I joined ToL not so long ago, and TBH the steam reviews had me worried. A lot.
Fortunately the “get trolled into oblivion as a newbie” part turned out to be false (for me at least).
My respects and congratulations on this. Both to the community and to the ones moderating it.
You guys beat ToS in this by a mile.
Unfortunately a hell of a lot of other complaints were spot on.
My apologies in advance if the amount of ToS comparison in this thread upsets you. But that’s “where I’m from” and, more importantly, it’s a very similar game with similar concepts in play.
I’m going to start from talking about the prince a little bit. Do you know why his ToS counterpart is so damn strong? It’s his ability to secretly gather information from his faction without putting any of them at risk of exposure and while having their complete trust. Sure, being able to both protect and kill adds to that, but the real source of his power is the above factor. He IS, after all, notably stronger than just a killer + a healer combined.
Why am I bringing that up though? Wait for it… [drumbeat] … it’s about the whisper king meta.
See, it’s not the prince that’s the problem, it’s the king. In your game prince is NOT the main carry. You went well over the limit of the “most OP” class in ToS. (Yes that’s a lame term, but it DOES show the extent of power shift doesn’t it?) And made him barely more than an afterthought. Who cares if he can gather info at night from select players. The king has it ALL and more, and get’s updated every bloody day in real time.
But more importantly than just breaking the prince’s main feature, you broke strategy in the process.
ToS, before the DLC anyway, was a strategic masterpiece. Time to analyse the right parts of your competition’s effort and learn from it.
I’ve already discussed one peak of power - the jailer.
Let’s add two more before we get to the real business.
First is the retributionist. Not the player himself though, the one he brings back is the cornerstone of power here. Why? Because he’s a 100% proven character who you can whisper to. Next comes the whisper meta and the end. Why am I bringing this one up? (no pun intended) To show the extent to which the whisper meta is limited in ToS. I doesn’t start until the ret does his thing, and ret is not a guaranteed class, and then even if it does, the cornerstone of whisper meta is fragile.
And last but not least - the mayor.
A class that excels at being proven and leading the public execution.
Note his two limits - he cannot be whispered to after revealing, nor can he be healed.
But we are not quite there yet. Before we get to the king’s affairs I’m going to bring up a few more points.
Please note how the roles are usually distributed. A normal class usually excels at one of the “areas”.
Protection. Those classes decide who gets to live longer, but they have to stay hidden to live themselves and as such are the LEAST informed of ALL the classes.
Killing. Those classes decide who gets to live shorter, can count of support of protectors to an extent and need the help of investigators to work.
And investigators. The guys who know who should live longer or shorter, but can’t DO anything about it without receiving support from others.
And all of them, generally, need to earn their allies trust and put themselves at risk via public exposure in order to get anything done.
There. Done. Now let’s take a look at the monstrosity that you call king. He:
-Has statistical trust of the BD from the get-go. (more likely to be good than evil)
-Is able to be the cornerstone of whisper meta.
-Is able to influence public executions both through his position AND his abilities.
-Is able to protect both others and himself.
-Is able to take justice into his own hands and kill without public’s consent.
WHAT THE F dev team? What were you thinking. You threw away ALL the possible limitations (and caution) with this guy.
Unsurprisingly you ended up with the most strategically shallow meta-game possible.
ONE player ends up gathering all the intel there is to gather, gets to lead the game during the day, gets to protect the important roles without even revealing them, gets to kill the bad guys without even saying who or how found them out and he gets to stay alive through all of that because he’s so well protected most killers don’t even consider going for the king’s throat.
If you want your game to be fun for anyone other than the king this has to end. And the sooner the better.
There are several paths you can choose here, so let’s get to them.
1st - the “Mayor” path
Plain and simple - no whispers to and from the king. EVER. Make the game social again, and stop “the throne of whispered lies” nonsense. Wanna accuse someone, or to defend your innocence (real or otherwise)? Step out into the public eye and plead your case to the WHOLE court, not to one uberman. Let the good know who’s badmouthing them, let the evil know who found them out and how, let the good protectors and killers scratch their head thinking who to trust and who to distrust. MAKE THIS A GAME OF PUBLIC DECEPTION AND DEDUCTION.
2nd - the “powerless king” path
Also rather simple - remove the kings ability to act on his own. No more ordered executions, no more fingers, no more decide fate, heck, no more VOTING for him either. Force the king to SHARE the intel to get anything at all done. This is a weaker path than the first, obviously, but at least it gets SOME social component back into the game. Would probably be a good idea to make his guard ability infinite on this path.
3rd - the “isolated king” path
Again rather simple - remove the kings ability to SHARE intel. COMPLETELY. No whispering from the king, no chating from the king, no logs from the king. And again, no VOTES from the king either. Make him socially an observer (not the class kind of observer). Depending on how it goes with balance up the number of his night executions. Definitely decrease the number of his guards. Preferably spread the number of his guards between the kings. Basically we’re making him an empowered vigilante (again, not a class reference). He get’s more info than anyone else on account of statistical trust and whisper TO the king still being enabled, and can do things about it. That’s more than the other players get anyway. The important part here is that it allows people to mislead a king, and then get rid of him to get away with it. The rest of the court can still opt to stay hidden and act with the king as their proxy, but since it’s no longer (near) impossible to mislead the king and get away with it the rest of the court gets a harder time earning his trust.
4th - the “gambling king” path
You guessed it…, it’s simple, it’s also boring and weak, but still better than what we currently have. Just remove the statistical trust from the king. Make him EXACTLY as likely to be evil as he is likely to be good. Do something to strongly weaken the subsequent kings. Maybe just force them to take the one of the 3 other paths.
And before I forget, on all of those paths you’ll want to make prince be unguardable by the good and neutral kings. Or else the whisper meta will just jump to him as the new cornerstone.
And for fun’s sake, take a good long inquisitive look at how the pre-dlc ToS plays out. It may be limited in term of class abilities, but it’s a strategic masterpiece as a result of those carefully crafted limits.
Most actions that have a good reason to be taken have a similarly good reason to NOT be taken. You often have to wonder what is the evil doing, how would they react to this situation, and whether or not you’re playing into their hands right now. This both supports social deception and is born from social deception.
How can it work in your game when most classes are provable? Princess, WoW the king. The “princess” gets exed first thing the next morning. Noble, make me vote 10. The “noble” get’s exe-d within seconds. I could continue, but do I have to? WHERE is deception in your game? It’s ok to have provable classes. But you have to have UNpovable classes, and that’s how the majority of them has to be.
I get it that “more power to the classes” is your moto, and I’m not saying that you have to get rid of that. But you have to handle that extra power with a LOT more care than that.
