That too. I have been killed Day 1/2 as the Seer before and it really is horrible. Also I am also saying that I have tried to get into more recent games but they always fill with in the first day.
That makes much more sense.
1) TDGI was a great way for those players involved to stay interested in the game (and helped me stay on track with this thread). However for that to be viable we required permission from AAM to make sure that there were no "psychic" roles or anything. (Speak with Dead effectively).
1b) If there are multiple games going at once then there is possibility for players to be able to do something besides wait for the next one.
2) Our playerbase has expanded. There is no question about that. The amount of players who want to and have played has never been higher, and will continue to increase with great games. This provides a conundrum.
How do we allow for the entire playerbase to play and have fun with WW? There are a few options.
- Have larger games
- Have more games
We've tried the former. This does not solve the problem IMO. While we've had some great fun with large games, there are almost infinitely more issues with large games.
Not the least of which is balance. In the OP I've outlined the balance issues we've had with large games, and I honestly don't think continuing the trend of each game being 30+ players is a good idea.
Another issue is the length of the game. As homeofmew said, it is disappointing if you miss the sign-ups (or die early) and the next game isn't for another 6 months (or 9 if its XV).
The last of the short list of problems is the level of difficulty in the Day phase. One thing that was good for me about the 6P Anon game was it was small enough to get good reads on the players I was playing with. The ability to get good reads drastically decreases when the number of players increases, for various reasons. Lurking being one, since in a large game its very easy to blend in and post once per day early on.
Smaller games emphasize and promote Day play better than larger games.
So, I feel that we are left with the second choice to deal with our growing playerbase.
Have more games.
The problems with this are multifaceted, however. Historically, only one game has been allowed in the Gym's RTC.
There was only one attempt to have more than one game running at once. but that was mired by controversy after the XIV sign-ups filled early, and permission was not asked of the mods/admins.
There is a possibility that more than one game could be conducted here on the Gym. I'm sure with proper planning this could be a viable option with success. However more planning and discussion should be done before this idea is pitched to the admins.
Another possibility is hosting games an a secondary, PokeGym Werewolf-specific forum. Now this can be done in a variety of ways.
1) We continue to run one game at a time here on the Gym, while hosting a second game on the other forum.
2) We drop Gym games entirely and only run games on the other forum
3) We continue to run one game here, and on the other forum run more than one game concurrently.
Either of these would be options we can consider, but I'm leaning now towards either the first or the third option. The Gym players are a great asset, and it would be a shame to completely drop Gym games entirely. At the same time I feel that we need to provide high-quality games that are balanced and fun, and to do that they must be shrunk slightly. Thus, we must have more than one game, (or at least have some staggered games) so that we can encourage our playerbase to grow.
If we do move to having some games onto a secondary forum, the purpose of said forum would be to host Pokegym WW games. If the purpose was anything but that, I would just recommend players to go to MafiaScum (which has hundreds of games going at once). My passion is Gym WW, and thus this secondary forum would become a place where players are directed to from the Pokegym, if that is the strategy we adopt.
I also have some thoughts about organization, and those will be forthcoming soon.