ATTENTION, BMG: This is how you can REALLY stop Jailor Meta

[Venusupreme]

Give Forger a second night ability. Instead of Forging someone, they can watch somebody like a Lookout. Also, undo the recent LO nerf, because having it be an RNG based role is not the way the game should work. Instead, make Lookout (but NOT Forger) unable to identify any visitors if they see more than three. They’ll see the NUMBER of visitors, but won’t be able to tell who they are.

If you do this, you're killing THREE birds with one stone.

1. This will make Lookout MUCH harder to confirm, since now there is an evil role that can easily fake it. This is especially true if a Mafia role visits the Jailor N1, even if they aren't a Forger, because any Spies will see that a Mafia did visit the Jailor, and therefore any Lookout claims aren't confirmed to be Town.

2. This buffs Forger, which is already one of the weakest roles in the game. Now it has a useful ability, and it can use the knowledge of who is visiting who to deduce a target's role in a way that doesn't overlap with the Consigliere (or require having one). While Lookouts won’t be able to identify more than 3 other visitors on anyone, the Forger will be able to identify them all, giving mafia a list of any townies who decide to visit the jailor n1 (IE: town protectives). Also, Forger is no longer screwed if found by an Investigator, since currently, not being able to fake Lookout well is a death sentence.

3. This DRASTICALLY decreases the power of the Jailor meta, since Lookouts and TPs can't just be confirmed right off the bat now that LO claims aren't instantly trustworthy.

Also, while you're at it, make Jailor unable to jail the same person 2 nights in a row so it can't roleblock 1 mafia/coven for as long as necessary when looking for other members of their faction.

Now, I'll address the most common counterarguments to what I've suggested here.

"A Mafia Lookout should be its own role!": See, the problem with that is that if you make a new Mafia role, you leave Forger as useless as it is now. Not only that, but you'd have to incorporate that new role into Investigator results.

"Forger should be buffed in a way that makes its own forging abilities stronger!": In theory, that sounds like a good idea, until you realize that there's virtually no way of doing that except for either making them become a Consigliere clone or allowing them to steal the will of someone at night and change it accordingly. The latter option won't work because the new meta will be for all townies to keep their will in their notes (or just in a separate window) instead of in the in-game will, and only post it into their actual will during the last few seconds of the night so that any Forgers won't see it if they try to steal it. Then they'll remove their will again and the cycle will continue.

"What if, to nerf Lookout, we just didn't let them see ANY visitors if more than 3 showed up?: This on its own wouldn’t be enough, however I now believe that this, along with my forger buff, are the correct way to go about this.

Since you're reading this, BMG, please stop taking suggestions on how to balance the game from people who only play All Any. All Any is MEANT to be chaotic, not to be balanced.

I'll happily refute any counterarguments left in replies here. Until then, this is Queen Sixteen signing off.

[CrimsonKatana]

I support

[TheFluffyWaffleV2]

"Forger should be buffed in a way that makes its own forging abilities stronger!": In theory, that sounds like a good idea, until you realize that there's virtually no way of doing that except for either making them become a Consigliere clone or allowing them to steal the will of someone at night and change it accordingly. The latter option won't work because the new meta will be for all townies to keep their will in their notes (or just in a separate window) instead of in the in-game will, and only post it into their actual will during the last few seconds of the night so that any Forgers won't see it if they try to steal it. Then they'll remove their will again and the cycle will continue.

Change chat logs hehe

I don’t know if I’ve come off as unsupportive of this, but I’m really not. I don’t know how to feel about this. But I like the idea of making Forger actually useful by giving it an investigative ability that isn’t just Consig 2.0.

Also, while you're at it, make Jailor unable to jail the same person 2 nights in a row so it can't roleblock 1 mafia/coven for as long as necessary when looking for other members of their faction.

My opinion on the 2 in a row Jailor thing is:
If the Jailor jails a target 2 times in a row, he MUST execute them. It’s not an option. The exception is if he’s chain jailing a revealed Mayor. Then he can choose to .

