Neither am I!In post 3173, mastina wrote:Same. This is the sort of game I very much would not like to play and honestly, I absolutely hate reviewing games like this one.In post 3144, Ausuka wrote:This setup was fine but not what I wanted when I signed up for a mini normal I guess?
No, no, you have it!In post 3150, Ausuka wrote:I still don't really get what assumptions I'm supposed to make.
It kind of feels like sometimes players are expected to make assumptions and if that's accounted for in the balance, but there are also setups which try to punish players for outguessing the mod with curveballs? Like idk. Maybe I'm just an idiot who doesn't get it.
In some setups you are meant to assume for balance; in other setups, you are punished for outguessing the mod. That's mod-dependent.
As for what itshouldbe, it should be both, and yet, neither.
Ideally, a game's setup is such that you don't need to assume things, you don't need to guess things, but if you get it right you get an advantage and if you get it wrong you get a disadvantage, and the game is designed where it doesn't need to be guessed but where guessing right gives an edge.
I'm writing a NRG article which will have a section about this.
[quote="In post 3155, scamper"[i'm not really a fan of what the normal queue is right now
I wouldn't ever want to play in a game like this one nor would I want to ever review it nor would I ever want to design it!
This is not the type of game I enjoy. This is not the type of game that I want to see. I'm writing my NRG article in part to try and encourage mods to move away from setups like this and more towards what my actual preference is. (My preference is ~3-4 town PRs of moderate strength vs. 0-1 scum PRs of weak strength.)
But as much as I don't like this kind of game and hate when I have to review them--I can't let my personal bias get in the way of my job. I hate traitors; I hate complex games. But if I am put into a review for a game with both, I can't abuse my power to say "yeah I'm not going to let this through at all because I don't like it".
I once did, as a reviewer--the mod (who at the time was reasonably new) put a traitor into their initial setup, and I veto'd an otherwise-fine setup just because I don't like the role of traitor. Because the mod was reasonably new at the time, they didn't stand up for themselves so the setup was reworked to be more in line with what *I* preferred...
...But to this day that review haunts me. It is one of the worst mistakes I have made as a NRG member, because past-me forcing my will onto a review and forcing my likes and my opinions on them was
So while I might not
I can
I tell people this fairly often, but well and truly, if you want to see the Normal Queue change, you need to BE the change, and the best way to change it isn't as a reviewer (because a reviewer should never overstep their boundaries and stop a mod from running their setup just because the reviewer doesn't like an otherwise fine setup); the best way to change that is as a moderator and game designer, because the majority of the power in a review IS with the designer,
In post 3174, mastina wrote:Yup, I feel the same way.In post 3164, Alexcellent wrote:I know these roles are "normal" but this many combinations of them and this many layers to the game feels significantly more complicated than I guess what I would expect when signing up for a "normal" game.
I will certainly defend the game on merits of balance and being focused primarily on dayplay.
But while it's in my opinion balanced and accomplishes the goal of focusing on dayplay, it's still just...not my cup of tea.
I genuinely considered quitting as a reviewer for this game when I saw the setups Pooky came up with, because it's exactly the thing I am least able to competently review. My preference is fairly simple things, because that keeps the number of interactions possible to a saner level. There's a difference between 4 roles and their interactions, and 9 roles and their interactions. The former is far easier for me to comprehend than the latter.
But while I don't like games which have this many parts, they are still valid setups if a moderator wants to run them. I certainly encourage them not to! But I can'tforcethem to not.
I do a lot of quotes for it in the review PT, gimme a sec for them.
In post 21, mastina wrote:Not gonna lie, with this many moving parts in the setup, locking down if it's balanced or not is a little difficult for me.
The town has the theoretical chance to have three conftown come D3, but lacking that, they basically have glorified Named Townies. The nature of Simple/Complex acts as a form of making every claimed action effectively a Vanilla Cop claim (succeed as simple = vanilla, succeed as complex = non-vanilla), and that gives the town some extra information in that they effectively have four vanilla cops, but the information from those isn't guaranteed to be useful.
