Anniversary Game 10/Anonymous Game 14: Tyrian Falls Apocalypse

[Araris Valerian he/him]

3 hours ago, TheRavenHasLanded said:

wdym by first game? your signature says otherwise.

That was an (apparently failed) attempt at humor, since it followed my statement of honesty.

[Ookla de los Cuervos he/him]

1 minute ago, Araris Valerian said:

That was an (apparently failed) attempt at humor, since it followed my statement of honesty.

I found it amusing, just i got confused lol. 

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

re: letting elims submit their faction NK in the elim doc

yes please

 

re: anonymous games discouraging discussion about player IDs

My flagrantly self-interested point of order here is that before we get into it too much with discussing the different aspects of this I just want to ask: do we actually need or want have to have a Consensus Standard About What The Real Meaning of Anonymous Games Ought To Always Be

Because that's still a Question isn't it?

like

Yes, I'm sort of in favor of it honestly, let's have an anonymous game where the GM says "talking about Anon IDs in this game is discouraged, you are allowed to privately hold guesses but if I catch you trying to talk about them in-thread or in PMs you will be considered in violation of the rules" or idk substitute that for whatever more complicated implementation you think up if you deem a more nuanced approach is necessary

Yes, I am planning on doing a game that goes all-in on literally the opposite approach, where guessing IDs is not only sanctioned but is actually an integrally necessary part of playing the game. And, well, anyone who really dislikes that premise is heartily encouraged not to sign up for it!!

Spoiler

 

I'm all for debating what meta and convention ought to be

Sometimes, there is pretty much a Right Answer and the other options actually aren't very good

Sometimes, it's definitely correct to say "this is a convention that should be adopted across the board by default"

But sometimes there isn't and it isn't

Again, it's a Question you would have to ask I think

I would argue that anonymous accounts are fundamentally a tool. Some tools lend themselves pretty strongly to one singular purpose. Others can accomplish multiple purposes! There doesn't have to be one purpose for anonymous accounts. And just because a tool was made with one thing in mind doesn't automatically mean it's wrong to use it in some different way. If you think it does in this case, well, that isn't something we are all on the same page about so maybe it's time to start explaining why

Or, alternatively, if everyone agrees that really it's pretty fine to do both tbh, then the stakes of this debate are a bit lower I think

Which doesn't necessarily mean it's not one worth having!

But, well, framing is important

that is all.

Edited January 31, 2024 by DrakeMarshall

[Amanuensis he/him]

Been a while since I logged in. 22 notifications is crazy. GG everyone! Sorry I pseudo-threw! Maybe we can just pretend I was trying to make the game more even / push the broken curse to its limits. Village ftw!

Also excellent work @Faerie Braids! I thought you were a returning player (Arraenae / Aspen). I look forward to playing with you more!

Edited February 3, 2024 by Amanuensis

[Elandera she/her]

I'm a little late on this, but I wanted to say a huge thank you to Devotary for running this game and putting up with my inability to remember what day of the week it is. Your write ups were fantastic as always.

Re: NK through Elim Doc

My only counter argument to that is that it would have to be while only one elim is alive. Aside from what Araris already mentioned that it's not an issue so long as there is village suspicion of more than one elim left, there's the issue of puppeteering. Maybe this is my always suspicious side coming out, but the doc isn't exactly reliable for knowing exactly who actually submitted the action (it's not like the color/font system is locked in). I do think there is argument that could be made for submitting via the doc when you have one elim standing, though, especially if the village is blatantly attempting the "who logged in" tactic.

[Stick. she/her]

Yea I think that should be good

[Archer he/him]

Cue villagers walking in and blue texting the fact that they were busy all weekend :P.

I do feel that losing to action economy is part of the punishment for losing so many teammates, but that's more of a roles thing than an activity thing. 

Hm

My personal preference would be a combination of enhanced filtering in the later stages (lower the threshold to a single cycle) plus the ability to submit the NK in advance during the preceding Day turn (possibly with conditions in case their target is exed). I understand if an elim can't get on in a 24 hour round, but I feel that they should be obligated to log in during the 72 hour cycle. If they don't, they die, as would any villager who does the same. The idea of an elim lurking doesn't sit right with me. 

