The size of games

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The size of games

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Sun Jan 04, 2004 5:09 am

Post by Guest »

I'm sure you've seen it all before, people dreaming of modding the biggest game ever. Going for the big 35/40 player games expecting it to be the best ever. But it never works out that way. For me anyway, the bigger the game, the less fun it is to play.

The reason is simple, with so many people it's harder to follow, you only interact with a small proportion of the players, and you can get away with lurking much easier. So what happens is the game comes to a complete stop. And nobody is willing to restart it because it would take a mammoth effort to analyse the playing patterns of all the people in the game, and all 50 pages of the game so far. It's almost impossible to organise a proper lynching. It can usually take a week from the cop identifying the scum until the town decides they are to be lynched, and another week till the final vote is put on.

Compare that with the small games. First we have the newbie games. 7 players seems very small but they are a lot of fun to play, all be it a bit too short. Then we have the mini-games, with 12 people. This imo, is the optimal number for a mafia game. Each game will take on average 5/6 game days, and maybe 5/6 real weeks. Also, you can be fairly sure by the time the 12th person signs up, the 1st few people to sign up are still willing to play. I've seen a few games where it took so long to sign up, by the time it did start, some of the people weren't active in the site and needed replacing, before the game even starts.

We don't lose much of the fun as we go a bit bigger. A std 15 player game, such as Texas mafia, was fun to play as well. Few problems with activity and lurking, and the game progressed at a nice speed. But there aren't much of these games. Most people either go for the mini or the 25+ player normal/theme.

As the games get bigger, it is harder to keep players interested. This is the field of the themed games. The interesting roles/game mechanics are designed to compensate for the natural effects of larger games. Games like Mixed Theme keep people interested because people are anxious to see what roles could possibly come up. But make no mistake, only talented mods can make such a large themed game both interesting to the very end and completely playable.

In conclusion, I believe 12-15 is the optimal size for a game, and any larger and you will run into problems with activity. Compensating with themes/game mechanics can take away from the mafianess of the game. I suggest only very talented mods can make large games work.

Finally, I'd like to say that I feel the current system of 2 themes but unlimited large games in biased towards these games. Maybe the restriction could be lifted but any such decision must be looked into more thoroughly than I have here. Either that or mods make more 'large' games in the 15-17 size range.

As I start modding, that will be the kind of games I'll be making.
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Tue Oct 06, 2009 4:27 pm

Post by mask man »

4-5 year bump. Cool.

But really, would anyone like to claim this post? I doubt it but I mean... This guy didn't just explode right? And nobody replied. This is what happens to my topics, but worse.
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Tue Oct 06, 2009 4:33 pm

Post by Hoopla »

What is the largest game ever run? Maybe about 40?
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Tue Oct 06, 2009 4:34 pm

Post by Pomegranate »

Hoopla wrote:What is the largest game ever run? Maybe about 40?
Probably.
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Tue Oct 06, 2009 4:49 pm

Post by Elmo »

As far as I know, ehobanohar had 56 - depends if you count that, though.

There was a thread a while back that said towns won a small portion of large games, so probably there's some truth to this.
Succinctness is pro-town.

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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:29 pm

Post by YamiJoey »

That's the strangest game of anything - ever.

Largest game I've been involved in is probably about 25 ish. I've just made a game of 31 which I'll be running soon, which'll be the biggest on our site. Scum are winning smaller games easier over there, too. We've had two perfect Town games for 20+ players.

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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Wed Oct 07, 2009 1:13 am

Post by Vi »

Large Games, generally speaking, are both unenjoyable and borderline player abandoned precisely because of what the TC said.

There are ways around that, though - most of them involving sudden and rapid death in some form. And IIRC even in ehobanohar that didn't completely solve the problem.
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Wed Oct 07, 2009 6:25 am

Post by Pomegranate »

Large games are often unenjoyable due to how many replacements usually need to be found, but I find them fun. I usually keep a somewhat low profile D1, while making personal reads on everyone. The games usually have quite a few game days, which I like, so there's more information to work with.
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Wed Oct 07, 2009 6:56 am

Post by charter »

I find large games much, much more enjoyable, especially when you get down to ~7 or so players. If you die before that, then it's not as much fun to sit and watch from the sidelines. Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to be in more than a few large games at a time.
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Wed Oct 07, 2009 7:01 am

Post by Pomegranate »

charter wrote:I find large games much, much more enjoyable, especially when you get down to ~7 or so players. If you die before that, then it's not as much fun to sit and watch from the sidelines. Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to be in more than a few large games at a time.
Yeah, well in my first large game, 100 (and only, until 102 starts up) I died N1, but I've been following it, and right now there are 6 players going into N5, and it's very interesting.
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Post Post #10 (ISO) » Wed Oct 07, 2009 9:01 am

Post by 12Keyblade »

mask man wrote:4-5 year bump. Cool.

But really, would anyone like to claim this post? I doubt it but I mean... This guy didn't just explode right? And nobody replied. This is what happens to my topics, but worse.
Necro fail.

*waits for CDB*
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Post Post #11 (ISO) » Thu Oct 08, 2009 7:52 am

Post by Mr. Flay »

Civil War had
60 IIRC
50, but ended up abandoned.
Retired as of October 2014.
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Post Post #12 (ISO) » Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:01 pm

Post by Yosarian2 »

Mr. Flay wrote:Civil War had
60 IIRC
50, but ended up abandoned.
Yeah. Shame how that turned out; it was a fun game, and if there'd been a more active mod who'd actually followed through with his "I'll modkill anyone who lurks if I can't instantly find a replacement" promise, game would have worked a lot better.

It was odd for other reasons too, of course, the biggest that there wasn't really a scum group or a town. Still, I really like the way he did voting in that game; if I ever run a 50 player game, I might use the same system, it worked well.
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Post Post #13 (ISO) » Fri Oct 09, 2009 5:42 am

Post by Thestatusquo »

12Keyblade wrote:
mask man wrote:4-5 year bump. Cool.

But really, would anyone like to claim this post? I doubt it but I mean... This guy didn't just explode right? And nobody replied. This is what happens to my topics, but worse.
Necro fail.

*waits for CDB*
TBH I think this was a good necro.

He wanted to talk about something, and used the search function to find that a thread had already been started about it.
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Post Post #14 (ISO) » Fri Oct 23, 2009 10:24 am

Post by 7baz »

id say the bigger the game the more fun it is.
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