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Post by Kachu on Jul 11, 2023 15:01:23 GMT
Hey! It's over!
Very HUGE thanks to dootdoot/Igniter for even helping this game exist at all. Without it the idea would've never taken off, even though the game ended early because of... interesting gameplay balance and other decisions that happened during the game!
And a big thank you to Safy for making their incredible return to these forum games to help me out when I needed one last spot!
This was a blast to run, even if the game began sluggish and we struggled almost every step of the way. If everyone had fun despite that, and the lackluster ending, then I'm satisfied.
I'm seriously doubting many of the new mechanics in this game will ever return, but I'm willing to defend the energy mechanic until the day I die. That or the Keyholder/VIP seem to be pretty good at least with some work for future games of this particular format. Normal mafia should probably play like normal mafia still.
By now, all the private threads have been made public. I can't lock them though. So don't stink them up too bad if you decide to give them a read, okay?
And one final thank you to everyone who played and brought your interesting characters into this! I also hope I could've introduced this banger of a franchise to some people!
I don't have much else to comment on at the moment, so things will be left at that for now. Enjoy some pizza, alright?
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Post by Panda on Jul 11, 2023 15:09:16 GMT
GG, thanks for running the game Kachu!
I already posted feedback at a few points during the game in my character thread, so I don't really have anything to add in that regard. I had fun regardless of any balance issues, it's a cool setting and there were some strong characters.
I've said it before but I'm always in favour of running experimental games. It's the only way to actually test these things, and it's better than the games just never seeing the light of day.
Bald is awesome.
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Post by Doctor Nanjo M.D. on Jul 11, 2023 15:14:35 GMT
Pizza: eaten
Game: good
Fun: had
I liked this game (even if I was suspicious and then got discovered immediately). I liked the flavor and the characters a bunch. Epic.
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Post by JoyTheBard (Slezak) on Jul 11, 2023 15:16:58 GMT
Hell yeah! I also hope I returned to the scene with enough of a splash. It really feels good to play this type of game again.
Josephine had lots of fun too, and she hopes she can see the light of day again soon enough. Here's hoping most people found her interesting!
As with Panda, I also posted a fair bit of feedback throughout my private topic and over in the Discord channel, so I don't have anything else constructive to say about the game itself for now at least.
You all had awesome characters as well and I loved interacting with them. It truly makes me excited to play with the rest of you again!
GG WP to all!
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Post by Safy on Jul 11, 2023 15:20:16 GMT
I am glad I came back for this game! Anything to help a fren in need uwu
It was also nice to be able to play a character and not die like right at the start cause school sucked me dry.
It was super fun! Enid was very fun to write.
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Post by Bad Player on Jul 11, 2023 15:28:01 GMT
Thanks for running Kachu!!
All the characters and shenanigans were really cool.
Game mechanics ended up a bit weird… There were definitely cool ideas, but they just didn’t quite come together/interact very well. But a lot of that is difficult to evaluate before actually running, and there’s a lot of variance in how these games can end up playing out. And I still had a lot of fun! I think we already discussed the game mechanics a lot during the game, I can wordvomit more thoughts if people want but I think most stuff has already been covered
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Post by notbadplayer on Jul 11, 2023 15:41:43 GMT
THanks for gming kachu :DDDDDD This game was really fun i'm glad i got to be silly with everyone else who was also being silly. I thought the mechanics were really cool even if some of them ended up not working like you planned. When you host BF10 anniverary edition I'm sure it will go a lot smoother. Also I have no idea how much this differed from the other black fable games so as far as i'm concerned everything in this game was completely original down to the core concept of Mafia so good job on handcrafting all of this!!!!!
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Post by satan on Jul 11, 2023 16:00:35 GMT
Speaking as the Second Apostle, this was rather fun. I tried to play the mindgame angle a little too much, methinks, and Monty really threw us for a loop that first Cycle. And then it all spiraled from there.
The fact that we tried to kill Andrea twice in a row certainly didn't help matters either, so we were short two kills on a good day anyway. But you live and you learn, I guess.
.... Wait, I was an Apostle. And I died twice. I'm definitely not alive. Oops.
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Post by Neotelenta on Jul 11, 2023 17:58:02 GMT
I enjoyed the game, despite being an Apostle. Not a big fan of being the 'bad guy' in almost any scenario, but hey, it was a good experience and even despite the mechanical issues of the game, I enjoyed the character variety and the interactions, even when they got spicy.
