wdym
Ok your argument is that people will join large quantity of games hosted on forum and won’t play them due to being in too many of them
Then I said that preventing games from being hosted here won’t stop them from doing that since They can join games on another said
To wich you said that they could but they won’t
So I said why do you think they will join on all games on forum but won’t join on another sites
It won’t,however it improves the site quality here a lot as most people won’t go to other sites
1 Like
Problems With The Proposed Categories
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CFoL
This category seems irksome, because literally no part of FoL is all that “competitive”. Remind me where CFM went again? Because CFoL is essentially a misnomer. While I am a fan of the move towards 48/24, I don’t think it should be required as mandatory (and likewise, a 36/12 or 72/24 FoL game shouldn’t be automatically classified as SFoL). We’ve been counting up in FoL number and adjusting game length for well over two years now (remember, we started at 120/48). I think the current category of FoL for any vanilla FoL game works better than CFoL. -
SFoL
As said above, changing the phase length of an otherwise entirely vanilla FoL game should not land you here unless it’s a radical departure (something like 12/12 or a time bank could be classified as SFoL through being exceptions, rather than making 48/24 a hard limit). Additionally, while I like the idea of having reviewers, we’re currently short on those as far as I can tell, so unless I missed a memo it would be nice to pick up a few more before we start enforcing that aspect. However, I’m not sure it’s worth our time to set up a full reviewing counsel given the events of February and what may come in the future. Additionally, there shouldn’t be a full requirement that every change must be listed in the OP. If the game passes review under the understanding that a mechanic will be hidden, or it is a Closed game, that means it’s likely not purely an asspull. These should be allowed to run, provided warning is given that the game is not entirely open. -
Mini FM
Frankly, 14 players isn’t Mini. While some sites that focus largely on FM can afford to get away with making games of around 10-13 players mini and 9 or less as micro, we frankly don’t have enough FM games to make splitting them based on size like this the best method of informing players what kind of game they’re looking at. If we really wanted to keep Mini, I’d drop the playercount to 13 or less, personally, although I still don’t consider 13p games like Cop13 or Mountainous 11v2 to be “mini”. -
FM
As above, I think dividing FM only by size is a mistake. There is a lot more that delineates different FM games than simply playercount, and I think that is a poor metric to choose to make our only true distinction. -
Miscellaneous
This category is too wide. It really needs to be broken up at least a little bit more, so we don’t end up with a bunch of completely different things falling into the category. Think about it - how similar are a full-blown EFoL game (currently placed here) and a game of Minority Rule (also currently placed here)? We can do a bit better.
What The Categories Should Be
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FoL
As described above, our FoL setup has been gradually shifting over time. I see no reason to stop just using “FoL” for any standard FoL game, and I see no reason we can’t let a host decide to alter the phase lengths, at least between 36/12, 48/24, and 72/24. Basically, there’s no reason to begin re-numbering things, so just don’t change the category. -
Special FoL (SFoL)
Removing the restrictions I complained about above should be good enough for this category, especially if we’re starting to get stuff seriously reviewed. Things that are based on FoL flavor or mechanics should be allowed to run here (provided they pass review) and never be pushed into FM just because there’s a hidden mechanic of some sort, so long as any bastard elements’ presence is at least known to players beforehand. -
Experimental FoL (EFoL)
The rarest FoL, merely for testing things. I think there’s a decent case people should be able to pitch their own EFoLs if they’re interested (saves you from having to make it a SFoL like I did). Either way, these involve the entire FoL team in their creation, and exist to test one or more specific mechanic changes. -
Vanilla FM (VFM)
Standard FM games, either Open or Semi-Open, free of hidden mechanics. The category for everything containing only vanilla roles, standard day/night cycles, and free of bastard mechanics (excluding arguable things like Godfathers, provided the possibility they may exist is known ahead of time). These games should need to pass review, but that should both not be difficult and should never prevent the reviewer from playing (if it does, that’s a good sign it’s not actually as vanilla as you think). -
Competitive FM (CFM)
Non-vanilla games that are intended to be taken seriously and played to win, with a setup that tries to be balanced and interesting. These games should be devoid of any real bastard elements. They will be reviewed before they can be run, but unlike the VFM category, CFM does not place restrictions on mechanics (if you can make a compelling Closed game that the reviewers agree is best classified as a CFM, more power to you). As such, this is the place for games that stray from the Vanilla setup, without straying from the Vanilla mindset. -
Special FM (SFM)
This is the category for your mashes and the like. Anything that is built for player enjoyment over player competition, has a lot of widely varying power roles, or generally doesn’t fit into the above two categories would be classified here. It’s basically the SFoL of FM - reviewed, and allowed to contain hidden roles or mechanics, as long as the reviewer doesn’t deem it to be entirely bastard. -
Bastard FM (BFM)
While I could see us re-naming this category for… reasons, this is basically where every other Mafia-style game would fall, or those which review deems too bastard to fit into SFM. This would include things like uPicks, unbalanced multiballs, things with a lot of neutrals, or extremely bastardized versions of the FoL premise (such as Camelot, that’s probably here). Kind of a catch-all for games that will require players willing to put up with some amount of craziness. -
General Forum Game
While I do think you should only be able to host one non-FM game at one time, I am in agreement that only a quick rundown of how your game works to a moderator is probably the best way to manage these. As they are not nearly as popular as FM, there aren’t as many people looking to play them. Plus, as they don’t carry the same weight, players can just leave if things get out of control without dragging down an entire game of dedicated players. If we start getting really well-managed GFGs, maybe we could tighten up the requirements. -
Low-Effort Games
Do we really need a queue for stuff like Minority Rule? That takes like five minutes per day to play. Things like that go here. -
Miscellaneous
Now we can group anything else together, like RPs or whatever. Quite literally the miscellaneous category.
