How to cure this cancer meta

Feedback/Suggestions
#1

The “point” meta is cancer. I know the reasoning is to prevent the king from slamming prince. But that’s stupid, because even if he doesn’t point he can’t decide fate exe without the permission of the majority, which is implicitly given when anyone is voted up.

In other words, if you don’t want someone to get executed, whether by vote or the whim of the king, don’t vote them up.

But the meta is so well established and its proponents so stubborn that reasoning with them is pointless.

So in order to preserve this awesome ability (which in my opinion is one of the defining aspects of this game, and certainly the coolest and most distinguishing feature of the King class), I propose making it impossible for anyone to confirm whether the king has ever actually clicked decide fate or not.

And this can be done by not consuming the single use of Decide Fate unless the king’s decision actually contradicted the majority vote at the time he clicked it.

So if King clicks Decide Fate, and his decision agrees with what was going to happen to the guy on trial anyway (get executed or get pardoned), the Decide Fate button becomes disabled for that trial instead of actually doing anything. And when the trial ends, it is enabled again.

So if anyone says, “D2 vote someone up and tell king to slam exe/pard so he can’t do it later on prince”, King can say, “I did but it didn’t work”, and nobody can call the king a liar because nobody knows what the majority vote was when king pressed the button, except for the King himself.

Actually … there is a problem with this. Since everyone is notified when someone casts a vote (although not how they voted), if King claims, before anyone cast any vote, that he clicked decide fate exe but it didn’t work, he will be proven a liar since the default outcome of a trial is pardon (all abstains).

This technically isn’t a problem right now because voting is very buggy in the sense that public notifications of “x voted” or “x changed their vote” or “x rescinded their vote” are unreliable and often don’t appear.

But a more elegant solution would be to give everyone the option to change their default vote (change it from abstain to execute or pardon). Nobody would actually ever use this obscure feature (it would theoretically be accessed in the settings menu), but the fact that everyone knows it exists would kill any attempts to use this cheap vote notification tactic to force king to prove whether he is able to use decide fate.

And make point a passive of course so DF can’t be disabled that way either. Additionally making room for giving king a new awesome day ability.

TL;DR

Point becomes a passive.

Decide Fate becomes disabled for the duration of the trial if you attempt to use it in agreement with the current majority vote.

This makes it impossible to prove when king can use decide fate, so he can’t be forced to waste it D2 in order to neuter him for the rest of the game.

#2

I cannot cure cancer

2 Likes
#3

I mean cool but tbh it’s way easier to just have it not notify anyone unless your DF changes the outcome of the trial

So why mess with all the complicated real-time stuff, just do that instead lol

4 Likes
#4

You mean, instead of disabling DF, silently waste it? That would be less fun for the King, who would probably prefer it displayed even if it didn’t change the outcome.

And the “complicated real-time stuff”, the option to change one’s default vote in settings is still a requirement. Otherwise, nobody will cast a vote so King will be unable to claim he “silently” slammed exe, since the default outcome when no one votes is pardon.

Unless by “current real-time majority vote” you are suggesting to not enact decide fate until the trial ends, which would mean King can’t terminate the trial instantly with DF which takes away half of the dramatic effect. And still doesn’t solve the problem of majority vote being public when nobody casts a vote, since if nobody votes King can’t claim to not know the outcome was pardon.

#5

I’m pretty sure this suggestion would if anything make the Kings-are-forced-to-point issue worse, not better – how do you see making it more difficult to know if the King slammed as reducing people’s insistence on pointing?

#6

It isn’t supposed to make it difficult to know if King slammed. It’s supposed to give King a plausible excuse for not slamming when the crowd demands he waste it ASAP D2 on someone everyone’s agreed should get executed. Because that’s what they’re going to do if Royal Finger becomes a passive that doesn’t disable Decide Fate.

It accomplishes this by disabling the ability if he tries to slam vote the same way the majority voted.

