Open 794 Pick Your Power X/Y (finished)

[davesaz]

I keep modding this and then remembering that I wanted to play it.
Guess I should resist the temptation next time in hopes someone else will run it first.

[Iconeum]

I keep modding this and then remembering that I wanted to play it.
Guess I should resist the temptation next time in hopes someone else will run it first.

everyone just plays this for the draft part, which is like 95% of the fun to be had in the game anyway

[the worst]

i actually want to know.

ooh i never circled back to this!

number theory is a whole thing, yes. i also actually don't feel like tanking the draft process is actually necessarily a massive loss for scum? there's novelty in 'winning the draft' for sure, but i think messing around with pypx/y zeitgeist adds more value than top picks at shitty power roles.

i feel like the earlier times i played this setup, i was instinctively drawn to suspect players in the upper tier of the draft because i wanted to kill scum power roles - on the flipside, there are /town/ power roles (e.g. cop/unibackup tbh) who have a tendency to bottleneck in the top of the draft anyway. it feels like more fun to shoot at high ~~town power role equity~~ players without exposing highly-placing scum. so much more fun if those highly-placing scumspects are also town!

it's also not like, super difficult to outplay the draft to some extent. if you accept that you need to work around a cop (fine) and that you're not going to get the rolecop (i'd argue it's nearly useless), you can have a lot of fun scheming around less-popular role picks. i actually think scum probably had ... a right idea with their picks. it's just that their picks rely on powerdriving a n3 win, and their actual collective dayplay skill set was like... not compatible with this.

honestly not sure if messing around with tanking the draft actually wins the game in practice, but in the spur of the moment i would 100% be down to drown my teammates with the theory of it and see if they're down to have a good time with me.


pedit: i'd be down to run this sometime soon if u wanna play it, dave

[word321]

Oh, GG everyone! Sry for dropping from this; I was busy IRL
I dnt think it affected the development either way
Ya know, when Gypyx flipped red I actually felt somewhat bad for not noticing, and pushing for doc, but it seems I was right all along

[word321]

i thought the no kill was pretty good play, but it was foiled by dats checking word sigh

Im too scum for this to work HAHA

[Iconeum]

scum pt

plz

[davesaz]

Should be visible now.

[the worst]

I can't believe it's still d4

[the worst]

The game I was modding is over, so I'll likely queue this shortly. Dave, I'll operate on the assumption you'd like a pre in & pm you to confirm.

After talking to SS a fair bit about the last few runnings of this game, a devious plan is starting to form. This isn't a setup I would call townsided carte blanche. But it's a setup which rewards good play and good mechanical choices, and guess what? More people are getting better at town.

To boot, the sheer level of information available to town creates a huge potential for townsiding swing, depending on (to be brutal) the degree of skill of the scum players. There also isn't a whole lot of scope for manipulation which is, though common for an open setup, sad to see in such a spicy setup. (The greatest example of this I can think of is TheWizard's running of the other PYPX/Y setup; a couple of years ago, a scum 1s watcher claimed gunsmith and in the right era that could have swung endgame. Now we just wait until everyone is cleared and policy it )

So based on an evil idea SS had, and with a bit of a PYP-esque tweak which I couldn't resist, I would like to propose we run exactly the same setup, but including a scum pregame factional choice.

During the number draft phase (before order is revealed), EITHER:

• After the draft is finalised, the mafia will be informed of ONE set of roles which have not been selected during the draft. OR
  
• All members of the mafia will become multitasking.

The factional ability chosen will be confirmed publicly after the number draft, but before the role draft is finalised. Failing to select either would default to multitasking (to be blunt, I think a scumteam without a strong opinion on this is gonna need all the antiswing they can get).

[davesaz]

Couple minor tweaks needed to make it deterministic, otherwise the change sounds good to me:
If every role set has been selected, mafia will be told no roles went unselected.
If more than one role set has not been selected, the unselected role set the mafia is informed about is randomized.

[davesaz]

What do you think about the tweak I ran with, where players have the option of selecting a specific role to save time in phase 2? Should that be formalized in the wiki page?

[the worst]

Couple minor tweaks needed to make it deterministic, otherwise the change sounds good to me:
If every role set has been selected, mafia will be told no roles went unselected.
If more than one role set has not been selected, the unselected role set the mafia is informed about is randomized.

