The problem with the current game throwing system

#1

I know that it probably won’t be reformed for a while, but I still think the current system is wrong:

Dev’s stance:

"It’s important we clarify the rules for bussing (throwing your teammate under the bus).
Voting? ALWAYS np. You don’t wanna be the only one to inno your teammate if 99% say guilty.
If you’re the MM and 9 is the Assassin, and you go “9 is MM”, that is NOT okay… unless! It was previously discussed.
:point_up: “But why!” Every single time this happens, the person they bussed reports them and makes it a 2-way bus “wtf, mm just outed me”. Suddenly you know who both the assassin AND mm is. GG, game is spoiled. See what we mean? :stuck_out_tongue:
IF you accidentally bus your teammate as a baddie, they can still hear you at night while dead. Explain to them what happened and why you did it so they don’t report you.

“But why!” Every single time this happens, the person they bussed reports them and makes it a 2-way bus “wtf, mm just outed me”"

-It is not every single time. The devs work very hard, and so do not have time to play the game themselves; because they only see the times that bussing goes bad in this way (through reports), they have a skewed view because they don’t see the times that the person is logical and doesn’t decide to out their fellow team mate
-If I am an assassin and sheriff finds me, I will pretend to be being bussed by the MM so they kill the sheriff. Anyone who just believes those people who out their team mates are susceptible to people like me

"Suddenly you know who both the assassin AND mm is. GG, game is spoiled. See what we mean?"

-it was the person who outed the MM in this scenario who spoiled the game, not the MM. The MM is the victim here, don’t blame him’her

"IF you accidentally bus your teammate as a baddie, they can still hear you at night while dead. Explain to them what happened and why you did it so they don’t report you."

I will do this, it would be mean to just out someone and then not explain why. :+1:

Why I want to be able to bus without discussing it first:

-People know after the death of an unseen, especially when the neuts are mostly gone and the prince outed, that there will be a conversion the following night. Because of this, the only way that will not cast unneeded suspicion is if I claim on schedule
-How is sacrificing any different? I am allowed to do it without discussion first, and it results in the death of a team mate for the god of the team.

You might say “But sacrifice is a mechanic of the game.” To that I say, so what? The negative result is the same: They die. The positive results are very similar: By busing them, the BD expends abilities to protect an evil player, that evil player will probably survive longer. By sacrificing them, an evil player can protect themselves by killing investigators and the prince, and can have BD abilities go to waste by killing the BD before they use their abilities

Note: I am well aware that the conversion nights might be off because of immune players, but claiming to have found someone with scout on a night there is not normally a conversion will still cast more suspicion then if I claim it on par with schedule

Other note: claiming to have found someone through scout is superior because an obs who followed you cannot say you did not visit that player

Other other note: If players only out there team mates with scout a day after the conversion, outing someone as unseen with scout off schedule will become more susp as unseen have to take that night to discuss it first.

I am okay with having these rules in a learner’s game mode, and am actually for it. When people are new, they probably won’t bus right anyway. But to completely restrict a course of action in the only game mode of a game makes it much worse.

I enjoy this game, and this new rule will not make the times I am blue dragon any worse, but I am probably going to try a lot less hard as an evil because my favorite tactic is now limited.

My overall suggestion: A game mode where these rules restricting busing do not apply.

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#2

I pretty much agree, but don’t have the time to write up an essay on this. I think you pretty much hit all of the reasons bussing should be accepted in a conversion game though, nice job.

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#3

I also agree with the concept… though I also see at least partially where on the game’s standards it is a nightmare to moderate with newer players involved.

I do propose that they hurry up on a “advanced” and “beginners” divide, and make some hard coded easy to understand rules listings for each, which show up as full pages that have to be agreed to before first few games in each.

IE beginners gamethrowing rules
“Do not include fellow unseen or cult members in your journal, you may include names of people that are not cult/unseen, but you may not out people you know are unseen/cult, even as a double bluff”

“Do not bus fellow unseen/cult members without prior concent and agreement to the bus play. You may and probably should join in if they are already accused and it seems likely that they will be executed no matter what you do, but you must not start an accusation of them, unless they give you permission first”.

For advanced mode, which should have 100 (number debatable, but I’d say around 100 seems like a good starting point) games played, a new list to agree to.
“You must not out a mastermind as unseen, unless he has already been accused and is likely to be put up. You may accuse other unseen or cults if you believe it is strategically advantageous to further the goals of your side. If you are accused by your fellow members, you must act as you would if you were accused by someone that you did not know was on your side, remember the goal is for your side to win, surviving to the end is not a requirement for the win condition of unseen or cult”.

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#4

I’m not a huge fan of segmenting rules like this, but if this is our stance on bussing right now I’ll take an Advanced Mode with more lenient bussing rules.

