Mafia Pokemon vs Digimon Mafia: Endgame (26/8/18)

[Crystal Onix]

Congrats, town! I had fun!

1. What do you think of the balance in the game?
I'd like to say some of the things that happened were lucky, except luck had nothing to do with it, between the considerable skill of my fellow townies and what seems like a pretty unbalanced role distribution. I was expecting mafia to still have some hugely powerful role at their disposal.
2. What did you think of our hosting skills?
Apart from how underpowered the mafia's roles were compared to town, yeah, I feel like this game was hosted pretty smoothly.
3. What did you think of our flavour text?
It was a fun read, I was pretty engaged.
4. Would you play a LoneCheff game again?
Normally, my schedule, followed by the theme, are the big things that get me to play or not, but yeah, given those, I would play again.
5. Would you be interested in a (less unbalanced) sequel where the Digimon will take revenge on the Pokémon?
That sounds like it'd be pretty fun!

 

[Maniacal Engineer]

If Feenie was tracked we would have given the result "Feenie was seen visiting the thread." if they were not a Ninja, I might have been wrong about that but flavour-wise it would have been weird to not give GreNINJA the ninja modifier.

True, but Greninja didn’t have to be in the game.

 

[Max1996]

True, but Greninja didn’t have to be in the game.

that was totally my idea lololololol

 

[CheffOfGames]

True, but Greninja didn’t have to be in the game.

We went for some of the most popular and well known Pokémon and Digimon and since Greninja is very well known even outside of the Pokémon games because of Super Smash Brothers for Wii U we had to add him.

 

[Almonds]

Thanks for letting me play! Good job, everyone!

 

[MegaPod]

Congrats, Town, and to my Unlyncher partner, Kyriaki, too! Sympathy to the underpowered Mafia team, but I won’t hold it against the hosts as I had a similar balance issue in CtSVM among other things. I’ll be honest, I was totally expecting Elieson to be a Bomb due to Eevee’s result and ME’s logic. (But Golisopod is even better!) No Mafia Rolecop also surprised me.

Still, I enjoyed myself a lot, even though this was one of my lazier games. Initially, my strategy was to act like a Jester with an Unlyncher counterpart because I thought it was more believable than my actual scenario, but I ended up just claiming the truth in OC and just playing with the Town for the most part.

I would totally play another GarurumonOfGames game, btw.

 

[MegaPod]

Oh yeah, and personally, I still think Lone handled the blocker result correctly; the Roleblocker visited ME but failed to stop his action. That’s pretty much how I handled it once.

 

[Pika_pika42]

First of all, Congrats Town & the Unlynchers. GG Mafia.
Thank you Lone & Cheff for the game.

Questions:
1. What do you think of the balance in the game?
As everyone pointed out, the game was balanced in favour of Town, making it difficult and a bit unfair for the Mafia to play.

2. What did you think of our hosting skills?
Hosting skills, except for the balance part, were quite good.

3. What did you think of our flavour text?
The FT is really interesting and the battle between Pokémon and Digimon is a fun theme to read.

4. Would you play a LoneCheff game again?
Sure.

5. Would you be interested in a (less unbalanced) sequel where the Digimon will take revenge on the Pokémon?
Yes. But we won't allow the Digimon to take their revenge.

 

[Elieson]

I...wow. Scum had no dedicated info role. I was planning to rant about the balance, but that just makes me gasp. Let the lesson be learnt; don't put watchers and lightningrods in the same game~. Full Answers in a bit.

 

[Maniacal Engineer]

I’m just gonna let Elie rant about balance. He’ll probably do a better job of it than I can.

 

[Snowy]

While he does that, I am going to sit over here, eat my doughnuts and laugh about how the town rolecop caught the godfather two games in a row...

 

[Elieson]

and

were some gems of my OC chat logs between myself and the Mods.

Anyway; OK, let's hit up the questions first:

Questions:
1. What do you think of the balance in the game?
2. What did you think of our hosting skills?
3. What did you think of our flavour text?
4. Would you play a LoneCheff game again?
5. Would you be interested in a (less unbalanced) sequel where the Digimon will take revenge on the Pokémon?

