TWG 204 - Forest Feast POST-GAME THREAD

[the sun fan]

Originally Posted by MixMasterLar

Replacements have also been inactive more then a few times.

Even when they're not, players have to react differently to slots that will be replaced, keeping them around "for free" another phase or two to try and be fair to the replacement. This benefits wolves along with the initial inactivity.

I've played with this rule enough to know it doesn't result in a fun, engaging or interesting experience and in many cases just drags out what could have just happened D0 with a modkilled

you're absolutely lost in the sauce if you don't acknowledge that replacements are a lesser evil than modkills

[the sun fan]

Originally Posted by MixMasterLar

Yes, and it works the other way too. If the modkill is a town that lowers villagers to be equal to threats then the game should end there as well

I don't know why you're refusing to acknowledge the wording that I want the game to end when a win condition is achieve. This seems extremely straight forward to me; an obvious course of action for a game with any win condition



I don't. We've played that way enough times to know that this community will keep subverting to expectation of engagement and abuse coming in at the last second to stay I the game without any real engagement.

How many EODs have we played where no real discussion can happen because of inactive players, waiting to see if a vote in there slot will matter, only to see people it both alignments pop in 10 before cutoff with a series of 5 one-line posts that contribute nothing but enable their slot to continue to exist for another 78 hours?

Countless.

It isn't fun. It isn't engaging. It doesn't allow the majority of players to actually deduce the game and instead forces established best practices of dealing with those players----gameplay by reaction, not gameplay by engaging. It's ass, it makes it to where I don't want to play the game. I don't care what's technically more balanced at that point because the community at large is literally supporting players abusing the game to lock out the core spirit of it all by refusing to engage.

Wolves got so many free wins for this, where was the outcry then that the balance needed adjusting?

Killing inactives an hour out at least preserves EoD to the people willing to play it. I don't think it skews the balance too far one way or another (especially compared to certain roles and rules we've used over the years) and it's only been used twice, so until we start seeing wolves auto-losing to it repeatedly I don't see why this can't be the standard.

What it seems to me us that you don't want one player's action to completely change the game in an instant, but you fail to realize that's been happening the entire time---it was just a slow, unfun, agonizing ordeal before and now it's actually something people can play around.




Yeah.

Wolves don't want town to get two lunches? Play the game
Town doesn't want to lose two people and possibly lose before Lylo? Play the game
Both sides want to avoid that third fraction from taking out crucial targets? play the game

You don't play the game then you lose. Again, this seems pretty straight forward to me

your first point is acknowledged
it would be pretty silly since wolves could basically out themselves and lolcat for 90 minutes otherwise
I'm trying to balance the evil of modkills essentially revealing a player's alignment before it is supposed to

fwiw you're like... playing TWG right now when you're reading my posts. I'm not refusing to acknowledge anything; I'm trying to understand exactly what you're saying and exactly what shado is saying and exactly what dbp is saying et al. Relax

the next point is more of a player thing, but I think its the best argument for modkills/replacements before EOD rather than at them.

A good bit of the time that people do that, they die tbh. The most clear example of that in my mind is Tokzic in the most recent Fire Emblem game. Him coming back to the thread with ~10 minutes left got him piled when it appeared that he wasn't going to improve beyond this.

People have been complaining about inactivity since long before any of us (aside from TPS I guess) played werewolf on this website. It is a losing battle, historically. I welcome any and all arguments/suggestions/etc for improving this, but the short of it is that inactivity will always exist. Also, fwiw, the game is neither more or less balanced by what you're talking about, or maybe I don't understand what you're saying.

Wolves letting town get two lynches is outside of their control if all wolves are active (which tbh is more likely than not). Sure, people should just play the game, but I think you're sidestepping my point about the fairness of modkills replacing/not replacing the lynch with that.

[Wayward Vagabond]

Sorry guys

[MixMasterLar]

Originally Posted by the sun fan

you're absolutely lost in the sauce if you don't acknowledge that replacements are a lesser evil than modkills

I won't acknowledge this because it simply isn't true
.
Replacements should exist for when something happens outside a player's control that would otherwise sink the gamefor the rest of the playerbase

People repeatedly not playing the game isn't outside of their control they just simply keep doing it.

[MixMasterLar]

Only other thing for me to add is that for every Tokzic example there's probably 5 more of it happening the other way.

Yeah ideally everyone should jump on players who do that but they don't a lot of the time.

"Oh he's here now I guess I should move my vote"

~

Regarding fairness of modkills towards wolves: I think that two dead towns plus a nightkill benefit wolves much more then you are giving them credit. Yeah, if given the choice they would pick an active player and keep the inactive ones around for the free F3 win---I also like my victories to be free from time to time, but to say this benefits town significantly more just doesn't make a lot of sense outside of the context that Town now has a chance to engage the game

And if giving an entire team a chance to play the game makes it unbalanced then we either need to completely revamp how we play or find another game. The advantages that wolves lose are ones that they really shouldn't have had to begin with, and this very rule could benefit that side in just as many instances

Considering that inactivity worsens over time, I would be more worried of wolves insta-winning in F5 before I concern myself with how much knowledge town might get from the double flip

Edit: to be clear, insta-winning early would suck to but that is always better then the slow defeat of having to watch it play out over multiple phases.

