ToL's future and the importance of FoL

#1

Right now the game is in an unsustainable state.

This shouldn’t be news to anyone, it has always been like that and it’s been getting better over time and will likely continue to do so.

What’s more interesting is WHY it’s unsustainable:

Right now, most players aren’t very good at the game. Before now they were even worse but over time the average player get’s better slowly. As this happens, mechanics that used to be fine become OP or UP depending on their purpose and the specifics behind the mechanic.

This is also to be expected as it happens with basically every game.

In Throne of Lies in particular this usually means reworking ability’s with high confirmability and making neutrals either more hostile or easier to fake.

However, Forum of Lies has already gone down this route, but the difference is the FoL’s format meant they had to do this sooner, faster and more thoroughly than ToL has had to so far.

But since ToL’s playerbase is still improving that means Throne of Lies itself will continue becoming more and more competitively balanced as time goes on.

What this means is that Throne of Lies will very gradually approach Forum of Lies standards of balance. For FoL this means that effectively you are playing a test version of ToL 1-2 years from now. Solutions from one game can be used to solve problems in the other.

TLDR: The stuff in @Icibalus’s mega rework (yet to actually be posted as of this thread) will probably make it in over the course of a year or two in one form or another.

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#2

The community is extremely lucky to have had you for its entire history, and to still have you.
You have been the most accurate and reliable balance opinionator, and it is not close.

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#3

Thanks for enlightening us for why these changes are important and definitely will be implemented. … but how about telling us your ideas instead :stuck_out_tongue:

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#4

Oh I have plenty of forum posts and discord posts on that already.

Removing twin, buffing NK’s, Fixing King a bit ect ect ect.

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#5

First of all, ToL’s balance is fine.
Second, it’s really hard to get actually good suggestions from FoL players. FoL is hardly any similar to ToL. You have hours to think what you’ll do/say and abilities are a lot different… So, while we can sometimes get inspiration or sometimes there might be some good suggestions, FoL is far from being a test of ‘future ToL’.

That said, there is no need to glorify FoL calling it ‘future ToL’, it really is not that special. Different crowds, which means we neither want nor need the ‘FoL balance standards’.

As for FoL’s importance, FoL could die and the game would not be affected at all; saying it’s important is false. Both games are independent.

If you only wish to bring more people to FoL, I understand that, but this is a misleading post, since almost everything in it is personal beliefs, most of which can be easily proven wrong. What’s even the purpose of this thread? There are no actual suggestions, it’s only advertising FoL.

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#6

Mostly the make a prediction

#7

A prediction based on your personal beliefs that the Forums adaptation of the game is better… than the actual game?

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#8

A prediction based on everything I said in the OP

#9

The balance of FoL is a personal preference of a few people who don’t even play ToL that often. It is not a better version or a future version of ToL.

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#10

Thank you for this. I know that ToL is a completely different experience, so they’re not really comparable.
However, it would be cool to see staff’s reactions to Nuclear’s other ToL balance suggestion posts on these forums, if any one from your team has the time to do so.

#11

I have found them to be pretty sensible thus far.

#12

Most of his changes were discussed in #feedback-discuss already.

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#13

Ok. I’ll look through the archive there.

#14

Right now, we don’t have a balance dev. I’ve just joined the team and I’m not ready to take on this task so reading balance feedback right now would be pointless. If I ever get to the point I feel comfortable making balance changes, I’ll look for balance posts on both forums and discord.

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#15

So if there ever would become a balance dev, it would be you?

#16

I’m not the one to answer this question.

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#17

fair. It doesn’t really matter.

#18

I’ll just keep my eyes open for a post from staff on if such a position/task is ever added or created.

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#19

Thank you.

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#20

FoL’s balance is at least intended to be optimized for a forum environment.
Ideally ToL would take some of the large steps we have to increase the importance of reads, but as is the social deduction genre is so niche that having a high skill requirement off the bat would destroy the game’s playerbase