Oh boy, we're playing this game, are we?
Stalking someone and seeing that they don't interact with anyone shouldn't determine their innocence; the DA and Unwatched technically don't visit anyone to use their night actions.
You'll note that I did stalk the DA, admittedly on night 0, and it was not obvious from the result that he was DA. I also stalked ray, and it gave no indication he was elite (attempting to verify his claim to Devlin).
It seemed obvious to me, and it became more obvious as the game progressed; you shouldn't be able to use a "This person interacts with nobody" to prove a role. Also, you got no indication from stalking Ray because I gave you that PM, not Excalibur.
Stalking shouldn't hint at a player's role anyway; you basically were fed information on whether someone was Mafia or not by stalking them, like a Cop in a regular game with no false positives/negatives. Additionally, you see their target if they have one, making it an even more powerful ability.
Seeing their target really is quite irrelevant. If I stalk someone who was a RM and am told that they killed someone, I don't need to know who that was 'cause I can see it in the Day post. Similarly if I stalk a troll and get told they troll someone, it doesn't matter who the victim was.
No it isn't irrelevant, and no you shouldn't be told
what they do. If you get "lil-Inferno visits Jack," you don't know if that was a suspension, troll, etc. and therefore don't really know Inferno's alliance. The way Excalibur set it up, you could confirm not only their alliance, but their role, regardless of what the game post describes.
Stalking did not reveal the GMod's name, which prevented a potential error to get the GMod lynched thinking he was a Rogue. I guess it was a Reveal-Target/Hide-Targeter setup, which wasn't specified in the role description.
Yes, and this weakened the power because it prevented me from forming a contact with a trusted player.
That wasn't so much a balance issue as it was pointing out the target/targeted setup. In this case, I actually agree with it, but it should apply to every role, not just Town-aligned ones. If you stalked ImagoDeo instead of Zycorax, you should not know Zycorax was the one to kill him. There's no example of stalking a Mafia's target in this game, so I can assume this was setup correctly.
The DA was not allowed to put The Devilesk on his list at all.
Part of the Devilesk's ability is to be only killed by lynching. It seems silly to let a DA kill them by another means, so why even let them put the name on the list? This actually makes it slightly more likely that the list will succeed because the only potential error here is when they target the actual devilesk and assign them the incorrect role, rather than targetting any other player and claiming they are devilesk.
Correct. The Devilesk would not die from the list, but if the Mafia finds out who the Devilesk is (which wasn't hard in this game, but that's another issue I mentioned), they can use that to make the DA's ability more useful. Maybe this is more opinion-based, but I think that would have made for much more interesting game play and strategy. Allow me to elaborate a little:
The game unmodified creates an atmosphere where the Town does not care about the Devilesk; killing him won't improve or decrease their chance to win, and if they thought someone was Mafia, they would ignore Devilesk completely. The Mafia don't really care about him either, because he doesn't benefit them alive or dead. At the very late-game stage, if the Devilesk is alive and has managed to hide himself successfully, he becomes a concern for Mafia (but still no concern to the Town).
Now let's change it so the DA can write the Devilesk. Now the Devilesk becomes an asset to the Mafia in a way, in that the DA can more easily kill the Town. However, they don't want to reveal themselves to the Devilesk, because the Devilesk needs to have at least over half of the Watched dead as his victory condition, and he can easily trade a Mafia name to save himself. If the town figures out who the Devilesk is in this scenario, they'll want to kill him immediately as long as the DA is still alive. If the DA dies, he becomes much less of a concern (like in the modified game).
Tell me which one makes better use of the Devilesk role.
A lot of the town were not secretive about their role. By the first or second night, the DA knew a Moderator and Veteran. An Elite reveals himself in the thread, and a couple players mention honestly that they are a Regular.
Hence why I don't think town was particularly advantaged...
Bad/foolish players have nothing to do with the game balance, just the implementation. And my point was that even
with the Town revealing some roles, it still wasn't enough to put the Mafia in the lead at any point during the game.