Since you're reading this, BMG, please stop taking suggestions on how to balance the game from people who only play All Any. All Any is MEANT to be chaotic, not to be balanced.

Pfft they don’t take suggestions anyway

[MysticMismagius]

Also, while you're at it, make Jailor unable to jail the same person 2 nights in a row so it can't roleblock 1 mafia/coven for as long as necessary when looking for other members of their faction.

*ahem*

TACTICAL MAFIA KILLS
i have heard people say that this change should be made anyway and i don't really have any objections to that i just really think the chainblocking problem would be better solved with tmk and necronomicon passing than with a jailor nerf that only affects one potential chainblocker

[orangeandblack5]

My issue with Lookout!Forger is that it's far and away the most powerful Mafia role

Just watching people is enough to make it top tier

[MysticMismagius]

My issue with Lookout!Forger is that it's far and away the most powerful Mafia role

Just watching people is enough to make it top tier

I've responded to this before with a different role but it bears repeating here

"It would be the strongest scum role in the game by far" is more of an indictment on how weak a lot of scum roles are than it is an indictment on how strong [LO!Forger] would be, as [Lookout] is not even close to the strongest Town role in the game.

[Brilliand]

The big problem with this idea is that it creates a weird hybrid role that is more Mafia Lookout than Forger. Among other things, this strikes me as inappropriate handling of a role that was originally added as a Kickstarter reward.

These three birds should not all be killed with the same stone.

"A Mafia Lookout should be its own role!": See, the problem with that is that if you make a new Mafia role, you leave Forger as useless as it is now. Not only that, but you'd have to incorporate that new role into Investigator results.

No need to address this directly, as the next counterargument you addressed is the counterargument to this.

"Forger should be buffed in a way that makes its own forging abilities stronger!": In theory, that sounds like a good idea, until you realize that there's virtually no way of doing that except for either making them become a Consigliere clone or allowing them to steal the will of someone at night and change it accordingly. The latter option won't work because the new meta will be for all townies to keep their will in their notes (or just in a separate window) instead of in the in-game will, and only post it into their actual will during the last few seconds of the night so that any Forgers won't see it if they try to steal it. Then they'll remove their will again and the cycle will continue.

You just objected to a specific proposal for how to buff the Forger. We have a whole world of possibilities here, that should really be discussed in different threads. For example, the meta you talk about could be defeated by giving the Forger the player's will at the end of the night (at the same time it would be locked in if that player died), and forcing the Forger to spend multiple nights on one person.

BasicFourLife also proposed a decent Forger buff years ago that focuses on buffing the "forging" side without giving the Forger any additional information: BasicFourLife's Forger buff

You're trying to dismiss the possibility that the Forger can be buffed without changing its niche, but you're nowhere close to demonstrating that that isn't possible; you've just given up pursuing that possibility because you like your idea better.

"What if, to nerf Lookout, we just didn't let them see ANY visitors if more than 3 showed up?: When I first saw this, I thought it was a good idea too. Then I realized that it was rare for more than 4 visits (the Lookout + 3 other visiting roles) on a target in one night anyway, even if it was a D1 Jailor claim. On top of this, evils could begin to exploit this by just having their RMs (and possibly Witch) visit whoever TP/LO is likely to watch so that it can overload them, which in turn makes Lookout become very weak. Just letting an evil role be able to fake Lookout is good enough of a nerf. Even if you DO this, you still don't change the fact that Forger is practically useless. I'll admit, this change is at least debatable, but for the time being, we should just revert Lookout to the way it was. If Town still has absurd winrates even after Forger is buffed in the way I've explained here, then we can discuss this again

As you admitted this change is debatable, I don't see the need to actually debate it here.

In any case nerfing the Lookout properly is orthogonal to giving the Mafia lookout powers; we can do one or the other or both.

