New User Unfriendliness

Feedback/Suggestions
#1

I’ve recommended this game to a few people, and the resounding review I get is that this is the least friendly game to new users of all time.

My suggestion for how to fix this is as follows:

We all know how to log now, because we’ve played more than 10 games. But some people never make it past the first game, because they write RP notes, or don’t know what to answer when the prince shouts claim at them.

There should be a button, similar to the one that default formats your logs, that just adds a log for what you did that night. Everyone logs exactly the same. “N1: Deb 5; Prevented” “N1: Scout 6; Inves 2; NS”

You could still fake logs by typing them in manually, or even do it that way if you’re a weird grognard with your own succinct notation system, but you’d have a target format to shoot for. It would be more work, but you could even implement an element to choose a different classes default logs which would make it super easy.

New players don’t even know what a log is supposed to look like. And I would bet that that causes a significant number of new players to bounce right off the game. Some of my friends certainly did. I felt the same way when I was a new player, except I stuck with it long enough to learn how to do it.

This won’t solve all the problems, my friend got stuck with evil classes or nk for his first two games, and had no idea how to fakelog to the Prince/Psychic/King so obviously he had a very poor user experience, and that’s what this suggestion is about. The current system punishes new players to an unreasonable extent, and doesn’t promote learning or encourage them to stick with the game.

I’ve mocked up an example of what I’m talking about. The right side of the logs don’t matter as much. Keeping track of everyone else’s stuff is a useful skill but it won’t immediately get you executed and make everyone hate you if you fuck it up.

tolexample

3 Likes
#2

auto-logging. I like this idea. Also because I’m a lazy log writer :sweat_smile:

That image example attached however doesn’t show any logs…

#3

Another thing that might be useful would be a “new player” indicator. Obviously this wouldn’t work if we still had the restricted list for new players (you can’t be prince in your first few games for example). Then when you took a while to get your logs the prince wouldn’t automatically execute you.

#4

NOTE:I DID NOT COME UP WITH THIS, I AM USING AN EXAMPLE FROM ANOTHER MAFIA GAME (Sc2 Maf to be exact)

I suggest adding a new player annoucement when the game starts like {your name} is new to ToL, they have played {x amount of games played}

#5

Yeah, that’s not the point. I gave examples of what logs look like, we all know what logs look like. “N[0]: [verb][0];[result]”

The point is the addition of buttons to add preformatted logs to a given night, and a drop down menu on top to choose which class logs you want to put down.

To be honest, you could probably do this with a 3rd party software overlay, but that would kind of defeat the point a bit, since the point is to create a unified system of logs to make things easier for new players.

Edit: I don’t think it’s important to tell everyone that someone is a new player either, because that would just get them an undue amount of attention, which would also lead to less enjoyable outcomes for all players involved. The most common response to this complaint from new players I’ve seen is “Well, you’ll get used to the algebra in a few games”, but of course there’s a very real chance that new players will just bounce right off without ever getting used to the algebra.

#6

I definitely think it’s always good to improve the interface and to do what we can to improve usability for new players. That said, it’s important to keep the reality of what Throne of Lies is in mind - it’s building on a lot of previous social deduction games, and does somewhat assume that the player is familiar with them. I would probably recommend Town of Salem for a beginner instead, which is somewhat simpler (or perhaps the newer Mindnight, which is even more rules-light.) There’s only so much that can be done.

I’d be a bit concerned about auto-logging because it would make it much harder to write fake logs, which would, counter-intuitively, make the game harder for new players (get even one character wrong in your fake logs? You’re screwed.)

Same for the new player announcements. I’m not sure they’d make the experience of being a new player any better, and I could foresee people strategizing around them in weird ways that I’m not sure we want. (Kill / convert the new player, or not?)

I suggested a voting log in another post, which I feel would help a lot.

Tracking people’s claims is IMHO much more of a bother than writing your own actions, but that’s not easy to automate since there’s so many ways you can come across a claim. Honestly, one thing that would be nice (although only tangentally-related) would be if we could move the logbook so we can easily cross-reference it with the chat without having it covering the chat up. Maybe with a single-page mode to only show one page at a time, too, so it uses up less space.

#7

Sorry to go off-topic, but what is this “Mindnight”? I’m used to hearing about new SDGs before most others.

#8

You actually already can. The logbook is draggable.

1 Like
#9

It’s online vanilla resistance.

#10

What? Really???

How did I not know about this?

Draggable logs op

#11

I feel like that would just get people spamming that person with “WHAT IS YOUR ROLE” because some new players might not even realize they shouldn’t say their role.

To the idea itself, I like it and would be in favor of it.