Yeah, definitely agreed on both fronts - that was in line with what I was *thinking* but indeed, good call formalising it up-front. I'll add that in to my /in to mod post. :p

What do you think about the tweak I ran with, where players have the option of selecting a specific role to save time in phase 2? Should that be formalized in the wiki page?

This should definitely be standard imo - the outcome of the draft only makes such a tiny difference to such a small number of players, the time saved is 100% worth it.

[Menalque]

All members of the mafia will become multitasking.

I think this would go a long way towards helping scum in this setup

[Something_Smart]

That seems perfectly fine dave, it really isn't a tweak so much as a time-saver.

[petapan]

multitasking wasn't really standard in the Way Back When of when this setup was first made (it feels weird to talk about it that way), where now it seems to be pretty the default, change probably good

[the worst]

hmm multitasking definitely isn't the standard, standardising it probably ruins a lot of opens from the good ol' days
i think this is more of a rare occasion where i endorse it, rather than a meta level change tbh

[Menalque]

I feel like multitasking makes sense in setups like this that are so PR heavy that you can get a lot of clearing done just by who actually was able to perform an action in line with the role they claimed

[the worst]

yeah, exactly - it's very much an intent thing tho.
was it explicitly intentional in this setup? hard to say because it's modified over the years and the current iteration is published anonymously. i kinda doubt they thought about multitasking when they designed it tbh.

[Hoopla]

yeah, exactly - it's very much an intent thing tho.
was it explicitly intentional in this setup? hard to say because it's modified over the years and the current iteration is published anonymously. i kinda doubt they thought about multitasking when they designed it tbh.

i designed the original PYP X/Y setup, and don't recall whether or not multitasking was standard. quite likely it wasn't. the design ethos at the time for opens/normals tended to favour mafia performing single actions - i believe one of the theories being that interactions with trackers/watchers/RB's etc were more elegant when each player can only go one place, or perhaps that interesting situations arise when scum have to forgo a PR use to make a kill... but don't quote me on that. it could well have just been a holdover from the oldschool flavour argument of "people can't be two places at once!"

i'm sure PYP mods have probably used a mixed approach over time re: multitasking, but i think overall this setup would benefit from the change. it helps minimise some edge case scenarios where scum fall behind early and simply can't catch up without confirming a bunch of townies along the way. probably a wise adjustment given where town winrates are at these days.

[the worst]

Awesome, that makes a bunch of sense. Thanks for chiming in.

2042 sounded unintentionally snarky, sorry - more so (to steal your language a bit) i think open design ethos was a lot more consistent when it was designed. Again stealing from your point, it feels like it makes sense to revisit points like multitasking periodically to reduce 'townsiding swing' or 'scumsiding swing' depending on winrates and stuff. but the whole "what should we account for in 40 runs' time?" spectrum of considerations is really not practical to design a setup around

[Hoopla]

To boot, the sheer level of information available to town creates a huge potential for townsiding swing, depending on (to be brutal) the degree of skill of the scum players. There also isn't a whole lot of scope for manipulation which is, though common for an open setup, sad to see in such a spicy setup. (The greatest example of this I can think of is TheWizard's running of the other PYPX/Y setup; a couple of years ago, a scum 1s watcher claimed gunsmith and in the right era that could have swung endgame. Now we just wait until everyone is cleared and policy it )

after all this time, it may be taboo to change the role pairings of such an established setup, but i think it's become obvious that fruit vendor and possibly 1-shot PGO are wasted slots. you could throw something fresh in there to make those pregame choices more of a dilemma,

and

also as a way to introduce more scum manipulation into the fray.

even without throwing in new roles to those slots, something like a Godfather 1-Shot PGO and a Miller Neighbouriser would be a cheeky way to balance those two role pairings, while also nerfing the cop somewhat.

2042 sounded unintentionally snarky, sorry

i didn't detect snark;)

[the worst]

that's a really cool idea as well, actually.

some other ideas that occurred to us were like, exactly that, tweaking the roles around a little so that they're more consistent with how their power is viewed today; we also thought of the idea of putting the roles into seven random brackets but on reflection i don't really know if i'd ever prefer to play that over just a normal pypx/y setup.

[Isis]