Let's Talk About Medium

[Ezradekezra]

I think medium is just right as it is and I really hope you will reconsider. In particular, the medium's ability to talk to the graveyard is what it makes so unique and interesting to play so please do not take that away. A medium keeps the game more interesting for all those who die early and encourages them to pay attention and stay invested in the game since they can speak through a medium. You can still participate and possibly impact the game's outcome. And yet, this ability also opens up for fake medium claims to mess with the town. I really do agree with the others posting here that medium is just about a perfectly balanced role. Please no medium changes!

Agreed. I feel like any changes should be centered around encouraging dead players to stay, rather than reworking the role entirely. I mentioned the possibility of instantly notifying dead players of a Medium's presence so that they don't leave, but nobody really payed attention to that. What do other people think about my proposal?

[HAWAIIANpikachu]

We can change medium without changing the core.

[MysticMismagius]

I think medium is just right as it is and I really hope you will reconsider. In particular, the medium's ability to talk to the graveyard is what it makes so unique and interesting to play so please do not take that away. A medium keeps the game more interesting for all those who die early and encourages them to pay attention and stay invested in the game since they can speak through a medium. You can still participate and possibly impact the game's outcome. And yet, this ability also opens up for fake medium claims to mess with the town. I really do agree with the others posting here that medium is just about a perfectly balanced role. Please no medium changes!

Agreed. I feel like any changes should be centered around encouraging dead players to stay, rather than reworking the role entirely. I mentioned the possibility of instantly notifying dead players of a Medium's presence so that they don't leave, but nobody really payed attention to that. What do other people think about my proposal?

It doesn't take into account that people may very well just leave anyway

You are trying to answer "what if people leave?" with a "how do we convince people to stay?" proposal, which still doesn't answer the question: what if people leave?

Under your proposal, sure a few more people might stay, but Medium is still SOL in the instance that people leave while dead, so it's not complete

[RedUp]

What about letting Medium see the current or most recent Last Will of dead players. Have this only update at night and freeze at start of day, so it'd behave much like Medium does now if a player chose to stick around and paste their Will for the Medium in graveyard chat.

Leaving players can first update their will with information like the Medusa they visited to end up stoned or if they were witched into the Veteran. Evil players can leave lies in their Will for the town to decide if they trust or not. Fake Medium claims still have an opportunity to fake dead wills and reasonably pass muster. Multiple Mediums would be able to confirm each other with matching fresh wills (perhaps too easily).

This feels like a mild to moderate change to Medium that lets it obtain the same sort of information it can already even if dead players leave, up to their level of cooperation before they left.

[BigSlug]

If dead players were alerted to a medium, and someone is fake claiming medium, it would be really suspicious for said medium if a bunch of townies left anyways. It would strongly imply they saw there was no medium and decided to leave, since they would know if theres incentive to stay. I really want them to keep talking to deadchat as possible, but Medium really is a swingy role. It can either be the most useless town role bar none, or extremely strong. But most of its strengths involve confirming other mediums or nullifying janitor.

[kyuss420]

If dead players were alerted to a medium, and someone is fake claiming medium, it would be really suspicious for said medium if a bunch of townies left anyways. It would strongly imply they saw there was no medium and decided to leave, since they would know if theres incentive to stay. I really want them to keep talking to deadchat as possible, but Medium really is a swingy role. It can either be the most useless town role bar none, or extremely strong. But most of its strengths involve confirming other mediums or nullifying janitor.

not really, people still leave if a medium is present.... medium isnt that strong in AA, and ranked players usually stay for their ELO with or without a medium, so its kind of other modes we''re talking about here.
Its not like town has a better chance of winning, because theres a medium in game, unless the evil factions strategy is ''kill the smart players first''

Most players leave becuase they dont wanna wait out the 15-20 minutes for the game to end, when they could be playing a new game. Having a medium in game doesnt make players more patient, It does make waiting in the graveyard less boring tho (but still boring, to a lot of players).

So the suggested medium change is to either - get information from players who leave
or - to remove dead interaction from the game altogether (in turn ''forcing'' more players to leave when dead and making stayers bored)

Hard to make suggestions without knowing the reasoning behind why the role is being considered for a change up

[BigSlug]

yes but a large majority of players leave before the next night. If they immediately knew of a mediums presense and 2-3 people all left, it'd be extremely suspect. People would also taunt medium claims if there was no med.

[Brilliand]

People would also taunt medium claims if there was no med.

Taunts were nerfed recently, so this particular outcome isn't possible.

