WW LXXIX: Fall From Olympus

[Boromir88]

This concept of a win feeling "unworthy" or "unjust" or that it has to be a "fair" win is just completely over my head.

Yes, as a mod you try to balance the game as best as you can, but in the end is it truly balanced? There's something that goes overlooked, maybe there's a mistake, or one side always starts with an advantage, whatever the case just think about it. It's like umping a baseball game. Human error, you make a bad call, do you compound the problem by purposefully making another bad call against the other team, to "even" out the number of bad calls? That doesn't make you a fair umpire, that just makes you incompetant.

This trend that every game has to come down to the final lynching for it to be a worthy game, a worthy win, because if it came down to the last lynching than it must have been truly balanced, I think is silly.

I doubt Mith liked having two of her wolves dreamt of and lynched the first two days, and then the third wolf lynched the next. It wasn't any imbalance, that's just how the game unfolded. She didn't say "naughty" village for lynching wolves the first 2 days, lemme even this up a bit. How is that any different from a player trying to evem a game out due to some perceived imbalance?

Wilwa, you died because your pack chose to kill the hunter. That was your choice, no offense met, but sorry your own tough luck. You didn't get a kill because of a ranger protection, again sorry your packs tough luck. Things didn't go the wolves way this time, that's how it unfolded. But maybe you should think about the wolves decisions first before declaring there's some kind of game imbalance.

And maybe the wolves started out in a tighter corner because of the number of gifteds in this game. Maybe they needed some luck to go their way to win, and clearly they didn't get that at the beginning. But how many times does the village need luck go their way to beat the wolves?

All this mid-game tinkering because Mods or someone else feels like one side got the short straw, (and forbid a game not being fair) is part of the recent decline. In poker, is it "fair" if my hand is KK, when someone else's is AA? Each game the village is dealt a hand, and the wolves theirs. You nut up, shut up, and just play the hand your dealt to the best that you can.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

All this mid-game tinkering because Mods or someone else feels like one side got the short straw, (and forbid a game not being fair) is part of the recent decline. In poker, is it "fair" if my hand is KK, when someone else's is AA? Each game the village is dealt a hand, and the wolves theirs. You nut up, shut up, and just play the hand your dealt to the best that you can.

But Boro, the rules of a poker game aren't supposed to favour a particular "side" to begin with either. The WW equivalent of the "luck of the draw" would be more like who gets what role, or how successful a gifted's early random pick is. So I'm just saying– with all respect and gratitude for Glirdy's hard work– I do think this game was rather weighted against the wolves. At least until phantom zapped tum, anyway. It was that action of his I was (semi-)approving, rather than attacking Glirdan, in case you thought I was. (As I said, it really is hard to make experimental games even.)

Also, I– ahem!– do hope you're not referring to my recent game as part of the "decline"?

[Boromir88]

Originally Posted by Nerwen

Also, I– ahem!– do hope you're not referring to my recent game as part of the "decline"?

Apologies if I've left that impression. My post wasn't intended as any negativity towards anyone or any game. It was my general feelings and inability to understand the feelings of the majority. I simply don't get why we should feel like if there's something imbalanced, we need to "fix" it and even it out.

Maybe with the number of gifteds this particular game did put the wolves at a disadvantage, but it wasn't an unforgivably, impossible imbalance, at the start. The reason the wolves got severely behind wasn't due to any "unfair" play. It was because the ranger stopped one of their kills, they then killed the hunter who made a correct guess (you saw Lottie's PM, she wasn't sure about her choice, it just happened to be Hera), and the seer dreamt of another one. They didn't get in that position because the game was imbalanced, they got there because of the play of the village. It's not any attack about the merits of the wolves, the fact is we've all played this game have good and bad games, no one needs to prove themselves here. But the wolves got quickly behind not because of a game imbalance, but because the events that unfolded.

Let me ask this, in this idea that we need to fix out all the imbalances. How was what happened fair to Tum? I don't mean to put anyone on the spot, tum probably really doesn't care, I don't know. But she was the seer, she did what she was supposed to she did her job. How is it fair to her that her own side punishes her for doing what she's supposed to do and has to be told "sorry, you're gone."

Or let's say this. I think a village with 3 wolves and a seer as gifted, the wolves actually start with a pretty good advantage. However, this seems to be generally accepted as a "balanced" game, so I'll say yes that's a balanced game. Now, Nerwen, what if the wolves are you phantom, and Fea, and the seer is a first-time seer? Is that still so even? And lets say the seer makes a slip that you catch, at night you alert your packmates, and first kill is the seer. Now, lets say next night, your packmates say to you, you know what we're such an awesome team we already started out at an advantage, their only gifteds gone...Nerwen we're going to kill you because this games so uneven now and we should balance this out. Would you think that's fair? But hey, it's for the sake of balance, so it has to be right?

I hope you can at least understand my position here. Try as we might, every game is going to skew things to favor one side. It's not our job to try to balance it out, it's our job to play the roles we're given. Should be that simple at least, because I'm not going to start thinking I should start holding back out of fear that performing the role that's given to me will unbalance the game and then I face retaliation from people who are supposed to be on my own team.

