the worst's Mini Normal Review, January 2020

[implosion]

here we go!!



town informed cop [there is a doctor]
town odd night roleblocker
town rolestopper
7 VTs

vs.

scum ascetic informed doctor [there is a cop]
informed goon [there is an odd night roleblocker]
even night strongman


alisae helped design this & did a preliminary fun-ness review.
so the intention of the setup is to play mind games with the informed roles (as all shiny informed roles should do !)

the setup itself is kind of like the evil twin of a super generic cop + doc vs. roleblocker 13p type setup; the rb is town and the cop is town.

the informed roles interact by at a surface level encouraging the cop to push a follow the cop strategy but i tend to believe most players will basically 1) be too smart, or 2) wifom themselves out of actually hard committing to this kind of game break in a normal early on when strongmen etc. are totally possible.

on the flipside-- the scumteam are informed of the existence of the cop/rb and given an informed doctor + strongman so that they have the option to try and manipulate the order of flips to cast doubt on the town claims. the doctor has no technical ev purpose but encourages gambit claims & plays.

the rolestopper is just there for like legitimate town power

i know you're not the only one i need to convince necessarily but if you want to c/p this for the review thread that might help maybe?

[implosion]

Primary: PenguinPower
Secondary: mastina

[the worst]

suckerssssss

[the worst]

sorry typo - hi guys

[mastina]

I'm not primary so it's not my call but uhhh...this setup seems incredibly ridiculously like 70+% scumsided to me? (As in, 70% seems conservative and a more liberal estimate would be in the 80-90 percentile range, scum win.)

[the worst]

at an ev level only scum power is strongman - town have full cop and can conditionally generate alignment results via roleblocker. The rolestopper/roleblocker synergy backs this.

There's enough information that this could swing heavily to either alignment but imo only via rewarding good play and analysis

I suspect you may be viewing this with a lens of 'being good at scum and highly analytical' which is a level beyond the majority of players.



all the same if you have any feedback on achieving better balance is be super interested

[mastina]

Scum ascetic is one of the strongest roles scum can have.
Scum are already the informed minority--giving them additional information increases the odds they will win.
The play on information is likely to falsely conftown a scumslot or falsely damn a town slot, either of which vastly increases the odds the scum will win.
Strongman is one of the strongest scum roles possible, especially in a game where the majority of the town's strength comes from a role the strongman punctures (the rolestopper).
Town roles have incredible anti-synergy. Roleblocker and rolestopper very easily can interfere with each other, roleblocker can block the cop, rolestopper can rolestop the cop's target, and these outcomes make the cop less able to generate reliable results--in a setup where one scum already has immunity to the cop (ascetic).

Literally everything in this setup stacks things in the scum's favor and the town has literally nothing going for it.
Plus, MBoS 4 should be a fair indication of what happens when scum are informed of a town role that is informed of the existence of a role in the game but not what alignment said role was.

You know what happened that game?
The town cop role successfully 'crumbed to the scum role, and vice-versa...allowing the scum to make a N1 nightkill on the cop role without any consequence because nobody in the town had the information to pick up on the 'crumb and the information per Normal standards doesn't flip with them so they had no way of gaining said info.

[implosion]

at an ev level only scum power is strongman - town have full cop and can conditionally generate alignment results via roleblocker. The rolestopper/roleblocker synergy backs this.

Think of it this way - I'll often say that at a baseline level, typically, you need ~3 fairly strong town roles to balance 3:10 against an all vanilla scumteam. Power roles on the level of cop, doctor, vig, etc (not that those three roles are exactly the same power level).

The cop in this setup is a fair bit weaker than a cop in a setup in a vacuum; it has a scum it can't guilty and it has two town PRs that could accidentally interfere with it. Cop is still an extremely strong role though so it certainly pulls its weight.

The roleblocker in this setup is essentially worthless until the mafia lose their ascetic doctor - the ascetic will always make the kill on odd nights. A roleblocker in a normal setup is like, medium-weak because it has the ability to catch scum but they have to get the right scum and they can screw with the town. But here it is very unlikely to ever successfully block a kill. It's a role that becomes stronger later in the game because it can start inno'ing people that it blocks. But here even those innoes might be incorrect because of the ascetic.

The rolestopper is also conditionally useless - it's useless on even nights until the strongman dies. So it's weaker than a rolestopper in a vacuum, and since there's no relevant scum abilities to stop, it's weaker than a doctor would be because it can interfere with the cop or even the roleblocker.

