Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[Ircher]

I mean, some of these changes are for the better, but I dislike the standardized role pms and standardized rulesets changes although I kinda understand the latter.

[Ircher]

What personal touches could you introduce in role pms? Is it possible that those can still be introduced? (I don't know how the new formatting will be, but if you just quoted the standardized version for instance, you could presumably still include more text?)

Primarily formatting was what I was thinking.

[Ircher]

Yeah, even the addition of the Loyal modifier during Nexus's tenure has not been added yet.

[Ircher]

Ah, this makes one of the issues with standardized role pms less relevant.

[Ircher]

I think one of the important things about the Normal Queue is that a lot of people play them because they don't want to play heavily unbalanced themed games; in general, I believe the normal queue does a very good job of keeping games relatively balanced compared to the other queues (partially because it requires a reviewer). That aside though, I think it is important that people feel it is worthwhile to play normal games; in other words, that they are interesting and fun to play. While the normal queue has always (and should continue to) emphasize the dayplay over night play, I think the setup of a game goes a long way towards the enjoyability of a game. So, what I am basically getting at is that I think as a whole, the normal guidelines need to be a bit more lax in terms of setup design.

I think the other problem with the Normal Queue has been time between inning into the queue to mod (and sending in your setup) and actually getting your setup reviewed. Like, tbqh, I don't understand why it takes over a

week

to find reviewers. I guess under the old system, finding three reviewers did take some time, but does it really take a week? Like, if that is the case, then yeah, the NRG seriously needs more reviewers. And, very few people are added to the NRG.

[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.)

[Ircher]

Plus, even with as restrictive as the normal queue is, wouldn't this be really hard to do @Psyche? There are so many role combinations et cetera and that's not even factoring modifiers in.

[Ircher]

I don't think the day modifier is currently whitelisted, so tbqh, I think that D1 Innocent Child would be a stretch under the current guidelines.

[Ircher]

i think an interesting role would be something like a town of salem jailor


or just the interrogation part and ability to execute

I think this isn't a good idea for multiple reasons: 1) it's a complex role making it harder for newer players to understand 2) it's a powerful role, which makes it difficult to balance around and 3) it's name is too similar to Jailkeeper that some confusion may arise from it. While the third problem could easily be solved by giving it a new name, the other two points still stand. Most normal roles avoid combining many actions into one role; those that fo generally have a long name (e.g.: Town Combined Friendly Neighbor Neighborizer), and this is considered importantly internally because it deters people from making setups that are "normal" by the physical rules but not "normal" in the spirit of the rules.

[Ircher]

I think, for Normal games, allowing for more Neighborhoods creates an added layer of complexity without compromising power balance. Instead of putting "/Neighbor" onto role PMs, just include the Neighborhood link into their role PM and then put on game post that at at least one Neighborhood may or may not exist... for the sake of simplicity.

I agree that neighborhoods add a good layer to games without breaking balance. However, if I am reading your post correctly, you wish to add hidden neighborhoods to normal games? I don't think that is a good idea mainly because it then encourages speculation based on a moderator's meta as to whether or not their exists a neighborhood in the game. That kind of speculation is not encouraged because it can break otherwise good setups. It is also not healthy to the game state for players to discuss moderator meta. Also Janitors are explicitly forbidden from the normal queue likely due to hiding information, and this idea seems similar in the information hiding respect. While hiding information is useful in some cases, flips generally are not; people expect flips to give full information about a player's role unless explicitly indicated otherwise (e.g.: informed hides information on flip). But even in the case pf Informed, players know that player had information, just not what that information. There are cases where obscuring information is a good thing, but this does not seem one of those instances.

[Ircher]

Why should we axe multitasking?

[Ircher]

I agree that Multitasking is a very problematic role in design and really should be axed. Honestly I think all normals should be only 1 action per night.

I don't agree that everything else necessarily is.

I feel multitasking is only problematic because we currently allow hybrid roles. I think the original purpose of determining whether scum can kill and act at the same time is a fair design space for the modifier.
pedit: That's a fair take. I still think Multitasking is worth keeping as a balancing mechanism, but it would also be okay if we go back to where moderators had to publicly disclose whether scum can act and kill at the same time.