The minimum name list for the DA was static at 5, and the Mafia lost their other killing roles early on due to a clue giveaway and inactivity/sacrifice. If the number was relative to the number of remaining players, it would scale better.
The DA's power was meant to supplement the other mafia roles. If the other mafia roles aren't performing up to the level they should be, that's nothing to do with the DA power being weak. The game would have been very different if Lingie had been active and we'd been having 2 hits every night from the start. Probably the best way to handle the DA power would be a sort of 'experience' thing: first list is 5 names, second list is 4 names and after that 3 names.
There shouldn't be a "I'll make it up on my own if my team is doing poorly" role, in my opinion. I'm talking about balance here, and you're talking about having roles that are supposed to undo the mistakes or poor performance of their side.
I don't think the role distribution was too bad, but let's look at it for a second:
On the Town's side you have 2 players that receive the alliance/role of a player per night, 2 players that either stop a night action (like a hit) or prevent a player from being harmed, 2 players that can kill at night in case you found more than one Mafia during the lynch cycle, and 2 players that don't die immediately from a single hit. Additionally, the 2 players that can hit become up to 2 more suspenders if they kill someone on their team. Imagine if GMods could choose to suspend or kill like I believe you suggested earlier? You'd have 4 suspensions going a night; that's a lot of protection/prevention.
On the Mafia's side, you have 2 hits, 1 prevent, and the DA (who admittedly would be stronger if they could verify whether or not a player survived for being an Elite or survived because of some suspend, which wouldn't always be that easy).
When regular clues decreased in difficulty to solve, the misinform clues remained the same.
Although no one solved any clues until quite late in the game anyway. The fact that they kept using misinform on Devlin and the host kept writing the same sort of clues also hampered them. If they had targeted other players and/or the host had changed up their fake clues, then this could have been different.
The players shouldn't be blamed for something the host implements improperly. And correct me if I'm wrong, but all Mafia aside from Lingie (inactive, died early) and
kinda Inferno (Seemed that the following clue was the only reason Devlin had for pushing the bandwagon, though) were ousted by clues, but not a single misinform was used to kill anyone. Granted, a regular clue was misinterpreted to kill both Riney (Town) and Jack (Devilesk), but it ultimately wound back around to its owner, and losing players at a 1:1 ratio is horrible for Mafia.
The Devilesk was basically revealed every time someone targeted Jack with anything. This made it statistically improbable for him to hide even if he's playing his role to its best ability.
Yeah, well that's silly.
There was mention of the Elite role making the DA more powerful, when this is not the case. Let's assume that the Mafia interpret a failed-to-kill hit as being an Elite role. A suspend on a different role being targeted will lead the Mafia to think that role is an Elite because he survived the night. Now the list is polluted with this incorrect role until the player dies.
This depends entirely on what the host chooses to reveal to the mafia. If the host is revealing inconsistent information then that's the hosts' problem, I think. When I targeted Jack who was suspended I was told I couldn't find him. If a RM targeted someone and was told they couldn't find them, then that means the person was suspended. If they target someone and are told the hit was successful, and yet the person doesn't die, then they know they are an elite.
I don't send hit replies, and I doubt anyone got or expected "Your hit is successful!" or "Your hit is unsuccessful!" PMs each night because they don't warrant a PM reply. However, abilities like the Veteran's warrant a PM reply with the results, which is why you get a PM even if your ability was blocked somehow.
Basically, the way I handle these things is as follows: if your night action is supposed to yield a PM result response, I send the response PM (it either has the results or states you were unable to get the results). If your night action is not supposed to yield a PM result response, I don't send anything, regardless of whether it went through or not.
But the thing is, we vastly outplayed you despite being short a man, and should have won.
I don't think one side outplayed the other. They both had good players and some not-so-good players (e.g., Lingie and Norm). The reason one side toppled the other was a balance issue. Don't pat yourself on the back too hard, now.
I was so close to winning
TROLLOLOLOLOL
It's sad that it took several days after your original lynch for the town to finally kill you. Town, Y U NO LISTEN TO ME?Like I said earlier, the Devilesk posed no threat to the town at all, so killing him quickly was pointless.