The mafia roles here also make the town's job much harder. They also have effectively two vanilla cops, and while the doctor/voyeur is fairly useless since all it can do is stop town from killing town, the bp traitor jailkeeper can absorb the complex vig shot and cause simple/complex roles to get the opposite of their intended result.
I'd say that if the town roles get the triple-clear, then their information in tandem with the vanilla cops would make the game fairly townsided...
...But if the town gets 0 clears by D3, then the game would benotablyscumsided.
The latter is more likely to happen than the former, but either happening would make the side disadvantaged by it feel terrible.
However, if neither extreme happens and it's closer to the middle, I would say the game is more in the 50-50 range, with a lot of focus on dayplay, and scum having some counterplay to the town roles but not being able to counter everything they want to do.
I think that if the town gets no clears, it's near 60% scum-town, but if the town gets 3 clears it's near 57.5% town-scum, and that if it's somewhere in the middle, it's probably closer to 50% for both.
I'd prefer a gutcheck from Ircher on this though.
In post 48, mastina wrote:In my defense, I personally don't like setups which have this many moving parts (that this game was in review hell for so long should be proof enough of that), but I can't let personal bias keep me from doing my job.In post 2087, Gamma Emerald wrote:Just the OP, OF COURSE, mastina is primary reviewer
She consistently passes the most wild BS setups
The game has enough VTs to not be role madness, so the only argument to be made that it isn't Normal would be if you think having almost every role having a Simple/Complex modifier is a themed mechanic.
In that regards, if you feel it was then my judgement that it wasn't would be a conflict, I admit. But while I have hesitance, I feel overall comfortable sticking by my judgement call that it was still Normal enough to be passed.
In post 49, mastina wrote:(This is also a reminder to myself that I actually need to finish my NRG Member Insight article, it's sitting at like 60% completion.)
In post 50, mastina wrote:(That said, the convo did bring up a valid point; thereIn post 48, mastina wrote:In my defense, I personally don't like setups which have this many moving parts (that this game was in review hell for so long should be proof enough of that), but I can't let personal bias keep me from doing my job.In post 2087, Gamma Emerald wrote:Just the OP, OF COURSE, mastina is primary reviewer
She consistently passes the most wild BS setups
The game has enough VTs to not be role madness, so the only argument to be made that it isn't Normal would be if you think having almost every role having a Simple/Complex modifier is a themed mechanic.
In that regards, if you feel it was then my judgement that it wasn't would be a conflict, I admit. But while I have hesitance, I feel overall comfortable sticking by my judgement call that it was still Normal enough to be passed.isa shortcoming in my review, an oversight that Gamma actually got good takes from.
I didn't consider that, if all the players truthfully claimed, that it could potentially leave all four VTs as being seen as conftown. There's mitigating factors to this. 3 VTs is still passable. Heck, 2 VTs is in theory although I'd probably be too uncomfortable with that nowadays. So the 4 VTs aren't going to be absolutely conftown. And then there's also the chance that scum lie and claim VT, bringing the total number of VT claims up.
I don't think it affects the outcome of this game, and I don't think this significantly shifts the power balance dynamic of the game into being unreasonably townsided, but it is still notable as an oversight on my part that I do feel needs to be noted as a failure on my end. Sorry!)
In post 51, mastina wrote:Okay bump the failings in review up to two.In post 2116, Alexcellent wrote:Yeah Idk. There's a scenario here where scum could have already won if Datisi's claim is legit.
D1/N1: town mislims, StD shoots a VT, scum shoot a townie
D2/N2: town mislims, StD shoots a VT, Datisi shoots a town PR, scum shoots a townie
7 townies dead before D3 starts which would leave us with 3 scum/ 3 town, GG. This is assuming this isn't like a 2 scum game for some reason.
Odds of this happening are super unlikely and would mean a next level bad performance by town and vigs but it's still a possibility and I feel like that's a thing that might get brought up for review? But I don't mod or review games so maybe someone can correct me. This just feels like it may not be balanced.