[cob709]

General Rework Idea:
Medium will now seance with a dead role each night.
Medium will learn important information about the dead player (Up for design debate here but things such as):
role (hard counter to janitor/medusa/disguiser/no role reveal game modes) - being a hard counter may be too strong
who visited them (lookout for dead people, possibly too strong)
who the dead player visited each night
night ability feedback from each night (maybe limited to TI roles?) forwarding of TI info from each night would replace the lost last will when cleaned/stoned or if the dead player failed to leave an accurate will, also counters forged wills

Okay, sounds like everything a regular medium does but instead of every dead player, only 1 dead player, but the information is more reliable and accurate.
This sounds difficult for the Medium to keep track of, as later in the game they'll receive more and more nights of results and will have tons of information to copy down(manually because they can't copy & paste).
Also, how will it interact with evil roles such as Disguiser? Or maybe a stoned mafioso?

[BigSlug]

Presumably the Disguiser would give no information whatsoever, and the stoned Mafioso would be revealed as mafioso, and who they targeted. I definitely agree on the information overload part, seeing as a lot of it may be useless in the circumstance. Current med wills are already pretty clutter-y.

[Brilliand]

and the stoned Mafioso would be revealed as mafioso, and who they targeted.

Shouldn't reveal who they targeted, imo. It isn't that big a deal for the Mafioso specifically, but in general evil roles shouldn't tell the Medium anything.

I'd even say a stoned Mafioso shouldn't tell the Medium its role, just "This player was not a townie."

[MaybeLaterx]

I think a fun way to keep it vague while fulfilling more or less the same role is for it to see all events that happened the night the player died.

They get the player's ability result ("You shot someone who visited you!"/"Your target is a Spy, Blackmailer, or Jailor") etc. whilst also seeing any Spy-based knowledge ("You were transported."/"You were controlled by a witch!"/"Someone threatened to reveal your secrets. You are blackmailed!"). Some roles don't get results (bodyguards, mayors, executioners) so a cleaned role isn't instantly confirmed. If someone was roleblocked the night of their death, they might not get an ability result either.

This can be used to confirm or deny spy bugs, potentially find witches/RM roles, confirm trans's, etc. It's also fairly easy to fake, making up the final result, but can be caught out in the same way a spy bug can catch people out.
Disguiser doesn't get a result for their night action, so they wouldn't be instantly caught out - however, an attentive med might wonder why an 'investigator' has no result appear for their final night. They weren't rb'd. Did they just afk? Or are they actually disg? This isn't so much a problem for disguising as a TP or TS or TK or some NEs.

It kind of acts like retri in that you pick a dead person and witness their last ability. The player would still need an up-to-date will, otherwise finding out your target is Doc/SK/Disguiser is useless because you don't know who that person is.

Two meds could pick the same target to try to confirm each other, but there are no people to call out a double med game, and one could just lie and say 'Same' to the other guy, and the mafia might already know the information from the dead person. Interestingly, janitor wouldn't know the person's last result, so the medium has the advantage that they can find the final result but the janitor can always know the role. On the other hand, medium not being able to 100% confirm who cleaned roles are (if TP for example) gives the janitor a slight edge in knowledge. Some nights are also very uneventful (i.e. just "You were killed by a member of the mafia.")
---
I will add that medium is my favourite role so I'd be sad to see it go. I love hanging out with my dead buddies! If you want to keep some dead interaction, it might be hilarious to have the dead chat 'vote' during trials. The votes don't mean anything, but the medium can see that certain living players are being voted by the dead. Dead evils can vote town, and dead town can vote suspected evils - but the med can't distinguish who is voting for who (2 dead maf + dead jester might push the town escort, for example. '3 votes on escort? Maybe dead know it's a consort...'). I think this adds fun for players who want to stay, both evils and townies, without really rocking the boat. It's a way of saying "I think it's X" from any anonymous dead person. The med still serves a function even without this, though.

[BigSlug]

The dead vote idea is kind of genius, actually. I don't think it completely replaces dead chat but its a neat idea.

[wozearly]

and the stoned Mafioso would be revealed as mafioso, and who they targeted.

Shouldn't reveal who they targeted, imo. It isn't that big a deal for the Mafioso specifically, but in general evil roles shouldn't tell the Medium anything.

I'd even say a stoned Mafioso shouldn't tell the Medium its role, just "This player was not a townie."

Agreed. It shouldn't be possible to scrape visit or result information from non-Town roles.

The Disguiser sits in an interesting position here, because it appears to be Town - and ideally the Medium shouldn't be able to automatically reveal them just by using the New Seance.

