In post 919, popsofctown wrote:I'm looking forward to Dunnstral's opinion on the game I am positive it is and should be more complex than "pops is amazing at mafia and won".
Sure, here are my thoughts:
A) Base Balance
Personally I feel like just having 2 masons in a micro is dubious for game balance, you can imagine how I feel about 2 masons, a bodyguard, and then the crown mechanic (which is in fact townsided and I'll talk about that in a bit). A bit of research on masons in micro's brings me to this:
Subject: borkjerfkin Micro Normal Review
callforjudgement wrote:I think 2 Masons + 5 VT versus 2 Goons is doable and close enough to balance, although it's hard to assess the balance of because it's hard to fit Masons into a game this small.
I guess you can reasonably compare it to setups like Cop + 6 VT versus 2 Goons; in that setup, the Cop confirms two players if they live until D3, in this setup we have two players who can confirm each other. The difference is that that setup leaves room for fakeclaims and counterclaims and this one doesn't really (more townsided); however, that setup also allows for the Cop to potentially confirm themself, and to potentially catch scum directly (more scumsided). This one still leaves room for PR hunting (scum benefit from killing a mason early), though, so it's not entirely dayplay.
Alternate mason in a micro game example can be found here:
https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=84&t=79835
(Mason Mailman, Mason Encryptor, miller, 2 goons, 4 vts)
Cursory research when reviewing the setup would have prevented this setup from coming forth, so... this shouldn't have gotten past review phase as 2 masons + bodyguard, regardless of the crown, unless the crown was somehow tilted in mafia's favor (it wasn't). Micc reviewed this game? This shows that he doesn't understand balance in his own area of setups, or even bother to do a little bit of research or consider what other people think on balance. I guess that's not a requirement for being a queue mod in the first place, just.... he should get somebody else to look over his setups because letting this one go through is shameful.
A seeker mason is weaker than a mason, but not by much, certainly not when looking at the game from a balance perspective. In fact seeker mason was so out there that it actually lent credence to Hectic's claim and prevented him from being lynched with his last minute claim.
Another aspect of balance that was overlooked: Mafia don't really get to
choose
who they kill this game. And that's not because of the crown mechanic, at all, which is what makes this setup really bad - mafia have to kill both of the masons and the bodyguard, they don't get to kill a player who is suspecting their whole team, or a frame kill, etc.
B) The Crown
The crown mechanic was neutered to fit in a pair of masons, but the crown mechanic really should have been the focus of the setup. As it stands, I think a better name for this setup would have been "Two masons and a bodyguard" really, because that ended up being the focus of the setup instead. The masons being revealed as IC was both a cheap "gotcha" for a town that trusted the masons, and a cheap "gotcha" for the mafia if they decided to try to make the masons look like the mafia (removing every last bit of counter-play).
Speaking of the crown mechanic:
In post 923, popsofctown wrote:
Dunnstral was the main one to dig into the mechanic, pointing out it was probable that at least one scum voted me for crown.... with which I agreed... seeing as Dunnstral did...
What I failed to mention, but definitely noticed, was that the crown votes at the end seemed to be ordered in the same order that they were made. I'm not sure if that's the case or if it was just a coincidence, but you'll notice that I was the last person to vote for Pops - if I was town I would have absolutely pointed to that as mafia who was deciding where to vote in their pt vs town who knew what they were picking going into twilight. I'm not certain if it was clear that this information would have been public or not, or if it's just extra stuff that was added. It does mention that the vote result would be revealed so... I guess it was implied, though some additional clarity in the rules would have been nice. Actually, it shouldn't be showing that information at all in my opinion, but as long as it's clear what is happening the specifics don't matter as much. Nobody else seems to have caught onto that this game, but it is the kind of thing that mods
really
need to be keeping in mind instead of kind of just doing things.
With that said, there were townies who didn't even realize that the crown vote was made public, or who didn't think it mattered (which is bad play and should contribute to your faction losing IMO).
I believe the crown mechanic itself was townsided in general, without considering the what the roles were. Looking at the actual roles, It seems townsided - town can get extra investigative roles to find mafia, but mafia can only get investigative roles to find the masons, the bodyguard, or the crown powers - but nothing to actually stop any of that or neuter the increased investigative power, and they are
very
limited on what kills they can make in the first place, so even if they find, say, a voyeur, they might still need to kill the mason.
