post a role you want to see more often

[Overswarm]

ninja is not an acceptable "balance" for tracker/watcher alone. That's like adding a godfather and saying "job done, now it's balanced".

If watcher/tracker is too powerful without a ninja, it's still too powerful with one.

 

[vanderzant]

OS I'm making a Day only game (and twilight I guess) with just day abilities. Quit stealing my idea

The watcher scenario I'm thinking of is a town power role claiming (lets say doctor) and the watcher instantly getting an awesome result when scum targets them during the night (i.e. mafia killer or roleblocker).

Ignoring this altogether, it's still a lot easier imo for a player to figure out who is likely to die then who is scum. So a watcher needs to be balanced with a combination of the following things:

1. Ninja. If there is a roleblocker then this isn't enough alone unless it's a... ninja roleblocker
2. Town abilities that would want to target the doc as well (maybe cop, tracker?). Despite this, the watcher still gets incredibly good results, it's not that difficult to piece together who is more likely to be what role.
3. Restriction (and this is probably the best single balance). Example: Once you pick a target to watch, you can not change unless your target dies. OS did this for his watcher in villains and imo it was a great restriction because if the watcher makes a mistake on N1 they can't keep picking a new target each night.

An example of where a watcher is broken is probably Halo Mafia. Mentos claimed mason recruiter so Chuckie watched him and saw Swiss roleblocking him. If mentos had picked a target that didn't die and claimed he'd been roleblocked, Chuckie would of had an instant guilty on Swiss, for basically NO work or intelligent play on his behalf. It wouldn't of mattered how well Swiss had played as scum, his team would get punished for roleblocking the town mason recruiter. Doesn't sound that fair does it?

So yeah, I generally think you should steer clear of watchers unless you know what you're doing.

 

[Asdioh]

13 person game
12 person masonry

So much wifom!

 

[#HBC | FrozeηFlame]

ninja is not an acceptable "balance" for tracker/watcher alone. That's like adding a godfather and saying "job done, now it's balanced".

If watcher/tracker is too powerful without a ninja, it's still too powerful with one.

Wait what?

A mafia ninja takes away the most common devastating effect the watcher has on a mafia team. Watching a killer to a dead body.

It also removes tracking a killer to a dead body.

Of course, so long as the ninja is still alive.

I don't understand how you can argue that using Ninja's isn't an acceptable means of balancing using a watcher or a tracker in a setup.

No one ever said that "oh no, but because mods can use Ninja's watchers aren't OP". All we're saying is that you can use them, and when used properly, they make watchers/trackers LESS OP. That IS acceptable balancing. Not perfect, but acceptable.

Like, obviously you can use Ninja in conjunction with other mafia abilities or restrictions on the watcher/tracker to further weaken the roles if need be but like, that doesn't mean you can't have a game with a watcher in it, a ninja to counteract it, and not have the game be balanced. That's entirely possible. Yes, watcher is still REALLY powerful, probably still more powerful than most other roles, but simply LESS powerful.

Idk maybe I'm missing your point. I really feel like you're kind of strawmaning the argument for using Ninjas more often in setups with trackers/watcher. =/

 

[Asdioh]

one shot watcher and/or tracker
mafia ninja, which is activated and also one shot?
hm

 

[Overswarm]

Wait what?

A mafia ninja takes away the most common devastating effect the watcher has on a mafia team. Watching a killer to a dead body.

It also removes tracking a killer to a dead body.

Of course, so long as the ninja is still alive.

I don't understand how you can argue that using Ninja's isn't an acceptable means of balancing using a watcher or a tracker in a setup.

-_^

"Of course, so long as the ninja is still alive."

Designing your game in such a way that if the Ninja is vigged or lynched in the first phase that suddenly mafia is sunk is precarious balancing at best.

No one ever said that "oh no, but because mods can use Ninja's watchers aren't OP". All we're saying is that you can use them, and when used properly, they make watchers/trackers LESS OP. That IS acceptable balancing. Not perfect, but acceptable.


