First up, I will talk about the very simple and probably universally agreeable option of toxicity toward new players - add an ability for new players to queue under ‘guided games’ then allow more experienced players to queue under ‘coach games’
The solution isn’t perfect. But I’m sure alot of people would be willing to assist someone in understanding the roles by acting as their helper and observing the game. The coach will get no more information then the new player, they’ll simply just be a watcher and an on command helper. This would be a bit messy to implement from the dev perspective, but I would suggest allowing the helper to send text that is different coloured from the new players. He may use a seperate chat box (similar to psychic) in order to ask questions. The coach would only need one chat box, as he lacks the capacity to disclose information to either the dead or the living (other than his apprentice)
Alright, now for the much more grueling issues that have made me want to refund this game as another bad variant of Mafia. Firstly, I’d like to talk about some things I like, that separates this game from other variants, before i delve into what I feel you need to make different.
The need for a king (or Mayor) is a nice change. I love the fact that a king can be evil (this nullifies the ‘role call’ tactic that is often used on a mayor reveal) and makes for a more interesting game (particularly if you get evil king. My hopes)
The deliberate push for more gameplay that falls in line with the ‘cult’ style of play. I really enjoy this, but at the same time, I have some complaints about pushing this agenda a little to much. I will go into that, as I believe this also effects the ability to balance the current game, creating some pretty annoying redundancies in roles, also the need to make everything immune starts to get really frustrating as a cult/unseen player. (Worth noting, Cult style games have always been less enjoyable. So far, your game revolves around the cult like gameplay. So to me, that would definitely be a plus that everyones been enjoying it so far)
So with these two things being fairly critical to ‘Throne of Lies’ over other variants (Salem/Epic Mafia) that make it more enjoyable. There is still alot of credit to other Mafia creators (such as Dark Revenant) who was the creator for StarCraft 2 Mafia, the mafia concept that founded Town of Salem.
After saying all that… Theres balance defaults that need to be put in place which I will discuss at the end. For now, role interactions are very critical to balance. Roles cannot be assessed on an individual basis. This does not promote balance, but instead does the opposite. This is the oversight of almost every player in the game, which leads to a large amount of over powered unique roles.
Firstly. the Priests existence in itself is an oversight. No one should be allowed to talk to the dead, let alone resurrect the dead (the previous changes where a priest would have to sacrifice himself in order to do this, would be the best individual balance) The reason priests existence hinders balanced gameplay, is because it means that a physician/Knight have a 100% guaranteed safe target to always protect, particularly in conjunction with the unseen/cult having managed to finally remove the Prince or some other critical target, from play. It also means that if a sheriff/obs or any other confirmed BD role, can pass on all their information not only to priest but also to whomever was resurrected, adding additional information to their chat logs. This existence makes life very difficult for the Unseen/Cult in general. Most players understand quickly the need to remove the Priest/Prince, as most also understand the need to resurrect the prince.
To counteract this singular role (which was originally created due to the complaints of 'once I’m dead, I may aswell leave because I have nothing to do) you would need to do one of two things, IMO…
- Remove the role completely. A random Priest is as bad as a guaranteed priest.
- Remove roles upon death. No one knows who died for sure. Meaning that log books are the most important source of information, but is not 100% accurate, as cult/unseen can freely manipulate this to pretend they’re BD… Priest may end up resurrecting someone they didn’t want to.
In the current sense of the gameplay, if you wanted the quickest fix… It would be to remove roles upon death. Game would be chaotic and you would probably recieve alot of initial backlash about gameplay. Physicians and Alchemists would have so much more to do. Alchemists could be BD roles who are purely a healer. A Physician would be remastered into the old role of a ‘coroner’ (purely just checks the dead for their role/how they died) and keeping in theme of their current, you could revise them to allow themselves to ‘stay indoors’ where they are night immune. As I would see the Priests removal the better option toward the current understanding of gameplay, the alternative solution to keeping people active post death is to directly ‘gamble’ their coins against other players in the dead chat. IE, Gamble that Player X will die/voted out before Player Y. Command: /bet Player X 500, then message appear, other players may take the bet or decline it. If a player accepts the bet (they must have sufficient funds) the bet closes and results will be revealed later.
In addition or instead of, you could use the roulette method that was used previously. Where players will bet a russian roulette style. /bet X Y where X will be the amount, Y will be the amount of chambers used in the ‘revolver’ and players will take turns trying to pull the trigger. Anyone may join this format… Payout is determined based on how many attempts each player took at pulling the trigger in relation to others that stayed alive. IE /bet 300 10. Players see a message ‘Russian roulette has started for 300 with 10 chambers’ players opt in or default is stay out. Player who initiates pulls trigger first /pull or /pass. Each player when handed the gun must pull atleast once, but may pull more if they should choose. Once a player is out, divvy up.
