Normal Game Balance

[Mizzytastic]

If you consider that example game emblematic it sounds like your problem may be more to do with swinginess of power roles instead of balance. It's not how much town is winning but how town is winning that feels bad to you.

This is important because game review cannot review games to make day play better. But if this is a wide spread attitude maybe we can find the problem roles and limit how many there are and see how that works. It may be that the NRG needs to be more picky on how town roles are combined without abandoning their (presumably statistically based) approach to balance.

Town being worse than EV is a pretty common result of studies into mafia. If balanced game designs feel bad to play from one side it would also make me wonder if the default game sizes are wrong for site meta and people would enjoy town having more VTs instead of power roles

[Mizzytastic]

I'm not voting cos I'm not experienced enough with the site to have an opinion. Just a game design nerd in general

[Mizzytastic]

Also yeah, an unbalanced fun game is better than a balanced one people find a chore to play. But knowing its unbalanced can change how people perceive the fun of a game - same way feeling its unbalanced is doing for Mena now

Pedit: setup WIFOM like that bugs me too, I'd be far happier to see players pick up in the hints in my design and be rewarded for it

[Mizzytastic]

Knowing that I could get feedback in the context of what players want would make me want to pass that threshold too. But I can't think of way of having that as an option to be reviewed for without it sounding like a value judgement. Player me is less likely to sign up for a game not reviewed for "what players want" if I know it's an option the mod had and refused unless I already like the mod.