#5

I agree with you there… but I also do see where the developers are coming from, as currently they are by hand reviewing all reports, and I certainly do see where the problem would come up with a large percentage of new players.

A second option may be some kind of quiet undetectable communication for unseen/cult. Not made for communication, just for getting concent on busing.

IE something they can click that says “X believes it is in the sides interest to accuse you, do you consent”.

That would allow consistant rules, pass the need for communication, remove the blindsided newbie problem, while still not leaving a whisper trail. Could even go both ways of allowing someone to recomend himself to be bused, IE an option to select yourself and it deliver a message *X is willing to die for the cause" to his fellow cult/unseen members". again without allowing more details or leaving any kind of whisper trail.

#6

Sometimes i don’t know how people think.I know what the devs are telling us about.One time I asked my sage if I could out him as MM.He said no so when I claimed Sheriff my claim had no confirmation therefore losing the us the game.What would have happened if he agreed.I would have been believed to be sheriff sus would be on other people and we might have won.One time as enforcer i told my MM to out me once i used my frenzy so he could get another convert off.He did and we won bc of that play.

#7

well yeah not much you can do on a bad team-mate that can’t put the team above the individual. Either way he’s probably the kind of inexperienced players that the rule is currently in place because of… IE if you couldn’t explain to him why it would have been beneficial in the 45 seconds there… you’d never have been able to expect him to not ruin the bussing in his defense.

also a large part of why I really hope they do soon implement the “advanced” ques or whatever to separate beginners from more experienced players.

That being said, the Bus-consent interface also does seem like something that would make sense to consider as well… that would allow an avoiding of 2 different rulesets for the modes, which is something I’d hate them to do, but also deem it necessary if the rules don’t support strategies that will almost certainly be necessary… IE bussing the assasain that was just jailed. or the just converted person not dropping his accusation the person he had just accused to avoid his conversion being noticed etc…

#8

Wall of text warning

Ah yes, another bussing announcement, another Norm argument in Discord folowed by a Norm thread here.
Rather than going into a long rant once again about how the current stance helps much more than it hurts, I figured I’d see a Mastermind game through Norm’s eyes, according to how he says it goes down pretty much every time.

Game start

Norm enters a game and picks his name. After the loading screen, he sees he’s been given the Mastermind. “I know just what to fake claim”, he says, as he begins preparing a Sheriff logbook.

Night 1

Norm greets his Assassin and converts somebody. Notice how I didn’t say “attempts to convert somebody”, because according to Norm, night 1 conversions never hit the Prince, a jailed person, or a neutral, they always succeed. So the conversion goes off. “Better write down in my Sheriff logs that I investigated this person, because I have at least one Observer on me the entire game, watching my every move yet never deducing I’m the Mastermind unless I slip up”.

Day 2

The day starts, and Norm has this burning desire inside. He’s scared! It’s day 2 and people are going to start calling him out for not finding anything, even though nobody knows he’s a Sheriff! He says to himself “Self, we must bus someone immediately, or else the game will be lost! But how do I do that with an Observer or two ALWAYS on me and never on any other player?! I know, Sheriff has Scout! I can say that the person I Scouted got converted! BUT ALAS, I have already converted somebody, because night 1 conversions never fail! How am I going to pretend that my Scout triggered on Day 3 when everybody knows that conversions never happen past night 1?! Damn those moderators and developers with their harsh, binding guidelines on how I must play the game! I obviously cannot wait until night 2 to tell the person I converted that I’m going to say my Scout triggered on them last night [and those pesky Observers who are on my ass can’t even see my Scout but let’s conveniently ignore that] because reasons! ARRRRRRGH!”

Norm then proceeds to spontaneously combust because The Man is holding him down and preventing him from bussing someone on day 2 for cred.

Now, instead, let’s see how 99% of other people’s Mastermind games go:

Game start

The beginning is very much the same, many people fakeclaim Sheriff as Mastermind, it’s indeed a good cover.

Night 1

Person greets his Assassin and attempts to convert somebody. Maybe it succeeds, maybe it doesn’t. It doesn’t fucking matter. Person writes down in his journal that he checked the converted person and they were NS/MM.

Day 2-Day 5 or so

Nothing out of the ordinary happens because between getting jailed, dealing with Neutrals or the King, and infinite other possibilities, nobody is surprised if a Sheriff doesn’t have somebody in the first four nights. Person continues filling out his journal with fake investigations, if he’s really worried about an Observer being on him he can even say he checked the people he used Foresight on and thus not worry about that.

