A Rare but awkward interaction between Evil King and Hunter

Feedback/Suggestions
#1

The Situation: Only Men standing in the court during the day are: The Hunter and The Evil King (this king is not the starting King and was ellected by the court at some point during the match, meaning he can only guard and not execute people during the night).

During That Day: With only these 2 men alive, The truth is finally unveiled and The Hunter has only 1 option which is to accuse the King of treason. That is not gonna work since you need 2 votes during the day. So The Hunter’s reality is that he cannot do anything.

The King on the other hand has 2 options. A) Accuse the hunter and point the finger in order to get the extra vote he needed. Then he procceds to vote execute on the hunter but then ‘‘retribution’’ triggers killing the King. B) Knowing that the hunter cannot kill him at night or accuse him of treason during the day, he proceeds in doing nothing in order to avoid getting killed by the Hunter’s passive ‘‘retribution’’

The Problem: The King is known to have the upper hand in a ‘‘1v1’’ situation during the day because of his day ability ‘‘point he finger’’. Ironacally In this extremely rare occasion the King is actually the one with less power. He is the only one that can make a choice. Option ‘‘A’’ gets him killed and he loses the game OR Option ‘‘B’’ forces an awkward interaction where King joins The Hunter in doing nothing and the next days and nights pass without anything happening.

The Solution: Make it so when retribution triggers, the game does not end and the hunter gets executed right after King’s death. This way the game will end in a draw, avoiding the awkward situation which finds both players doing absolutely nothing for the next days and nights.
I understand that if you were to consider my solution from a ‘‘reality’’ point of view, it would make no sense since there would be no one there to actually execute the hunter (since the King dies by the Arrow) but this is not real life :stuck_out_tongue:

PS: This is a rare interaction but i truly believe that the outcome of this is not healthy for the flow of the game.

#2

Retribution probably just shouldn’t activate if there are only two players left alive.

3 Likes
#3

I’m actually OK with the hunter default winning a 1 vs 1 in this situation

4 Likes
#4

I don’t know if that would be the best way to approach this, but one thing is certain. It’s unhealthy for the game when the optimal play is to do nothing for the rest of the game in order to avoid losing and getting a draw. thanks for the suggestion

#5

Why though? BD certainly doesn’t deserve this one if they all died, elected an Evil King, and only left a Hunter by luck probably

#6

But evil king should find a way to get a bd to kill the hunter

#7

please read my post in its entirety before you start typing. thank you

#8

It’s extremely likely he did :roll_eyes:

@Moleland why should it be on the Evil King to figure that out rather than be the burden of the Blue Dragon to figure out that he is evil? That seems backwards.

#9

So if the King is dead then who executes the Hunter?

1 Like
#10

"I understand that if you were to consider my solution from a ‘‘reality’’ point of view, it would make no sense since there would be no one there to actually execute the hunter (since the King dies by the Arrow) but this is not real life " as i already mentioned in the post.
Imo the game running correct should be #1 priority and not being realistic. It is a game after all

1 Like
#11

No not that. When someone is executed there is an animation of the first accuser killing them. Normally this would go to the second person in the case of the hunter. Since here it is just the King and the Hunter who actually preforms the execution?

#12

that is what i am saying. Since there is no one left to perform the execution on the Hunter he ends up winning. Even tho this makes sense it’s not good for the game. King is being forced to do nothing for every day and night to come in order to not lose. The solution i suggested would fix the problem but it would feel weird watching a hunter die by a ghost…

#13

So just make Retribution not work

ez pz

#14

I’m not sure this needs to be fixed. The chance of this happening is pretty rare, and I don’t think it qualifies as a problem.
(BTW, I just had my first two games. First was as poss(Loss), second was as phys turned herb turned assassin.(Draw))

2 Likes
#15

This change would defeat the purpose of the Hunter’s retribution.

Beyond that, my feeling is that evils should almost never be completely, 100% certain in their victory (that’s also boring.) It’s good to have roles that could potentially turn a winning situation into a losing situation if you’re careless of them.

Why though? BD certainly doesn’t deserve this one if they all died, elected an Evil King, and only left a Hunter by luck probably

That’s silly. You’re assuming that the Evil King got to his position through some clever strategy (it could also have been luck, eg. converted the very night before when Cult had no idea he was noble); and you’re assuming that the Hunter survived last by luck (it could have been carefully-planned by BD over the last few days as a last-ditch effort to win.)

My feeling is that this function is essential to Retribution and is very good for the game, since it gives BDs another interesting goal to play to and forces the king to identify the hunter if possible.

More generally, providing for alternate victory conditions is a good thing. I don’t see any benefit to removing this - I’m not at all convinced by the “deserved” or “feelbad” arguments. You can flip it around and say that if Cult left the last person alive as the Hunter and was left with nothing left but an evil king, they have played badly and BD has outplayed them.

And I’m more sympathetic to that because it’s more interesting. The king already has an incentive to try and end up 1v1 against anyone but the hunter (so, making them win against the hunter adds no new strategy or depth - because that’s already a scenario that can play out with every single other class.) Whereas the hunter winning 1v1 against the king is unique and adds new potential lines of play for BD, while adding new risks for the evil king and Cult / Unseen.

EDIT: Aside. Curious question: Supposing there are three people left - evil king, Hunter, NK. The king votes up the Hunter with finger, but the NK doesn’t accuse (they do have to guilty for the Hunter to die, of course.) Does the Hunter die? Or do they survive because only an accuser can actually perform the execution, and there’s none left with the king’s death? It’s a somewhat odd corner-case that is unlikely to ever occur, but I’m curious.

2 Likes
#16

And as for the possible win rate argument. Unlike in ToS, ToL has a roughly equal chance of BD wining as with Unseen or Cult and there tends to be about 3 or 4 converts on average making almost half the players playing for either side. This means there is no particular reason why the evils always need to win ties.

#17

In terms of what is shown in the game currently, the retribution arrow is fired killing the king. At this moment, the game awards victory to BD, and the hunter is never actually executed or killed.

#18

I know. But for them both to die there would need to be an execution animation. However there is no 2nd person to carry out the execution.

#19

Preliminary data from an admittedly small sample size of the 26 Tournament For The Throne games from this past weekend shows that this is not the case once players know what they’re doing.

image

In addition, most all of the scum wins occurred when there was a non-BD starting King.

This would look even worse had some black magic not tanked the BD’s D2 winrate :stuck_out_tongue:

These stats aren’t great, but they’re probably the best we have in terms of ignoring new and/or awful players

2 Likes
#20

I strongly disagree with your logic. If something is wrong you fix it, even tho it’s rare.