23456th poster gets a cookie (cookie thread (Part 7)) (Part 11)

[Atlas]

@notblackorwhite

it’s chasing ghosts.

magnus archives reference

@notblackorwhite

the motherboard’s debug display showed code 4c for awhile

magnus protocol reference

@notblackorwhite

manual said was a “reserved” code with no further explanation

magnus protocol reference

@notblackorwhite

some fuckers

magnus archives reference

@notblackorwhite

some kind of RAM error

magnus protocol reference

@notblackorwhite

the sticks

hilltop road (magnus archives) reference

@notblackorwhite

It booted

magnus protocol reference

@notblackorwhite

shut it down

magnus protocol reference

@notblackorwhite

motherboard

magnus protocol reference

@notblackorwhite

a new motherboard would cascade into a new CPU and probably PSU and also a new case

magnus protocol reference

@notblackorwhite

, so I’d need to deal

magnus archives reference

@notblackorwhite

and praying it all decided to work

magnus archives/protocol reference

@notblackorwhite

so fuck that until I literally have to.

magnus archives reference

[lilith]

you werent lying you were being thoroughly unfunny

[Marshal]

i laughed

[orangeandblack5]

@notblackorwhite

Anyway these are all signs that my motherboard might be starting to crap out, but getting a new motherboard would cascade into a new CPU and probably PSU and also a new case, and I think swapping mobos fucks up your boot partition, so I’d need to deal with that after assembling all the hardware and praying it all decided to work again so fuck that until I literally have to.

and this is exactly why I’ve been dealing with my computer crashing if i bump it (pretty sure it’s a mobo issue) for like 4 years now

[Daeron]

Omg that would be a total nightmare for me and why I don’t want to try I’d cry if my eyebrows got fucked up
I bought an hourglass eyebrow pencil and like, it just didn’t work whatsoever
I’m happy going to Edinburgh and getting them tinted & threaded when they need done again and I feel like it

[notbIackorwhite]

So the thing about the word “balance” is that it’s actually concealing two very different concepts in one word. The first one is making the overall town and wolf win chances close to 50/50, which is what most people think of. But this isn’t actually what’s most important to a good game. Standard mountainous setups are wolfsided from a mathematical perspective.

A wolf role which has the compulsive ability “on D1 flip a coin, if heads, kill everyone but you, if tails, die and announce the entire wolfteam in thread” doesn’t push the setup’s win chances away from 50/50, but it does centralize the game’s mechanics around that one role and means the game is less competitive as a contest of skill. That’s an extreme example obviously to illustrate the concept but a lot of roles can end up warping the game away from skill expression and toward luck of the draw.

And to a degree inconsistent role power increases skill expression by enabling new types of gameplay, like identifying and pushing for specific win conditions enabled by roles and hunting the opposing side’s most important PRs while keeping your own alive, but that’s a whole different topic I could write an essay about. What’s relevant right now is that it’s important to avoid roles that can singlehandedly make or break the entire game without input from other players, because that leads to very high-variance situations where skill expression isn’t promoted.

Another important thing is to manage players’ expectations around the game. Players will have certain ideas about what mechanics are considered off limits and a role that violates these expectations can often lead to a team losing because they were wrong. To a degree this is their fault, but it still creates an unpleasant gameplay experience and cheapens the feeling of both win and loss. It sacrifices player enjoyment for the host’s own, which is never a good thing. This sort of feeling is also caused by roles (like N5 5-Douse Arsonist) which obscure the gamestate, leading to a situation where a team (usually town) loses suddenly without warning. Both kinds of roles have a high likelihood of making players salty in postgame. That doesn’t mean they’re never okay to use, but it’s usually good to carefully evaluate what kind of impact they’ll have on the game.

So from that perspective, even though it could be said to be balanced in the sense that the same advantage is being afforded to both teams, I don’t think it’s really a good idea to run your “all Lying Darkness game”. Obviously, the player expectation stuff depends on site standards to a degree but it’s still really overly centralizing in a way I don’t think is really good for the game.

[notblackorwhite]

um this is illegal actually?

[Arete]

I think we forgot to put anything about impersonation in the rules, but if it bothers you I’ll ban the alt

[Arete]

(do you want me to do that)

[notbIackorwhite]

So there’s actually no laws against impersonating users on Fortress of Lies on the books in the US right now. This is a major problem because it challenges the integrity of information on the site. Basically anybody can create an alt and imply that users hold opinions they actually don’t (like being against the N5 10-kill Arsonist). This can be used to create election disinformation or, even worse, to abuse the credibility of a well-known setup design enthusiast to push the opinions of literally whoever is willing to capitalize an i in place of an L.

Unfortunately, there’s basically no way to preemptively stop impersonation because it’s difficult to cover all the potential ways to imitate the look of another username. People just have to punish it when it comes up, both moderators by banning the impersonating account and users by paying careful attention to spelling and refusing to grant likes to any impersonation posts. That being said, we just aren’t there right now. Impersonation is still a very profitable way to get likes on FoL.

[Atlas]

@notbIackorwhite

So there’s actually no laws against impersonating users on Fortress of Lies

[Daeron]

I don’t know, this notblackorwhite is posting in paragraphs and using words like “integrity” and “profitable”
They seem pretty legit

[Arete]

oh right I forgot the community guidelines existed. I’m not sure if we ever even changed them from the boilerplate but in this case the guidelines do seem to be correct about what should be allowed, so I’m not going to complain

[Amelia]

Off to the shadow realm then

[Daeron]

I don’t know I think we need to have a health discussion regarding who the real notblackorwhite is in Drama Mill Misc

[Atlas]

i wouldn’t exactly follow that if i were you

[Arete]

beep boop

[Arete]

anyways imo putting in “arsonist that can kill 10 villagers on n5 with no meaningful warning” fails the “will this make everyone really mad” test, which is where you ask yourself “if I put this role in the game, will it make everyone really mad?” and don’t put it in the game if the answer is yes

[notblackorwhite]

The N5 10 kill arsonist is problematic only because 1) it’s so much wolf KP tied up into a single role that can’t be backed up and 2) the village will be incredibly salty if it ever gets 10 kills off. The village not being aware of how much peril they’re in late is not ideal, but also is not really all that unusual either. Like if Clara and an endgame wolf with the worst role are just full vigis instead, the village still loses there. And more impactful villagers are dead early on which could have cascaded into more wolves being alive later on, etc. etc.

[Atlas]

it is super super swingy and the kills probably should’ve been distributed in a more even spread, and if you have to have an arso i think force ignite on n4 (or n3 with ignite being a free action i dunno) with a hard max of like 5 is a way better implication and spreading out whatever extra kp elsewhere