Night 5

Person is starting to worry his claim needs some cred, and thus tells his Assassin or 3rd that he needs to bus one of them. He knows he can’t bus with a Scout this late unless one of his fellow Unseen dies, because it’s not believable at this stage on the game (BECAUSE IT’S NOT NIGHT FUCKING 2). “It’s for the win”, he says. “It’ll help me build Sheriff cred and also allow us to convert someone else. Hey, Alcoholic, I’m going to say I found you were Unseen last night.” “:thumbsup:” says the cool Alcoholic (or maybe he doesn’t, maybe he doesn’t realize even after explaining to him how it works that it’s a good idea. Bus the fucking Assassin instead if he’s being a whiny baby. Or don’t and bus him anyway, you let him know, we won’t get on your case about it). “The only way this goes wrong is if some Observer we haven’t dealt with yet for some reason happens to check exactly me exactly tonight, and even fucking then if I get called out on it I can say I got target swapped to you”

Day 6

“I found an Unseen member, it’s [X]!”, person cries. X is swiftly voted up, defends himself poorly (whether intentionally or not), gets executed, MM gets cred, everybody’s happy.

Seriously. Norm, you keep fabricating convenient scenarios to fit your crazy narrative that everything always goes according to plan when they’re against you. It makes it impossibly frustrating to argue with you and honestly I’m not sure why I keep expending the energy, it’s probably because I don’t want people to read your bullcrap and think that it’s the (pun intended) norm.

As for the Cult Leader using sacrifice - again, the victim gets notified in chat, which is essentially what we’re asking for. As long as you’re not chain-using it every time to wipe out your allies or using it on the last Cult member on purpose before you die (and yeah I’ve seen that happen before too), it’s not gamethrowing and you won’t be getting issues from us about it.

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#9

I mean fair enough as well lmao

#10

And here’s another case I just handled of something similar happening, except this time it was a freshly converted person instantly outing his CL. Names have been removed to protect the innocent (and guilty in this case), as well as other non-relevant chat:

(System to [11] (Cult Leader)): You initiated [8] into the Cult
(System to [8] (Seeker)): You were initiated into the Cult last night.
(Day) Day 4
(Alive) [8] (Seeker): 11 is the new Cult Leader
(Alive) [16] (King): ok
(Alive) [8] (Seeker): I checked him
(Alive) [11] (Cult Leader): report 8 for throwing
(Alive) [11] (Cult Leader): report 8 for throwing
(Alive) [11] (Cult Leader): i converted him
(Alive) [11] (Cult Leader): and guess its yolo now
(Alive) [1] (Court Wizard): 8 is cult outing cult…
(Alive) [11] (Cult Leader): Im cult
(Alive) [11] (Cult Leader): brainwashed 8

This is the kind of stupid crap we’re trying to prevent. Should the CL have rolled with it instead of throwing the game further? Probably. But it’s easy to see where he’s coming from, the dude he just converted immediately bussed him for no reason other than he felt like getting cred. And FYI, that chat was the first time 8 had talked all game, so it’s not like he was following up on some prior investigation request or something.

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#11

I did not say to remove these rules for a new player game mode, just an advanced game mode with more lenient busing rules

#12

As I said, an observer may have watched me. Better safe then sorry.

#13

And no, it isn’t how it goes. Once suspicion is cast, I out an unseen sometime in the following two days.

#14

Regardless of Rope’s personal play, he has good points.

Just saying.

#15

I’ve just put up a suggestion that I think can possibly cover the best of both worlds, while keeping the rules consistant as well as avoiding subjectivity as much as possible. https://forum.imperium42.com/t/bussing-interface-for-unseen-cult/20941 . IMO something like that would also make the mod’s job a lot easier, as it allows a simple rule you can point to if people object to the calls made.

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#16

So that is throwing and not bussing? Or is bussing and throwing being called the same thing with different names?

#17

The Seeker bussed the Cult Leader. The Cult Leader gamethrew by revealing himself and the fact that he’s getting bussed by another Cult member.

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#18

I just bus people and as long as it’s not clear throwing, who cares honestly.

#19

The difference between busing and throwing is entirely intent. IE outing a single cult/unseen to protect the group as a whole, is busing. Outing a team mate because you don’t like him, or you want to lose is throwing. The real problem is there’s scenerios where it’s harder to judge, which is why they lean towards the “get concent if at all possible”, which at least partially makes sure that the team mate also understands that it is in the interest of the side, and not you throwing.

Outing yourself and your teammate at the same time is 100% throwing (IE in the examples listed). Which is why the dev’s view getting concent as the key to avoiding the problem to begin with.

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#20

That’s why I asked. Why make a line if throwing is clear as day and reportable? Busing should be allowed and if you out your team for being bussing it’s throwing. Easy enough. If it’s past d3 don’t bus a MM period. If you are BD dont bus BD. Both of those are throwing clear as day. Other than that why make a clear defined rule? Let people bus because it makes sense. I think we are over analayzing a common sense mechanic here.

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