The next issue is the fact that a cult and Unseen game are basically the same. Lets change this. Firstly, lets look at the Unseen (more mafia styled gameplay) Lets make this less cult;
Reset the Unseen numbers to 3 (probably should be 4 based on the BD’s current setup) as the starting number. Add a role that allows a singular usage of conversion (forever held) that conversion adds someone to the Unseen as an assassin (no uses of 2for1. Purely just a singular target kill, multiple assassins will vote on their target. If they cannot be unanimous, the MM’s target takes precedence) this is basically just standard game. But with the current method of king, this will feel greatly different. Alternatively, make the newly converted class a ‘framer’ who just frames people for the night if checked by Sheriff. Again, following along the lines of standard mafia. The reasons for this, is that the current Cult/Unseen games are almost identical, but due to the similarities, balance inputs have been implemented for cult games which also effect the Unseen game. Thus, the Unseen should be at a lower % chance to win over a cult game. Cults now have bleed whilst Unseen don’t have much at all. Both parties are limited to how many they may recruit, but the reality is, I’ve never seen anyone get to that capacity due to the amount of immune to conversions there are (plus the jailor jailing people makes them immune. More difficult yet, because if you come across someone who’s been jailed, you don’t particularly want to waste another night trying to check if they’re jailed or just immune…) this would be because you only have 2 members, whilst you have about 3-4 investigative roles per night (Sheriff, Obs, starting King, lesser extend but more powerful sense, the jailor) gets a bit ridiculous.
Cult game - This game basically needs you to reduce the amount of immune to conversion roles there are… Are you seeing a trend here about how removing the priest might just be the balance fix you could use? He’s conversion immune, makes his res’d target conversion immune, plus he has all the information of the dead and the ability to res someone…
Alright… So thats the faction break down of things that are causing issues with current gameplay, but remember how I said you need to consider role interactions and not just individual roles? Well, heres why Neutrals exist. Neutrals exist because they are designed to choose who is winning at the time. They switch sides fast. Neutrals should be hated by BD, not loved. Alchemists will sit on the side of BD because thats the highest probability along with safest, to win. Reaper is the only neutral role I truly like. Mercenary is another glorified BD unless converted.
The Reaper is a great example of how this role helps to try and neutralise the permanent protection upon the king - except the Knight cancels this out. As the king is always known, a Knight should always be protecting the King. Making the Reaper forcefully target people who may end up killing him. A reaper should be allowed to wait out (So should the MM too. Please don’t force roles to use their killing abilities. It limits potential strategic options for people like Unseen to pretend to be cult or Reapers to pretend to be Scorned) Reaper is a great idea… However as previously stated, the Kings permanent reveal to all players should paint the target on the kings back. However because of the Knight killing the reaper, what ends up happening to this balance interaction is that the king gets to stay in the game. Reaper isn’t going to sacrifice himself purely for the purposes of the Unseen/Cult to be able to kill the king. Thus, the reaper is just killing more random targets instead of assisting BD at removing the targets they need in a timely fasion. (Reaper and Unseen/Cult should be helping one another initially… Later they should be revealing one another in subtle ways… Hence death notes were formed in order for them to pass information to one another without revealing.)
Scorned - I like the idea of these guys… They’re pretty fun too… But as a neutral, they just don’t quite cut it. This to me is the old ‘Executioner’ role, who just would try to lynch a target he was given at random, in order to achieve his personal victory. Troll boxing is useful… Just not sure how effective it is when people can’t really be silenced by anyone but the reaper…
Mercenary - As stated before, he’s a glorified BD with the potential to be converted. I think this role should probably be removed or made into a BD role. Not a neutral.
Possessor - This is a combination of two former roles that has been empowered. These roles are the ‘Witch’ and the ‘Disguiser’ The Witch was an evil neutral who took over someones action for the night (or redirected them) for balance purposes, I found the witch to be relatively useless if their target knew they were witched. The disguiser was an Unseen member who would one shot kill and disguise into their role. I enjoy the current possessors abilities. As a neutral killing role, I think they can do quite well. However a balance change to make sure they’re not just stupidly over powered is to make them occupy immune, but not night immune.
These changes would force neutrals to have to work together with the unseen/cult in order for them to survive. The idea is that early they need eachother, later they start trying to kill eachother. The NK’s have to be more subtle about it throughout the game as to not be forced into a position later where they are outnumbered by the real bad guys.
Next off, some quick changes I think that should be in place, if a converted or replacement of a role (such as king) happens to occur, they should not be granted refreshed uses of that roles abilities. The old uses should stay in play. IE, King has 4 guards. If he’s used 4 guards, he shouldn’t be granted another 4 when a new king is empowered. This just keeps Kings alive when there is no reaper for no reason at all.
In addition to this, a balance fix needs to be implemented at the earliest convenience. BD should NEVER win a 1:1 tie. For balance reasons the balance fix for ties should be…
Neuts > Cult/Unseen > BD King/Evil King
A King should never win a 1:1 tie at the end. He is a king of a rock. But more importantly, King is already super powerful and has the highest probability of winning the game, particularly if a BD king. They should not be awarded a win over those that had to actually work for it. An Evil king is hard, I agree… I believe an evil kings playstyle just has not yet been discovered.
This was pretty long, I apologise, but I see alot of issues with the current format in terms of balance and interactions. If I have forgotten anything, I will try to post it back in here. I am almost always on discord, best way to get my attention is to shoot me a private message if you have anything further to discuss. If you want immediate answers, or quick responses, use discord. I probably won’t check this forum to much.
). Thanks for your contribution, and I hope you stick around and keep making suggestions - the devs here act lightning-quick, and they’re usually open to ideas (although they may be more into reading a few paragraphs than an essay - believe me, I’ve tried 
).