[OreCreeper]

Maybe I can agree with adding the new seance on top of the passive ability to speak in dead chat each night. Keeping dead chat allows your voice to continue to be heard so that if you die early and the rest of the town is dumb that doesn't become as big of a problem.

Edit: I know that the proposed changes overlap greatly with the medium's current ability, but the current ability should be kept as most ranked townies do stay, and since this change is mainly for other modes, it shouldn't affect ranked really so having both isn't a bad idea.

[Ezradekezra]

Maybe I can agree with adding the new seance on top of the passive ability to speak in dead chat each night. Keeping dead chat allows your voice to continue to be heard so that if you die early and the rest of the town is dumb that doesn't become as big of a problem.

Edit: I know that the proposed changes overlap greatly with the medium's current ability, but the current ability should be kept as most ranked townies do stay, and since this change is mainly for other modes, it shouldn't affect ranked really so having both isn't a bad idea.

I'd support this, but only if the new seance could only be performed with people who have left. This way, it won't get too overpowered, but it would still help make the Medium less dependent upon people staying in the game (the reason the devs are considering reworking the role in the first place iirc).

I want the Medium to keep their access to the dead chat because if they only had the reworked seance, the Medium would become more of a Town Investigative role than a Town Support role, and there are already way more Town Investigative roles than there are Town Support roles.

[wozearly]

I want the Medium to keep their access to the dead chat because if they only had the reworked seance, the Medium would become more of a Town Investigative role than a Town Support role, and there are already way more Town Investigative roles than there are Town Support roles.

Being able to access dead chat has some problematic areas, such as multiple Mediums being able to cross-confirm each other and having better synergy than a single Medium in play.

Medium already acts primarily as a TI supporting role and anti-Janitor defence, able to draw info from TIs that the Mafia may otherwise have attempted to silence (albeit with a slight delay) and provide a block against the Janitor's cleaning ability. This would just double down on that somewhat, as most other roles will usually not have critical final night information - which was presumably the logic behind allowing them to see visits and/or outcomes of final night actions, as this could also be situationally useful across non-TI roles. What the Med gains from not having to worry about whether people left or not, it loses from having a good team of dead Townies providing support from beyond the grave. And it's no longer a perfect counter to the Janitor if it can't see someone's role, only their actions - it's a reasonable trade-off, IMO.

The trick is to make sure the Med doesn't act as a hard counter to roles like Medusa, Werewolf or Disguiser in the process. This naturally pushes a bit more towards being able to see outcome info but not visit info.

[OreCreeper]

I want the Medium to keep their access to the dead chat because if they only had the reworked seance, the Medium would become more of a Town Investigative role than a Town Support role, and there are already way more Town Investigative roles than there are Town Support roles.

Being able to access dead chat has some problematic areas, such as multiple Mediums being able to cross-confirm each other and having better synergy than a single Medium in play.

Medium already acts primarily as a TI supporting role and anti-Janitor defence, able to draw info from TIs that the Mafia may otherwise have attempted to silence (albeit with a slight delay) and provide a block against the Janitor's cleaning ability. This would just double down on that somewhat, as most other roles will usually not have critical final night information - which was presumably the logic behind allowing them to see visits and/or outcomes of final night actions, as this could also be situationally useful across non-TI roles. What the Med gains from not having to worry about whether people left or not, it loses from having a good team of dead Townies providing support from beyond the grave. And it's no longer a perfect counter to the Janitor if it can't see someone's role, only their actions - it's a reasonable trade-off, IMO.

The trick is to make sure the Med doesn't act as a hard counter to roles like Medusa, Werewolf or Disguiser in the process. This naturally pushes a bit more towards being able to see outcome info but not visit info.

Rarely more than 2 meds, and them confirming each other makes up for med usually being trash. Also imo getting feedback on whos sus from dead is like med's primary use rn.

[Brilliand]

them confirming each other makes up for med usually being trash.

A role usually being trash but sometimes being OP depending on what other roles roll doesn't cancel out, it's just two different problems in one role.

I do worry, though, that giving the med the ability to "seance" dead people doesn't do enough to buff the Medium in cases where it rolls solo.

[hissingwillows]

I think a medium should be able to see dead players' roles when seanced even if cleaned. They already have the ability to learn someone's role when cleaned through chat, and this seems more like a nerf that isn't needed. Med claims are treated like scum pretty often without hard proof of being real (like two meds that can confirm each other, a resurrected person that can confirm them, though this doesn't exist anymore), there's no reason to strip them of this. It doesn't give them anymore validity than it does to a janitor, who knows roles as well and it will still force town members to doubt whether or not the medium seanced the dead person or if they're actually janitor.

