Ensemble Mafia - N5

[eclipse]

HEY, I CAN TALK! And do more than post votals/edit the first post/pester Boron through PM.

So, let's go over what happened, both good and bad.

BAD

- Welcome, new guys. Do take the time to see how your behavior affects the others playing in the game. I saw several comments about how reading backwards was unfun. That's a bad sign, especially on D1.

- SF PM, it knows what it did wrong.

- Surprised no one called out the buddying between Ryker/Elemina/yedi from D1 (ISO links break after 75 posts). It was enough for me to make a note of it.

- What was the point of that Ryker lynch? Not the actual logic to lynch him (which I don't fault town for), but the claim that led to the lynch. I can't really see the benefit from it, since it's asking for trouble as town, and giving the town information as mafia. IMO it would've been better to do it at MYLO (in other words, a day later).

- I died twice in this game. GG.

THE GOOD

- Everything past D1, honestly.

- Paper did a pretty good job as backup host, even if Yours Truly failed to keep the title updated.

- Thanks for subbing in, everyone!

- Lynching Ryker was the right move, given the situation. So was lynching yedi the next day, which caused the scum team to fall apart.

- How did three night phases go by without anyone being killed? One was explained via kirsche. I count this as good play by town, since they'd have a hard time coordinating actions in public that early.

- Y'all didn't lynch Irony.

- I'm completely and utterly mystified as to how Proto survived the entire game. Good job, regardless.

- Elemina outing the numbers on D1, which is exactly what numbers is supposed to do. It's a glorified vanilla, which means that all the talking he did was exactly what his role was supposed to do.

- kirsche has inherited Blitz's wizard hat. I guess it's better than a bottle of rum?

- I found a couple of funny quotes from the game.

OVERALL, the kinks worked themselves out, and it was an interesting game to spectate. Glad I kept out of it, since I have a bad habit of editing this particular host's posts while I'm playing.

AND NOW. . .

I shall think of some punishment for Ryker, on account of those Taokaka comments. Which may include pictures of kittens.

[Elemina]

Please generate the funny quotes. Will say more later.

[Prims]

Mafia is a good game.

[🔥YOLOSWAG🔥]

we got outplayed and most of town played well

this was a bad setup that favored town heavily. watcher/doc/roleblocker is insane town should never get more than 1 of those if any

we fakeclaimed cuz we knew we were screwed that day so wanted to sink in a mislynch. people are saying "wait another day" but arent realizing it wouldnt have made a difference as yedi had no use to us at that time

our only chance was to put the game on sb and lynch rainbow (i really did think he was scummy btw) but w/sb bouncing and the power roles we likely still would have lost

[Kriemhild]

I didn't survive the entire game! I died on N5! I'm not quite sure how I avoided getting lynched, but I think my nightkill avoidance was due to players like Elemina and Ryker who generated a lot of suspicion over my slot, possibly because they never played with me before.

As for the three nights with no deaths, the first was due to Kirsche as you pointed out. The second, I'm pretty sure it was because I protected Irony. She was the obvious choice for the nightkill because she'd have started getting roleblock charges after that (unless Town screws up super badly), which would be super dangerous for the Mafia, and also because there was very little disagreement of her Townieness from the remaining players (making her tough to lynch). Obviously they didn't know I became a Doctor at that point (they never scoped me either). As for the last no-deaths case, well, Irony was on the final scum, though I have my doubts as to whether he actually sent in an action at all.

(I kinda did bring up the buddying between Ryker/Elemina/Yedi in my D1 wagon raeg analysis, but as they were all unfamiliar players with distinct playstyles that I don't approve of, I didn't push it too hard.)

Thanks for all your support, Clipsey! It's always nice to have you around!

I second Elemina's request to generate the amusing quotes!

[🔥YOLOSWAG🔥]

@ryker it was nice to play you w/o all the baggage/meta. hope to see you around again man

[Blitz]

Ummm, Eclipse, I am pretty sure Proto inherited the Wizard hat too...

[Ryker]

this was a bad setup that favored town heavily. watcher/doc/roleblocker is insane town should never get more than 1 of those if any

Essentially this, but less harshly.

Doc + Watcher is one of the most powerful combos in mafia (even if the Watcher is of limited capacity). Having a universal back-up in the amnesiac and a roleblocker (even of gimped quality to snipe at targets and narrow the field of who can be preforming the kill makes it much harder. This is not even speaking of the additional stopgap that my role provided to defend townies. Town PRs could definitely have been watered down in this set-up.

