The Situation Room 2.0

[Maniacal Engineer]

Be fair, Elieson, you've never actually seen ME try to scumhunt.
I literally died Night 1 in the only game we ever played together. Plus, I figured out who the last scum in Christmas Mafia was before you did.
@Zexy can vouch for that.

 

[Elieson]

that's why I said the collective

as in

I know some of you can but I also know that many aren't that great at it (yet)

 

[Qing'e]

You're missing the point however, it's not making Silencer a %-based role, it's discouraging rather than barring it from consecutively targeting the same person by setting it so that there's a 50% and steadily higher chance of failure if it tries to. As long as it doesn't try consecutively silencing anyone, it's not %-based. And anyway, I still don't see how a scum role being %-based or not affects scumhunting by town.

 

[Elieson]

@Hellcrow
What if the optimal scum play is to silence a person a second time? What if scum knows every role that exists, and the only one they want to silence is the town cop? Now, scum is effectively reduced to needing to take a potentially punishable risk to try something and just see what happens? If it sticks, the cop is silenced twice in a row. What fun is that? If it fails, scum will be relatively irritated that they were given a role with the element of failure built right in. Either way, somebody is going to finish the game with a vapid headache, and it's probably going to come right out at the host.

the point is

when there's like 6 people alive in a 4:2 scenario and it's MILO, and a key player (i.e. the claimed Cop) got silenced the previous phase, and there's no one else logical to try to silence, then the scum silencer is in a pickle because they're obligated to silence the known threat and just hope for the best. They may as well hope that the player decides to be inactive for 90% of the day.

Plus, the point of a silencer is that it prevents town from playing, which goes against the concept of having players become better. Having a % chance for something happening means that on top of theoretical opposing Safeguards, Roleblockers, Commuters and Ascetics, they need to compete with their own role even working at all. Who's to say they can't alternate between one and another player? If the stipulation is in there that says they can't, then the silencer is just a random potshot that for a chunk of the game is relatively useless and doesn't maintain and key involvement in the game sans pulling a vote from the numbers and giving people a headache.

Silencers are a decent role on paper, but the role itself is detrimental to the players ability to grow as a player and a giant headache to be a victim of, and a % role just promotes the frustration of theoretical unreliability. It already gives scum a huge advantage by cutting numbers for votes to be places against them, in addition to pulling discussion away from a player.

I'd rather have a Silencer that flat out can never target the same person twice, but then again I'd rather never have a silencer in a game. I'd rather rather have a player that prevents another player from engaging in conversation, but that can still interact in the game with a vote, or a player that can suck your vote away but can't zip your mouth shut. Both of those can interact positively within the metagame and not prevent a player from just throwing their hands into the air and taking a piss in the corner for 48 hours. Furthermore, this forum does not have the activity levels to demand the inclusion of a role specifically designed to punish it. It's detrimental to the game, it's detrimental to learning and it's detrimental to fun. Like I said some ages ago, if this forum were more active, I wouldn't be so against the premise of including a silencer and variants of said silencer, but when you have 25% of the past four game's populace posting as many times as there are phases in the game, and 25% of the game's active populace dead by Night 2, the rest of the game turns into a one-page-per-day fuckfest in which literally nothing is going on.

Coming back from 48 hours of sitting in the corner banging your head against the wall in frustration means that you, the player, will very likely just move on to other things; it's normal human psychology. If you can't interact with something for 2 days, you're gonna lose interest, especially when you aren't in control of the pace in which the medium is progressing.

Coming into a game where you can't reliably count on your role doing what you want it to do means jack diddly to the player and discourages both using the role given to them or promotes internal frustration with the role rather than frustration directed towards the game's playerbase. The latter is fine, since the players drive the game forward, but a player's role should never be their own enemy.

It's like making a setup where you're the mafia faction and on N2, you have a 50/50 shot at your kill being successful because of a flat %. Now add to that the frustration of the other theoretical player roles to consider. If a doc targets your N2 kill, in Endgame you just bite your tongue and say bad luck. But if you failed some key crucial gameplay action because your role just failed at a dice roll and you see in endgame that the cause of you taking a loss was because of that, you're not exactly gonna feel good about it. The other 95% of the game might not care too much and might even celebrate it, but you the player are gonna be unhappy about it.

Now what about the game itself? What if the person you tried to silence with a 50% -10% rate was a commuter, and commuted. Either you, the host, can say that the role failed because of a dice roll, you can declare that it failed by other means, or maybe both?
Is it something that can be caught if Tracked/Watched?
What about protected against?
If so, You're punishing a player who had their role fail just be existing. If not, you're promoting uncertainty and frustration for a player's limitted ability to impact the game as a whole.

