But why should we care that it takes longer than the average? I mean, people still are playing mafia right? No matter how you put it, people are playing the same amount of mafia for 1 game of vanilla vs 2 games of default. You can continue to say that the point isn't that "faster is better" but that sure seems like the point to me. Otherwise, I don't see why anyone cares that it takes longer than average. What exactly is the "point of the discussion"? Serp has come closest to actually giving a reason why longer games are bad, but as I said earlier, I don't really think it's such a huge issue that we need to remove the theme. I am not against shortening time, but that isn't my call. Maybe even something where the time goes down as there are less people, but idk if that's at all feasible. Sorry if I don't know exactly what everyone is trying to say, I'm a little slow :x
I can hardly see this as the same amount. 2 games means everything changes. You get another chance if you lose, you can play differently with other people that will also be playing differently and you can get the taste of victory twice. An example (even if I'm not sure if it's a good example) is Football: Is there any difference in having two 90-minutes games or a single 180-minutes game? I'd say there are lots of differences here.
everyone is just shouting each other down and not actually listening, its a shitty theme to play online as the way its down IRL is reading body language (90% of it anyway), and guess what, you can't read body language online so i dont care what you say about statistics and that its "balanced" because both sides seem to win equally enough, if the theme is all luck based then they would win equal enough personally i dont find this theme fun as it is completely devoid of strategy other than trying to read into what everyone's saying to find things that arent really there in order to justify a rand
Personally i don't see timing like an issue, i think we can focus in the "overpowered mafia" issue: Truly, in this theme, mafia have all on his part to win, they can play the good guys, they can make 1 villy guy suspicious and don't kill him, in big games they can counterand together if randed, etc. Villagers in the other side have nothing, the only way what they have to win is an unexpected good rand, and maybe clean some vilagers from that rand. So, like no one gives a crap about my suggestion of a stalker in the villy side, i would like to hear other suggestions, not theorymon comments anymore.
I'm not sure you got the point of this theme. It's meant to be basically 0 special actions and this is just....no.
I grow tired of arguing with you. This theme is making people wait too long for another game. In the span of ONE Vanilla game, we can have 2 games of many themes with equal numbers of players. That is indeed a huge issue. To be honest, I'm not discussing the way the game is played. I'm not discussing whether I like it or not. I'm saying that it runs far too long for it to be useful on the server at this time.
Are you proposing we change it to make it shorter? because that would completely defeat the purpose, and you know that
I suppse that's true, but that really doesn't sound like a good enough reason to get all up in arms about. As to your analogy, while I think it does fit to an extent, I do not see what differences there are. There really aren't that many differences, you still play the same amount of soccer/football. They are in effect, the same thing; one over a longer period of time, one over a shorter period of time. I hardly think that this is such a cause for concern. You keep saying this, but you don't really have any data or info to back this up. You continue to make assumptions about the theme that aren't true at all. I don't disagree that sometimes people don't listen, but I would not say that happens all the time. You can continue to think this, but it's hard to take what you say seriously when you don't provide any evidence to back up your argument and you flat out ignore my /other pro-vanilla arguments for seemingly no reason at all when we make good arguments backed up by actual evidence. This is no longer a theory, people are playing this theme, why shouldn't we use what available info we have? Wait, so are we changing viewpoints now? I thought the mafia was overpowered? In any case, your assertion that the theme is luck based, is well, wrong. If this theme is "all luck based" then what about themes like Vepix, Rotom, and to an extent the early versions of castle? In any case, I can just make that same argument about every themes that is supposedly "balanced." Teams win equally? Must be a luck based theme then because it has no strategy that I consider a valid strategy! That pretty much sounds like what you are saying, please forgive me if I am so how misrepresenting your statement. I don't find a lot of the themes fun on the server, but I don't go around bashing those themes or rejecting them on the basis that I don't like them. You can continue to call this theme devoid of strategy as much as you want, but what themes have strategy then? What do you consider a strategy? I don't think it's really fair to say "Oh x theme is bad because it doesn't have anything that I believe is strategy." Well this isn't really an argument considering you just ignore all the posts I've made :/ Like I've said, what exactly is "too long"? People die the first night of all mafia games, so what? Timing should only be an issue if the players actually alive and playing the game are bored to death because it takes too long.