1. You'll see.
2. Efficient. Ya'll were prompt with everything from results to phase updates. Job well done. I might have a biiiiiit of a nitpick regarding responses via OC to "venting/thinking outloud"isms, but that could just be me looking into everything said by everyone, ever.
3. Delightful~ Did I miss the endgame flavor though?
4. Sure. Even if attention to detail was missed on a few things, the game felt like it had a lot of heart put into it, and I appreciate that, as a player.
5. Only if DUELMON make a return~!

I would also like to sincerely apologise for the godawful balance present in this game. I'm honestly amazed that neither of us noticed how poor this was. It cannot have been fun for the mafia to be against something so ludicrously overpowered. And I am sorry. I'll try to make sure my future games are better balanced.

You knew this was coming. Don't worry, it's not early as bad as you might be thinking, but you're still getting a lesson from ol' Champion Elieson;

+ The setup number: 17 players (11:4:1:1 or 11:4:2) wasn't really that big of a deal. Going with the "The game cannot realistically end before Day 3 begins if there's more than 10 players" philosophy that I like seeing in the core design of games, this game did meet those needs. There wasn't really any crazy kill power (there was hardly any), so at worse, two Mislynches and two Scumkills brings the game to 7:4:2, leaving things open ended enough by then to accomodate for ITP pair swing. That, was good. Heck, the vig is born right at that time, so it's even more acceptable.

+ Basic Role Balance: The Vig not appearing until N3 was nice for numbers, and also helped the ITPs and Mafia slip by for early game. With 11 players, the practice of 25s [25/25/25/25 (25% info roles, 25% protective roles, 25% +/- utility roles and 25% kill power roles)] was withheld decently, pooling the 25% from the virtually nonexistent kill power into other areas of the faction, rather than just removing them entirely. It all pretty much went to the theoretical Innocent Child, which was a lot, but still remained pretty close to the ideal conceptual numbers for an ideal role-madness game balance variety. Mafia was one-off here, but still rather close at its core.

• [Info] Role Cop, Cop, Watcher Variant, Innocent Child
• [Proc] Doctor, 1x BPV Bodyguard, 1x DP Untargettable
• [Util]Double-Voter, Ninja Announcer, Lightning Rod
• [Kill] Miller Vigilante

• [Info]
• [Proc]1x BPV Godfather
• [Util]Roleblocker, Ascetic Redirector
• [Kill] 1x Strongman

+ The ITP duo was pretty well built: Aside from the 1x Doc, they kept to themselves, and never had reason to take a risk, or not take a risk. It was arguably, one of the most balanced elements of the game. How do you balance Swing? IDK but you guys figured it out. Them being involved only served to help Town catch Scum, but also put them into the spotlight if things started going wrong. No bulli here.

- Mafia team lacking a dedicated Info role. Ascetic Redirector, BPV GF, 1x Strongman and Roleblocker are a decent team, but with this being an OC game (and one that basically required lying to advance the team), having one Passive roles that offered little protection from anything and another passive role that was rendered immediately moot by the literal piles of protection within the game was just too much of a detriment to the team. How to Fix: Give Strongman a passive investigative role, such as Tracker or Role Cop, OR give the BPV Godfather a passive Ninja modifiers and one of the aforementioned roles (or both). It lets them maintain their passive claim, but also allows them to do things like get caught via the town's two out of three of the town's dedicated info roles, allowing each to dodge one freely, giving mafia a bit of an edge with access to info and protection from earlygame threats in town. It's not like the BPV was doing anything major for a while anyway.

- Town's overwhelming protection: If I count correctly, Non-Mafia had a Doc, a BPV'd Bodyguard, a 1x Deathproof, a 1x Doc and a 1x Commute...that's a lot for Scum to have to work through. sure, two of those weren't town's protection, but that's also a problem; town still had three protective roles that they could not reasonably have busted through. In tandem with the Innocent Child (a role which could have theoretically rocked the game with immediate usage and double protection for the majority of the game), the 1x DeathProof could threaten scum by surviving even a kill without doc protection, a giant detriment to scum.
How to Fix: Consider removing the BPV from the bodyguard, ensuring that at least somebody dies when the BG is involved and mafia shoots it. Alternatively, remove the Innocent Child altogether, or modify it so that if after it claims, it becomes "Weak" (if visited by any mafia player's action, dies). The former gives mafia a bit of a benefit in terms of still screwing with their plans but not with the numbers, and the latter could be something that encourages careful play for the Innocent Child with regards to the OC aspect of the game, and also makes town a bit weaker by creating a player that's not gamebreakingly powerful as a leadership role.
Additionally, the ITP duo's protection was fine, but considering the lack of kills from other locations until mid->late game, giving both of them a commute lets them stick to their own little side of the game and gives ITPs less reason to side with any one faction, as they can't really benefit one or the other, and remain ambiguous towards alliance play.