Like the other: I don't think it affects the game's outcome, I don't think it's something that swings the game to notably scumsided, so ultimately I don't think it'd have affected my judgement call on the setup and I'd still have approved it anyway.
But, I stillshouldhave noted it, when I didn't.
In post 52, mastina wrote:I would like to once again remind players that as a reviewer, I am not the one creating setups. None of these roles were my idea.In post 2188, Gamma Emerald wrote:There’s a particular reason I have strong feelings on this setup but I can’t really explain in a way that’d make sense. Otherwise, I am mostly just taking a stand because I feel like person-who-will-remain-unnamed probably has had historically good criticism of mastina setups but it’s never sank in for anyone because he’s the one saying it. Hopefully my voice while enact some recognition that mastina sucks at making normal games feel “normal”.
The reviewer has two jobs, and only two; everything beyond those two jobs is extra.
To make the game fit the definition of Normal;
To make the game be within 10% of balanced.
I will defend the setup as the latter. It is ridiculously swingy. Swingy af. But it's overall balanced.
The former you can find more questionable, but it hinges solely on the concept of, "are this many simple/complex modifiers Normal, or are they themed?".
That, you can have disagreement with my call on them being Normal.
To be clear, I don't like setups this complex, but as a reviewer it is not my job to say "I don't like this therefore I won't pass it".
I already noted how it was a struggle on my end thanks to the moving parts.
But the main judgement call was on if it was Normal, which is one of the reasons I wanted a gutcheck from Ircher. If Ircher felt it was Normal, then I was comfortable enough passing it as being so. (Also implosion didn't complain either.)
That's one of the reason we have two reviewers (with implosion theoretically able to chime in at any moment for a third, far more decisive, voice) in the first place.
You can maybe say that I should've more explicitly voiced my concern in the review and more explicitly asked for the gutcheck on Normalcy of the core mechanic, but while I wasn't sure, I was still comfortable enough with my decision to move forward with it.
In post 53, mastina wrote:(Keep in mind this is a very rough draft, and may be revised. And yes. This is anSpoiler: Excerpt from the planned article, for referenceexcerpt. The full article is getting to be a bit ludicrously long.)
In post 54, mastina wrote:(for the record; the nightmarish hell of me reviewing this game is why I wrote the "A reviewer should still be willing to pass a setup that they are not perfectly satisfied with" segment in the first place. I noted in this review my struggles with reviewing it, but why I was okay enough with it. Not happy, not satisfied, but okay enough.)
In post 55, mastina wrote:Oh that reminds me, something I should probably add to the article;
NRG members to a large extent get to pick which setups they do, and don't, review, but sometimes it can also come down to speed of being online vs. not online. (And sometimes, they get things that they simply...just weren't expecting.)
There's plenty of game mods who sign up to review who I would love to review their games--they'd be games that would be Normal and Balanced and be fast reviews.
But most of those games get snatched up before I have a chance to sign on as a reviewer for them.
So I get left with whatever isn't instantly snatched up.
Even then, I tend to still try somewhat to pick and choose which games I review.
I amwell awareof the perspective that setups I review are seen as crazy/not very normal/balanced--so Iactively try to stay awayfrom reviewing game moderators who I believe will have a setup like that.
I deliberately aim for reviewing setups that I feel will help break that perspective.
I just have a combination of terrible luck and terribly misreading what I think of the game moderator in question beforehand. (Plenty of game moderators I assume will run some crazy shit end up having a tame setup, and plenty of moderators I assume will have a tame setup end up running some crazy shit that I am left to review.)
For instance, in this case, I saw Pooky was signing up and assumed, "oh Pooky has played hundreds of Normals, is basically an OG member of the site, modded dozens of games before, so he will probably have a setup that is reasonably easy to review".
Boy was I wrong about my assumption there.