Voyeur: Can be used to find the bodyguard and to figure out what the crown user is doing
Motion detector: Secretly a really strong role in this setup, on par with a tracker, and starting in a micro. The only thing that holds it back is town assuming mafia have powers they can target people with, or not trusting the person with this power.
C) Mass claiming and Mafia decisions
In post 900, Oversoul wrote:I balance all of my games on the assumption that town mass claims on day 1 (I think this is usually THE play regardless of alignment, but we can discuss that later). From there, I wanted mafia to really have to choose between letting a townie use an unknown power versus leaving a confirmed town player alive.
There's so many things wrong with this statement it's shocking. I will go over all of them.
First of all, I'll point out that one of the mafia crown powers is a role cop. What's the point of that if town massclaims on day 1? It becomes a useless role, so if you balanced around that you really shouldn't have.
Second, mafia didn't really get to choose anything - either they kill both of the masons (and the bodyguard by extension), or they automatically lose the game. If there was an actual choice where a townie had a real crown power... why should mafia be driven into a corner by towns bad play?
Town mass claiming all of their roles on day 1 should put them in a position worse off than where they started. Instead, the opposite happened, and even though the entire town was outted with their roles, AND we lynched town, AND the crown power was very tame (neighborizor), AND we knew what the crown power was because it targetted mafia.... it still felt like we were the ones being cornered - and we were - because the setup was straight up broken.
Mafia had absolutely no answer to the entire town massclaiming on day 1 - that's a design FLAW, not a feature. That's not how setups are designed on this site generally, and yes mass claiming day 1 is, and really should be, bad play. I'd go as far as to say that a mass claim from town on day 1 should almost always result in a loss, so the fact that town wasn't hampered in the slightest, and instead seemed to have benefited from this is pretty bad and goes against a lot of the design principles I've seen on this site.
And you don't deserve to say that this is how you balance your games, from now on if you want to continue to design setups like this please say it's how you "make" your games - a small distinction, but you're not implying that you're looking out for balance, it's just how it is.
In post 900, Oversoul wrote:I wanted the mafia to really have to grapple with their nightkill choices in this game because I feel like Micros are inherently scumsided due to their small size.
Again, the opposite was accomplished and there was really no choice.
D) The Alphabet Rule
Voting is plurality based, which means it will go to the person with the most number of votes. Tie breakers will be determined by whose name comes first in the alphabet.
This rule is not ok and there's a case to be made that the game is classified as a bastard game because of it.
The case is as follows: You determined that a persons name is at least partially significant for the events in the game. When a player replaces out, you see the new player's name and decide whether to allow them to replace or not. That means that every time you allow a player to replace in, you're stepping in and making a mod decision that changes the course of the game - that's a mild case of mod intervention every single time somebody replaces in, and there's no way for it to not be mod intervention without changing the rule.
Allowing AA to replace xmaya is
just as bad
as if you had said "no, but I'd allow a player named XX to replace in"
One small change, where the order was determined at game start and wasn't changed due to replacements, even if it was still alphabetical.
What did Micc say when he saw this rule in the review thread? Did he say... nothing? Does he realize that this is, essentially, a rule that turns this into a form of bastard game, and that every time you replace somebody, that is an action for a bastard game as well? I am now very concerned with the state of the micro game queue, but only if Micc continues to try to review micro games himself. I don't think this game was reviewed to an acceptable degree before entering play.
I'm sure he does great with his other duties, managing the queue etc, in the same sense that a person can be a great driver but have to blow into a breathalyzer attached to their car before they drive - I think we need somebody in the micro queue thread assigned to review games when the responsibility would otherwise fall to the queue mod.
Postscript
Those are my unbiased thoughts on the game, or maybe I'm just salty that I lost, who knows.
Pops I do think you are good at mafia and have generally good insight
In post 922, Correspondence wrote:Mr. Dunnstral
- Hey buddy, the "lurk and they won't notice me" thing is useful sometimes, but in a Micro it was deadly.
It seemed to work out fine for you