Seeing who visited the dead person is probably too strong... it's like a retroactive lookout that could quickly track down evils. I DO think they should be able to see who the dead person visited, as this is also information that would normally be conveyed through chat. I think the night ability response would be interesting to have as well.

I don't really see a reason for taking away the ability to seance the living. Many times I've found that the seance doesn't measurably save town - it sometimes can help when done at the right time and with the right information, but in my experience it often doesn't play out in a useful way. When it does, it's a nice boon to town, but I feel like it can backfire or just not help enough that it's not overpowered.

I don't want to see medium get nerfed, but I think a rework could be interesting. I think a lot of people find medium to be too underpowered/boring (especially when people quit or only unhelpful people are dead), so I think changing the powers to let them be more versatile is better than de-powering them. I think if the information is something they would be able to have conveyed through normal chat (a dead person's role, visits, and nighttime feedback), the medium should be able to access it. If it's something they normally wouldn't be able to access (who visited a given person), they shouldn't gain that.

[wozearly]

So how's this for a potential balance with seeing roles/visits while treating cleaning and stoning, and town/non-town roles, differently:

1. Medium no longer has access to dead chat while alive, but can seance any dead person at night. They may also seance the living for a conversation once when the Medium is dead (as currently).

2. If the Medium seances a dead Town member, they receive;

2a. Confirmation of the Town member's role
2b. The messages the Town member saw on the night that they died (e.g. Your target was suspicious. You were attacked by the Mafia. You have died.)
2c. Who the Town member visited on the night that they died [ignoring the effect of transports, witching, etc]
2d. If the Town member was lynched, there will be no messages available as they were already dead by the time the night phase comes around.

Basically, a hybrid combination of Spy's bug, Tracker and peeking at the outcome of someone's active abilities if they have feedback in the same way Mediums currently can if the person is alive and co-operative (e.g. getting TI results, confirming if the Doctor's target was attacked and healed, etc.) This would give the Medium the info you would expect to collect from a reasonably competent Town member.

I've suggested results should be from the Town member's last day/night alive, rather than "last night" as if multiple Town members die on one night followed by none for a couple of nights, it's a little harsh if the Medium can only get useful info from one of them.

3. If the Medium seances a non-Town member, they receive a message saying "This person was not a member of the Town".
3a. Except when the Medium seances a Disguiser who has disguised as a Town member. In this case, the seance will confirm them as their disguised role. No messages or visit information will be provided (basically to avoid turning the Disguiser into a double agent who confirms a Town member).

This means a "mislynched" Disguiser will be indistinguishable from a mislynched genuine Town member. The Medium may be able to deduce from missing visit or result info clashing with the Disguiser's will that someone was a Disguiser if they were killed in another way, but they won't get it handed to them on a plate.

4. If the seance target has been cleaned, outcome 2 or 3 apply as normal depending on their alignment
5. If the seance target has been stoned, outcome 2 or 3 apply as normal EXCEPT that no visit information will be provided.

The modification on stoned is to prevent the Medium hard countering the Medusa's pre-Necronomicon stoning ability.


There would be a reasonable argument for the Medium not to see who the person visited because of the slightly tricky interaction this gives with Disguiser (who can't lie from beyond the grave any more) and Medusa (who shouldn't be hard countered in that way). Janitor escapes this because they will in the vast majority of cases have this information from the person's last will if they wish to pretend to be a Medium. Forger will be countered as is usual.

On the flip side, not being able to see visits makes the Medium reliant more on people keeping accurate last wills (not a huge issue) and makes cleaning marginally more powerful as the only useful info the Medium can get is the person's role.


On balance, this would make Med a bit more purposeful in games where everyone leaves, and removes the somewhat overpowered situation of 2+Mediums cross confirming. On the other hand, it takes away some of the Medium's most useful abilities, and sharply limits the information they can get from the dead (1 night of results at best, not the collected views and deduction of dead chat). In the round, I suspect this would act as a Medium nerf...which feels a little odd, given it's not usually considered one of the most influential Town roles.

[MaybeLaterx]

Wozearly and I have pretty much the same idea, and I like it a lot.

I think seeing the target the dead player visited shouldn't happen, just for more consistency. It not happening when stoned saves medusa but it doesn't seem like a very elegant solution. I think the med should rely on a will to see who the target's final visit was - Medusa destroys wills, so you wouldn't be able to see who they were visiting.

