shapesifter13 wrote:Medium and Ret:
I saw some posts mentioning these roles because they also allow dead to living interaction, and that some players view this mechanic in general as bad. We know that Ret is one of the most problematic roles, and it is slotted for a redesign now that Unity is out. We do need to get some bug fixes in for Unity first though. As for Medium it is in a similar spot to Ret almost. Many players either view it as wildy underpowered, or overpowered. Medium is another role that is on our radar for a potential redesign.
Let me start by saying that I think that Medium is in an okay spot right now in the context of Town of Salem. It hasn't been something that I would have suggested get changed with any sort of high priority, but it appears the dev team is at least considering the possibility.
And that's pretty exciting.
First off, the main issues I have with Medium:
- One Medium is not super strong and is easy to counterclaim. Two Mediums turn both into confirmed Town, making the pair significantly stronger than the single role in a way no other role can really self-combo (excepting perhaps protective chains, which are another topic worth discussing another day)
- Medium devalues the Mafia's main weapon - the nightkill. Old Retributionist was worse, sure, but the entire reason the Mafia can kill in the first place is so they can remove voices that could help bring about their downfall. Medium means the people you kill to silence can keep on talking.
- If the Mafia want to silence the dead, even killing the Medium still doesn't accomplish that, because the Medium can just seance to pass along info even after you kill them too! This is by far one of the most underrated abilities in the entire game and means that, when Medium spawns, the dead are effectively impossible to silence no matter what the scum do.
- The kinds of players that only stick around while they're dead because there could be a Medium will be much happier if neither role exists and they can just leave and start another game as soon as they are dead. Removing these interactions with dead players simply allows more people to spend more time playing more games, a net benefit for everyone. In other words, you no longer need to worry about the current gray area of people who leave while they're dead, and can just encourage it with no qualms. Ideally, you could just leave games while dead, and if your team won it would be counted as such on your profile after the game ended, with the appropriate amount of MP being added to your account.
- Many people find Medium very boring to begin with.
And for these downsides it doesn't bring a lot of positive value to the game - it takes zero brainpower to just pass along pertinent info that other players are telling you to pass on, and just about the only choice you have to actively make is who to seance after you have died. Other roles like Spy may suffer from this passivity worse, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't also look at how to fix it here.
So yeah, I for one would be all for removing all dead interaction and just encouraging people that want to get right back into the action to just go queue up for another game.
As for what to do with this role - well, role design has never been my forte, but it's very clear to me that any sort of Medium change that removes its ability to interact with the dead would be nothing short of replacing the role entirely, and luckily there is an entire subforum filled with literally thousands of ideas to that extent. Some of them are probably even good! I'll give it some thought, and if I think of anything I think really fits I'll edit it in. Interested to hear what others would suggest if the devs do go through with this rework.
So sure, I don't think I'd necessarily call the Medium change on its own high-priority - but as long as we're re-evaluating whether or not dead interaction has a place in this game at all, might as well look at it.