2
3 Likes
3
3 Likes
Wait, thatās May? For some reason I assumed that was Willow this whole time
3 Likes
owch
2 Likes
I donāt think big ācatch-upā designs are a necessary feature of mash designs. Variance reduction is relatively important and I want to acknowledge that thereās potentially some overlap there, but really what Iām talking about is a backup is variance reduction but itās not really a catch-up mechanic. Catch-up mechanics like a role that suddenly comes online at a particular ratio is something that have been in games Iāve hosted a couple times, but theyāve usually been more or less symmetrical. One I can remember was from a bastard game where each faction had a role that would become what their faction āneeded mostā at their āhour of needā (at some pre-determined ratio, we (the hosts) would convert their role into whatever we thought their faction needed at that particular moment to continue to have a chance at the game), and they were mostly like a fun idea for a bastard game rather than an attempt to address some fundamental issue of mash balance.
Anyway, I think youāre broadly correct on the numbers aspect. Someone else mentioned in anni post-game actually, but I do think even the standard ratio is a bit wolf-sided in mashes for a number of factors because of how things become more concentrated or diluted. I can only speak to my own design philosophy here and I canāt say whether or not other designers have similarly views, but this one reason why Iāve started to push towards things like a bell curve looking kill distribution, fewer day vigilantes, and KP roles with targeting constraints. Protection roles are almost always useless in mashes for a variety of reasons like itās going to be alexa or ladd receiving all of it and wolves being able to get around with poisons, day vigis, or some kind of overwhelming/unstoppable/strongman kill. The only way to stop all the SPKs from being sweeped up on night 1 comes down to not giving them enough tools to do so. Day vigis that can fire from d2+ at any time are just boring as shit to me because thereās no counterplay and they just snipe the most important villager before theyāve really been able to participate in the day every single day after the first. I think Iāve managed to convince some other folks to stop doing this, but Iām sure itās a regular occurrence in mashes.
However, something that already structurally benefits the village immensely are ITAs. Theyāre so, so powerful for the village. Thatās somewhat difficult to properly account for when figuring out what to give the pack because if you gave an equivalent amount of KP that the village gets via shots, the village would get fucking blasted back into the stone age before they could tie their shoelaces. Iāve been experimenting with a different KP balancing metric recently to help account for this, but Iāve seen wolf teams that were absolutely outplaying a village get hero shot into equality in a couple of sessions.
All that being said, the vast, vast majority of the time the winning faction is the faction that had a better action economy. In my experience, villages lose because some of their ace roles holster inexplicably, and ITA shots go unfired. Another significant element is just not keeping track of information. Like itās pretty common that a wolf or 2 is just outed late game if the village had made sure to collectively keep notes, and when notes are being kept itās usually not a group effort but an individual hero. I do try to account for this sort of thing by skewing village roles to having fewer constraints and being more explicitly powerful but I canāt make anyone read their roles/press buttons regardless of alignment (and wolves also fall victim to this, but itās just less frequent because thereās a small number of wolves basically doing everything and they tend to live longer because the village canāt see who the brains of the operation is and the inverse is not true obv).
6 Likes
If only I had the inspiration to write state-of-the-art wallposts
2 Likes
magnus archives reference
1 Like
Mash wolves hate when you restrict their KP or donāt give them strongman power or otherwise prevent them from killing every important villager every night. Have you tried wolfing in a regular game. Thatās just kind of part of it
5 Likes
Guys we dont have enough kp i think theres a lw
2 Likes
how else are you gonna n1 kyubey ever single game
5 Likes
Idk where you even find these lmao
1 Like
this is kind of a crazy thing to say after three wolf kills got protected on n2 (and one on n1) we were actually quite lacking in strongman kills this go around. we did however have a strongwiller to occasionally build them in a cave with a box of scraps
2 Likes
i think itās a little crazy how even in the most broken down and vanilla game, all kills are strongman and ninja
7 Likes
My new setup: mountainous + all kills are strongman and ninja
10 Likes
thatās honestly so funny. protection has rarely worked unless itās been busted
3 Likes
three lines next to your pfp in the top right, and the about button at the very bottom, then tos
1 Like
I accidentally logged into Atlasās account once trying to figure out what Impersonate User does btw
5 Likes
I thought it meant like your posts have their name on it or something
2 Likes
Iām too lazy to find my login on my phone so I just log in to the admin account and impersonate myself now
6 Likes
I need to go check up on a reaction but itās raining extremely heavily all day
1 Like