That would be be true if we could hold more than one mafia game simultaneously in the server, but we can't. You are only thinking about people who die N1 by arguing that they still played, but what about people that missed the game? If the game lasts for 2x the time another theme do, then those players have to wait for 2 games to be over to even have a chance to play once. That's what people mean when they say a theme that takes too long hurts the channel: it restricts players from playing.
"Well this isn't really an argument considering you just ignore all the posts I've made :/" I haven't ignored them, you've simply pushed aside the argument and effectively said "lol it doesn't matter". But regardless, Ricekirby made a damned good point. There are always people waiting to enter a game. So yes, game length matters. It will always matter. It is not a condition that a game should be too short, as you brazenly stated above in the thread. It's a condition that it shouldn't be too long. And when two themes of the same playercount can be played in the same time as this theme, I think that is too long. Why do you think we have concurrent tournaments now? Because tournaments would last too long and people would miss the opportunity to join, and get screwed over (and yes I realize it's also because of differing tiers). Except we can't have concurrent mafia games, and so the best option is to keep all of them to a playable length. And when you have a user waiting 15 minutes because they missed the signups to a single theme....That's too much.
I haven't pushed aside any argument, I responded to it 2 posts or so ago, which you either missed or ignored. I think that if the goal is to have as many people play mafia as possible, then making the assumption that shorter games are better is a valid one to make, but obviously I misunderstood that? I mean it's not as if people can't do other things while waiting, such as battling and etc. I don't especially think the length of vanilla is hurting the amount of players we get, but I have no data to back up my belief, so I just really don't know. Perhaps it is but I see nothing to suggest so. I may take some flak for this, but I personally feel we are making an issue out of something that isn't there, but then again who really knows? I don't think 15 minutes is a long time at all, or unreasonable, but at this point it simply becomes an argument of how long is too long. Either way, I respect that your guys' opinion that the theme takes too long, but why do we have to take it off the server? Wouldn't it be easier to just edit that? idk i guess i'm just missing something here
sure, the goal is to have as many people playing at the same time. There are 18 people. Playing for 15 minutes. Let me re-iterate that. 18 players. When other themes have been seen with 30+ player counts, an 18 player game takes 15 minutes. Sure, 15 minute isn't long if you have a lot of players, like you said. But the point is. You're having a small game that takes a long time. And that. Doesn't. Work. It is not a large set of people that gets to play for those 15 minutes. It is up to 20 people. That's it. That's the highest amount of people that can play mafia at the time that Vanilla takes. And when a 20 player theme runs for 15-20 minutes, that's when I get concerned. Having a theme with a max of 20 players, and then saying that you want the max amount of people to be playing at the same time is counterproductive at every level.
I was more harsh than I'd like, and I'm terribly sorry. Here it is what I'd like to say: I consider what others say on a theme thread (QC and non-QC people), I analyze the code, I try to judge what the channel needs or not, among other things, to give an approval or a rejection. Everyone can say things on the theme thread, I read all the comments on the thread too to check what is being said: things I may have missed, some suggestions... What anyone says have some influence to my decision. Non-QCs can have their thoughts considered, at least by me. When I said "that is a QC job", it's because, after all, the QCs approve or reject the theme for them to be uploaded and played. Absolutely no. I gave a rejection, other 12 approved. According to the guidelines, a theme can be uploaded if it has more than half of the QC members approving the theme. Because 12 is more than half, it has to be uploaded. Conclusion: I'm sorry if I didn't use my words properly. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Vanilla Standby should be cut to 45 seconds, and Night time back to 15 seconds. More than half of the time spent talking is off topic, or useless to the situation. People tend to wander with their chats and it isn't really pertinent to the game. I do like Vanilla, and you can see from Serp's logs that 18 people played it tonight. Drapht was one, who complained a bit (but ended up winning), so there were 17 people that wanted to play... So, there are people willing to play.