- Mafia's lack of protection against the LightningRod Watcher combo. The Watcher was guaranteed to exist by at least a 1x, and the use of it in tandem with the Lightning Rod, alerted town's watcher to literally every active player other than the ITPs (as why would scum not act on N1?). It's way too much info to hand the town under normal circumstances. Even if the strongkill was around at the time, not using it on N1 meant that again, scum gains nothing through the lightningrod acting and town gains plenty. It leaves primarily passive roleclaims out in the open, which are easy pickings to Process of Elimination lynchings.
How to Fix: The aforementioned Ninja modifier would have helped, allowing mafia to get something out of the LightningRod acting by at least theoretically securing a kill (if on the StrongMan), or at least some info via the aforementioned Role Cop/Tracker element. As it stood, Mafia's Night 1 in this particular run of the setup was an absolute waste to the faction, while town gained more info than they knew what to do with (seriously; the leadership core was torn at one point as to whom was worth lynching first). Additionally, removing the Watcher altogether, or giving Mafia the Watcher, would help balance out Mafia's info powers by quite a lot, while not really messing with town all that much. Finally, town not having a Watcher meant they could run say, a dedicated Tracker, which would not have broken the game and additionally, still provided good info to the town as the game progressed, only having to worry about the Ninja.

- Town's RoleCop: Mafia had no way to hide from the RoleCop. Considering that the RoleCop showed factions (if a RoleCop shows Godfather, then it's a 100% confirmed faction-detecting power), this was absurdly powerful in a game that already had a dedicated full-time cop and a Watcher variant. The only mafia player that had any chance to survive a rolecop check was the Ascetic Redirector, which would have looked suspicious as heck when returning a failure, or possibly the RoleBlocker, which really doesn't have much reason to exist in town's hands given the pile of protection. The Role Cop was a better Cop than the Cop in this setup, arguably. But Elie, the Ninja Reporter was added in so like, that was ok as a sort-of Miller, right? First off, you had a Miller. That miller would've been townconfirmed by a RoleCop check (what Mafia has the Miller role?). Secondly, the Ninja Reporter is better than Miller, but I don't think the tradeoff of town risking a mislynch on a "caught" Reporter is really worth mafia losing their Godfather to an non-visitation investigation. The Ninja Reporter couldn't even visit, and since no items existed in the game, it was a red herring. It's good mislynch fodder for the Role Cop, but it's the only real weakness the sucker had, and given that this OC game was an OC Game, there was info already much more accessible.
How to Fix: Make it so the Role Cop doesn't see Passive roles, or Faction modifiers. A Role Cop would typically be expected to learn what powers a player is capable of using/performing, not what faction their target player works for. This would've allowed the Role Cop to not immediately be able to catch a scum, but also would've made the catch on the Ninja Reporter that much more "believable", buffed the scumteam up by a bit, given town something to distrust (Mafia commonly has RoleCops) and finally, in tandem with the other town investigation, could have led to some interesting banter as to whether the role cop itself was a town sided role.

The game was pretty good, and many roles were fun to have seen. Innocent Children are rarities in this day and age (what with Masons being easier to incorporate into games), and larger sized OC games with partnered ITPs, 1x Deathproofs and mafia Ascetics are fun to have in setups like this, since they encourage play to force a player to think about how they're able to explain themselves as not being a hostile ITP worth lynching if caught via check, but there was just too much power in town's hands, and virtually no power in scum's unless they managed to stumble into the action core, which realistically wasn't happening even if they weren't down a man by Night 1. In reality, there were just a handful of balance issues that kind of had an "All the planets align" sort of issue with reference to the mafia stomp that this game experienced, but even if Mafia played well, there were hurdles that required a bit too much effort for Mafia to realistically overcome, and little adjustments here and there (seriously, all I really suggested was modifying two roles on each faction) would have balanced the game by a lot, without changing up the foundation of the game that was build. In the future, when building a setup, run scenarios in which every player acts on Night 1, Night 2, etc, with the absence of 1 particular player [a randomly selected D1 lynch], and just see what the outcome is. Something like that, for this game in particular, is a good way to confirm what could go wrong if X faction loses Y player/Z role, and gives great insight as to what could stand to be modified in worse-case scenarios for each side.

