Long Game 91: A Fresh Start in Shinovar

[Kasimir]

2 hours ago, Ookla the Implosion said:

That one time when Kas said I probably thought being elim was fun and being vil was more boring I kinda wanted to say "Umm, actually? I just last Saturday played about three games of Avalon in a row where I was evil. Elim is not more fun than village. It's a little easier, but not more fun."

In LG85 you submitted a request to be Evil and didn't want to be Village back when I was doing the alignment experiment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Good work to Araris and Aman, both of you really hardcarried for your respective teams, IMO.

And thanks for the PMs and the paranoia Araris >> Enjoyed paranoiding on you, JNV, and Alv!

Edited December 15, 2022 by Kasimir

[Archer]

That was a marathon! I really appreciate you making yourself available for so many rollovers, Ashbringer. That's a big commitment. Shoutout to Devo as well for being a good IM, as always. 

Araris, I'd thought you'd peaked with your PM choices, but you really carried the village in the endgame as well. Good job. 

And well done everyone else, it was a fun game!

I liked the transferability of roles. In future LGs, I think Nights should be done away with after the first elim flip to expedite the pace. 

Anyone want to take the over on the AG lasting longer than this one? 

[Szeth_Pancakes]

Whew!

Good job, village. Although you should have listened to me yelling at you about Cash in the dead doc.

Thanks to @Kasimir and @Ookla the Tall for the World Cup banter in the dead doc.

Thanks to @Araris Valerian for pulling the village through to the bitter end.

And thanks to @Ashbringer for being a wonderful GM and starting a new holiday .

(everyone go join my game now)

[Araris Valerian]

18 minutes ago, Ookla the Paragrapher said:

In future LGs, I think Nights should be done away with after the first elim flip to expedite the pace. 

I mean, isn’t that just a MR? There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this change, but you would be playing a different kind of game that we already have in the MR format. I prefer the longer style, which is which I play almost all the LGs but few MRs and QFs.

[Mat]

3 hours ago, _Stick_ said:

@Ookla the Tall araris got all eight blades. And also you owe me some RP if I’m not wrong. 

You're not wrong. I believe I lost every single bet I made, actually >>

I'll post that eventually, promise  

[The Wandering Wizard]

Just now, Ookla the Tall said:

You're not wrong. I believe I lost every single bet I made, actually >>

 

I also lost all my bets

[Kasimir]

11 minutes ago, Ookla the Tall said:

You're not wrong. I believe I lost every single bet I made, actually >>

I'll post that eventually, promise  

11 minutes ago, Ookla the Myopic said:

I also lost all my bets

Thank you Araris, thank you Mbappe  

[Stick.]

I won every bet I made, even if I lost one 

[Ashbringer]

I won the only bet I made 

[Cash67]

Thanks Ash for a great game!!!

[Kasimir]

34 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

I won the only bet I made 

GM flex, but thanks for running this and the bemused World Cup banter  

[Archer]

1 hour ago, Araris Valerian said:

I mean, isn’t that just a MR? There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this change, but you would be playing a different kind of game that we already have in the MR format. I prefer the longer style, which is which I play almost all the LGs but few MRs and QFs.

The challenge becomes that signing up for an LG is a hard commitment to gauge. The length you'll be alive ranges from 2 to 25 days. I think that contributes to inactivity problems among players with less stamina/lower expectations of game length. The difference between two and three days between opportunities to vote is small once you've gotten into the mid-game groove of testing theories. It's still a disadvantage, but you're buoyed in this scenario by the elim flip that precedes it, so it balances out.

I believe interest is a greater determinant of player engagement than time. In mid/late games, Nights are utilized enough to justify the player retention cost of a 50% longer game. If you're a player with analytical endurance, the question is would you rather have more time to think or more to think upon from a livelier thread? 

19 minutes ago, Cash67 said:

Thanks Ash for a great game!!!

Oh yeah, sorry for being very wrong about you. And TUN. And JNV. And anyone else I've forgotten :P. 

[Araris Valerian]

6 minutes ago, Ookla the Paragrapher said:

I believe interest is a greater determinant of player engagement than time. In mid/late games, Nights are utilized enough to justify the player retention cost of a 50% longer game. If you're a player with analytical endurance, the question is would you rather have more time to think or more to think upon from a livelier thread? 