I'll also bring back my suggestion that I big games, the game should end if just one elim remains versus a sizable village contingent, to compel more teamwork from the elims. 90%* of the time, deepwolfing results in a lengthy finish but a predictable loss, but it's usually their best shot, so they still do it. (Ignore the fact that Beagle played both approaches well this game.) It'd make the end game more exciting by making votes have meaning, since they have to actually contest them. Elims just sitting back and letting the villagers control the thread in the late game and hoping they choose wrongly is unfun.

And the grounding principle of that is if an elim comes up with a plausible lie for why they won't be NKed and proceeds to bus the entire game, they shouldn't be rewarded for it. Not saying that's ever happened, but theoretically, it would suck.

*90% of the time, it works every time

[Stick. she/her]

i mean action economy will still apply - just because a solo wolf submits the NK from the doc wouldnt mean theyre free to use an additional action slot on top of that

 

and the standard activity filter (i.e. gotta post in the thread) would also still apply so it wont really be encouraging lurking i dont think

 

what youre suggesting is a White Flag Mafia set up (the village wins when 1 mafia remains), which does work if balanced correctly but i dont think that should be the standard in SE just because bussing isnt always the reason why an elim ends up by themself in endgame

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

On 2/4/2024 at 10:19 AM, Elandera said:

My only counter argument to that is that it would have to be while only one elim is alive.

That sounds like a pretty reasonable caveat to me yea.

4 hours ago, Archer said:

The idea of an elim lurking doesn't sit right with me.

I strongly agree with this statement.

But

Hm

I still believe it's a good idea to allow off-site NK submissions for solo elims? I think?

I suppose, to me, it basically comes down to the fact that it also doesn't sit right with me for the village to be rewarded for inactivity or lurking, which is what can (potentially) happen right now. And I'd assert that this is probably a little bit worse.

The way I see it, the point of allowing off-site NK submissions is ultimately to discourage lurking, not to enable it, even if that's certainly what it looks like it does in the short-term. The goal is that people who lurk aren't cleared from suspicion, regardless of their alignment.

 

My view of the incentives:

Spoiler

If we don't allow off-site NK submissions, I'd say the incentives in a solo-elim endgame night turn look sorta like this:

Fully lurking if you are an Elim:

----- You cannot submit a kill. Furthermore, everybody knows there was no kill, and that you couldn't have submitted one. Which is probably a strictly worse state of affairs than if you had actually been active and deliberately not submitted the kill in order to frame other people. This is a Real Bad Situation for the elims.

++ You draw less attention to yourself

- You are going to have to post at least something in the near future assuming the inactivity filter doesn't suck

Getting online once and posting a single insubstantial post if you are an Elim:

+ You draw less attention to yourself

Fully lurking if you are a Villager:

+++++ You get hard-cleared and close the PoE net without doing anything

+ You draw less attention to yourself (for villagers, a dubious benefit at best: blending in to the background only means somebody else on your team gets killed, either way you are losing someone, but self-preservation is real ig)

-- You don't contribute anything to the village discussion for the night (but tbh there isn't always anything pressing to discuss at night)

- You are going to have to post at least something in the near future assuming the inactivity filter doesn't suck

Getting online once and posting a single insubstantial post if you are a Villager:

+ You draw less attention to yourself (for villagers, a dubious benefit at best: blending in to the background only means somebody else on your team gets killed, either way you are losing someone, but self-preservation is real ig)

-- You don't contribute anything to the village discussion for the night (but tbh there isn't always anything pressing to discuss at night)

 

If we do allow off-site NK submissions, I'd say it looks more like this:

Lurking if you are an Elim:

++ You draw less attention to yourself

- You are going to have to post at least something in the near future assuming the inactivity filter doesn't suck

Getting online once and posting a single insubstantial post if you are an Elim:

+ You draw less attention to yourself

Lurking if you are a Villager:

+ You draw less attention to yourself (for villagers, a dubious benefit at best: blending in to the background only means somebody else on your team gets killed, either way you are losing someone, but self-preservation is real ig)

-- You don't contribute anything to the village discussion for the night (but tbh there isn't always anything pressing to discuss at night)

- You are going to have to post at least something in the near future assuming the inactivity filter doesn't suck

Getting online once and posting a single insubstantial post if you are a Villager:

+ You draw less attention to yourself (for villagers, a dubious benefit at best: blending in to the background only means somebody else on your team gets killed, either way you are losing someone, but self-preservation is real ig)

-- You don't contribute anything to the village discussion for the night (but tbh there isn't always anything pressing to discuss at night)

I will be clear that I think if anyone on any team is deliberately lurking that's a pretty bad faith thing to do and I don't like it.

Still, I suppose I'd rather the incentives weren't unduly skewed. I suppose the whole point of this conversation on both sides is that it doesn't feel good if the rules encourage and enable bad faith behavior to any significant extent, whether or not we trust players to generally act in good faith.

 

Anyways, my points boil down to this, I suppose:

1) Elims could always lurk by logging in, posting a single nothing post, and leaving (is this behavior a problem? quite possibly yes, but not really one that allowing/disallowing off-site NK submissions has bearing on). The marginal benefit they get from not logging in, and submitting an NK in their doc, isn't really that great compared to that. (Especially since they'll have to post sooner or later if the inactivity policy has any teeth.) Therefore, the way I see it, allowing off-site NK submissions isn't actually in practice very significantly encouraging elim lurking behaviors.

2) It remains that when the prevailing sentiment is that there's only 1 elim left, villagers potentially have quite a strong incentive to lurk. And making lurking more viable on either side of the fence is bad.

3) Villagers can also unintentionally be inactive and end up benefiting from it, which is also fairly undesirable imo. And that's probably a lot more common than people intentionally lurking anyways.

 

idk that's my two cents for why Stick's suggestion makes sense

I kinda agree in that my knee-jerk reaction to it was "??? why should we make it easier for elims to lurk"

But for the above reasons I think it actually is a solid idea

 

Edit:

4 hours ago, Archer said:

My personal preference would be a combination of enhanced filtering in the later stages (lower the threshold to a single cycle) plus the ability to submit the NK in advance during the preceding Day turn (possibly with conditions in case their target is exed). I understand if an elim can't get on in a 24 hour round, but I feel that they should be obligated to log in during the 72 hour cycle. If they don't, they die, as would any villager who does the same.

This is, I think, a pretty interesting idea, regardless of the outcome of the above debate.

I don't know if we've ever had an inactivity filter that progressively ramps up as the game goes on.

It sort of makes sense, in that things move more quickly in the late game. Not being around for all of D1 simply isn't nearly as big of a deal as not being around for all of LyLo.

As an aside, I think I'd probably base the condition for when you crank up the filter on player count. You're going to get to that point sooner in smaller games, so rather than having it be "after 5 cycles" or something it should likely be "when you get down to 7 or fewer players" or something. Probably.

 

Edit the Second:

4 hours ago, Archer said:

I'll also bring back my suggestion that I big games, the game should end if just one elim remains versus a sizable village contingent, to compel more teamwork from the elims.

I too have lobbied for this, and while I'd agree with Stick that we shouldn't do it always, I do rather want to see some games that try this.

Less because of bussing considerations for me personally and more because I think it's sometimes a plus in game design when the game doesn't dally too long in the territory where one side has probably won but we just need to chug away until the end. Attention span is real

The reason I think we shouldn't always do this is because I also like a good comeback Stick pulled off a sick comeback in this game and I think she deserved the chance to, even if the coin toss didn't pan out in the end. Keeping the upper hand is as important as getting it in the first place, and I think it's probably good for us to be reminded once in a while that if you get too comfy with your lead you might get walloped for it.

Edited February 5, 2024 by DrakeMarshall

[Araris Valerian he/him]

The best solution is obviously just to kill everyone that fails to sign in/post during the night turn.