Yes. The ability to make Day/Night posts automatically would be a huge asset to the Moscone system.

 

I've already said most of what I have to say mechanic-wise on IRC to you, or in the mspa wh thread. But I like most of the changes, that make this more balanced and a little less town-favored.

Nerfing Day One lover claims is the big thing. It didn't happen here, due to, well. Both lovers being replaced, and me not demanding it because I was frantically trying to ensure there was no scum judge taking me out and preventing court from forming, heh.

In most games, when there's not a ton of witchery on the court, the court is too strong, and that's being taken into account with reducing killing power to every other night.

Three spies was bad, and is being reverted back to two. Good change. Turning it into Spyhunt exclusively for the witches was bleh-ish.

I really like Moscone, though. Radio buttons and confirmation boxes would be excellent instead of the slightly clunky double click method, but I've said that a few dozen times by now.

Angel majority needs revamped to make it realistic to actually end nights early later in the game. Still like the angel mechanic in general though.

I don't really have any other unique feedback. I like the setup, and I thoroughly enjoy playing it. Even if I'm fucking sick of being the King. (Two straight games, both with witch queens and witch-heavy courts. Ugh)

 

I agree with Kalas in that the amount of info the Angels get is heavily pro-town. Basically, it allows them to make a way-too-informed decision on who to protect. Sure, they can only protect once, but unless no one's made any useful checks, it's basically a no-brainer on who gets shielded, rather than the guessing game they normally have to play.

And whose fault is that?

 

Good feedback; since lots of stuff has already been fixed, either because of this game or the MSPA one, I'm going to indicate those first to focus discussion onto stuff that isn't.

Fixed yesterday, this was a really simple/stupid bug on my part.

I just finished some work that should significantly address this.

Long story short, an implication of real-life compatibility is that Angels cannot be governed. (outside of forbidding communication with players) You can't make Angels stay, you can't make them leave, you can't make them watch, you can't make them not watch. They are free radicals outside the circle.

However, an interesting change is in-bound that may address your concerns. Dead Witches are gaining the option of permanently converting to a Demon; Demons vote to block a single target from getting protected the next Night. (once per game per target) In other words, Demons can block Angels just like Demons block Witches.

Additionally, Angels are going back to only blocking Witches. #whatwasieverthinking

Already fixed; the game will no longer wait on Angels (or Demons) who were inactive last Night.

Well, that's exactly what is happening.

Yeah, Lovers and Cupid is getting bumped a Day to prevent ill interactions with the King. Additionally, Cupid is getting moved way up to only be in very large games. (Other roles are getting moved down, including King?!?)

Yes, never again. Ironically MSPA's 2-Spy game had more to do with this conclusion than you guys did.

Long story short, we've been down that road before.

(Trivia: I invented the "Oblat" as a third-party years ago, originally named Werewolf.)

There is a different flavor to different size games, for sure. I'm interested in any thoughts you have about game size, specifically concerning different roles being included or not. The game is made to scale from ~8-30.

There's a certain type of player, probably exclusively a sub-type of "Johnny", that enjoys methodical organization. There's a certain satisfaction to be had in sitting back and looking over everything; under normal forum-game protocol this is mandatory and sort of valued, which can be empowering to these players.

Moscone (hopefully) does a good job of letting players who want none of that to bypass it, removing a major barrier to mafia participation. Meanwhile, the hope is that the game log empowers those organizer players in a new way, albeit in a different flavor.

What was you guys experience with the game log? How often did you consult it, and for what ends? (This is primarily to Aurion and Sesc, but anyone can jump in.)

This is me slacking. I do owe you guys (and MSPA) an apology for my lack of involvement. There should have been Day/Night posts, flavor writeups, and significantly better replacement investigation/control. (Were it not for Moscone, I wouldn't have been able to commit to moderating.)

Does anyone feel that the game currently favors Witches? Don't be shy.

What do you guys think about the Thief and its interaction with this game? What about the Fanatic? Any other roles you want to mention anything about?

 

I mainly used it to look for voting patterns.

In this game it worked out with Thief and Fanatic on the coven, which is a tad OP since the Thief has the potential for a guaranteed lifesteal if he thinks one of his covenmates needs it more. It's not too bad though, and chances of it happening again are fairly slim.

 

Interesting, thanks.

 

It's just an additional tool.

I loved the ability to quickly copy/paste multiple vote wagons at different points of the day into notepad, etc to compare things. Going back through the thread to manually look at what the opposing bandwagons were at different points of the day is a gigantic pain, and this streamlines it quite nicely.

 

Sesc, when ChocoPi says Johnny, he's talking about the MTG player archtypes of Timmy, Johnny and Spike (It's an interesting read even if you have 0 interest in MTG).

I feel that Thief is pretty lame, since it's hugely swingy and extra lives are very polarized in their difficulty to find, being very hard (surv, fanatic) or very easy (bod life). So it ends up being like finding a needle in a haystack or stealing candy from a baby, neither of which seem particularly fun (Guljons could probably talk more about it, being someone who has actually played Thief to halfway).