[orangeandblack5]

"It would be the strongest scum role in the game by far" is more of an indictment on how weak a lot of scum roles are than it is an indictment on how strong [LO!Forger] would be, as [Lookout] is not even close to the strongest Town role in the game.

Lookout not even being close to the most powerful Town role in the game is more of an indicator of how strong a lot of town roles are than it is an indicator of how weak Lookout is.

Furthermore, scum Lookout is objectively more useful that Town Lookout. They are not 1:1, and treating them as such is silly.

That aside, note that one scum role being stronger than any other adds a lot of swing, and this would outclass even Janitor by a fair amount. That's way too much.

[orangeandblack5]

My issue with Lookout!Forger is that it's far and away the most powerful Mafia role

Just watching people is enough to make it top tier

not really unless town decides to go with the strategy of placing a large amount of their strong town roles on one person, which people would probably stop doing should a mafia lookout be introduced

even if lookout!forger has an easier time claiming town lookout than other mafia roles, it still isn't particularly easy to simultaneously not be too town sided and also appear town - a good town easily catches on to a lookout claim with bad night actions

considering the actual forging ability is situational utility and overall very weak i would argue janitor, consig and consort are all similarly strong or better

Mafia Lookout basically nullifies Town Protectives as a whole and can easily net investigative roles as well, unless your plan is for protectives to never act at all.

Don't underestimate a non-guaranteed Mafia Watcher, it's very strong.

[OreCreeper]

My issue with Lookout!Forger is that it's far and away the most powerful Mafia role

Just watching people is enough to make it top tier

It's around consig level, and people will start to get suspicious of you quickly when you claim LO on jailor N1 and TPs start dying to mafia. Not to mention it also faces the same pitfalls as consig- vfr reduces like half of the power of the role. Adding it to forger not only makes sense: it is a good complement to the forger's current ability, and forger already has the LO's invest results, it also nerfs the meta to actually be fair to evils while not completely destroying it, buffs forger, and nerfs LO in a way that doesn't involve RNG or killing the role's purpose of confirming town. It's very hard to buff the forger's current ability, and giving it a way to gather info solves half of the roles problems without impacting consig. This suggestion is far better than anything the devs did in the recent patch.

/support

[cob709]

Solution to Jailor Meta:
"JAILOR META IS NOT ALLOWED"

[orangeandblack5]

Solution to Jailor Meta:
"JAILOR META IS NOT ALLOWED"

That was what they did with the Mayor meta, to be fair

[orangeandblack5]

My issue with Lookout!Forger is that it's far and away the most powerful Mafia role

Just watching people is enough to make it top tier

not really unless town decides to go with the strategy of placing a large amount of their strong town roles on one person, which people would probably stop doing should a mafia lookout be introduced

even if lookout!forger has an easier time claiming town lookout than other mafia roles, it still isn't particularly easy to simultaneously not be too town sided and also appear town - a good town easily catches on to a lookout claim with bad night actions

considering the actual forging ability is situational utility and overall very weak i would argue janitor, consig and consort are all similarly strong or better

Mafia Lookout basically nullifies Town Protectives as a whole and can easily net investigative roles as well, unless your plan is for protectives to never act at all.

Don't underestimate a non-guaranteed Mafia Watcher, it's very strong.

i mean, it doesn't nullify them, it just catches them. but yes, it's undoubtedly good for catching TPs, that's one of it's main strengths other than having good potential to claim lookout for credibility. all the TIs except sheriff are usually better off claiming earlygame for sake of confirmability and/or potentially getting scum to kill a role weaker than the other present town roles, so a scenario where mafia catches a TI that hasn't already been outed would not be all that common, and usually there will be higher priority kills even if they do catch TIs except if it's earlygame Spy or something. and often it won't be easy to know if it was an investigative role visiting, or which investigative role it is.