Like, obviously you can use Ninja in conjunction with other mafia abilities or restrictions on the watcher/tracker to further weaken the roles if need be but like, that doesn't mean you can't have a game with a watcher in it, a ninja to counteract it, and not have the game be balanced. That's entirely possible. Yes, watcher is still REALLY powerful, probably still more powerful than most other roles, but simply LESS powerful.

Idk maybe I'm missing your point. I really feel like you're kind of strawmaning the argument for using Ninjas more often in setups with trackers/watcher. =/

The idea is to not have a "Town gets X, so Mafia gets Y" but rather make abilities balanced in of themselves. While I've made abilities balanced with other people's abilities in mind, if you think the watcher is too strong you can't just make one ninja role and say "okay, now we're good". That's bad game design.

As an example:

In FPS games, people complained about campers. They'd put their back to a wall and watch the only entrance and wait. So later, FPS designers knew people didn't like this and said "if you sit still for more than 30 seconds, you will die automatically".

People would sit for about 20-25 seconds, move a little, then sit back down.

So it was changed again. Now you couldn't sit in the same ROOM for 30 seconds.

Now people would pop out of the room and then back in. It resulted in two people camping; one outside and one inside. People would stand at the entrance of a room until they saw someone coming, then hop into the room and watch the door. Their timer would be ahead.


In other words, they didn't balance the actual issue. They just plopped stuff in and said 'that should fix it'.

What you're suggesting with the ninja is similar. The OPness of the watcher role isn't really destroyed by the ninja; it's just made into a coin flip. Only considering those two roles, it's either "ninja lives, watcher is useless" or "ninja dies, watcher is OP", and either can happen at any time. It doesn't change the actual properties of the watcher.

This isn't considering mafia roles of other members that be tracked, or the potential of roles such a paranoid gun owner and whatnot.

Speaking of which, that'd be a better way to balance a watcher role than simply having a ninja. Having a town role that killed whoever visited them with a non-fatal action. That still wouldn't be good, but better than a ninja since it doesn't make the watcher useless but makes the watcher in danger.

A better way would be to force the watcher to watch one person and only one person, to have limited amount of uses (one or two maybe), have the watcher roleblock whoever he is watching, thus meaning if the doc claims and the watcher watches him, he might get a kill but he's also rbing the doc, having mafia abilities that can send fake visits to multiple people to dilute his results, have the watcher choose his target for the night after the current night (so no watching on N1 and on N1 they select who the watch on N2) thus making them always a step behind and forced to think far ahead, etc.

 

[Deleted member]

13 person game
12 person masonry

So much wifom!

13 people, each person in a masonry with 2 others (so a is masoned with B, A is masoned with C, B is masoned with D and C masoned with D in the 4 player case), and nobody is allowed what their "other" mason partner is.

About the watcher, maybe make it only receive the first X people (so if the limit is 2 and 4 people visit he only gets 2 of them as result), or maybe link it with another townie

 

[X1-12]

Self watcher yo

Or Gravedigger or something

 

[Fynal]

in a big game, some kinda 1-shot repetitive gravedigger would be cool...

so the doc dies, digger gets 1-shot protect, then tracker dies, digger gets 1-shot track, etc

 

[X1-12]

Thats not a gravedigger?

Gravedigger always appears to have visited whoever died that Night, also shows up guilty to forensic investigator.

What you're talking about sounds more like a backup

 

[Fynal]

whaaaaaat?

>thought gravedigger was sort of like maf backup, he got role of dude who died

i have been MISLEAD

 

[Seikend]

whaaaaaat?

>thought gravedigger was sort of like maf backup, he got role of dude who died

i have been MISLEAD

SOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUP!

 

[ranmaru]

whaaaaaat?

>thought gravedigger was sort of like maf backup, he got role of dude who died

i have been MISLEAD

lol

>random dude digs up some doctor dude and INSTANTLY GAINS HIS POWAHS YEAH KICK ***! DIGIVOLLLVVEEEE TOOOOO

 

[#HBC | ѕoup]

Graverobber.*

not Gravedigger.*