[Ircher]

Don’t we have a problem with town winning the majority of normal games? I feel like getting rid of multitasking makes that more of an issue.

I don't think that's an issue. Back in 2017 or so, scum won the majority of games. Since then, we recalibrated our balance preferences to be a bit more in favor of town, so winrates have gone up since then. We can always readjust the balancing function, so whether town or scum is winning more games is more of a matter of current site meta.

[Ircher]

Can suicide bomber be normal?

I don't see any immediate issues other than it being a Day action.

[Ircher]

Town can have multitasking as well, and since hybrid roles are currently a thing, trackers can (theoretically) track a town player to two targets.

[Ircher]

vanillaizer is a very strong scum role and a pretty weak town role

It's almost as strong as giving scum a vigilante, but town might see it as negative utility.

I disagree about the degree of strength, but I think an ungated vanillizer would be exceedingly rare anyway. Just because something is difficult to balance doesn’t make it not normal - that’s what reviews are for.

That's true, but simply putting unbalanced roles on the whitelist encourages people to (mis)use the role when designing setups.

Maybe the Normal Queue should go back to having a greylist, but with the possible greylist roles explicitly specified.

[Ircher]

I'd be very against including that mainly because it seems more like a theme role tbh. Why does town need to distinguish between types of scum?

[Ircher]

Except it changes how you investigate to cops temporarily. Firstly, that doesn’t seem useful ever, and secondly, it kinda bends the role changing rules.

I don't think the investigation changing aspect of it is an issue; there are setups where maybe being a miller on certain nights could be potentially useful. That said, I agree that it does not seem very useful, and that's the greater issue with the role. People have made it clear in the past that roles that simply exist for the sake of existing are not really liked, and this kinda falls under that.

That seems like a problem with activated.

I don't think it is reasonable or feasible to spell out every single combination of roles and modifiers that are "normal" and that are "not normal". There are just too many such combinations, and it is not worth the trouble.

[Ircher]

I really do think this is something that should be explicit. I know that in the past, I've been caught by surprise in some games where the threshold was exactly 50%.

[Ircher]

Like, in terms of game impact, it may be relatively low, but people rely on the thresholds to know whether or not it is safe to vote something, and even in the case of No Lim, people might still vote it while not quite being ready for the day to end.

[Ircher]

I don't think so. Changes to the normal rules have traditionally been announced in this thread, and this is the first time I've heard of the modifier. It also wasn't listed on the normal game wiki page which lists all the currently whitelisted normal roles and modifiers (and can only be changed by administrators), so I went ahead and modified the wiki page accordingly.

[Ircher]

I believe the answer is yes.
Backup is a modifier. The backup tracker is still a tracker.

okay, but consider this:

Spoiler:

so if i had three mafia backup ascetics, and one of them died, the other two would become full ascetics, right?

my answer to that i think would be no, because a backup ascetic would only active when an ascetic died, not when a backup ascetic died.

again, this is just my interpretation (cough cough

@implo

), but i'm decently sure that this is how it works?

Pretty sure you got it right.

I believe nsg/mastina are right. I think "backup" is sort of a special exception in a sense that a "backup cop" isn't actually a cop yet. Similar to "enabler" which while technically a cop enabler is a modifier applied to a cop, it's not really a cop.

It's possible we would revisit this, but I'm inclined to agree with the interpretation given by the NRG reviewers here. (Please note I am not speaking in an official capacity by any means.) It would defy my expectation as a player for there to be two backup cops and for one to suddenly become a cop when the other dies.

Backups are a source of quite a few confusing interactions.

[Ircher]

I think if that’s the argument you’re making, interactions that were previously allowed, like Backup Cop being able to use a Cop action when it was a Vanilla Cop that died (I distinctly recall an interaction like this in a game a while back), should be illegal.

This interaction is already abnormal. Even though Vanilla Cop has Cop in the name, it's definitely not a cop and cannot cause a backup cop to become a cop.