I'm not sure if we had the same idea about disguiser... Basically, a disguiser's role would be shown as whatever they disguised as, and it would be up to the med to figure out if (based on feedback) that player was a disguiser or not. (No investigative result from a non-roleblocked 'sheriff'.)

This adds consistency even in games where players leave.

[Descender]

tip2devs: alive-dead interactions make the game worse overall. People shouldn't be able to be seen leaving, and not being able to lynch someone whos left makes no sense, the game should be as unaffected as possible from it
if youre gonna fix medium, you might as well fix that altogether.

[texer]

Now that the Retributionist rework is completed we want to take a look at the Medium. The goal is to remove the Medium's dependency on dead players not leaving the game. While this change will stop players from contributing to the games outcome from the graveyard it will also remove a necessity for Town roles to not leave once they have died. Many members of the community have suggested that this will be a healthier and more fun environment for players. It will also allow the Medium to be a useful role, even if all of the dead players have left the game.

General Rework Idea:
Medium will now seance with a dead role each night.
Medium will learn important information about the dead player (Up for design debate here but things such as):
role (hard counter to janitor/medusa/disguiser/no role reveal game modes) - being a hard counter may be too strong
who visited them (lookout for dead people, possibly too strong)
who the dead player visited each night
night ability feedback from each night (maybe limited to TI roles?) forwarding of TI info from each night would replace the lost last will when cleaned/stoned or if the dead player failed to leave an accurate will, also counters forged wills

Additionally: Should the Medium keep it's ability to open a seance with the living when the Medium dies?

Opening the floor to debate and discussion.

This is a great medium rework idea.

I think that a medium should only be able to seance uncleaned/unstoned Town roles. If the medium tries to seance a disguiser who disguised as a Town role, then the seance should fail. (The medium should not be allowed to seance the Town Traitor, but that's open to debate).

An idea I have is that the medium should be able to speak specifically with the dead town player (if they did not leave). The medium should get all of the night ability feedbacks from each night regardless (I disagree with the idea that mediums will need to keep a long will --for TI roles if the TI was leaving an accurate will the medium will really only need to see the info from the very last night unless the will was forged). I think this won't be that overpowered since the medium will probably only be able to seance a specific dead player once.

Medium should lose its seance once they die.

[wozearly]

I think that a medium should only be able to seance uncleaned/unstoned Town roles. If the medium tries to seance a disguiser who disguised as a Town role, then the seance should fail. (The medium should not be allowed to seance the Town Traitor, but that's open to debate).

An idea I have is that the medium should be able to speak specifically with the dead town player (if they did not leave). The medium should get all of the night ability feedbacks from each night regardless (I disagree with the idea that mediums will need to keep a long will --for TI roles if the TI was leaving an accurate will the medium will really only need to see the info from the very last night unless the will was forged). I think this won't be that overpowered since the medium will probably only be able to seance a specific dead player once.

Medium should lose its seance once they die.

As I understand it, the general aim is to rework the Medium to operate broadly as it does now (give or take) but without needing to rely on the dead sticking around to talk to them - and ideally scotching the issue where multiple Mediums can too easily cross-confirm each other.

On that basis, it would make sense that the Medium continues to be able to seance cleaned/stoned roles to collect some information from them. Otherwise it boosts the Janitor/Medusa, who are already more influential on the game's outcome than most other supporting roles for Mafia/Coven. However, taking the opportunity to stop the Medium hard-revealing the Medusa is probably a good step IMO.

If the Medium seances a Disguiser and it fails, that 100% confirms them as a Disguiser. I personally think that's too powerful, especially in the absence of additional buffs to the Disguiser role, and why my thinking was to confirm the Disguised role but provide no other information; not a perfect solution, but the closest we can get to the current balancing without also needing to rework Disguiser. Similarly, I'm not a fan of the Medium getting all of the dead person's info from every night; not only is that excessive to wade through given most of it will be in the last will, but yet again it comes back around to hard countering the Disguiser. It would be more justified for cleaned/stoned roles but, again, I don't think the benefit outweighs the drawbacks.

Speaking to the dead person if they're still alive while seancing is nice on paper, but retains cross-confirming of multiple Mediums (even if it may be delayed by a night if Meds seance different people) and so I'd rather see it gone on that basis. I can take or leave the Med having one last seance to the living while dead. There are reasons to remove it, but as the Med isn't really in need of nerfbat attention I would probably be inclined to leave it in for now and revisit further down the line as needed.