Fun times all around. =D
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Post by JoyTheBard (Slezak) on Jul 11, 2023 18:12:35 GMT
I think you did a pretty good job in making it seem like Vincent believed he was legitimately doing it for a righteous cause, so you could very easily spin it that you were the antiheroes.
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Post by Neotelenta on Jul 11, 2023 18:32:11 GMT
Oh, absolutely. If I couldn't be a hero everyone wanted, then I could at least try to be a 'hero' that thought he was needed. I'm glad I pulled that off.
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Post by satan on Jul 11, 2023 18:52:34 GMT
Also, just putting this out there, but I am legitimately having a chuckle over Scott not even getting an ending post. Which, I mean, was the thing I was going for, so I chose not to make an ending post, but nobody even mentioned it, which is even better.
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Post by JoyTheBard (Slezak) on Jul 11, 2023 18:55:53 GMT
. . . Who's Scott? I don't recall a character named Scott in Black Fable 5 on the Cox Studio forums provided by ProBoards available on PC, Mac, Linux, and any other platform that supports a web browser.
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Post by satan on Jul 11, 2023 19:03:07 GMT
Good question! I don't know either.
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Post by Joker on Jul 11, 2023 20:16:14 GMT
I'm Scott.
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Post by satan on Jul 11, 2023 21:48:21 GMT
Gasp! Incredible.
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Post by Bad Player on Jul 12, 2023 3:33:44 GMT
Maybe that was Legion's real name? I guess we'll never know
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Post by NIKI on Jul 12, 2023 3:41:19 GMT
geegee
nyaa
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Post by Kachu on Jul 12, 2023 14:22:05 GMT
I think what ended up being the biggest issue with the energy system was that I took too long to change it. We've correctly figured out it was too good as it was, but the thing is cycle one already gave all the info players needed. If cycle 1 had the same rules as cycle 2 I don't think it would've been as bad?
Also, I forget who but I remember someone saying (on Discord I think) that employees should only be able to vote for 2 workers at a time so it's not a clean sweep and if you wake up later in the day or can't post then you can't hope to change who is working without looking sus as heck.
Say what you will about everything else, but I think the way energy broke this game isn't entirely its fault! A lot could've gone differently and can be changed for future games I believe.
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Post by JoyTheBard (Slezak) on Jul 12, 2023 16:02:27 GMT
Yeah, it was I who brought up the voting for two workers max idea. I just think once someone establishes a work plan, there really isn't much incentive to go against it. Having more slots for workers than there are votes per player means the vote has to be split. Having three votes for four workers would also create some interesting voting situations . . . .
One big snag for me was just the fact that certain information becoming public seemed to benefit one side more than the other. Sure, knowing who's vanilla means the town protective roles know who to target, but so does the mafia's killer know who to go after in order to make the town lose. The pool for VIP candidates was so small that anyone being outed as vanilla was a liability unless they had already been the Keyholder. Then again, maybe the system is fine as it is, since the Keyholder did manage to evade notice by the Apostles both times.
I know Kachu has expressed that they wanted information the employees received to be reliable, but I think the energy mechanic heavily favored the employees with it being perfectly reliable. Certain roles affecting the energy system would've added caveats for the apostles to potentially hide behind, like some people being extra-efficient and adding 3 to the pool, or who don't work well under pressure and thus only contribute 1. Kachu was careful to say in mechanic descriptions that "some roles may alter how X mechanic works" and I think that creates a reasonable expectation not to perfectly rely on the result, but to consider possibilities the result does rule out or seem to favor. Could the apostles have stopped the perfect energy score in Cycle 2? Maybe, maybe not. But with careful consideration, a perfect score can still lend imperfect information. I do, however, see the argument that complicating things might bring forth other problems, or make the game too difficult to solve.
But, that's the nature of social deduction games and why they're so difficult to balance: People are imperfect and bring all kinds of different communication styles and quirks to the table. Roleplaying a character masks or emphasizes certain things. Of course, for me, telling a great story and developing my characters and their relationships is just as enjoyable, if not more, than trying to win the game. Thus, like some others, I was a bit disappointed when the game got cut short, since some people were relying on the three-arc structure to time out character development. But, it was also a bit of a relief because I was aware how obsessed I'd become with this game. Overall, I had a great time and met some new friends, and that's what matters the most to me.