Please don't be offended when I throw all of this out there; I want you guys as hosts to continue to host fun and entertaining games, and this is just some advice that I hope provides insight to more ways to balance games that you host in the future.

 

[CheffOfGames]

Delightful~ Did I miss the endgame flavor though?

I'm writing the endgame flavor atm, just a bit busy with school and such, gonna read your advice now

 

[Elieson]

**An edit to the above; in the 25s philosophy, if you're going to pull a role from a particular type, sticking it into the Utility pile is normally the way to go, (like, pulling a role from the kill power and stuffing it into utility), as it doesn't really power up the faction, but also, doesn't really nerf opposing factions.

I'm writing the endgame flavor atm, just a bit busy with school and such, gonna read your advice now

NP take your time. I'm here forever.

 

[Maniacal Engineer]

Like Elie said, the game’s role balance wasn’t actually as awful as the roflstomping that occurred would suggest.

As I previously mentioned, who RNG’d which roles was also vital to contributing to how one-sided things were. I pretty much saw my role and said to the hosts that the game was over before it had begun. I was more right than I realized at the time.

 

[Maniacal Engineer]

Like Elie said, the game’s role balance wasn’t actually as awful as the roflstomping that occurred would suggest.

As I previously mentioned, who RNG’d which roles was also vital to contributing to how one-sided things were. I pretty much saw my role and said to the hosts that the game was over before it had begun. I was more right than I realized at the time.

This was my literal reaction:

Spoiler

I pretty much stuck to that plan, too. I did post a bit more than just Etemon quotes and votes, though. I am sad that I failed my personal challenge.

As a fun bit of trivia, concerning point number one (the no softclaiming bit), look back. I never actually confirmed receiving my role PM in-thread on D1. I just jumped straight into business. I figured my role would “confirm” itself as of D2.

 

[CheffOfGames]

Holy crap, that was one long wall of helpful information, while I agree with most of it there was 1 thing which you probably didn't see

The Watcher was guaranteed to exist by at least a 1x

The Watcher (Lycanroc) was either 3x Watcher, 3x Tracker or 1x Watcher & 1x Tracker, so this was not guaranteed to be in there

Please don't be offended when I throw all of this out there; I want you guys as hosts to continue to host fun and entertaining games, and this is just some advice that I hope provides insight to more ways to balance games that you host in the future.

I am not offended by helpful information, I'm glad you took the time to help us.

NP take your time. I'm here forever.

I'll keep you to that

As I previously mentioned, who RNG’d which roles was also vital to contributing to how one-sided things were. I pretty much saw my role and said to the hosts that the game was over before it had begun. I was more right than I realized at the time.

I had the same feeling when I saw the RNG with you as Lrod and Elie as something hard to kill, that compared with Elementar choosing Watcher made me and LG jokingly say we could end the game right there and then

I never actually confirmed receiving my role PM in-thread on D1. I just jumped straight into business.

You posted in your role pm relatively fast and were quite active, me and Lone never thought about asking you for confirmation because of this.

 

[Maniacal Engineer]

Just note that, one of these days, I’m probably going to try playing a mafia game without reading my role PM. This is a very stupid thing to do, and can potentially have some hilarious results, but it’s also probably not something advisable.

 

[Max1996]

Just note that, one of these days, I’m probably going to try playing a mafia game without reading my role PM. This is a very stupid thing to do, and can potentially have some hilarious results, but it’s also probably not something advisable.

JUST. DO. IT!

 

[MegaPod]

Just note that, one of these days, I’m probably going to try playing a mafia game without reading my role PM. This is a very stupid thing to do, and can potentially have some hilarious results, but it’s also probably not something advisable.

Do it when you join MegaPod’s Pokémon of the Week Mafia