Well conversation has died off a bit and I meant to post this some time so I might as well do it now.
First of all, it really was a great game run by SS7, so thanks for that. Thanks also to Ikrit for his best efforts at hosting the anon games. I know they didn't quite work out exactly as planned but he did a good job regardless.
It's clear that a lot of people took the information from the meta-analysis thread on board and the Pokegym WW community is definitely on it's way to improvement. Obviously, as this is the first game after a big shift, there's still going to be a few kinks that need to be ironed out. Also I have a few more personal opinions on the game. I'm just going to list them as I think of them.
A lot of these I think come down to the fact that Pokegym is and always will be a DIFFERENT community to MafiaScum. That's kind of the point. While they do offer a brilliant resource in regards to information about the game, I think we just need to bear this in mind.
1) Game Size. I thought that the game was bordering on too small. 20 people is a medium or so standard game compared to MS, but I think that the pokegym community has different needs for a game. MS has many many many games running at once. If you miss the sign ups for one, even if it was one you were really looking forward to, there will always be an excess of alternate games to get in to. This is not the case on 'gym. At the moment, it looks like we're going to continue to only have one game running at once, and IMO that's probably a good thing to do. But this means that the games should probably accommodate more players. Obviously this is a double edged sword, as more players leads to longer games, which increases the wait time for players that miss out or are killed early on, and it also begins to slightly shift the favour back to the town (even with an optimal wolf number). However I still think we could generally run with a few more than twenty. Did anyone else notice, once we removed DP and Diaz from the game, discussion died down a lot and cabd had a lot more free reign. I'm not saying we need more vets in the game, but the more players we have, the more likely productive discussion will occur. If this were to go ahead, mods would have to be really tight on inactivity, as it has been said before that spots in a longer game shouldn't be taken up by those not interested in playing. The flip side to all of this is that more players get a spot, and less players miss out. The thing that makes the 'gym WW community so great, is that it is just that, a community. The playerbase is what makes these games enjoyable, and I think a slight increase in that would be beneficial. It also paves the way for....
2) More Roles. I've heard the argument for and against lots of PRs a hundred times over, and I fully support the belief that they should be kept to a minimum. I also believe in the strength of VTs. However, I think nobody really receives their role card at the start of the game and goes "Awesome! I got VT! I was really hoping for that." I think that the game would benefit somewhat from including a few more smaller roles. Maybe a once off unblockable role seer. Or an armoured wolf that requires an extra vote to lynch. An independent who can swap role targets every other night (Person A receives the effects dealt to Person B and vice versa). Those are just 3 completely random ones off the top of me head (not balanced or anything). But I think with a few additional ideas, we could make games that are a little more interesting, while not making things at all unbalanced. In larger games, we have more flexibility with the ratios, so we don't have to cut the number of VT or VWs. This would have to be carefully moderated and examined pre game, but it seems like we have measures in place for that anyway now.
3) Flavour/Story. I think on the whole, SS7 did a great job of this. There was a rough storyline, with updates that I wanted to read for that reason alone. There was information in them, but not blaringly obviously, Person X is a wolf, and I think the best thing was that a lot of the information was only useful if you'd already put a bit of thought into other aspects of the game, or else might be useless at the time of writing, but on looking back became a bit more useful. I think Ikrit's games left everyone in the dark a bit too much. I understand this is partly to do with difficulty dedicating enough time to write them. Regardless, I think if 'gym was ever to go with "Player X was found dead. Begin Day Phase" style updates, interest would be lost very quickly. I think there is a bit more freedom and creative license to be taken with storyline and theme though. As said before, it's a bad idea to have a setup where the characters of the wolves are completely obvious, (eg Team Rocket). But as long as this is taken care of and carefully balanced (as above), I'd love to play more games on futuristic spaceships or in the medieval Pokemon world etc.
4) Spirit/Quality of the game. Whether it was because for once the wolves had the upper hand, or the playerbase had shifted slightly towards more newer players, there seemed to be a few too many incidents which left a sour taste in peoples mouth. I know that I myself am guilty of this to some extent, with some level of frustration towards PM, so for that I apologize. I think everyone needs to remember, myself included, that we are for 2 main reasons. Number 1 being to have fun, and number 2 being to improve our skills at the game, which in turn leads to better communication, logic and reasoning skills which can be highly beneficial outside the game. Post game, this has been brilliant, and it's really great to see the community so dedicated to help each other out and improve. What would be even better would be for this to transfer even more into the game. It's fine to say that all's fair in love and war, and I understand that from a wolf perspective that the last thing you want to do is help out a flailing townie who is looking like a viable lynch. But on the whole, constructive feedback/criticism should be given wherever possible, and those receiving it should try to be as receptive as possible. Instead of people complaining that game is being played at a low standard and making personal attacks, more effort should be put on actually improving quality of play and providing a competitive but friendly atmosphere.
I think I'm going to leave it at that for the moment. As I said before, these are all just my opinions and views. Feel free to shoot them full of holes
In the meantime, I have one final exam to go to then I'm free for the year, and really looking forward to the LEX/PikaMaster game.
