Not if your TP and Offensive classes do their job right.
You only keep low when there are enough high profile targets that there won’t be a spare TP for you. They will kill either way but it wont be you and it might even be someone who already has TP.
If you get Empower reaped N2 then you leave the game with or without dead interaction because you haven’t gotten invested yet.
If that happens closer to N5-6 or so then yes.
But how does a “smart player” avoid that?
You can’t argue that someone wasn’t “smart” enough if their survival depends entirely on other players’ actions. Hell, there are scenarios where no matter how smart you are you can’t win. Enforcer kills, sage lock-outs both are “you’re dead” unless you know who the assassin is.
Less dead interaction means sloppy play from evils/NK is rewarded.
If people haven’t heard yet, the next patch is planned to remove all interactions with the dead (DKs, Psychic / Mystic’s ability to speak with them, Chill’s ability to speak with the dead, all of it.) The stated reason for this is that because people sometimes leave after dying, those abilities are unreliable (and the upcoming patch will give you 40% of your winnings if you leave before the game ends.)
Of all the reasons for getting rid of dead interactions, this was the absolute worst. I didn’t like Death Knights, they are too game-changing and I’m glad they’re gone. I didn’t like the Possessor/Psychic dynamic, I’m glad it’s gone. I didn’t really care about gold at all. But I think getting rid of Call of the Dead is taking fun out of the game.
I would have liked even more stuff for the dead to do. Like maybe evils could trollbox dead Blue Dragon to mislead Psychic, or distract them. And let Illusionist and Apostle have Call of the Dead so the dead don’t even know if Psychic is converted. Also it would be cool to have a scoreboard so dead can see who won the most gold by placing bets.
Fun is an important part of the game (it is, after all, a game.) Yes, the game needs to be balanced to be fun, but “Call The Dead is fun” and “it’s fun to hang around as a dead and try to give good advice to the mystic” are totally good arguments for keeping the ability.
This 100%.
Honestly this wasn’t even a problem. The Psychic’s link causes way more problems than their ability to speak with the dead (since it makes it impossible to fakeclaim psychic.)
Replace Mental Blur and Apostle Snoop with Link Minds. This is such an obvious solution to the problem.
Hey y’all!
I originally took @Aquillion’s view a few patches ago when the first draft of the patch removed the DK. At the time, I thought it was essential to incentivize people to stay. But I have come around on this issue.
I’m not sure what changed for me. Maybe I’ve just come to accept that dead interactions is not the direction Bos wants to go.
But I’m willing to give this a shot. I feel very optimistic about this change.
It will be easier for the devs to balance without the hard counter of Mystic/Possessor, the consolidation of power in a single dead player, which dead players feel like sticking around to collaborate and pass along info, etc. They’re right. It is unreliable. That kind of thing is outside the intended gameplay.
You can’t have the dead affect the game’s result and also have no consequence for leaving.
Otherwise, isn’t it throwing to leave when dead? Especially n1/2, when more classes are alive? What if the Psychic was in jail? What if the Physician was occupied? If someone else is rezzed, then it would be throwing to not stick around and help him figure out who to kill, wouldn’t it?
And if someone leaves when they could have helped their team, even if they were simply too impatient to wait and see if it was even possible, then they should be punished for throwing.
It is unreasonable to force dead players to hope that they will somehow affect the game and then punish them if they leave.
If we do not punish dead-leavers, then it is also unreasonable to expect dead-dependent classes (Physician, Psychic) to play to the best of their ability, since their contribution depends on the altruism of the dead.
Since dead players would never be punished for leaving, it’s only reasonable to eliminate the unreliability of dead interactions for the sake of being able to better balance the game and allow all classes to play to the best of their ability.
I’ve seriously swung 180 degrees on this. Previously, I thought it would seriously impact the fun of the game if there was no dead interaction. But now I feel the opposite: instead of waiting and hoping to have some impact and then leaving anyway when there is no Psychic or DK, now we can relax and enjoy the show.
When you’re dead, you’re dead. Your team is without you. Having a group of dead BD, all confirmed, who can pass along their thinking (which will be better due to less time constraints, etc.) to the living is against the spirit of the game.
But fun is important too. Engagement and care for the game is important too. I’m willing to give this a chance.
I don’t particularly see how dead talking to the living can be “against the spirit of the game” when it has been a cornerstone of the genre all the way back to SC2 Mafia. Every aspect of the game (and the genre) has always been designed and balanced around this almost as far back as the “role-focused” variant of Mafia has been around, and it’s been a prominent feature of all successful iterations.