i think the role is quite strong, stronger than any mafia role that isn't janitor/consig/maybe consort excluding non-standard mafia roles, but i do think you're overestimating how strong the role is given consig is universally consistent at catching any type of role and also has an easy time with town credibility; i fail to see how mafia lookout would be significantly stronger than consig. and imo janitor is significantly stronger than consig in a game where mechanically sorting players into subalignments is massively powerful for town and janitor essentially denies it allowing large claimspace and massively reducing the risk of mafia players claiming something that they will eventually regret

You're forgetting we aren't discussing Watcher here

I think Mafia Lookout is about on par with the best other scum roles, yes, and that's why I stress that Osservatore should absolutely be a thing

But what I'm saying would be far too powerful is a Mafia Lookout that can also blank out people's wills (and anything else you could get Forger to do, but mainly that)

It's too much utility in one role

[OreCreeper]

Solution to Jailor Meta:
"JAILOR META IS NOT ALLOWED"

I hope you are joking

[Venusupreme]

Solution to Jailor Meta:
"JAILOR META IS NOT ALLOWED"

I hope you are joking

he is lol

[Venusupreme]

My issue with Lookout!Forger is that it's far and away the most powerful Mafia role

Just watching people is enough to make it top tier

not really unless town decides to go with the strategy of placing a large amount of their strong town roles on one person, which people would probably stop doing should a mafia lookout be introduced

even if lookout!forger has an easier time claiming town lookout than other mafia roles, it still isn't particularly easy to simultaneously not be too town sided and also appear town - a good town easily catches on to a lookout claim with bad night actions

considering the actual forging ability is situational utility and overall very weak i would argue janitor, consig and consort are all similarly strong or better

Mafia Lookout basically nullifies Town Protectives as a whole and can easily net investigative roles as well, unless your plan is for protectives to never act at all.

Don't underestimate a non-guaranteed Mafia Watcher, it's very strong.

i mean, it doesn't nullify them, it just catches them. but yes, it's undoubtedly good for catching TPs, that's one of it's main strengths other than having good potential to claim lookout for credibility. all the TIs except sheriff are usually better off claiming earlygame for sake of confirmability and/or potentially getting scum to kill a role weaker than the other present town roles, so a scenario where mafia catches a TI that hasn't already been outed would not be all that common, and usually there will be higher priority kills even if they do catch TIs except if it's earlygame Spy or something. and often it won't be easy to know if it was an investigative role visiting, or which investigative role it is.

i think the role is quite strong, stronger than any mafia role that isn't janitor/consig/maybe consort excluding non-standard mafia roles, but i do think you're overestimating how strong the role is given consig is universally consistent at catching any type of role and also has an easy time with town credibility; i fail to see how mafia lookout would be significantly stronger than consig. and imo janitor is significantly stronger than consig in a game where mechanically sorting players into subalignments is massively powerful for town and janitor essentially denies it allowing large claimspace and massively reducing the risk of mafia players claiming something that they will eventually regret

You're forgetting we aren't discussing Watcher here

I think Mafia Lookout is about on par with the best other scum roles, yes, and that's why I stress that Osservatore should absolutely be a thing

But what I'm saying would be far too powerful is a Mafia Lookout that can also blank out people's wills (and anything else you could get Forger to do, but mainly that)

It's too much utility in one role

It's really not too much utility in one role. Just blanking out wills accomplishes very little when most Townies regularly post their wills anyway. In fact, generally speaking, when multiple Townies start to die to Mafia without any will, it makes it obvious that there is a Forger anyway. So no, having Forger become the Osservatore is not OP. That, and I already explained why adding in that new role isn't as good of an idea as just buffing the already existing, weak as fuck roles.

[Venusupreme]

The big problem with this idea is that it creates a weird hybrid role that is more Mafia Lookout than Forger. Among other things, this strikes me as inappropriate handling of a role that was originally added as a Kickstarter reward.

These three birds should not all be killed with the same stone.

"A Mafia Lookout should be its own role!": See, the problem with that is that if you make a new Mafia role, you leave Forger as useless as it is now. Not only that, but you'd have to incorporate that new role into Investigator results.