Basically the cop is a pretty useful role but the other two aren't really in the context of the setup.

Roleblocker/rolestopper also have negative synergy in a sense - if the rolestopper stops a kill, then the roleblocker might think they have a guilty.

There are a lot of ways to balance the setup; adding town power roles and/or buffing the existing ones and/or removing scum power roles.

[the worst]

Sweet. Thanks for the balancing feedback both of you - let me have a play around, I'll get back here with something a bit closer to reasonable.

Of course if PP has any other feedback I'll take that on board too.

[PenguinPower]

I’m just going to take credit for mastina and implosion’s work. Thx.

(Just kidding. Ego post. I’m traveling this weekend but will take a look when we get to the hotel).

[the worst]

Can we add an Alisae in here please? E helped with the design

[implosion]

added, feel free to link it to em

[Alisae]

Lets start here
1) Is it possible to disable the ascetic if the doctor makes the kill? I think that would dissuade the ascetic from making kills.
2) Would a combined follower tracker be enough power or would that need to be a rolecop instead?

[Alisae]

1) Is it possible to disable the ascetic if the doctor makes the kill? I think that would dissuade the ascetic from making kills.

this was done before btw (see firebringer's role pm)

[the worst]

1) Is it possible to disable the ascetic if the doctor makes the kill? I think that would dissuade the ascetic from making kills.

this was done before btw (see firebringer's role pm)

(elena fisher's role pm, not fireb's)

[mastina]

Lets start here
1) Is it possible to disable the ascetic if the doctor makes the kill? I think that would dissuade the ascetic from making kills.

That is not Normal.

Either the mentioned setup where that happened was while we had a Greylist, or the reviewers for that game missed that the mechanic wasn't Normal. 'Modified' is not among our list of whitelisted modifiers.

You can obtain a similar result with Activated as a modifier:
Mafia Doctor Activated Ascetic, with no multitasking.
This would force them to choose: protect, activate their ascetic, or nightkill.
But as that was written, no, that wasn't Normal.

(For the record, Mafia Doctor Activated Ascetic, is a significantly weaker role. Still way too strong tho.)

2) Would a combined follower tracker be enough power or would that need to be a rolecop instead?

So that'd be a proposed:
Town Informed Cop (there's a doctor)
Town odd night Roleblocker
Town Rolestopper
Town Combined Follower/Tracker

vs.
Scum Informed Doctor Activated Ascetic (there is a cop)
Informed Goon (there's an odd-night roleblocker)
Even Night Strongman

In this setup, I would say things are significantly closer to balanced, but the scum are still too strong even with the nerf to the Doctor/Ascetic--they probably need 2/3 further nerfs of,
{Remove the cop information, remove the odd-night roleblocker information, further gate the strongman}, but that's mostly my opinion; PP as the primary reviewer has the final word on that call.

[Alisae]

You can obtain a similar result with Activated as a modifier:
Mafia Doctor Activated Ascetic, with no multitasking.
This would force them to choose: protect, activate their ascetic, or nightkill.
But as that was written, no, that wasn't Normal.

this works and gets the job done

[Alisae]

mastina, I would like to nerf both the roleblocker and the strongman
I still want them to have some synergy with each other (hence why they're odd/even night modifiers) to make the roles look aligned with each other.

[Alisae]

also I want to make the informed goon an encrypter.

[Alisae]

Also, would introducing a town ascetic be a good idea?

[PenguinPower]

So you want to take this:

So that'd be a proposed:
Town Informed Cop (there's a doctor)
Town odd night Roleblocker
Town Rolestopper
Town Combined Follower/Tracker

vs.
Scum Informed Doctor Activated Ascetic (there is a cop)
Informed Goon (there's an odd-night roleblocker)
Even Night Strongman

And:

- Remove daychat by default and make Goon an Encrypter
- Further nerf Town Roleblocker and Mafia Strongman?
- Add a Town Ascetic?

[Alisae]

yeah

[Alisae]

actually
buff the roleblocker to be a full roleblocker
nerf the strongman to be 1-shot

[the worst]

so like

Town Informed Cop (there's a doctor)
Town Roleblocker
Town Rolestopper
Town Combined Follower/Tracker
Town Ascetic

vs.
Scum Informed Doctor Activated Ascetic (there is a cop)
Informed Encrypter (there's an odd-night roleblocker)
1s Strongman

[Alisae]

Informed Encrypter (there's an odd-night roleblocker)

u mean there is a roleblocker