Why didn't people like garden OH I KNOW GARDENER WAS A MASSIVE TROLL but yeah people do like this theme, my motto recently is actually "when in doubt /starttheme vanilla and flash michu for lulz"
For the record, I believe that Vanilla does take skill. A lot of it actually. I'd like to get a direct y/n on what I've been saying for months from all of you. Wouldn't cutting down the time a bit, just a little bit be a good compromise? We may getting deep into semantics territory with the strategy or not thing, but we can all at least that Vanilla takes a bit of luck, and a bit of strategy. No one is saying it's all luck, or all strategy. We're just differing on the perceived values of each.
So I'm probably going to put the day at 45s to try to improve on time; I guess if you have any important objections to that now would be a good time!
It's laughable what people cares about the standby timing, and dont cares about the main issue here, how broken can a mafia be in this theme (last 6 games i played, all were won by mafia, and the mafias didnt lose any member, in all the 6 games, so broken in fact). Worst thing is no one here gives suggestions to solve it, so at this point i think i'm gonna reluctantly agree (becos i like this theme) with Oak, and say: Vanilla just don't work on mafia. :\
There are certaint people who get suspicious at different things, and it is generally impossible to stop all suspicion. And in all honesty, the most common tactic I've seen is- "Oh, he randed a village, ge must be bad." I have to agree, I believe that it is entirely luck, not so much skill. And I know I am new, but could I suggest a slight chance for hax maybe? I know they're villagers, but maybe give them .025% hax chance.
That's definitely the easiest "strategy" to do, not so much the wisest. You can never stop suspicion, true, but there are ways to guess who's bad and who isn't (emphasis on guess). I'd say that this theme is about equal parts luck and skill, maybe with a smattering of strategy in there. With Rawr's examples, it was clearly more of an example of "the village sucked really hard every single time and had pretty terrible luck" than "this theme is borken zomg disable it." Again, doing anything further with the roles would go against the spirit of the theme, even a minuscule chance of hax.
The point of voting out a guy because he randed a villager isn't that "shallow." Sometimes people are WAY TOO eager to vote out someone, with no reasoning whatsoever. They were the ones that brought it upon themselves. The point is to talk to the other players and have them agree with you on why someone is bad. If you eagerly start a rand, don't get countered, and a villager gets lynched, then you should know what could happen next. You designated yourself as the "village leader" and people who seem too eager to lead the village draw suspicion. If you have logic behind your rand, then there's less of a chance to get lynched because you "randed a villager." For example, there's 1 mafia and 4 villagers. Bob is Mafia, and Sally, Sue, Sam, and Seth are villagers. If Sally spent all night talking (nonstop for ~20 seconds) and there was not a kill that night, then if Seth points that out, there is reason for suspicion. In this example, we know Sally is a villager, but during the game it provides a basis for a lynch. Now when Sally turns out to be a villager, other people might not hold anything against Seth because the reason was logical. Using the same players, if Sam decides he didn't like Sue last game and starts a witch hunt against them for no reason, then it looks bad on Sam when Sue turns out to be a villager.
I actually rather like Vanilla. I have been surprisingly good at figuring out at least one mafia per game, of course no one ever believes me, but still! Does it turn into a randfest? Yes sadly. in my personal opinion, I believe it would be sounder to hold off randing at least for a day or two since the first few days have the worst chance of actually hitting a mafia and you'll have more info by then anyway. To me the biggest challenge is not to find mafia, but to work together intelligently instead of acting as a big rand happy mob which is precisely what loses the games for the villagers. Being too rand happy and too happy to act like sheep. Vanilla is a simple theme which is surprising deep after you look past the surface. It's a theme that demands you put aside your reliance on inspectors, samurais, hax and demands that you really use your brain instead of waiting for the pr roles to find the mafia for you. I believe it's a nice theme that goes outside the mild and a worthy addition to our repertoire of themes.