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Post by NAF1138 on Apr 15, 2010 18:56:10 GMT -5
What games do you all think were the most well balanced ones? Any games this group has played are fair to enter as well balanced, not just ones her on Idle's board.
Best balanced != most fun. Batman is still the most fun I have had in a single game, but it was a mess in terms of balance. Part of what I am looking to see is if there is a correlation between balance and fun, or if less well balanced games are actually more fun.
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Post by ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies on Apr 15, 2010 20:00:31 GMT -5
I fear I am but a goldfish with no memory, but I don't seem much to mind. And the little plastic Mafia castle is a surprise every time.
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Trepa Mayfield
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Post by Trepa Mayfield on Apr 15, 2010 22:04:20 GMT -5
Just looking down at the list, Last Bastion is the only one that jumps out as not having major balance problems.
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Post by Pleonast on Apr 16, 2010 9:26:40 GMT -5
I'm not really good at neutrally judging the balance of games I played in, and I typically don't follow games I don't play in well enough to make an informed judgement, except for games that I moderated.
I think my most well-balanced game was Conspiracy 3, keeping in mind the large swing inherent to a four-faction game. Of my mini-games, the Munchkin one had a major design flaw which helped the town significantly. I believe the Ship one was well balanced, but the power-role mechanism was complicated enough that I don't think anyone optimally.
In general, there's two problems I see in trying to evaluate balance. The first is that it's hard to separate luck from player skill. Did the game seem unbalanced because of a lucky break to one side at the beginning? It's hard to answer without rerunning the game many times. (Which is one reason I like to stick with a single rules set for my games.)
The other general problem is that it's hard to evaluate player skill. There's skill at using one's powers optimally. And there's skill at surviving the melee of the lynch mob. Ideally, balancing the game requires the designer to take into account the skill level of the players and variations among them. Will the side be screwed if its key role is played by less-skilled player? (Which is one reason I like to spread powers around as much as possible.)
In the end, balance in itself is not really what the game designer should strive for. Instead, fun is the goal. In my opinion, for that, players should feel like 1) they have a shot at winning (of which balance is a factor) and 2) they make a difference.
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Post by Høøpy Frøød on Apr 16, 2010 11:52:52 GMT -5
I think SMB was actually well balanced. Town cakewalked it because Rugger exposed himself early to save the godfather, I was able to create a large block of town confirmations as detective, I also outed two 3rd parties, one of which was a serial killer we leashed to take out Rugger. But there was a lot of luck. I was fortunate that no one I investigated died (except the Mad Bomber who we lynched) and that I had a block of 4 confirmed town by the time I bit it. I was also able to confirm that the 3rd party masons could co-win by town when I jumped into a mason role in the swticheroo Day.
I also think Doperville was balanced as set up, but the distribution of roles gave scum no newbies, just a bunch of inexperienced players, whereas town got both the veterans and the complete newbies. Scum were able to work as a coordinated team, something town didn't accomplish. Two major examples of this was the one-shot vig didn't claim when his lynch was certain, and then the counterclaimed town detective (Ryjae) was lynched even though a better case for scummitude could be made against the scum (peekercpa) who countered him.
I think Mr. E's mansion was balanced as well, but that one suffered from lack of participation by both town and scum.
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Post by MentalGuy on Apr 17, 2010 22:53:14 GMT -5
I will just do a rundown of all the games I remember and comment as to their balance and fun factor.
Simpletown II (Not-so-simpletown) - This was a four-faction game (unbeknownst to the players at the outset). Since it went down to the last 3 players, I would have to say it was fairly balanced. I was on the Mason team(which was the entire Town) and felt that we were at a bit of disadvantage. We had no offboard communication and were immune to lynches. I think just a little something more would have made it a bit more fair for the Masons. Maybe cluing them in it was a four-faction game or something. I think it was a fun game, but I may not have enjoyed it to the fullest since it was my first game and I was learning as I went.
Ragnarok - A no-vanilla game. Scum simply outplayed Town in this game. I don't think it was really unbalanced except that scum were given a safe fake mason claim that had very little chance of being exposed. How much that contributed to scum kicking Town's butt, I don't know. I think it was a rather fun if somewhat frustrating game.