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Post by Kachu on Jul 12, 2023 18:12:40 GMT
If there was to be a role that impacted energy generation in one way or another, I'd only say it'd be fine if it was known from the start of the game, on like a public role list.
There was plans for a role like that, an "Amplifier" who would increase the energy generated of whoever they visited for the next Noon. I later considered it to not be that useful since it'd be tricky to actually make it work, but with other aspects of the work system reworked it could fit fine.
It was honestly a little frustrating that everyone was SO hush hush about everything. Though I believe I understand why now more than I did even during the game, and it all makes sense to me. Both sides I thought were given a lot of tools to have a sort of "battle" between protecting and seeking out Vanilla employees. It seems like I've terribly misjudged that, though.
I can't imagine the game would've ended in Cycle 2 with work if Cycle 1 had followed the 2 times max rule. Knowing Legion/Debra was bad and everyone else was innocent was a huge part of it. If they'd only worked twice, the information would've been significantly harder to weed out, considering there'd have been many others who also worked twice. I wish I'd seen this sooner, but a lot of things about this game barely played out like I expected it to.
At the end of the day though I think these new mechanics and win conditions here have a lot of potential that I wasn't able to fully capitalize on, and I hope these ideas aren't totally abandoned in favour of the old system we've seen in previous multiple-arc Black Fable games. I was much focused on ensuring the Mafia Faction was incentivized to kill, that I seem to have overlooked other things though...
Though, I also think we've landed on a low chance for the game to end up this way anyways. Thinking about it a lot this last week or so, I can see how a few slight changes in the actions/votes of the players could've dramatically changed how the second cycle went. Unfortunately the game was pretty much over as soon as the Work System was abused in a way I didn't anticipate before it was modified.
It is what it is, though. And even if nobody else will try these things out again I can't say the same for myself. It will be haunting me until the day I die. (Or run another multi-act Black Fable, I guess)
One final note though, it's more or less intentional that the reveals is... revealing. I suppose this is more of a flaw in hiding the role list, but the Town had plenty of strong options to keep other players safe (Fox, Snake), or potentially catch the Apostles (Keyholder), or disturb them in some other way (Parrot, Lamb) Though I can understand why that wasn't really used or anything.
The game is much harder to win (or to even play, imo) on both sides without something like that. The Apostles are shooting blind all game doing their best to uncover who they can attack (With the Eagle) while the Employees are sitting ducks without anything they can do. It's sort of meant to accelerate the game. Knowing who is a potential target can inform the Apostles actions while also informing the actions of the town at the same time. "Oh, Monty is vanilla? We should try to kill him." "Oh, Monty is vanilla? I should protect him." "Oh, Monty is vanilla? I should watch him to see if anyone visits" and so on. It might seem bad that revealing who the potential Keyholders are to the apostles just informs them of potential victims, but there were 5 Vanilla Employees. The likelihood of the revealed characters matching one of the sins of the Apostles and also being Vanilla is slim (this did happen, but the odds are still realistically slim.) and that doesn't speak to how much the employees can gain by potentially protecting a victim and leaving them alive, or the Keyholder catching them in the act.
I wouldn't see a vanilla employee being outed as a liability, though I can understand why people would have that line of thought without having one of the roles mentioned or without there being a public role list. But like as soon as Greg spoke up about being the Keyholder (it was a lie, but) Fran still took action the entire cycle. Every night protecting Greg because she thought that was their win con. An extra guess is really valuable still even if it the overall way to win the game. If Greg was outed as a Vanilla employee the Apostles would still have to kill Fran before they'd have a chance to kill Greg. Or they'd have to use one of their tools to disturb it, such as Tangie targeting Fran so Greg can be killed.
I do think it might've actually been TOO stacked in favour of the employees. It's a hard thing to balance. I also regret not having a public role list from the game's beginning. That and the changes to the work system would be what I'd do if I did this again. But I think the employee purchases is an asset for both sides of the game. The town doesn't lose at the loss of the VIP, they lose if they can't out the Apostles, and being able have some way to try and catch them or see who they can be with their roles by knowing who they'd target is one way to do that.
