How to balance multiball games?

[TemporalLich]

I have also noticed in the course of running them that people will complain about their factions power level almost no matter what you do. In a 3 faction game I ran awhile back I think it was reasonably balanced with each side having roughly 25% chance of winning. However most people aren't used to having 25% chance of winning. Their faction will feel underpowered to them. They will complain.

I still think this is the right way to do things but in the moment people are going to be annoyed.

A 25% EV for three factions adds up to 75%, which while balanced has a non-negligible chance of a draw or complete loss. The game being multiball does have some expected endgames that are draws (1 mafia and 1 werewolf is a stalemate), but a 25% chance for no winners feels like there is too much of a chance for an unsatisfying endgame.

But yeah equal EVs are balanced, and you won't get 50% EV in a balanced multiball as you have more than two factions that can't win together.

[TemporalLich]

3 non town factions.

Alrighty. I assumed that Town was a faction.

25% for Town and three non-town factions adds up to 100%, and yeah I consider that balanced.

I think you could have maybe assumed I know how to do basic math idk.

Sorry about that, I assumed that Town was a faction.

Having the EV be 50% for town and ~16.6% each for three scumteams would be extremely townsided

[TemporalLich]

I think its ok to have somewhat unbalanced win% per faction, but not so drastically that the town wins the game half the time.

Like if you have like town wins 30% of the time each faction wins ~23% of the time that's probably fine.

yeah, balance is an ideal

slight imbalance is a very reasonable possibility and is likely not significant anyway

Or like if you're working with a serial killer its usually pretty impossible to give them equal win chances.

Yeah... SK is hard to balance as it would be balanced as an extreme version of unequal scum team sizes

That being said, Survivor is impossible to balance