Please bring old Role Distribution back

Feedback/Suggestions
#1

Before last patch there used to be a distinct distribution of all available roles which I considered to be well-balanced and fun to play. According to my understanding, it used to be as follows:

Mandatory

  • King
  • Prince
  • Neutral Killer
  • Cult Leader or Mastermind
  • Secondary Evil Role

Fluid

  • 1-2 Nobles/Mystics
  • 2-3 Physicians/Alchemists
  • 0-1 Court Wizard (that change can stay, as the potential of having 2 CWs allows for more scumclaims)
  • 1-2 Knights/Hunter
  • 1-3 Investigators
  • 1-3 Butlers/Drunks
  • 0-3 Rest (Neutrals)

Said role distribution is completely in tatters which causes an imbalance that is either more heavily in favor of the Evil Faction or the Blue Dragon, but it is not linked (at least I am very sure about it) to the King’s faction. As for right now, there might just be a single healer in a game, and said healer can even be a yolo-bombing Alchemist, who gets executed night 2 after having gotten debauched (Today, I played one of those. Needless to say, poison killed more people than anything else). In this situation, a random but very decisive factor that is not or just minimally linked to skill (as - in my opinion - the Evil Faction should have to make a conscious decision to target the healers immediately, for example after a Physician has been killed N1, and not just get thrown into a composition that allows for it) had a huge impact on the game.

The loss of a more set role distribution also lowers the skill floor for players that excel at deducing rather than just gathering information from investigative abilities. Right now, it is entirely possible that there can be four investigative classes, whereas earlier you knew that either the 2 Sheriffs or the Princess or the Observer were lying, since that would have been one above the limit. I would prefer RNG to be the least influential factor in who wins a game of ToL, but the way I evaluate the current situation makes me suggest that compositions are much more dispositive than earlier.

If we cannot go back to the role distribution I mentioned, at least smarten up the algorithm, please. Don’t let an Alchemist be the single healer of an entire game. Don’t let there be an Evil King without at least one Butler on the Blue Dragon. Probably continue capping representatives of each subgroup at three, not at four. The list should probably go on and I would like to hear some additional suggestions.

#2

There is no cap on any of these and there never was. It was always possible to have 2 sheriffs, 2 princesses, and 2 observers all in the same game (not counting patches where sheriff was unique). And there is no minimum on the number of butlers, drunks or even physicians and alchemists. The odds of each class spawning in any given slot are not equal and a physician and alchemist is the most common class by default. However there was never any hard minimum on the number of any given class type besides the existence of a King/Prince/NK/Starting scum.

#3

Also that gives too much information. For example.

Here you know that if no one is being occupied that there is a good king. Additionally a butler is more likely to be in a game with an evil king and therefor would know that he has better odds of hitting an EKing by randomly poisoning than otherwise.

This list is already too restrictive (if it were even real). You should not consider Knight and Hunter with a dead knight to be a counterclaim. In fact a counterclaim is the least interesting way to find a scum as it’s free information that you didn’t work for. Sure it CAN be interesting but it should be something that rarely happens on accident and usually was something the evils planned in order to push a misslynch with a non-invest claim or as a bait from someone waiting to claim so he can CC someone.

#4

I see you are claiming my list is not real and that there used to be no hard minimum on the number of any given class type (except for the mandatory roles) and I would strongly invite you to provide counter-evidence. I would very much like to know if I am indeed wrong. Can you link me any source, for example a Dev statement or a Screenshot of one of your games, which debunks my list? As for myself, I have statistical evidence of myself playing for a couple of months under the previous patch, which ultimately resulted in said list. Surely, there might be a minor mistake or two, Offensive classes could very much be capped at 0-3 instead of 1-3, but I personally think my list is very accurate and it thus helped me find scumclaims in countless games, while being a Physician or Court Wizard.

As for the second point, you are basically supporting my suggestion. Yes, indeed, people could deduce that - if noone gets occupied - there is a Good King in charge. That is precisely what I want, because that form of deducing shows skill and game knowledge. It doesn’t necessarily have to be exactly as I suggested, but more or less in that direction. And counting the amount of dead Killers for Blue Dragon, which - let’s say - includes two dead Knights in a given situation and thus concluding that that suspicious person out there, who is also claiming Hunter, is lying, is meaningful because - again - it shows game knowledge and skill.

#5

It shows you can use a checklist. The biggest problem with that is things like that on a BD/Scum competition, those kinds of things pretty much create a skill ceiling of gameplay.

