Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[RadiantCowbells]

I was not complaining about any NRG member for the record. I certainly don't agree with the call out. I'm just saying that there's more than one female member on the NRG.

[Mathdino]

and i'm saying that calling out fferyllt isn't even applicable because she's not in the NRG lol

[RadiantCowbells]

Actually I'll just delete my posts. Oh I can't delete my posts.

:shrug:

[Nexus]

I was not complaining about any NRG member for the record. I certainly don't agree with the call out. I'm just saying that there's more than one female member on the NRG.

I know. I was generally just saying as a response because I should have dealt with it earlier, and it felt easiest to do it as one post.

and i'm saying that calling out fferyllt isn't even applicable because she's not in the NRG lol

Okay. Thank you for that informative post, except for the fact that she is/was in the NRG at that point. I should know.

Actually I'll just delete my posts. Oh I can't delete my posts.

:shrug:

No worries!

Have a wonderful day.

[Firebringer]

ffery doesn't appear to be in the NRG though

You know the only other female member of the review team is Ether and she rarely reviews any more, right?

In post 74, callforjudgement wrote:

He was complaining about ffery, I'm fairly sure

Yeah this is a super productive conversation to be having.

Please do not insult other people. At no point were concerns raised about any Normal Review Group members. When you signed up for reviews you never asked specifically not be to put with anyone else. If you had a problem, you should have told me before now. Publicly calling people out is not the right way to do things.

And thus ends the conversation.

Nexus, RC was making a joke.

[Firebringer]

and i'm saying that calling out fferyllt isn't even applicable because she's not in the NRG lol

she is.
or at least she has posts in there and I have been in reviews with her.

so unless she removed herself, she is nrg.

[Nexus]

Why are you continuing a conversation when a mod has asked you to stop?

[TehBrawlGuy]

I don't think I should be forced to run an otherwise normal game in the theme queue if I want to use just one of some kind of slight variant role.

Yeah, there are a lot of cute slight variants that make games more interesting, a lot of which are not mainstream on MS. If I want to see how one of those runs here, I'd have to make all the vastly different theme games wait as I took up a slot. Plus, players interested in theme games might be disappointed to play in something that's almost a normal.

The changes in general are good, but greylist removal is a big mistake.

[Firebringer]

Why are you continuing a conversation when a mod has asked you to stop?

Are you doing okay? Things going okay in your life Nexus?

[MagnaofIllusion]

I don't think I should be forced to run an otherwise normal game in the theme queue if I want to use just one of some kind of slight variant role.

And I don’t see doing that as a hardship on the Mod at all. I’ve yet to see a good arguement made why using the Theme queue for nonstandized games is a problem. There are tons of things I’m not a fan of on MS and over the years the simplest way I have found to deal with them is to calibrate my behavior to avoid said personal problems.

Your mileage may vary ...

[Something_Smart]

I applied to join the NRG several months ago, and I also got no response. Should I send it again?

[Gamma Emerald]

My favourite theme games have essentially been Normals with flavour wrapped on.

This makes me smile because I haven't really done much in the way of fancy flavor mechanics in any games yet, and it's nice to know someone enjoys those. I definitely intend to buck that trend sometime though.

[Gamma Emerald]

If people are taking too long for making their own changes to move forward, isn't that their problem and not the NRG's?

in my experiences with game review, all of my delays came because of the reviewers taking too long to come back and check the thread. they also are very nitpicky about things. All of my role PMs have been copied from previously approved role pms yet I get asked to make changes for some reason. My last game took around 5 weeks to be approved and it was nearly identical to a game I had previously ran on another account except I made minor changes. That time frame is completely unacceptable especially since there was a lack of approved games.

we need to replace the current reviewers and bring in new blood. Especially one reviewer who I won't name by name, she approves way to many unbalanced games imo

I agree that reviews stall frequently due to non-presence of reviewers, in all departments. I think we should make it an unspoken rule that reviewers should constantly check threads for reviews they are a part of (once a day minimum)

[mastina]

I agree that reviews stall frequently due to non-presence of reviewers, in all departments. I think we should make it an unspoken rule that reviewers should constantly check threads for reviews they are a part of (once a day minimum)

Quite a few do especially since a relatively recent change was Nexus making it mandatory and sending out review-prods to people inactive for 48 hours.

[RadiantCowbells]

I think that Alisae is responsible for the failings of the normal queue and I advocate promptly permabanning him to restore the normal queue to its former glory.

[Psyche]

i don't want to seem like i'm plugging something but maybe the solution to this deficit of reviews is (reviewer-supervised) automated setup review?

if in a thread like this one we can specify a sort of formal process by which games are reviewed or even just for summarizing the relevant factors that must be subjectively considered during a review, then it should be straightforward to code something that does that work automatically

[Psyche]

What goes into a setup review? What kinds of considerations are made?

[RadiantCowbells]

This came up and I already wrote a program to test the EV of setups and am working on adding more PR functionality, but I don't think people were enthusiastic about it

[Psyche]

Well, I really really think it deserves serious discussion if the review process is what everyone seems to think is wrong with the normal queue. If there were some limitations to the EV program that put anyone off, they might be straightforwardly improved on.

[Psyche]

And even if automating the process is shot down, I do think this sort of highlights how much of a black box game reviewing is, at least officially speaking. In all the queues, reviews are often mentioned or even required, but I can't find much discussion of what reviews are supposed to do or filter out. Shouldn't moderators know the underlying quality objectives going in? Might not providing this knowhow help speed up the review process?

[callforjudgement]

I'd love to see an automated reviewer.

The problem, though, is that it'd make town setup speculation orders of magnitude more accurate, as town could just run all the known power roles through the reviewer to check for fakeclaims / hidden scum PRs.

[Alisae]

I think that Alisae is responsible for the failings of the normal queue and I advocate promptly permabanning him to restore the normal queue to its former glory.

Lmao good post

[Ircher]

I applied to join the NRG several months ago, and I also got no response. Should I send it again?

(Same--I got an unofficial response about it from Firebringer in site chat.... You probably should though since there is a new listmod; I have.)

[Dunnstral]

Informed: You know (some information about the setup). This information may be related to the setup, or to other players. It must be objective and accurate. For instance, an informed townie (or informed mafia) could be given any of the following:

You know that this setup has 10 town members and 3 mafia members.
You know that there is a rolecop in this game.
You know that there is a mafia rolecop in this game.
You know that (player) is a tracker.
You know that (player) is a town doctor.
You know that (player) is town. NOTE: if something like this is used, it must be non-random what player-slot is referred to. For example, if an informed townie is told that someone is town, it should be part of the setup specification that the player they are told is town is a randomly chosen vanilla townie, rather than a completely randomly chosen town player. Or it should be part of the setup specification that they are told that a specific power role is town.

What are the guidelines for how this stuff flips in a dead role pm?

I'd like it if there were guidelines for things like this

Is it normal if an informative role says someone is town and that gets revealed on their death when they didn't know it would reveal beforehand, for instance?

[Alisae]

I thought about joining NRG
But then I realized that would be a mistake