In addition to the power level of the set-up, I do apologize for the mess created by that posting restriction PR targeting me, but, as I told the mod, I would not have signed up to play if I had known such a role existed. I am not going to change my posts every single time I type with absolutely no effect on the information I can provide in them. If you have a mechanical restriction, such as Blitz's, that's fine, but actually telling people what they have to say is lousy and I refuse to support it. I would've likely played it out if it didn't include me ending all of my posts with something I consider self-deprecating.

[Elieson]

I know I didn't!

Good game to all that showed up. Still confused at the Ryker thing but perhaps with the game over, fair discussion can occur. He worked pretty hard.

[Ryker]

On the subject of the game:

1.) I will fight to the death about GP's role proving nothing.

2.) My lynch was fine. We COULD'VE lynched Yedi instead, but with the PRs we had available, we were set for life anyway.

Most everything else, I left on the table. I'm sad Ken and Refa replaced out. I enjoyed interacting with both of them immensely.

[Ryker]

I hope to stick around if this place is more active than SWF. I enjoyed playing. I didn't have a problem with anyone within the constraints of playing mafia. I will likely finding myself pushing to lynch Rainbow in pretty much anything though. I don't know that we agreed all game.

I like mafia. I like mafia game design. If anyone wants to talk about the game, they can add me on Discord Ryker#2103. I also play a lot of JRPGs, fighting games, and Overwatch.

Also, I think I'm blacklisted from Boron's games, so I hope there are other hosts here.

[Ryker]

Thanks for the game. Hope people add me so I can get to know people better.

[Irony]

Also, now that the game is over, I'm gonna post my original Role PM, even though I've already claimed my role. Hopefully that means that my role makes more sense to everyone? Because it took me a while to get it. XD

Dear Irony,

You are Ryuji. You're a supposedly ordinary guy, and sitting on the sidelines isn't your style -- so you jumped into the fray. With your improvised weapons and skills that are yours alone, you'll do whatever you can to turn the tide.

Even if you can't fight the bad guys yourself, you can be a distraction -- you're good at that. During the night phase, you may respond to your role PM with "Night X: Look over here, <USER>!" Your antics will keep <USER> busy and unable to carry out any night actions they may have. Currently, the time is not right for you to get involved, but for every correct lynch you will gain motivation to help out.

In other words, you are the limited role blocker. You start off with 0 shots.

You are aligned with the Ensemble. You win when all threats have been eliminated.

[Elieson]

we got outplayed and most of town played well

this was a bad setup that favored town heavily. watcher/doc/roleblocker is insane town should never get more than 1 of those if any

we fakeclaimed cuz we knew we were screwed that day so wanted to sink in a mislynch. people are saying "wait another day" but arent realizing it wouldnt have made a difference as yedi had no use to us at that time

our only chance was to put the game on sb and lynch rainbow (i really did think he was scummy btw) but w/sb bouncing and the power roles we likely still would have lost

Except the Roleblocker was 0-shot and had to accumulate them at a rate of basically super-duper-slowly, and the Watcher was alt-night, so town had exactly 1/2 of an investigation role. Maybe the Redirector was townsided, but that could've easily gotten other town screwed over, so it's swingy

[Da Bear]

I'm no expert on setups so I'll abstain from that but I definitely enjoyed this game.

DaBear: Some of your lategame activity was very facepalm-worthy, but like Gorf, I can't really blame you since you just popped in really late without properly experiencing the first 75% of the game like the rest of us did. Again, I would like to see you play more, and hopefully in an easier situation to get thrown into.

Thank you both for subbing in btw, you guys are awesome. Inactivity was imo the biggest problem in this game as a whole, and you both helped alleviate those issues in the lategame.

I was really convinced that you were scum and I couldn't imagine a scenario where the scumteam was you+yolo. After you flipped Yolo was pretty obvious and I was townreading the rest of the game 6/10 reads successfully sheeped elemina when it mattered lul.

[🔥YOLOSWAG🔥]

@eli

the roleblocker and watcher had modifiers but they were active when it counted which makes it difficult for scum to do anything. when a mod does a setup he oughta keep the worst case scenario in mind. a situation where a lone scum can be outed through THREE different roles is too much. i feel like this game was designed with "its okay there are counters to certain roles and there are modifiers in place" in mind but didnt account for worst case scenarios when scum start losing their power roles or the modified roles come into play. it becomes too daunting to scum in too many cases when you play the game out randomly (tho i dont know if mods do that here before the fact)

im mostly just typing this in hopes that mods dont put too many roles in their games where scum get punished by being outed through power roles for making optimal nightkills. a blocked nkill is a huge boon for town in itself a doc is enough. finding a scum through it because of a watch/roleblock is overkill specially when both of those powers can instead be placed on a scumteam to great effect. my understanding is that this game was originally designed for more people so when it downsized certain things were kept without enough tweaking to the setup to make things balanced

Edited November 22, 2016 by YOLOSWAG

[Elieson]

The Roleblocker could've theoretically been unable to roleblock all game long, as he started with 0 shots (and only accumulated shots with mafia was lynched which I agree with as being a bit atypical, but the concept is neat. You guys have a Universal Roleblock which always worked no matter what (and superceded the town 0-shot roleblocker). That's a free kill.

