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Post by ardor on Dec 16, 2007 8:20:20 GMT -8
I don't know who will run the next one, I'm not sure if MrBlarney or myself are up to it again.
However, we plan on writing another handbook to update for what we've learned in this game and the last for someone else to run this again, maybe it'll be us, who knows.
First, I think the first day red vote, or maybe even the first 2 red votes should simply put a bounty on the head of that player, so everyone has a chance to die by their actions, not by the masses.
Second, I think the methods off the island should change, so people don't know what to expect. So the laptop item will likely change, the method the hackers use to get off the island will change, the escape method will change as well.
My thoughts?
The hackers setup their headquarters and when they make it, they can hide themselves from all other players unless the players search the zone and no items are left to be found, they have a GPS tracking unit or the player is a lone wolf. Otherwise, finding the hackers is not possible at their headquarters..
They'd still have to roam around to find their supplies and that puts them outside to where they can be seen. I think it'll be more of a stealth operation in that sense.
Second, I think the escape methods should be the players actually finding a boat and each boat can hold 4 players. Escapees will not be announced so nobody will know if the boat was used yet or not. We'd probably classify the players as having committed suicide or something in the narration, so it's not well known that they escaped.
Third, we're still trying to figure out how the game is best enjoyed from your perspective, the students.
Personally, while I haven't participated as a student, I think it was more fun with the movement before attacks, but it was more work for the moderators.
What do you think of the narrations? Do you like this style where you see the deaths and who caused them? Do you prefer to have them hidden to the zone they occurred in only?
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gumpy
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Post by gumpy on Dec 16, 2007 8:39:45 GMT -8
Those people who have their collars deactivated can raid the volcano.
What way is better to escape then killing the people who trapped you in the first place?
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Post by ardor on Dec 16, 2007 8:56:51 GMT -8
Also, I think changing the items around would be a neat idea. For example, maybe reduce the chances of each bullet hitting for the guns but allow you to use as many shots as you want per night.
We've never ran into a situation yet where someone used all the ammo for a gun. I don't think we've ever seen the 2 shot flare guns get used up yet either. So maybe allowing someone to shoot two flares a round would make a difference for example.
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Post by iamtheaznman on Dec 16, 2007 10:10:31 GMT -8
I definitely liked movement before attacks. Sometimes it would require more effort to kill people and such, but I felt more in control. Knowing that the dynamite was going to go off and not being able to do anything about it was .
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Post by ardor on Dec 16, 2007 10:13:04 GMT -8
I suppose we could keep things as they are and just make dynamite go off last in each round, even after the vote or something.
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Post by seriously on Dec 16, 2007 11:34:14 GMT -8
Maybe make the red-vote informatory instead of lethal. The winner has a public reveal of their role (normie, lover [but not who it is], lone wolf, hacker[?]) and/or their inventory.
This is pretty much just an off-the-cuff-suggestion though.
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Post by seriously on Dec 16, 2007 11:37:54 GMT -8
Also, I wonder if it would be interesting if the green vote delivered to a zone as opposed to a specific person, and whoever gets it is simply a function of the amount of people present in the zone. It might inspire massacres during the round in question as well as in the next one when people rush to it.
I feel that players like myself have basically no interest in the green vote because there is no way in twenty hells we'll win it.
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Post by pretentious on Dec 16, 2007 11:40:23 GMT -8
Maybe some new items? Like, a security camera or something that can be set up to watch a zone?
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Post by ardor on Dec 16, 2007 11:41:22 GMT -8
That's actually a neat idea.
The basic idea behind us having all the votes is to let you guys have more control over things and give you a little more to do in the thread itself since technically, you don't have to post at all. You can just send in orders if you wish.
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Post by ardor on Dec 16, 2007 11:42:16 GMT -8
I'll start another thread for item/weapon ideas and update the op as this thread can be mechanical stuff.
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Post by seriously on Dec 16, 2007 11:43:36 GMT -8
Did I ever even vote?
I think I did.
It is so obvious when I'm involved in a team, my spamming the thread is cut into like a 6th.
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Post by ardor on Dec 16, 2007 11:45:11 GMT -8
I'm just hoping the teams aspect makes the game more enjoyable. I personally enjoy being able to do more than vote and to work on a team for a common goal.
We honestly thought that if we didn't add more than a kill vote, the thread wouldn't be very active at all.
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Post by seriously on Dec 16, 2007 11:53:41 GMT -8
Team aspects pretty much always make a game more enjoyable, and very much so for those of us who are basically only ever vanillagers.
Especially in this case, and I think someone said this in the thread, where with the threat of lone wolves every high school was essentially a mini-phalla.
When I handed the map off to Shankill Butcher I was basically very very tense.
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Post by ardor on Dec 16, 2007 12:04:10 GMT -8
It's kinda funny. When we came up with all of this, we thought of ways to make the game more about the individuals rather than the good versus the bad, mostly since we weren't sure how well we could compete with the great games going on already.
We figured instead of making individual specials, everyone would basically have the same abilities with the option of moving to another role.