[thesunfan]

Originally Posted by MixMasterLar

I won't acknowledge this because it simply isn't true
.
Replacements should exist for when something happens outside a player's control that would otherwise sink the gamefor the rest of the playerbase

People repeatedly not playing the game isn't outside of their control they just simply keep doing it.

Inactivity upsets and concerns me too.
I would rather there be a replacement. We don't have to agree, but I am surprised that you don't.

Something else worth talking about is multiple inactives at the same time, can be hard for town to pick "the right one"

[ShadoWolfe]

Originally Posted by the sun fan

Wolves letting town get two lynches is outside of their control if all wolves are active (which tbh is more likely than not). Sure, people should just play the game, but I think you're sidestepping my point about the fairness of modkills replacing/not replacing the lynch with that.

so I'm only going to talk about this because I think we more or less understand each other on the rest. I think the biggest thing you need to understand reading my post is that our idea of the status quo seems to be different. I look at the status quo in these games as whatever the setup calls for. Meaning if a setup calls for 11 players, I believe the status quo is 11 active players. I look at inactivity as a divergence from this, and a way to restore the disrupted balance is what I'm looking for.

I think a modkill of town should never replace the lynch under any circumstances. Yes, even in F4, which I'll get to in a moment. Whether a modkill of wolf should or not replace the lynch to maintain balance for wolves, I see both sides of.

I say modkills of town should never replace the lynch under any circumstances because, if it did, then all that's achieved is taking control away from the players. If it did, then the modkill BECOMES the lynch, albeit a host-controlled lynch on a guaranteed town player, and we should all be able to agree that that's bad. I wouldn't play further if that happened in a game.



I also think framing modkills as "essentially two lynches" distorts the conversation and limits objectivity in how we think about and discuss it the topic. It isn't two lynches. As you say, wolves being active enough to clear the extremely low bar is more likely than not. In the vast majority of cases, it's gonna be a town getting modkilled. I want you to answer something, at least to yourself. If you knew with 100% certainty that someone was town, would you want them lynched if you were town? At the end of the day, this is a numbers game as much as it is an information game. Losing a town slot as town hurts town, but it's a necessary loss.

I say it's a numbers game because that's what setups are designed for. If you have an 11 player game and 10/11 people are playing, removal of the 11th just makes it a 10 player game. When a non-player in a town slot is removed from a game via modkill, the game goes from a set balance of, say, 9 town to 2 wolf to 8 town to 2 wolf. That hurts town. By the numbers, that's essentially a free town kill for wolves, not "two lynches" for town. The only way the removal of an inactive disadvantages wolves is if you believe wolves have the right to inactive towns as red herrings/easy targets, which is a slippery slope that disrupts your view of balance itself (because then it wouldn't be 9 towns, but actually 8 towns and 1 yellow that would be in the setup). But I understand the info part, so let's talk about that.

It's an information game too. Which is what you've been arguing. That the info revealed to town is revealed before it's supposed to, and therefore benefits town. That's not a fair assessment, though. It stems from the same predisposed notion that inactives are part of the game, and the removal of them is therefore advantageous to town since they would otherwise be a part of the PoE, "while wolves would almost always prefer that to remain around". But try to shift your viewpoint a bit, just for a minute. Think of the setup as the status quo. When 1 town player isn't playing, it creates an imbalance that needs to be remedied. Forcing the remedy onto town via lynch takes the setup from 11 players (9t,2w) to 9 players (7t,2w) after lynch and nightkill. Essentially, it compounds the imbalance problem. Rather than having a non-player make the 11 player game a 10 player game via modkill, removing the lynch (or not modkilling) forces the 11 player game into a 9 player game. Even in F4, removing an inactive town just makes it F3. Replacing the lynch doesn't make it F3 anymore, it makes it WOLVES WIN endgame instantly due to parity after nightkill. At least in F3, both alignments have a chance of winning.


Town doesn't truly "gain info" by the modkill. At least, not info that compares to actually having their number of players. Wolves don't get disadvantaged by having inactives killed. At least, not compared to having all town players present. Slots that are filled in name only aren't part of the game. They shouldn't be gifted to wolves just because "inactives will always happen" and accepted as part of the game state. That destroys games. Removing or replacing divergent elements from a system as promptly as possible only serves to restore balance to it.

[ShadoWolfe]

I think what still needs more discussion is what modkills should look like when it's a wolf that's inactive. Where games can continue with 1 less town, the balance disruption is devastatingly worse with 1 less wolf. Thankfully, wolves are rarely inactive below the VERY low bar of 5 posts, but it does happen. When it happens, is it fair to their teammate(s) to let town have lynch?

EDIT: I think this is really important. I'd go so far as to say that a wolf below the modkill threshold on D0 with no replacements available straight up ends game for reroll.

[MixMasterLar]

Originally Posted by thesunfan

Something else worth talking about is multiple inactives at the same time, can be hard for town to pick "the right one"

That's what the modkills are there for?

If there's so much inactivity that the rule causes a Thanos Snap then that ain't an issue with the rule and we got some serious discussion on this community's inability to respect the players, hosts, and the game itself to have instead