farside22 wrote:The only thing is I wish you would have had more then just the veto out there to play.
I thought hard about what other things from the show I could add in, but I just could not think of anything that would not be detrimental in the hands of scum. I refused to have non-travelling powers because in a nightless, any power means that person is never lynched. The coup d'etat was too powerful, Golden/Diamond Power of Vetoes were too unilateral as well. Only the Power of Veto made sense as a town power, and the perfect time was when FaerieLord had it. I was bummed out when he didn't use it then. I wasn't creative enough to add a new power.
mneme wrote:I like fast games, but games decided by modkills and timeouts? not so much.
I agree. The timeout was something I hated, but I gave pickem extra time and even suggested other considerations in the case he could not make his selections before deadline. As for the modkill, unfortunate as well, but I'm not exactly sure that pickem/farside would've lasted too long anyway.
The deadlines were probably more detrimental to town than to scum, but I can't stand games that lag and this game was much much slower than I anticipated. Ultimatum Mafia was a good pace for me. I had longer deadlines for this game because people said Ultimatum favored scum because of the deadlines. I felt that there was little urgency in this game, so deadlines ended up being redundant and punitive rather than motivating discussion. I felt that too many people pushed the 48 hr post deadline rule too much, but I can't blame people for not taking it seriously (due to the site's norms). However, I refused to mod a game without deadlines just because of my personal preference, but it also made sense because of the "theme".
Skruffs wrote:With no investigative or protective roles, the town was severely outnumbered! That there were two groups who didn't know who the other group was, didn't matter for TOWN, because Town still was facing very harsh odds.
Agreed. 3:3:6 is not favourable for the town. It's been long established. It's something like 38:38:18 chances (as hypothesized by Kelly Chen in
Open Setup Nom/Disc thread). I wondered if the dichotomous voting would help town. Turns out that it really doesn't make a difference at all if I look at both Ultimatum and BB Mafia. What happened is that I think the random role assignment happened to be unfavourable to town in both games. 3:3:7 or 8 is probably better for town, but I wasn't going to run a large theme game either time. What's odd is that the majority of the HoHs were town but the strong majority of nominations were for townies anyway. I believed that with dichotomous voting, the two nominees would probably end up being the top two suspects anyway. However, in this game, it didn't happen because the HoHs were allowed to get away with it. I felt that past HoHs that were attacked were attacked mostly outside of the context of their two nominations - and that it really made this more kingmaker than anything else.
I do think this time dichotomous voting did affect the spotlight on mneme. In a regular nightless setup, mneme nor ChaosOmega would've lasted this long. But then again, the impetus should fall on the town to ensure the spotlight sticks on everyone. This happened in the first two days when the HoH facilitated decent discussion. The third day onward the nomination phase was void of any general discussion and the HoH held all the power and the game changed. The game from that point onward felt like a chore to most involved because the power shifted out of their hands (not due to game setup). That's when the town lost, I felt - much like how Kingmaker II also faltered in the end - because power was more in the Kingmaker's hands more than the King or town.
I do agree that this game probably could've worked better as 4:8, but I'm all for testing out the 3:3:6 format and now we've seen how it could feasibly work or not.
As for the argument about mafia equalling all others alive vs. making mafia outnumber all others alive. I thought about it before the game, but when I tested out all possibilities it lead to the minority mafia faction winning in the end. I thought that a game which would make sacrificing a mafia member at a crucial juncture to gain position would be a poor setup in the first place (ie: final four - Elmo eking out the win would've been a poor outcome, I believe)
However, I think that the game followed a very basic and predictable formula. Scum will bus and look town to get the HoH position and last long and town will stay under the radar and get replaced. I thought town had a chance once VRK got HoH, but things changed in week 3. Town had a chance even after that because Skruffs was untouchable, but it seemed that no other townie would last the distance with him.
If I were to do the game again, I think I could go for a 3:3:8, maybe renew the veto once (to give two total) and tighten up deadlines actually. But I'm not doing anything like this game again. If anyone wants to run away with these ideas, go for it.