At least that's the sort of thinking I had when I came up with all of this. If it really applies in practice is hard to say considering BP brought up like 5 things that just made little sense and had to be accepted as "a necessary evil" that I totally overlooked somehow haha...
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Post by Panda on Jul 12, 2023 20:57:28 GMT
I don't know for sure if revealing information would help the Employees or not. However, it's something that benefits both sides, and it's unclear which side it's better for, so Employees just aren't really incentivised to take the risk. With the midnight phases in particular, the benefits seem too minor to really warrant engaging with the mechanic.
Another way to look at it is: if it's in Town's benefit to know who the vanillas are, then vanilla Townies are incentivised to just reveal the information themselves. The midnight phase's benefit is that it forces a reveal from someone who might be unwilling, but it's hard to see how that would be in Town's favour when Town are the majority faction. If a Townie is unwilling, then revealing them is bad, whereas if they're willing then they'd just reveal it themselves.
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Post by Kachu on Jul 12, 2023 22:32:17 GMT
Hmm. I suppose I can see that.
Or rather I can understand that point of view completely, I just don't think I can see it totally that way myself. It explains a lot of things though.
I'd hope that something like that would work itself out, people wanting to know more about each other based on what they were discussing during the executions, or possibly revealing things they uncovered during the Dusk, but the whole first cycle of the game had a lot of nothing happening in it.
It's awkward, because I pictured a lot of things as good for both sides, but definitely in the Apostles's interest. The option of just not interacting with it really went over my head. I might've done a lot of things differently if I figured that out.
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Post by Panda on Jul 12, 2023 23:13:59 GMT
It's been mentioned before (I think) but part of the issue was having so many vanillas. Half the cast just didn't have anything to contribute. The other half would often have nothing to contribute either, because their targets were vanilla so they learned nothing. (Not accounting for how many roles don't even gain any information when used.)
I think normal mafia can work with vanilla roles, but these multi-arc games probably need to just give every character a role. In written, roleplayed form there aren't many social cues and other such things, so we kind of have to rely more on mechanical information instead. The multi-arc structure means people are less inclined to take risks, because there's still so much game ahead of them and everyone just revives after a cycle is over. So roles provide something more reliable. (Obviously some people still tried ploys in BF5, but they were in a distinct minority.)
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Post by Kachu on Jul 14, 2023 0:11:56 GMT
Hmm yeah I think I agree. That's a pretty big takeaway. A game like this would've been better if we all had a role in the end.
I think I've said all I wanted to say too. I do still hope not everything that was tried here is totally abandoned at least, but at the end of the day most of us seemed to still have fun!
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Post by Doctor Nanjo M.D. on Jul 14, 2023 1:01:50 GMT
Comment on the game:
Father Pliny was extremely comedic and funny
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Post by Neotelenta on Jul 14, 2023 1:33:40 GMT
I agree. Hallowed be thy gains.
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Post by Doctor Nanjo M.D. on Jul 15, 2023 2:04:51 GMT
I appreciated the new approach with the key holder and stuff. But I do think arcs that go down to 1-3 people are really fun so :7 (thonk)
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Post by Panda on Jul 15, 2023 9:17:17 GMT
One of the nice thing about games with 'arc' structures is you can kill loads of the players. DRF doesn't allow for that. So yeah, I do agree with that actually. However it's a game design nonbo, which keyholder was trying to solve. Not sure what the best way to resolve that is.
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Post by Kachu on Jul 15, 2023 17:48:23 GMT
I think the keyholder idea is probably fine? I'm not too sure. I had vanillas to help it be less chaotic and I avoided as many roles as possible that can directly interfere with it. Like no town killing roles so the down doesn't kill the Keyholder by mistake, or a transporter/swapper/porter/bus driver(?) to potentially really muddy results.
Though at the end I was REALLY stretching thin for roles, which is why the Parrot kinda sucked (Sorry)
It was a last minute addition along with the Apostles being 5 members instead of the original planned 4, though. I'm not sure if it'd have been any more balanced like that.
We might need another new idea, at least, if the Keyholder doesn't work out, because BF2 and 4 ended up being "don't play as your role" with the evil faction. If the winner of the arc is just determined by the number of survivors on one team outnumbering the other, you'll never/rarely want to be the winning faction or you'll want to keep as many people alive as possible.
I'm sure there's a solution to this, either the VIP/Keyholder in another game with different mechanics/roles or something different altogether.
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