Why More Categories Is Better
Simply, it makes things easier to regulate, and easier to find a game you’ll like. Especially when playercount is in the title of the game like nine times out of ten.
7 Likes
people like different things so if each person joins their favorite, it will still be split.
you need to limit the options a little bit so people have to choose whats most good for them, rather than their absolute favorite. its still good to have options so people arent forced into a binary choice but still
36/12 is like 48/24 but it makes you feel paranoid that it’ll be too short of a night phase until you realise that nobody actually likes 24 hour night phases.
2 Likes
completely unrelated note: somebody should teach wolves on this site how to play better
because as of now it’s pretty much village self destructs or wolves lose
4 Likes
Yeah, but wolfing is hard to explain, and “just lynch villagers lol” would sound awful to anybody who hasn’t seen a true powerwolf in action
1 Like
We can also add Newbie FM or Newbie FoL if needed
Either way though it helps to have key letters/acronyms
FoL - Forum of Lies
FM - Forum Mafia
C - Competitive
V - Vanilla
S - Special
B - Bastard
E - Experimental
so on
Agree that phase lengths shouldn’t be mandatory, but consistency is again a problem. It’s not that the host won’t communicate that to players, but instead that changing it kind of makes the game outside of the current agreed parameters.
And I don’t want the last sentence to have to be the case, because frankly it reads terribly. I’ll probably backtrack on that in the next week, so eh. If somebody wanted a shorter game, they would have to make it clear and obvious.
Also agree with changing the naming since ‘Competitive’ doesn’t really apply. Vanilla FoL or just FoL would work.
That’s what I am trying to do in the near future.
Of course. I may have forgotten to put a clause about closed setup games. Lack of communication about mechanical changes will typically deal more damage to the setup though. I will add a clause in the OP about closed setups in that regard though.
After reading this I agreed mostly and made changes to the queue, adding the EFoL tab.
Historically, EFoLs have always introduced large sweeping changes tested by the FoL team for purpose in Vanilla FoL, so I wouldn’t have people pitch EFoLs themselves unless I was working with them to make changes.
I don’t have much of a comment here. Agree.
EFoL didn’t have a category :^), so I suppose it was in Misc.
I’d lump low effort games as mentioned later with miscellaneous.
We don’t review RPs, and minority rule isn’t really reviewed.
Completely agree
The problem with divying it between four different categories ends up being the regulation of all of them. What I would try to do is limit the amount of games that could be run between all four categories at once (probably about 3), but that could lead to annoying situations.
I do agree with the VFM, SFM, and BFM but due to the nature of this site I do not believe a CFM category is entirely necessary since most vanilla setups end up being the competitive ones and the more complicated ones end up being far less serious.
I do think we are missing a middleground here due to the fact that closed setup games that are normally fairly vanilla but not inherently competitive are forced to be in the SFM category.
I believe these two end up being lumped together quite easily without any problem. They barely are reviewed so I think they can just be in the same spot.
So essentially:
Agree with points on FoL, SFoL, and the FMs
Changelog:
Renaming CFoL to FoL. Changing the phase restriction to a recommendation.
Adding clause about closed setups in the SFoL section.
Splitting Mini FM and FM into:
- VFM
- SFM (will come up with a solution to the problem of balanced, but not very competitive closed setups later)
- BFM
Added EFoL section
Split Misc to:
- Forum Game
- Misc.