Hmm, my take comes more from having a busy schedule. The night turns give me a break so that I can come back the next day and refocus. Or, if I'm an elim, it means I have a chance to spread my scheming around and adapt to the events of the day with better hindsight.

I guess this also constrains the elims; since they lose out the most from having no night turn, bussing becomes less viable. And yes, I consider this a severe downside . Though Kas's recent analysis indicates the village could use a boost.

I think there is something of a logistical issue as well, since the Day/Night cycle split tends to be used in the rules, and some rulesets might not adapt well to needing to shift partway through.

My suggestion would be to run a game like that, and see what people think (yeah, I know this means waiting a while). I guess you could also pitch the idea to any upcoming GMs and see if they want to adapt their game that way. The post-AG is also generally a good time for discussions like this to happen, since a lot of the active community members tend to be involved.

[---]

I posted in meta discussion about archer's suggestion, if anyone wanted to join me there!!!

Spoiler

I'm gonna interrupt Kas's train of thought and move this here

I have a few parts to this but I'll try to stay concise.

@Ookla the Paragrapher @Araris Valerian

THE BENEFITS OF NIGHTS
I heavily disagree with the statements about no nights. if you want to play a MR then play or run an MR or QF, but nights give everyone time to accomplish things that shouldn't be done when the day is still happening.

Elims:
 - Strategizing on what to do the next day
 - Talk about who to kill that night

Villagers:
 - Taking a break from constantly posting, as posting during the night isn't as essential. Taking a day off from the game to have time irl for whatever reason.
 - Reading over thread and re-evaluating based on how the day played out (actions, voting, inconsistencies)

And for everyone it's time you can use to make better planned Night Actions based on how the day played out.

Nights exist as they do so that the game can be better informed. In a MR or QF? night actions, night kills- they're both made without the full info of what went down that day. not only that but if a large MR is running that is weeks of a game without any sort of a break for the people who survive. LGs simply aren't LGs anymore if you go that way.

ARCHER'S PROPOSED SOLUTION
"LG nights should be gone after the first Elim flip" is a bad fix for the problem of "people don't have enough time to play through a LG, because it's

1) a debuff to the Elims right when they don't need it- they lose one of their members, and then the consequence of that isn't just that they have one less member.
 - it's that their NKs now are less informed
 - they lose a whole day of strategizing time each cycle.

2) Nights give players time to take a break from posting or reading so much, and gives players with not as much time per day a chance to catch up on the previous day

3) Nights allow everyone to make more informed Night Actions and Plays during the game, which leads to an overall more enjoyable game

I also want to mention that even though you can run a test game, it won't show you the full effect until you can run like 20 and compare it.

ALTERNATIVES
I was thinking about this after LG91, when the GM asked publicly in thread if we wished to shorten the day.

Shortening Days
I think that LGs should allow a private vote every day after day 4 (in the GMPMs) where they can choose to vote to shorten cycles to 24/24 for the rest of the game.
Allowing this in thread can be bad, as it's outside of the game in a way and how you vote will show your alignment based on how the game has played out. (this has been okay in games so far because it's offered as an option when the game is basically won but needs to be played out, even though I think in some cases when the GM offers it and it isn't played out, which i have seen happen, it spews the last elim as an elim simply because the GM offers the option)

If your comeback to this is "isn't that an MR too" then I'd say no, and that you're simply saying that to be combative. the main point of an MR or a QF is that it's nightless, with very few being run as 24/24s.

This is my most direct alternative fix to archer's solution. It keeps the days while still shortening the total time played in the game.

Limit Nighttime Communication
Mostly what comes to mind is PMs. Keeping nights open for talking is a SE culture thing and I don't want to see that changed. What I do think however is that giving people a 2/1 on/off routine for a game allows them to get caught up irl after those 2 days of being stuck to their computers. adding more things on during the night cycle means that it's no longer a 2/1, but practically a 72 hour cycle. This leads to burnout in the game, and more days that they're going to have to be inactive in the future to make up for it.

This is a partial fix for burnout, and although it doesn't shorten the total time of the game, it does limit the amount of time players are expected to play per week.

Try Longer Cycles
I know this one might seem counter-intuitive, but assume you get the same amount of activity in a 72/24 that you get in a 48/24, then it gives people more time within the days where they don't need to be there. Instead of having to be present for 3 weeks in a row (for the longest living) it turns into you only need to be there between 2 and 3 days every 4 days. Yes, the total time of the game will be longer, but the time players have to spend in the game for it to function will be less per week.

