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Game Balance

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Game Balance

Postby Iron Butterfly on Mon Mar 17, 2014 5:52 pm

Ok I have wanted to run a game for along time. I have played for several years.

This is open to anyone who is knowledgeable. My questions.

What is your definition of game balance? What are the do's and don'ts? Besides of coarse having 3 docs and two cops. :roll: as being a no no. I want to run a fun story lined game but not at the experience of balance. By that I mean I want to have a traditional mafia game as balanced as possible. I do not want flavor to dictate game play...however I do wish to tell a story.

I would love ones thoughts and opinions.
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Re: Game Balance

Postby StorrZerg on Mon Mar 17, 2014 6:15 pm

what i have been told, is. "if you plan to create a unique set up, you plan the town roles first. Once you have settled on town roles, you balance the mafia power based on the town roles."
Might also help to "group" type of roles together. protective roles, investigative roles, 3rd party, kill power roles, etc.

do you like game of thrones? atm im looking to host one, and i have 1 person who has responded to me for a co host. I know a big thing ill be lacking is "flavor" and "story telling"
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Re: Game Balance

Postby jak111 on Mon Mar 17, 2014 11:24 pm

XD Depending on how you think of my games, (they are not always as balanced as I want because I experiment with this or that).

1.) Start off with making 3-4 town per mafia

(so a 8 player game roughly 6 town and 2 mafia).

This is assuming they are ALL VT and Nilla (mafia version of VT as in no role besides killing at night).

Now begin making power roles, about 1-2 town power roles per mafia power role.

So if you plan on 2 mafia power roles look forward to putting 2-4 town power roles (depending on how strong the roles themselves are, like cop I consider to be a SUPER efficient role in small games as they clear/find people, so if there were lets say 2 mafia power roles I'd only have 2-3 town power roles).

Once that is all said and done, 3rd party roles and handicaps to power roles sort of tip the balance.

3rd parties can also be a balance act, for instance, if the town have too many power roles you can have a 3rd party aimed more against them, however if they have too little but adding one more TOWN power role would make them too powerful you can make a more town aligned power role 3rd party.

Another thing about 3rd parties and handicaps, while they are fun do not get carried away, there should be a counter out there for almost everything.

If there's a 3rd party killer (and original mafia) there BETTER be a town doc to counter at least one of the kills. If there is trackers/watchers/etc there should be a 3rd party/mafia role blocker.

There must be ways to counter this or that if roles are just too powerful to go unhindered.

Though all this info is nice, most of it is useless. You want to try to balance something, sketch up some ideas and run scenarios through your head (or talk to someone about the setup).

I'm open for conversation on it in inbox if you need help. But you must come up with a rough draft of roles first.
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Re: Game Balance

Postby safariguy5 on Thu Mar 20, 2014 5:25 pm

One of the things I generally go by is to not have too many duplicate roles. Two sane town cops can end up counterclaiming each other and screwing town over. However, something like one sane and one insane can work just fine (you can even hide their sanity from them).

One other consideration is that if you multiple anti-town factions, especially if you have multiple mafia factions is to give some investigative power to the mafia factions. Mafia watcher is a pretty popular choices, possibly mafia doctor if there are many killing roles.
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Re: Game Balance

Postby Lootifer on Sun Apr 27, 2014 9:29 pm

Also either make sure you have 1-2 people look over the setup and brain storm possible situations which might result in unbalanced play or jot down a whole bunch of scenarios (scenario analysis) to work out where your weaknesses are (what happens if PRs are killed first night etc.).

Dont forget a lot of the balance is tied up on what players know about the game; a vig who knows there are no cops or docs is much more likely to shoot from the hip than one who is in the dark regarding other PRs. Same with what Safari said above about sanity.
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