach them how to play instead of name-calling and having a holier-than-thou pile of shit attitude. Wooow, you know all the rules in an online game. Bravo. You're so much better."
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This post received overwhelming support.
It had comments saying how bad the toxicity was in the community, and while it should never be tolerated, I'm tired of excuses like "Well, if you wanna play seriously, don't go to classic." as if that's a solution to these players being hurtful instead of helpful. While I know developers cannot control the behavior of its patrons, I think there are some additional steps you can take besides the broken report-a-player system. It's important for the developers to also consider how new players who only get bullied are more likely to just give the game a negative review and refund it. There's already so much bad press on TOS review pages with the data breach and player toxicity. Let's make the reviews good again by fostering a supportive community with incentives towards said support.
Currently, you make it so after meeting requirements you can play ranked practice and then ranked. What about an automatic requirement that when you are brand new to the game, you're thrown in to a similar situation which forces you to play Beginners Mode: A mode that is strictly made for beginners? I'm sure there are plenty of ways to make such a mode so it would be good for beginners, and here I'd like to suggest two such ways - one that's more of a "first aid" solution and one that'll take longer to make but would be much more like a proper game tutorial.
The quick solution would be to make Beginners Mode completely identical to Classic, and have Classic require a certain number of games to be unlocked - perhaps 25 instead of the 50 required for Ranked Practice. (Is it 50? I don't remember.)
Since this is only another game mode and doesn't have any new mechanisms, I believe this should be easy to implement quickly, and while this doesn't seem like much of a change, the fact that this mode is intended for beginners already makes it valuable.
As for what I imagine for the proper solution, you can make this Beginners Mode be like Classic with the addition of "helpers" who are veterans of the game -- as spectators. The helper is identified by a star symbol near their name, letting players know this is a special neutral in the game that doesn't actually participate in the game. Players can whisper to the helper at night, during the day, whenever, and ask advice on how to proceed. To not disrupt the game engine, just remove one town role and replace it with the spectator, giving them no new abilities or anything you'd need to fundamentally design besides the ability to whisper at night. I think probably jester is the easiest role that could be removed which wouldn't break down the game's functionality for all players.
To make this appealing to the veteran player to actually want to help others, maybe you have a scorecard at the end of each game upon exit where new players can rate the helpfulness somehow, by leaving a star for the spectator if they were helpful. After however many games or hours, when the player has collected X amount of stars, their helper title is promoted to teacher, or to professor, etc. and they can trade in stars for perks ... like an old Salem style schoolhouse for a house, an apple or dictionary for a pet, a "teacher" skin with a diploma... etc.
I realize there's room for abuse even by those wanting to help... Reports against veteran players in that game mode should get a higher priority than other reports. A higher priority as in being reviewed first, but not necessarily given more credibility. It's important to root out people who are deliberately hurting new players quickly, since with many of them there are no second chances; they'll just stop playing the game immediately. Look at the TOS achievements on Steam... 84.1% of players have won their first game of TOS. Did the rest just abandon the game because they didn't understand it or because they were treated badly?
Just random ideas to bounce around. I know we cannot change the toxicity of the community and I know we cannot rely on report-a-player to remove them adequately. All that can really be controlled is the teaching and educating of newcomers, and maybe initiating rewards to players for "being nice to noobs."
Lastly, this is not a "character role suggestion" so please don't link to that area... It's a teach-and-train measure of a neutral party to benefit newcomers while remaining impartial and strictly in help-mode.