Princess Bride - This game started with 29 players and came down to Day 8 when Town had to lynch one specific scum to win the game (not immediately but it would have been inevitable). If they mislynched or lynched the wrong scum, they would have lost. Given that, I can't say the game was unbalanced, but Town had a lot of lucky breaks in the game (though their investigator was very unlucky early in that everyone she investigated wound up dead). This was probably the most fun game that I played.
Naked Dogs Mini-This was an all vanilla game (though it was not known whether it was all vanilla) with 7 Town and 2 scum. After playing it, I feel that scum have a bit of an advantage with these numbers.
Alien Taste II - 3 faction game with recruitment for one faction (open setup). Town won this one fairly easily but I do not believe it was a balance problem. I think Temple played very poorly and the Aliens did not play well. Since I was on the winning team I found it a fairly fun game. I think this setup could be one of the best if the Temple and Aliens played a bit better.
Heroes - Another no-vanilla game, but I think this one had Town overpowered. Too many Town players were confirmable or essentially non-killable. When the non-killables became confirmed it essentially was like giving the Town two votes that could not be eliminated. This one wasn't that much fun after the confirmation of the non-killables since a win for Town seemed inevitable, even though I was Town.
Weird Wild West - This game had a godfather that could not be role-blocked. A lot of players thought this was way to overpowering for scum, but Town won when it came down to a 3 player game. I was eliminated early in this game so I am not sure how fun it was viewed.
Colorless - A completely open setup. Only one scum was lynched the entire game and scum won easily, but I don't think it was unbalanced. It primarily demonstrated how harmful a vig can be to their own team.
Super Smash Brother Brawl 2 - Even though Town won this one even more quickly than the Heroes game, I don't think it was as unbalanced. Town only lynched one of their own players. A lot of killing in this game though, so I don't know how you judge the balance on this one.
So looking at my list I would say that I think of the ones that I have played, Alien Taste II was probably the best balanced. Alien Taste II was definitely a fun game, and had Temple actually eliminated some of the confirmed non-Temple, then I think it would have been one of the most fun I played.
I think some of the problem is that some of the most fun games are ones with a lot of power roles for the players to tease out and try to do creative things with, but a lot of power roles can lead to something devastating happening early in the game completely destroying the balance. Princess Bride is my favorite game I have played so far and Weird Wild West went down to the final three players. But I think either of those games could have wound up lasting just a few days with an overwhelming win for either side by just some random luck.
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Total Ullz
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Post by Total Ullz on Apr 18, 2010 1:40:32 GMT -5
I will just do a rundown of all the games I remember and comment as to their balance and fun factor. Ragnarok - A no-vanilla game. Scum simply outplayed Town in this game. I don't think it was really unbalanced except that scum were given a safe fake mason claim that had very little chance of being exposed. How much that contributed to scum kicking Town's butt, I don't know. I think it was a rather fun if somewhat frustrating game. We were told that it was unbalanced - and that the fake mason PM was part of it. I think my problem with balance often is that I tend to look at the numbers and forget to think of what the role could do in the game. It was a fun game to mod and watch - but a lot of players found it frustrating and I think it's a good point to make. When planning a fun game - one should try and plan fun for the players and not for the mods I like the games where every power role has a "weakness" that makes them not standard and therefore leave a lot more up to the player and how to play them. That's why I think of "Evil Dead" as the most fun game ever. And the most difficult game ever. And the game when I realized that I'm not really very good at playing mafia - but I really enjoy it anyhow ;D
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Post by Holy Moley! on Apr 18, 2010 4:03:54 GMT -5
Well that's an interesting question.
"Last bastion" for me - that's the one where I took over the "Hider" role and Rysto won as War, a serial killer, right? - was irritating because of some role-related stuff. I'm not sure who the role stuff favored the most, although it was myself and Story who lost out the most from it and both of us were town.
"Arkham Knights" seemed to be very well balanced indeed, despite the fact (as someone pointed out) that town only technically mislynched once and it still got to LYLO. The whole point of that game was that town and PFKs had to cooperate. My problem with it was that the last few lynches seemed fairly "inevitable". I'm not sure how you can stop this from happening though.
