The King whisper meta is a very good strategy imo, I don’t understand the reasoning behind adding a counter to this strategy.
Because why the heck would you leave a strong strategy with no counterplay?
Whether it needs to be nerfed or not is a question, but there should always be counterplay. In this case, converted Social classes and the possibility of an Evil King are some of the things the scum have going for them in these scenarios.
There is already some counters, for example, you fake logs which is a core part of being evil and surviving even without this meta strat. Don’t see why more counters need to be added tbh.
I just listed some counters, and I get that there are some in place. Your post seemed to generalize the idea that good strategies don’t need counterplay, which is what I was responding to.
As for whether this particular case needs any, that’s a matter for individual opinion (well, and Boslof’s stats).
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Ima just address all of the specific solutions suggested in the OP.
This would have too much collateral damage. Classes like Merc, Psychic and Noble would take a big hit and I don’t think you intended for that.
This would just be really annoying. If there are 2 different groups of people that trust each other and want to talk then they should be able to do so simultaneously.
Yes. This is more like how we should go about it (this alone will not be enough however). Noble is a little weak and if we nerf the whisper king meta then we will need to buff the Noble anyway to keep him strong.
No. This just rewards players who obsessively record everything and punishes slow typers and people who might look away for a second. Any mechanic that rely’s on Memory or Speed is usually a bad idea (hence why Mental Blur gets so much flack).
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@Livicus had a suggestion that I think is very promising.
For Noble/Aristocrat:
Apostle would have the same ability, meaning it is much more of a risk to have everyone and their mother whisp king on d2.
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The problem with that is that the Apostle or Aristocrat only rarely shows up in those first few days.
Adding more whisper-related abilities like
“You were supposed to destroy the Whisper meta, Noble! Not join them!”
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Maybe there should just be no whispering at all. Or a strict limit of 1 whisper per day.
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Allowing a whisper as a day ability for a class like Noble/Psy (and their converted forms) would be an interesting concept. A message like “whispers are heard among the court” instead of saying exactly who whispered who
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That would definitely be the eventual outcome of such a decision. You should probably also let evil roles continue to whisper in that case.
Maybe just Aristo/Illus/Apostle, and allow for one return message.
And Possessor. Possibly allow him to have a day ability that allows you to whisper the target you controlled the previous night. (would up his fake claim space)
Having a full day chat might tilt the game too heavily in Unseen/Cult’s favor
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If nobody can whisper except evils, how does that increase poss claimspace?
The idea is that a few BD Social classes would have whispering enabled.
This would obviously take a lot of work to get right, but maybe I’ll sit down and hash out the details sometime.
And then you’d have the whole “instant confirmable” problem we already have that everyone has been going on about for days. I think your original point is right: whispers are all or nothing.
I’m all for changing whispers, but LIMITING whispers isn’t the way to go. We either fix it or drop it
I had a hilarious idea for a counter-play ability - Night of the Long Knives - Attack anyone who whispered during the day.
If the whisper ability was used in line with the design concept, it would be possible to have knights defend, physicians to heal, or observers to follow investigative classes that had whispered.
As it’s being used in the meta, 3/4 of the players in the game would be dead by day 3.
You never know. They might learn it’s not such a good idea.
If we consider the problem from a real-world point of view, the king would be up the dais on his throne and would be asked if they could grant an audience, or a messenger would approach, and an advisor or two would be at their side. Everybody else would be in the main room. He wouldn’t hear the whispers, and everybody would overhear them if anyone tried.
Maybe the classes appropriate should have a “Request Audience” ability and, if granted, they could whisper with the king, and then be released back to the main room (conceptually). The advisors would be able to hear what was said but not have permission to join in (prince, noble/its converted equivs) for example, OR the king could opt to choose who the advisors were). I could imagine the impact of that being the king demand the prince or his favoured class to out themselves though if it was literally as I described it, which is again not what we want to happen.
I don’t agree with the more drastic changes suggested here; I think whispering (even whispering to the king) is interesting and I’m against anything that would remove it entirely or make it completely useless. That would decrease the depth of the game, which isn’t desirable unless we have no other choice.
One option is to give evils more ability to hear whispers. I suggested giving Aristocrats / Apostles the ability to spy on the king in another post. In fact, it could be expanded to just let them hear all whispers, couldn’t it?
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Not really. The first issue is that there is no guarantee that there will even be a noble to become the apostle etc. The second is that there is a low probability a noble would be converted early enough to hear the whisper meta whispers. (1 in 14 n1, 1 in 13 n2 etc, or 1 in 7, 2 in 13 if there’s 2). The third is that the whisper meta takes away the ability for players to switch up their claim as the game evolves. It’s useless having the same info as the BD/neut king if the king will simply expose where multiple claims lie and vote people up on that basis as opposed to bona fide investigative results.
If N2 a sheriff dies and you claimed sheriff, your cover is already half-blown. You can’t switch your cover to obs for instance, if you were forced to whisper a claim D2. Being able to hear the whispers won’t change that problem.
UN/CU and NK won’t even have the chance to share the info they learn, let alone act on it.