On spy numbers... I think just having two spies makes it really hard for them to make it to the coven? I think alot of the problem is fixed by making witches have more of the first half of kills.

On Moscone, I like it - a lot. It's not meant to replace notes or anything like that, it's just providing an easy reference for everyone, on basically everything that has happened. As a gamehost, the biggest problem with games is the organization (role & qt assignment, vote counting, timekeeping) and Moscone goes almost all the way in automating all of those. As a player, I'm pretty lazy and usually don't take notes at all, so moscone giving me anything is really nice and an unexpected surprise!

---------- Post automerged at 11:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:17 AM ----------

Making notes on votes is a giant pain. I just want to tap into my INSTINCTS.

:awesome

 

You.

(Filler)

 

But more seriously, I view it differently to you sesc!

I think of it like, streamlining the numbers so you can focus on the people.

 

About the thief. Once we reached 15 players I had almost forgotten my role, because of no extra lives being obvious. And when we reached 15 players Kai was really the only option to even take. If I had not been a witch this role would have been really boring to play. So idk if you think of having it taken out, but if the game plays out like this when survivalist is obviously dead and BOD has not given the life, then yeah I say thief is not a role that is really needed.

Only reason besides Kai being the only choice to take, that I choice him was that his fellow JW suggested him to be checked by priest.

In the end I just wanted to say that KaiDash you did a really good job of showing us the JW and spies. But after how you did it in this game it probably won't be so easy in any other game which would be played in this format.

 

Early in the game I used it to try and track people's voting patterns, but by the end I went back to just reading the thread. It's cool to have the cold data availible, but seeing the context in which a vote was made is (in my opinion) more important than just seeing when it was made.

I spent most of the game trying to get hard Junior Witch reads due to my role, so it could just be me.

I think both the DLP and GOD games were a bit of an aberration in some regards because of the Court shenanigans in both.

The Scum are powerful by virtue of high numbers once the Spies go out, but I think a properly functioning Court pretty much offsets it.

Fanatic's definitely a natural role for a Junior Witch- it would have been pretty bad if Ash had survived until Kai joined the Coven and then re-checked him.

Town!Thief and Scum!Thief both have their uses, I think. Not the most exciting role, but useful for ganking lives off of important members of the other team.

It didn't really work out for guljons in this game since the Benevolent Old Dame was inactive most of the game and the Moonlight Pagan never fired so there was a serious lack of targets for him.

 

I'll be taking Moscone down soon and clearing the database.

Roles need to add some unique gameplay to the game for not only the player, but also the town as a whole. (Look at the gameplay the Priest adds personally as the Priest, and what it adds to town discussion, and what it adds for the Witch gameplay.)

Some roles are stronger in one category than the other. The Judge has some of the weakest personal gameplay, but an extremely healthy impact on the overall game. The Survivalist is very empowering to play adds little to the game as a whole. In general though, we do need every role to contribute positively to both.

Personal gameplay is not strictly auxiliary decisions. For example the D.O.B. only has a single extra decision to make (that sometimes never even occurs), but sitting on that knowledge/power gives that players a completely different perspective on the unfolding game. The B.O.D. is then different in a completely different way, ect. The Acolyte, Nun, Bishop, Queen, Gravedigger, Survivalist, Gambler, Recluse, Fanatic, Pauper, and Henchman--more than a third of the roles--have no independent or unique mechanical decisions to make, but only factors that warp the existing core game decisions in unique ways.

The Thief seems to feel doubly outside the player's control (you have to make it to half-time, and there has to be an extra life around), and thus insignificant and easy to dismiss despite being mechanically one of the most powerful roles. I think there is value in the uncertainty it adds, but the negative impact it forces on the extra life roles is a fairly steep cost.

Thief has been replaced with a new half-time role for the next tests. Conversely, I've been tentatively quite satisfied with Fanatic.

 

This is my experience as well, Sesc. One of the things I love about mafia is "And when you finally have compiled all the votes in your qt, run an analysis over it and are rewarded with a discovery?

That is exactly the part of the game where you happily invest hours. The rest is just numbers. If you streamline that aspect, what you end up with is playing statistics."

I continue to play mafia game after game for those moments....not a huge fan of Moscone; I miss posts from the mod ending day, etc.

 

Le sigh. So much hate in the JW thread QQ

@chocopi: The largest problem with the Judge role (especially a scum!Judge) was once again the length of the day. By including a non-Holy Judge you've 'forced' the town into making a lynch every Day, which is fine in theory. However combine that with the game length and you end up in a situation where twon has ample chance to defend themselves and have more then enough time to over-analyze every scummy post.

Overall its a nice idea, but the day length +town size is just too much for Town to make any real missteps in regards to lynches. If Day length is lessened it would be fine. Less players would be fine as well. If neither of those change I'd have to argue that removing Judge would lead to a more balanced game.