And even though us scum rocked "The Smasher Mansion" and probably would have won anyway IMO, I think there were a few genuine problems with its balance. We could've won much earlier in the game if it wasn't for some bad luck. I also think that the "Borda" voting system favors scum (although the cits, it has to be said, played right into the scum's hands there) and that should be taken into account when working out the balance issues.
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Post by Rysto on Apr 18, 2010 21:48:06 GMT -5
I'll comment on the games that I played in that I remember best: M1: Simple setup, probably balanced given the inexperienced players M2: I've heard people say that this was perhaps unbalanced in favour of scum, but Town didn't play particularly well and the scum played extremely well and it went to double lynch or lose. Starting with 37 players was a bit excessive, although it made for some crazy early days. This game was overall a blast, although I suppose the newness of Mafia helped there Conspiracy I: Synergy between town powers(especially the Secret Powers) could have favoured Town immensely. A mass claim at the end won it for the Town, which is always a big worry for me in no-vanilla games. I definitely enjoyed this one, even though I was relegated to being mostly a spectator after dying Night Two. You-Solve-It: Very well balanced. Would have gone to three handed if not for a mod-kill. Participation in this game was problematic(and I was one of the bigger offenders here), which made the game less fun. Arkham Knights: Very high participation, and as a result was probably the most fun game I ever played in. The balance was a mess, of course. As I recall, there were 24 players and only 8 players(Hoopy, story, Atarus, Koldanar, MHaye, brewha, sinjin and Hockey Monkey) were 100% Town players . But wow did I really enjoy this one: so much so, I was just able to correctly list the exact order in which players were killed, and I could name the roles for all but 4 of them(the scum, minus Batman) Last Bastion: I really enjoyed this game, but really that was mostly because of the last 2-3 Days. Before that Town was burned by low participation, bad luck and poor play(the Kison lynch will go down as one of the worst ever). molefan did get screwed with the Lighting Rod power, and killing story mid-Day also kind of sucked. Overall, Town mislynched 3 times in 7 Days and hit a PFK once, and most of the power roles were taken out early through poor Town play. The game was probably balanced, although there may have been too much of a dependency on power roles for the Town. Terminator: Horrifically unbalanced in favour of Town. As scum it ended up being kind of fun to try and swim against the current and pull out a game we had no business winning, but overall this is the kind of game where unbalanced=unfun. Scum Pond: I have two issues with the balance here: first, there was an unkillable pro-Town players, which I think is too much, and Town had to make 5 scum lynches against 4 mislynches. In the end, it came down to the players, not the Roles, so I think that the balance did end up working fine. For me this was a fun game, but I always seem to enjoy playing as scum Overall, I find that participation is the most important element of a fun game. I'm very much a reactive player, though. I don't initiate a lot of conversation; I just react to it. That's why in low-participation games I don't usually have a high post count while in high partipication games I can be right near the top in terms of post count. In the case of Batman I think that the fact that there was so many crazy roles there was always new things to talk about, which really got everybody involved in the game
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Post by Boozahol Squid, P.I. on Apr 19, 2010 2:48:49 GMT -5
"Arkham Knights" seemed to be very well balanced indeed, despite the fact (as someone pointed out) that town only technically mislynched once and it still got to LYLO. The whole point of that game was that town and PFKs had to cooperate. My problem with it was that the last few lynches seemed fairly "inevitable". I'm not sure how you can stop this from happening though. I would have to say the the Conspiracy games, particularly the second incarnation, were the most balanced games I've played in, although the Firefly game was also pretty well done. But I do feel the need to correct you on the Arkham Knights game: that game was purely designed to work according to fluff purposes. RoOsh and I did some game balancing, but fun was our most important motive (including fake and real Gastardness, and wagering on the fortunes of the PFK players) I don't want to say that Batman was the best or most fun game that's been played in our group, but I am confident that the players involved would probably rank it among their top ten games, and inexperienced future game mods might consider that if a game is to be fun for your players, it needs to be fun for the mods as well.
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