[Rikae]

Experimental games are often going to be unbalanced - it's the nature of the beast. I don't consider it such a bad thing: what's wrong with an additional challenge for one side once in a while? Still, I wouldn't necessarily say this game was unbalanced. Early on we wolves were quite confident, knowing we had, potentially, three lovers and a cursed on our side. It could very easily have ended up with a village more "cobbler" than innocent (which would have been fun to see).
Foley, if you want the village to win when you're a wolf... I don't know what to say. I mean, it kind of ruins the whole point of the game, know what I mean?

[satansaloser2005]

Well, look at the wolves (and their lovers) first of all.

Wilwa: veteran player
Phantom: veteran player, even if he doesn't play much
Shasta: veteran player
Nerwen: veteran player
Lal: veteran player, even if she doesn't play much anymore
BG: complete newbie


Now the gifteds.

Dun: veteran player
Lottie: newer player but old enough to be considered skilled
Tum: newbie, first time gifted if I remember correctly
Nienna: veteran player
Boro/Kath: both veterans, but they weren't really gifteds anyway


So we had essentially five veterans and a complete newbie up against two veterans, another experienced player, and a newbie. Of course I knew Dun and there was some severe gifted PMing between Lottie and Dun, but the wolves each had more or less two votes per person if they chose. Add to it the revenge kills and whatever else they had and for goodness' sake, they had power.


Really, I don't see how that's terribly unbalanced. Of course the way the game ended up going yes, it became that way, but Glirdan can't control the flow of the game, only the start of it. I think the game was as balanced as it could have been.


Also, let's not forget my first game, where I had six wolves. The village still won. My last game Nerwen dreamt three wolves in a row, including the freshly turned cursed I believe, and the game was over far too quickly for my liking. Mods can't predict what players might do or whom the village might lynch. It's impossible.


ETA: 3800 posts. Not like to 4000, and then victory!

[Folwren]

Originally Posted by Rikae

Foley, if you want the village to win when you're a wolf... I don't know what to say. I mean, it kind of ruins the whole point of the game, know what I mean?

Yep, I do. Problem is, I played all but two rounds of the game an innocent bystander. I'm a very loyal type of person, and the entire role went against my grain of character. I did my best, you must understand, as soon as I was turned to a wolf, but when I first read the PM saying that Dionysus had been turned, I was pretty upset. I got over it and began plotting away. Inexperienced as I was, my plots went all astray and I ended up losing, and I was sad about that, too.

Or do you mean I should've played the entire game on the wolves side?

And to clarify, I've never played as a wolf and hoped that the village wins.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Sally

Really, I don't see how that's terribly unbalanced. Of course the way the game ended up going yes, it became that way, but Glirdan can't control the flow of the game, only the start of it. I think the game was as balanced as it could have been.


Also, let's not forget my first game, where I had six wolves. The village still won. My last game Nerwen dreamt three wolves in a row, including the freshly turned cursed I believe, and the game was over far too quickly for my liking. Mods can't predict what players might do or whom the village might lynch. It's impossible.

I don't mean unbalanced in terms of player-strengths, I mean in terms of roles n' rules. See, tum got Rikae and Lottie got Wilwa– that was good playing and good luck. But then the village found a loophole in the rules by which tum could be protected continuously, as long as the Rangers survived. That was, well, a loophole. Add to that the number of players who knew others' roles, and the fact that everyone had a unique role, and thus could basically find the wolves just by elimination.

Look, it's hard to discuss this without making it look like I'm jumping on Gllrdan. It's not that– if you run a complex game with a whole lot of new rules, it's a practical impossibility to think of everything (you, know, "even the very wise cannot see all ends" and all that). I'm just saying that I'm rather glad the phantom killed tum, as the endgame would have been lacking in drama otherwise. As it was, the village still won pretty easily.

Originally Posted by Foley

Yep, I do. Problem is, I played all but two rounds of the game an innocent bystander. I'm a very loyal type of person, and the entire role went against my grain of character. I did my best, you must understand, as soon as I was turned to a wolf, but when I first read the PM saying that Dionysus had been turned, I was pretty upset. I got over it and began plotting away. Inexperienced as I was, my plots went all astray and I ended up losing, and I was sad about that, too.

Or do you mean I should've played the entire game on the wolves side?

Not necessarily– what if you'd never been turned? Some people just assume the Cursed will play for the wolves all along, but that really depends on the player.

[Lalaith]

I liked the way that everyone in the game had a role, and the wolf/lover pairings which did make things harder for the village at times.
The main glitches/issues as I saw them:
1. the fact that everyone had a role made things harder at the end-game. It was easy for innocents to hint or reveal their roles, if no-one came to gainsay they were kind-of proven innocent, so very hard for a wolf to hide.

2. The role of Demeter. As protector of Persephone, whose side is she on? Perhaps Greenie could elucidate how she felt about her role.


Btw - in retrospect, I wonder if Shasta and I could arguably have made things easier for ourselves if we had killed Nerwen rather than Nienna on Night 6. That way we could have also got a revenge kill. However, Nerwen will be glad to know that this option was never even discussed.