No need to address this directly, as the next counterargument you addressed is the counterargument to this.

"Forger should be buffed in a way that makes its own forging abilities stronger!": In theory, that sounds like a good idea, until you realize that there's virtually no way of doing that except for either making them become a Consigliere clone or allowing them to steal the will of someone at night and change it accordingly. The latter option won't work because the new meta will be for all townies to keep their will in their notes (or just in a separate window) instead of in the in-game will, and only post it into their actual will during the last few seconds of the night so that any Forgers won't see it if they try to steal it. Then they'll remove their will again and the cycle will continue.

You just objected to a specific proposal for how to buff the Forger. We have a whole world of possibilities here, that should really be discussed in different threads. For example, the meta you talk about could be defeated by giving the Forger the player's will at the end of the night (at the same time it would be locked in if that player died), and forcing the Forger to spend multiple nights on one person.

BasicFourLife also proposed a decent Forger buff years ago that focuses on buffing the "forging" side without giving the Forger any additional information: BasicFourLife's Forger buff

You're trying to dismiss the possibility that the Forger can be buffed without changing its niche, but you're nowhere close to demonstrating that that isn't possible; you've just given up pursuing that possibility because you like your idea better.

"What if, to nerf Lookout, we just didn't let them see ANY visitors if more than 3 showed up?: When I first saw this, I thought it was a good idea too. Then I realized that it was rare for more than 4 visits (the Lookout + 3 other visiting roles) on a target in one night anyway, even if it was a D1 Jailor claim. On top of this, evils could begin to exploit this by just having their RMs (and possibly Witch) visit whoever TP/LO is likely to watch so that it can overload them, which in turn makes Lookout become very weak. Just letting an evil role be able to fake Lookout is good enough of a nerf. Even if you DO this, you still don't change the fact that Forger is practically useless. I'll admit, this change is at least debatable, but for the time being, we should just revert Lookout to the way it was. If Town still has absurd winrates even after Forger is buffed in the way I've explained here, then we can discuss this again

As you admitted this change is debatable, I don't see the need to actually debate it here.

In any case nerfing the Lookout properly is orthogonal to giving the Mafia lookout powers; we can do one or the other or both.

I respect you for laying out your argument as thoughtfully as you have here. I'm actually going to enjoy picking apart this one, and that's a sincere compliment

1. Forger being a kickstarter role isn't relevant to whether or not the role should be buffed. If anything, the fact that it was a kickstarter reward means that it is more important to buff it and make it powerful.

2. The reason I like this idea as much as I do is the fact that any other sort of Forger buff is too easy for the Town to work around. And, as stated previously, my idea here nerfs Lookout as well.

3. "What if Forger got their target's will at the end of the night and had to take another night before replacing it" What if the person Forger chooses dies before they can have their will forged? What if they post their will the next day, meaning that an attempt to forge it would be pointless anyway? Hell, confirmed townies would just start whispering a code to other players to write in their will to confirm they were not forged. The only way this could backfire (excluding people being stupid, naturally) is with a Blackmailer, and the odds of Mafia having a Forger AND a Blackmailer are extremely slim.

4. I didn't see BasicFourLife's suggestion before now. I have to say, it's actually good. Unfortunately, while it WOULD certainly be an improvement, and would give the Forger more time to write out a detailed, believable will (something it cannot do currently), it is still pretty much impossible for players to not find some sort of workaround to prevent forger from being able to forge well.

5. "In any case nerfing the Lookout properly is orthogonal to giving the Mafia lookout powers; we can do one or the other or both." That is true, but since we can solve multiple problems here, there's no reason not to do both

If I missed something let me know. In any case, congratulations on coming up with a better counterargument than I thought was possible in this instance!

[Brilliand]

it is still pretty much impossible for players to not find some sort of workaround to prevent forger from being able to forge well.