The ridiculous problems could've only happened if the Masshooker was lynched D1, then the Doc protected / Hooker earned a shot and properly hooked to prevent a N1 kill. Since the masshooker wasn't lynched, N1 should've had a nightkill (and it didn't).

The town hooker became more powerful as scum got killed, which again, I think was atypical, but again, it's otherwise useless. @YOLO, how would you rebalance this game in your eyes, to make it balanced and fair by your standards?

*Edit

Misread the SB/Gorf role. It was basically able to surprise-hammer anyone which is immense day control with a scumteam that can persuade town, which is high risk high reward for early game, and punishes town with a free scumkill when lynched. That's still scary and there is absolutely nothing town can do to stop it. Ignore the bad analysis above.

Edited November 22, 2016 by Elieson

[Elemina]

Put in less roles. I also wouldn't use governor. I did not expect this type of setup. I prefer low amount of roles, or vanilla.

[Zkirsche]

Unfortunately there are very few vanillas in setups or just weak setups in general nowadays. I prefer strong roles in combination with vanillas myself.

[🔥YOLOSWAG🔥]

eli i wouldnt run a setup like this. id remove and switch so many things around itd be pretty much a different game tho a few remnants would remain. theres enough in the setup for a cool game youd just have to move the puzzle pieces and streamline stuff. too time consuming for me to make something id be happy with atm but id consider making some of the town aligned roles here scum instead (like watcher insomniac + roleblocker) and scrapping roles from both sides

[Kriemhild]

I like strong roles and personally, I do think this setup was pretty balanced. Watcher isn't THAT OP (especially compared to Alignment Cop or arguably even Tracker) and its ability to actually catch scum is very situational. And Town really needs some type of investigative role to help alleviate the disadvantages of being very uninformed compared to the Mafia. The Watcher was even restricted to non-consecutive nights, which further weakens it.

Roleblocker is, admittedly, pretty powerful, but she only gets 2 charges max and even then she only gets those charges after scum gets lynched. She's not even guaranteed to live long enough to get a single charge, let alone two.

I should also point out that Town lacked a Vigilante, which means they were entirely dependent on lynches to eliminate scum. The closest thing to a Vig they had was Green Poet, but her ability was essentially an alternative to the day lynch and only if hammer isn't reached.

We could argue about theoretical balancing factors all day long, but what matters in the end was the actual implementation. If you think Town was too OP wrt roles, do you believe that it was this role imbalance that caused Town to win? I don't think so. Green Poet and Ryker never got to use their roles and Spinal/DaBear never watched anything useful. You could argue that one action from each of me, Kirsche, and Irony all contributed to a Town victory, but I would argue that those only served to prevent the Mafia from steamrolling the Town despite the very strong advantage they had before D4. Yes, before D4, because even though we lynched Ryker on D4, Yedi's claim screwed the Mafia over.

My personal opinion is that the Mafia really didn't play too well in this game. YOLO and Yedi were perceived to be suspicious from just their subjective fluff alone by several players, and Gorf did nothing besides claim. So I would say that given the way the Mafia played, they most certainly did NOT deserve to steamroll the Town. I do believe that the roles were properly balanced, and that Town did, indeed, deserve this victory.

I can understand why some players might prefer games with less roles, but eh, I'm of the opposite mindset because roles tend to generate more objective data to analyze, so we don't have to rely entirely on subjective fluff.

[Ryker]

Unfortunately there are very few vanillas in setups or just weak setups in general nowadays. I prefer strong roles in combination with vanillas myself.

I like those as well.

Hell, I like all PR games. However, those are very easy to make errors on. Sometimes it doesn't matter and the worst case doesn't show up, but I've seen very few people who can consistently make all PR games that are fun and well balanced.

[Ryker]

Oh man, I disagree with Rainbow's post again. Immensely.

IT KEEPS HAPPENING

[Kriemhild]

Oh man, I disagree with Rainbow's post again. Immensely.

IT KEEPS HAPPENING

We should play more games together. Maybe I'll finally find someone who annoys me more than Shinori.

[Ryker]

subjective fluff.

This triggers me the most.

Followed by your comment about tracker power level.