So if they tell King to waste his slam, he can plausibly say, “I tried but it didn’t work because the majority vote was the same as how I tried to vote.”

It’s presupposed that point has become a passive instead of ability that disables slam.

#7

The thing is that no one voting isn’t pardon because your default vote is pardon, but rather because ties cause a pardon for balance reasons.

Having abstains sometimes count as an execute has balance problems for things like force votes.

#8

Okay. Fine. I suppose the only solution then is to make Distract disable DF for the entire duration of a trial, and bring back Invoker’s Bewilder. Instead of reworking DF.

#9

How about this:

All Kings gain the ability to use both their day abilities in the same day.

Removes forcing King to point as a way to prevent decide fate, while keeping Point’s ability to be used on second trial. This does make late game King much more powerful (they can break vote ties AND execute), but that just adds more reason to be more careful of who is King.

Making the point ability into a passive makes some other mechanics awkward:

  • Distract would need special exceptions when used on King to affect passives.
  • It can stall out the day trials (e.g. King vs two others. King can waste both trials by voting others faster than they can vote him).
  • If fixing the previous by making it only affect first vote of the day, it could be accidentally wasted by voting wrong person, and can no longer affect the second trial of the day.

Starting Evil King gets a second charge of Decide Fate.

Removes forcing starting King to waste Decide Fate.

I don’t think this would affect the balance of the game too much: a King using the first charge evilly will likely be killed before they get a chance to use the second charge. It does increase the power of late game starting EK, but the increased necessity of scum reading the King seems like a good thing to me.

Perhaps this could be extended (if it becomes meta to force all elected Kings) to all non-BD Kings at all stages of the game, but that might make late game King elections too swingy.

Possessor that jumps into King and now has no uses remaining of Possess becomes Psycho King.

Removes the last possible reason to force the King to point.

This is a change that I think should already be in the game to be honest. Losing Puppet Strings doesn’t really affect its killing ability. The only only real loss is Mind Control, but Point into Decide Fate is far more powerful.

#10

You make some good points but giving EK 2 charges won’t solve the problem for GK, who will still be forced to spend it D2 so that the crowd knows “at least if he’s EK he now only has 1 use”.

Possessed King should not become PK because it destroys the concept of “hard to become PK but really powerful when you succeed”. And not having point as possessed King is not an issue since if you wait until there 6 or less total people alive, your safe from being jailed or voted out as long as you have uses of Mind Control remaining.

2 Likes
#11

A meta like that forming would be annoying, agreed. But in that case, isn’t it only weakening starting GK while EK is completely unaffected (compared to current patch)? Even then, they still have to be careful in case they up the Prince (or any other important claim) at all times for the rest of the game in case of EK.

Perhaps some of the problem is stemming from the fact that GK has no way of using slam effectively, and thus no penalty for wasting it.

  • Slam an evil? As long as court is mostly BD (and knows what they are doing), they should come to the same verdict as the King and exe them anyway. If evils have enough votes to pardon, they just won’t vote up an evil in the first place.
  • Force pardon a BD? Again, court should already be pardoning as well, unless evils have votes, in which case you save a player for a day and get voted out yourself. In most cases when this happens, evils still win.

The only times it comes in handy for GK is when your decision conflicts with the court, which is mostly never if everyone has the same info (assuming the BD aren’t making bad choices); or if evils have majority and vote the wrong person.

Perhaps adding more power to force pardon and and adding penalties to wasting it would help? “Using force pardon ends the day immediately, the same way a successful exe does (EK can only do this once to prevent late game stalling?)” and “using force exe/pardon removes all charges of self guard (for GK only)”?

I guess cheapening the Psycho King win would make it less special. I only put it there to remove the last reason players would have to force king to point/slam. But doesn’t solo Possessed King only win day phase at 4 players remaining? At 5 players (including Poss), Poss cannot stop at least 3 players from voting them.