Lying/seeing through lies, has a tough problem, namely seeing through lies is a skill that naturally increases faster than lying. It’s very easy to spot a trick that you haven’t seen before… much harder to come up with a trick that none of the 9 BD members has seen before.

But while there is difficulties in that part at high level, that all pales in comparison to the checklist/formula problems. when skilled bd develop a formula to win… that’s basically it, one of the players will push that formula, most will follow, anything short of a gamethrow leads to one direction.

Town of salem used to have a very limited role list where via categories you could deduct things… The really rapid result was… push a VFR narrow it down to a few 50/50 shots, execute the 50/50s. if you get it wrong let the jailor (prince equivelant) kill the other, before long a 90%+ town winrate in the ranked mode of the game… (of course the low skilled modes had about a 60%+ mafia winrate… from the people who couldn’t follow the lists).

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#6

To a certain extent, I agree. It allows a player to include checklists as an additional method of gaining information. But Blue Dragon can never afford to spend both time and ressources on executing the two Sheriffs and one Princess before finally grabbing the Mastermind, let alone they would need every investigative role to out him- or herself in the first place. That is unrealistic. Checklists should obviously never be the exclusive method of deducing, but I enjoyed having it as an addition while it lasted during last patch.

And now we are getting to the interesting part. I like the fact that you bring this up, thanks. I don’t think such a follow-to-win-formula could possibly exist, but assuming it does, it would in fact help the game develop if it existed… for a certain period of time. I am sure you have noticed, but a decent amount of players repeatedly make horrendous mistakes while playing the game, which - to a certain degree - lessens the fun of more experienced players when teamed up with or against them. As an experienced player, you feel helpless towards those people and wins feels a lot less rewarding. Additionally, those people often won’t listen, even when asked (deceptively) nicely. If a follow-to-win-formula existed, those people would have more incentive to follow certain steps and gain more stability while doing so. Therefore, people would gradually and most likely faster become better at the game, which would allow for experienced players to feel like they’re amongst equal-minded and equally skilled players, and not just random dudes who love hanging others.
Then, after such a meta had been established for long enough for people to pick it up, adjustments needed to be made that lowered the winrate of the Blue Dragon.

I agree. But - from my point of view - the biggest difference between ToS and ToL is that in ToL conversions exist. In an average group, you cannot make every piece of information public and expect to win, because investigators can get turned. Then they can “find” a Blue Dragon member as Unseen, get him hanged, get hanged themselves and free up space for more conversions of investigators.

Until proven otherwise, I insist on my claim that such a list existed during the entire patch 1.0.18 but still, people did not use checklists to deduce.

#7

If you are so sure that the list existed then tell me.

How do you know it was changed?

I think I know where you got those figures from (besides CW where in 1.18 he is not Unique and that any class with a maximum of 1 is designated by a symbol.) And that is from statistics. And the spawn rates ARE weighted to make better lists, just with statistics rather than hard rules.

I can even get some examples of what I’m talking about from when these things have been changed in the past:

When the Assassin was given 4 uses of nightshade the chance of a healer spawning was increased a lot.

However they were not made guarenteed like you suggest. How do I know?

Well there is another class they DID make guarenteed: The sheriff or Paladin.

One of those is guarenteed to spawn and not only does it say so in the patch notes but it’s even in the UI.

Also they would say if there was a max on the number of each class type. How do I know? Because Neutral Social has a limit of 2 and that was made explisit in the patch notes. When NK was made to be exactly 1? In the patch notes. When butler was made less likely? In the patch notes. When Mystic was made not Unique? In the notes.

Now where is the basis that the rules you provided exist? Sure there will PROBABLY be a butler or drunk. But where is the proof that it was ever made officially guarenteed like all of those other examples I just listed.

I’m not sure why you would expect me to have spacific quotes or screenshots in mind as I don’t screenshot all my games and I haven’t seen any particular reason to think that there was any min or max to the number of types.

Go look at the notes when the drunk was added. It was definitely possable for there to be 2 Butler’s at the time. For there to be a hard limit on the number of offensive types it would have had to be set then or later. Same for the Hunter.

The only place where you might be correct is with Investigative where no new classes have been added meaning it might have been built in from the start. However even there I would have expected a line mentioning it when they were first made not guarenteed.

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#8

Oh and there is a hard limit on Neuts. It’s 1-3 not counting NK and it was mentioned in the patch notes it was established in.

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