In post 56, mastina wrote:(incidentally this is also why I have reviewed many of Datisi's games. I don't know why I didn't learn my lesson after the first, but I somehow assumed Datisi would have setups that were, so to speak, fairly sane. And yet per his own words, Datisi is the most unhinged Normal moderator, so instead...)In post 55, mastina wrote:I just have a combination of terrible luck and terribly misreading what I think of the game moderator in question beforehand. (Plenty of game moderators I assume will run some crazy shit end up having a tame setup, and plenty of moderators I assume will have a tame setup end up running some crazy shit that I am left to review.)
For instance, in this case, I saw Pooky was signing up and assumed, "oh Pooky has played hundreds of Normals, is basically an OG member of the site, modded dozens of games before, so he will probably have a setup that is reasonably easy to review".
Boy was I wrong about my assumption there.
In post 59, mastina wrote:I happen to agree for what it's worth.In post 57, PookyTheMagicalBear wrote:I am actually p happy about the balance of this game nothing has really run off the rails per se and it will be up to the skill of the players whatever may be
This setup isn't my cup of tea and I hate reviewing setups this complex, but I stick by it being mostly balanced, with a focus on dayplay over nightplay.
In post 60, mastina wrote:Actually, power rolesIn post 2290, Ausuka wrote:I feel like postgame someone is going to quote all these posts and be like "You deserved to lose because you speculated on the PRs, power roles aren't there to give town information they're there to fuck with the playerlist"arethere to give the town information--but ideally, power roles serve as a small boost to the town. The game in its default vanilla state is absurdly scumsided; power roles serve as a method to give the town "extra", usually in the form of information, to give them an extra edge that brings the game closer to balanced. (At least, that's the theory.)
It's included in my article, but basically, ideal game balance for a Normal does notrevolvearound setup spec; the game shouldn't be a puzzle piece focused on solving which power role claims are most likely to be town/scum. The town shouldn't be able to break the game by massclaiming, and neither faction should be able to just outright win the game by correctly identifying the power roles in the game as being what they are.
But while the game shouldn't be a puzzle piece revolving around power roles and setup spec, a faction (beit town or scum) should still berewardedfor accurately deducing facts.
I realize there's a fine line balancing those factors. You never know how competent your players are going to be at guessing things in the design. Which is tricky, so it's not always possible to obtain. (Which, notably, is one of the reasons this isn't really a mandatory part of a review; I count these considerations mostly among the extra, barring egregious examples.) But ideally, optimally, every setup is in that fine margin where massclaims can't break the game for the town, the players don't need to focus on solving the puzzle, but the town still gets good information from their roles and both factions are rewarded for accurately deducing setup information.
In post 61, mastina wrote:For the record, yes, it was Normal because it was a valid interpretation of the Simple modifier at the time: if the modifier is placed on the player as a whole rather than a specific part of their role, then a mafia Simple cannot kill a VT. At the time, this was the interpretation used, that Simple was applied to every aspect of the mafiate in question, including the factional kill.In post 2399, Gamma Emerald wrote:was it a normal? if not idk if that would be allowed in a normalIn post 2393, Ausuka wrote:A few years ago I played a scumgame where the last mafia alive had a Simple modifier and because of that they couldn't nightkill any PRs. I wonder if it would be the same for Johnny
In this game specifically and what should be done in every Normal game though, is for the Simple modifier to specifically apply to a role the player has.
It's a formatting/syntax thing.
[Simple] [Mafia] [Role] applies the Simple to everything.
[Mafia] [Simple] [Role] applies the Simple to the Role, but not to the mafia factional powers.
I would never recommend the former because it is just Not Fun.
I'm not sure what the Normalcy policy on the modifier is now.
If we have an official standard, or if it's game to game.
But I will always encourage the version that doesn't make it so that mafia can't kill half the playerlist.
Here it is!In post 62, mastina wrote:(Incidentally, I remember this because I'm pretty sure I was involved in the review of the game being mentioned. That, or a player. I was there to see it happen, and I remember it being Not A Good Time for the mafia so if Iwasa reviewer, then that was something present-me should be ashamed of past-me for. Serves as a learning experience if nothing else tho.)