I'm not sure if I'm just upset about a Silencer existing and flat out killing this site's struggling activity, or if I'm more upset about the serious consideration of how to balance a % based role on a site with an already hit-or-miss activity level. As a player who was a victim of both, simultaneously even, I can attest that it's a miserable experience, to the point of driving my interest already out the window to join standard games for fear of stumbling upon these elements of gameplay.

If you want to risk pissing off players by giving them a role that they can't count on, go for it.

 

[Zexy]

Silencer is a bad role in general imo, I only include it in some setups because it fits flavor/balance.
Each time it was used something went wrong with it, leading us to change the way it works in future games.
It's nothing like it used to be and it will be nothing like what it currently is pretty soon...

We should better not get started with %-roles. I can accept Flying Pumpkin for the fun of it, but if we include 50% Silencer, why not include 50% Doctor, Roleblocker, etc... I don't really want us to go there.

 

[Snowy]

I suggested giving the silencer a punishment like that because it really is a fun-destroying role. As I'm sure Elieson can attest to after being silenced 2 times in FBM, and was nearly silenced a third time if Elie didn't hit Kyriaki.

I suggested giving it a percent based punishment because Leetic had the right idea there... Elieson was the greatest threat to the mafia, and so Leetic took Elieson out of the picture... My or Hellcrow's idea allows the silencer to continue to try to silence the largest threat to the mafia, but does provide a risk of failure the more time it is used in the same direction.

Silencer needs restrictions... but I would rather go for the risk/reward style restriction of a percentage, rather than a strict restriction like the "Can't target the same person twice".

 

[Calvinッ]

So you guys mean like a, "If you choose the same person twice, you will only have a 50% chance of it being Successful?"

 

[Snowy]

The second time, yes... The third time is a 40% chance, then 30%, etc.

 

[SoaringDylan]

The second time, yes... The third time is a 40% chance, then 30%, etc.

should work like protect
100% 50% 25% 12.5%

 

[Snowy]

should work like protect
100% 50% 25% 12.5%

I like that idea too.

 

[Maniacal Engineer]

Why so serious?
*crashes a Flying Pumpkin into the thread*

 

[frozen.palisades]

why are you and others so damn gung ho on pushing % based roles when the collective of you lot can barely scumhunt even when your roles don't have variables of failure?

L o l

I recommend playing some simple vanilla games with no out of thread communication for y'all to improve your scum hunting/playing abilities.

Vanilla games = no roles at all.

 

[frozen.palisades]

Also, irt silencer, I've never seen it used as a percentage based role. The only roles I've seen as percentage based are ones that would be very overpowered otherwise.

Even if it is fun destroying, I'd make it x-shot instead of percentage.

 

[Elieson]

The second time, yes... The third time is a 40% chance, then 30%, etc.

But what about the player who in theory, could be silenced more than once, in a row even?

You're considering the gameplay aspect but you're not considering how this impacts the morale of the player and faction

 

[Snowy]

But what about the player who in theory, could be silenced more than once, in a row even?

You're considering the gameplay aspect but you're not considering how this impacts the morale of the player and faction

The morale of the player is the entire reason why I am thinking up restrictions, but still allow silence to be a viable strategy.

 

[Maniacal Engineer]

Making Silencer an X-Shot role will partially help with this problem, especially if the number is kept to 1-2 times per game. The Silencer will need to carefully consider when to use his Silencing.
It may be, and probably is, still necessary to prevent the Silencer from silencing the same player twice in a row. Or, as Elieson said, activity in this forum isn't exactly stellar so the best option might be to not have a Silencer at all...

 

[Zexy]

making silencer x-shot really saves you trouble.
RM had 1-shot, VGM 2-shot.

punishing a fun-destroying role you put in the setup yourself doesn't sound a correct way of hosting games

 

[Elieson]

If your setup hinges on the inclusion of an active and %-restricted Silencer, then either town's too powerful or scum's too weak.

Silencer negates discussion and restricts a vote. It's super powerful

 

[Snowy]

Honestly, I think the idea of not including silencer is probably the best idea of all...

But I hesitate to say I'd never use it because I cannot foresee what my future games will be and I definitely not want players to think "Oh it's an AussieEevee game, it won't have a silencer"...

I think I'll cross the bridge of what kind of restriction to give it when and if I ever need it in the future.

But I will say this.... Silencer is one of the few roles... along with Voteless and goon/vanilla... that I absolutely hate. Especially since Bulbagarden already has an activity problem.

 

[Doctor Floptopus]

I think town silencers are better if you feel a silencer is needed. Or a post restrictor.
But I do absolutely hate voteless. I think it's an unpleasant role to play as, and an entirely unnecessary role to put in. It's bastard, but not in an enjoyable way.