This is a partial fix, and although it doesn't shorten the total time of the game, it does drastically limit the amount of time players are expected to play per week, meaning they can easily leave for 2 days in a row at any point and still be able to participate and not take away from the game as much as if it was a 48/24.

--

In the end it comes down to Information. The whole game is about information, and nights are a time for people to collect the information and make informed decisions that affect the next day, however that be done for them.

Nights make games more enjoyable long term, and if people have an issue with playing with them we always have MRs or QFs that they can play, faster games for those with less time, more activity all squished together for people who cant stand the slowness of nights, but also actions that happen during the day and without time to process them.

Changing a game that people like to fit the minority of people who go inactive isn't a good solution. if they are going inactive because of lack of interest, then that's on them to stop signing up for a game format that they don't like. If it's lack of time irl then my proposed solutions provide options we can look into without completely changing the LG format.

EDIT:

Spoiler

We could also always try a 36/12 :3

 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Ooklil' the Wei

[Kasimir]

48 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I guess this also constrains the elims; since they lose out the most from having no night turn, bussing becomes less viable. And yes, I consider this a severe downside . Though Kas's recent analysis indicates the village could use a boost.

On brand

But hey, we're getting there, I think. 40.9% isn't too awful, though there's the whole 'broken games' and 'mech' confounding factors, and so on, but that's another story. Granted, 'too awful' depends an awful lot on context, and compared to the stability of the early SE rates, it's not great. 

52 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

My suggestion would be to run a game like that, and see what people think (yeah, I know this means waiting a while). I guess you could also pitch the idea to any upcoming GMs and see if they want to adapt their game that way. The post-AG is also generally a good time for discussions like this to happen, since a lot of the active community members tend to be involved.

This is more or less my take. It's fine as an experiment, and I think it's absolutely worth giving a shot. I question the assumptions player inactivity is based on - I don't think Archer or I really have good data for this, and I am dubious that either of us are, just by intuition, correctly modelling the mindset of frequent inactives, which is where I think the dead doc discussion Archer and I had about actually collecting more data comes in - it's at least helpful if we get a better sense (qualitative? Invite survey/focus group?) of what drives inactivity and how to handle it.

Basically we're both not frequent inactives so I have some doubt we model them quite right.

By and large, I agree with Illwei the Nights serve a purpose, and I don't think it should be an either/or in terms of lively Day discussion or Night discussion, but will accept that most players want to take it easy at Night. My claim would be the point is you are supposed to discuss at Night, the rejoinder would be that players often don't/do not feel lynch pressure, and I think it more or less is a wash and at the mercy of discussion drivers.

I think there's concerns as well about the impact on the Elim team, as Araris points out. Just less about bussing - ideally if the Village isn't driving at Night, then the Nights give the Elims a chance to get a breather and take stock, instead of going back to fending off the next lynch. Remember, if you're counting on a buoyed Village, you are also counting on an Elim team that has just suffered their first lost now having to defend each cycle instead of having the Nights in which to operate with a little less pressure. That feels like a two-shot in terms of their mentality, and puts them very much under siege. (My antipathy for Elim might be showing here.)

I do think this feeds into a bigger issue where we just don't understand the causes of inactivity very well, much less how to tackle them. And this despite years and years of SE data on the matter.

[Quivil]

8 hours ago, Kasimir said:

GM flex, but thanks for running this and the bemused World Cup banter  

Speaking of the World Cup, is there a winner yet and who is it?

[Szeth_Pancakes]

14 hours ago, Ookla the Implosion said:

Speaking of the World Cup, is there a winner yet and who is it?

No. Argentina and France are in the finals on Sunday and Croatia and Morocco are playing for third place tomorrow.

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

Congratulations to the village for winning, and thank you to Ashbringer for running the game!

As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Devotary of Spontaneity, Elbereth, Araris Valerian, Elandera, or StrikerEZ, or post in the GM Signups & Discussion Thread. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. 

You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone in our Art of Game Creation thread. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about. If you would rather keep some detail secret, or are self-conscious about posting in thread (there's really no need to be; while we do slaughter each other, we are very polite about it), then I'm sure one of our fantastic committee members (Amanuensis, STINK, Sart, Fifth Scholar, Straw, Archer, and Kasimir) would be more than willing to help you out in private.

Thanks again to everyone that played, and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!