I mean, if the devs are absolutely, positively determined to go forward with this terrible terrible idea, I’m pretty sure it’ll be reverted in a patch or two when it becomes clear how awful it makes things in the long term or in the face of the declining player-base it’ll cause.
But to answer your other objections point by point:
Lots of things are tricky to balance (and as I said, Link is way more problematic.) But in practice, people with important things to contribute almost always stick around long enough to contribute them.
It is far more unreasonable to crush that hope utterly by removing it entirely from the game, either punishing everyone who dies with the unremitting, unfun tedium of watching a game with no way to interact with it, or making them leave and miss the ending. Again, your arguments are backwards - you admit that interaction is essential to keep the game fun for dead people (hence why they “hope” for it), yet you use that as an argument to punish all dead people with that tedium, forever?
It is necessary to sometimes leave them with no way to communicate with the living, since evils have to be able to shut the channel between the living and the dead down in some fashion. But the fact that the living are sometimes forced into that unfun and tedious state is a terrible argument for making that the only possible outcome.
Those classes have many other things to contribute; and, as mentioned, people usually contribute. There are lots of ways the game can break down (BD being passive and ignoring clues; evils behaving mindlessly and attacking or converting at random, erc.) I don’t think the dead leaving, in ToL, has ever been a particularly major problem for the classes that interact with the dead, certainly not bad enough to call for a “solution” as draconian, poorly-thought-out, and generally unfun as this.
This suggestion would make the game unfun and drastically reduce engagement. I’m absolutely not willing to give it a chance. If this does get implemented (and I strongly hope that the devs come to their senses and walk it back), I’m 100% certain it will get reverted in a patch or two in the face of the inevitable blowback, just like previous mistakes of this magnitude; but I don’t want to have to suffer through several months of tedium-amongst-the-dead for that to happen.
I agree, if you’re right about this, then it will be reverted quickly.
I don’t think it’s essential. I think it has to be one or the other - enjoy the show vs. you must not leave because you can still contribute. I think your arguments in favor of more dead interaction ultimately have to lead to the second option because someone who still has something to contribute should not be permitted to leave.
Maybe it’s just personal for me, but I think I’ll have more fun in dead chat if I’m not antsily waiting to see if there’s anything else I can do for my team and then getting frustrated when there isn’t. This also lets us speak more freely between factions in dead chat.
I feel you though. It is a big change, and if the game feels unfun because of this I will definitely admit I was wrong. 
I made a thread like this sometimes back.
While I agree, there are a few pieces we really do need to consider:
While I think removing dead interaction isn’t the answer, we can’t ignore the problems it brings up. We need some way around all of these.
The only one of those statements that is definitely true is “Call of the dead screws possessor”.
Going in 5-4-3-2-1 as my order
Is it fun for the Unseen/Cult to get fucked because they killed a pally who got a cult result on one of their members and could now relay that to the dead? You are looking at it from a BD perspective, this isn’t the way to look.
It devalues kills, if you are alive. You could be converted/not believed if you were alive, but if you die and you flip BD OH LOOK PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE YOUR RESULTS.
It should mean that! You are dead, you cannot provide info, with dead communication kills justs turned people into citizens who can’t vote and don’t count towards the majority and can’t be heard by the living expect for one role.
40%>0% it’s basic math it’s actually BETTER if you leave when you are dead now.
Fun =/= Balanced
Dead interaction is something I would like in the forms of MINI GAMES not rezzes and dead communication
No objection from me, while psy was semi-dependent on dead they WEREN’T 100% reliant on them. (Same with Phys and DK they can heal)
TL:DR
Dead communication is not fun for the scum, It devalues kills, it allows info that should not be known except to the invest who DIED to be known by the living
How’s that any different than dying to night 1 smite? Or night X smite? If it’s later in the game then it’s your fault for not converting/eliminating the psychic.
Literally already happens. Can’t count the number of times people weren’t believed and then were post death.
Who actually cares about GP? I don’t.
Also this should really be considered -60% to GP gains since at least previously you could sit around with the chance to do something.
Sure but I have better things to do than sit and do nothing.
You’re missing my point - there was incentive to stay before and now there is not. I imagine most people didn’t make their stay/leave decision based on gold gains.
And that doesn’t matter, because you can still stay if you want more gold (or see what happens)
I only stayed when dead if the game was almost over or if I was a member of the scum faction.