This is true. The ultimate counter to Forger (and also Janitor!) is for everyone to fullclaim every single day (possibly in a whisper to Jailor), up to and including who they plan to visit the following night. But people don't currently do that, not even in upper Ranked, true? I'm not even sure why, but I keep hearing that Janitor is actually strong, so there must be some reason the Town can't just keep all information in a place where graveyard cleans don't matter.

I suspect that whatever forces conspire to keep Janitor strong will also prevent the more involved anti-Forger workarounds from being viable.

[Venusupreme]

it is still pretty much impossible for players to not find some sort of workaround to prevent forger from being able to forge well.

This is true. The ultimate counter to Forger (and also Janitor!) is for everyone to fullclaim every single day (possibly in a whisper to Jailor), up to and including who they plan to visit the following night. But people don't currently do that, not even in Ranked, true? I'm not even sure why, but I keep hearing that Janitor is actually strong, so there must be some reason the Town can't just keep all information in a place where graveyard cleans don't matter.

I suspect that whatever forces conspire to keep Janitor strong will also prevent the more involved anti-Forger workarounds from being viable.

The biggest asset with Janitor is that it frees up claimspace for the Mafia by cleaning people who haven't claimed at all yet, thus Town won't know their role (unless there's a med). If Forger tries to forge the will of someone who's role they don't know, then it will almost certainly be crappy and obviously forged.

[Venusupreme]

Main point being this: the main roles that forger would aim to forge would be those of TIs. However, most TIs constantly post their will anyway, so there’s not much that can be done to help that. I suppose they could make them appear to visit a mafia while they’re visiting a veteran so that mafia will be confirmed as vet, but once the vet CC is killed that mafia will be killed anyway, so it won’t do much good.

[TheFluffyWaffleV2]

Main point being this: the main roles that forger would aim to forge would be those of TIs. However, most TIs constantly post their will anyway, so there’s not much that can be done to help that. I suppose they could make them appear to visit a mafia while they’re visiting a veteran so that mafia will be confirmed as vet, but once the vet CC is killed that mafia will be killed anyway, so it won’t do much good.

That's my biggest problem with Forger currently. Forger is suppose to screw with TI, but in a way that is different than Framer. And to do this, they tried to allow players to change wills and alter the information after it's been revealed.
Obviously the problem is A) You don't know your target's role until a fellow Mafia member finds them out or they claim, and B) After you find out what their role is, they've likely already shared their information with the town. And then you can't forge the will because they've already explained what their results are, and there's a big ole mess, blah blah blah.

While I'd like to see Forger have a day ability that can mess with day chat, that idea is completely unreachable. I'm left to dreaming

Last thing, if this is what you truly want to happen to Forger, then it would have to be moved to Mafia Support. It's ability to change wills will become a secondary ability, as the LO ability will obviously be the main attraction of the role. And being a Lookout isn't deceiving town at all. It simply gains information for the Mafia, which is obviously supporting them, like a Consigliere and Blackmailer. On a side note, others have said this role has too much utility, and I disagree with that. Giving the Forger LO ability isn't giving them that much utility, at all. I believe the thought process for this comes from the fact that most Mafia roles are very straight forward, and don't have much utility (unlike the Coven). This isn't the first role that has 2 abilities, either.

After completely looking over this and thinking about it, I think that this is actually a really good idea. I don't have any complete disagreements that I would otherwise make just to sound smart. I can't say how this would be in game, as it's not, but I like it.

[ABadWord]

You could always remove Jailor.
Occam's razor.

[Brilliand]

You could always remove Jailor.
Occam's razor.

Wouldn't work; the Lookout would just go on something else and we'd start calling it the TS meta or someshit.

[TheFluffyWaffleV2]

You could always remove Jailor.
Occam's razor.

Wouldn't work; the Lookout would just go on something else and we'd start calling it the TS meta or someshit.

remove LO
ez

[FrenchyTheSphee]

+Support why the heck not