I personally think it'd be interesting to allow people to also choose whether they want to be a lone wolf or not, but give them a random ability if they choose it. Second, I think the lover options need to be more appealing as most choose option 3. It's a good option though which keeps them alive longer without a doubt, I think we just need to find ways of making the other ones more appealing.
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Post by seriously on Dec 16, 2007 12:32:34 GMT -8
So I'm just going to keep vomiting up random ideas.
How about, instead of having maps to boats, just make the boats completely visible but wrecked and unusable, with holes that need patching, missing oars or a motor.
They can be repaired, but it'll take some dedicated item gathering and maybe a specialized role to do it (like the hacker escape plan), and
1) The boat can't carry the entire team, or it can't carry the entire team and their lovers.
2) If there are hostiles in the zone where the escape is taking place they can kill the escapees and commandeer the boat.
EDIT:
3) A player, if they so desire, can attack and damage or destroy the boat.
4) Also, anyone can take it as long as their collar is deactivated and they make it their primary action, so if there's a dramtic shoot-out between the other players in the zone one sneaky little f**ker can shove off if the boat is operable, leaving whoever else stuck on the island.
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Post by ardor on Dec 17, 2007 21:03:00 GMT -8
So looking over everything, I think we need to make the move action a free action. That way people are more prone to attacking and using other items if they know they can move. Keeps things interesting too, so you don't always tie yourself down to attacking, following and being next to one particular student.
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durax
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Post by durax on Dec 18, 2007 22:59:56 GMT -8
The public kills in the narration served to discourage killing.
I think one could save on writing, and still leave let the happy murders have their fun if the killers were simply referred to as "The emo from Moonlight Bay Academy."
This could in turn lead to Kitano rewarding the school with the hight kill count, or even just having an entire school team be filled with lone wolves...
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Post by ardor on Dec 19, 2007 5:33:13 GMT -8
Probably right, as long as the red vote kills. I seriously think the red vote needs to either go away or be something else. IT gives the lone wolves a better chance to live when they cannot die by the red vote and it also helps the lover pairs and the powerful folks too. So some guy ripped several people apart? Doesn't mean they have to go die by collar detonation now.
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Post by justplainpavek on Dec 19, 2007 9:47:01 GMT -8
This is my first game so I don't know what the background on this decision might've been, but I'm curious why players are allowed to pick their roles (lone wolf or lover) rather than them being randomized as in all other phalla games I've observed? As someone who didn't really know anyone else, being a lover was out for me, which left me totally dependent on my team as a network. Which was fine, I guess, but it seems like being a lover gives you pretty definite advantages and a definite trusted network of two to build on. The hacker school seems to be the only one with real concrete incentives to work together as a close team... although I guess I'm not totally sure what the other schools' win conditions were, just that mine was basically a slight variation on be-the-last-ones-standing (noting that lone wolves had to be eliminated too, which might've thrown us if we had lasted that long, except that Chrono accidentally gave it up before he'd even resurrected).
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zot
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Post by zot on Dec 19, 2007 9:56:10 GMT -8
You don't get to decide to be a lone wolf
And being lovers has plenty of disadvantages
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Post by justplainpavek on Dec 19, 2007 10:01:05 GMT -8
Oh, I guess I misread / misremembered on the lone wolf, I thought that was an option to choose as well.
On lovers, yeah, I suppose it does. Just wondering why it's not random along with everything else, I guess.
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zot
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Post by zot on Dec 19, 2007 10:01:55 GMT -8
Because then you could end up in a bond with someone you really don't want to end up in a bond with
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Post by justplainpavek on Dec 19, 2007 10:09:06 GMT -8
Well, fair enough I guess, I had just thought putting people together in pairs like that might liven things up a bit, and maybe reduce some of the imbalances that previous associations between players might bring to the game. And if it really wasn't working out, well, add a "lover's spat" mechanic or something. Just a thought, that's all.
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Post by MrBlarney on Dec 19, 2007 10:30:20 GMT -8
All the schools had the same win condition: be the last school standing. The Bell team had an additional special win condition, to escape the island with a cunning plan.
Lovers roles were all about giving options to people. If you wanted to buddy up with someone, then you could do so, knowing the risk that you might tie yourself with a lone wolf. If you just wanted to work with your own team and not have to worry about others, then you didn't have to choose a Lover role. I think the Lover bonuses were more balanced this time, though a lot of people chose Type 3 over the others. I don't know if it's because people don't notice the Hit bonuses on Types 1 and 2, but Type 3 remains the popular pick and could be toned down further.
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Post by smasher on Dec 19, 2007 22:44:11 GMT -8
The main two things I would suggest are getting rid of the hacker team and getting rid of random roles (namely lone wolves and people with special bonuses).
I haven't been a hacker, but from an outsider's perspective in both games it basically seems like they're playing a different game than everyone else. The fact that they have (or will, if my understanding is correct) be victorious in both games shows that they're quite powerful, but even weakening them doesn't solve the problem. They just feel out of place, and I'm not sure they really add anything to the game.
In most phallas random roles are crucial, but PR is distinctly different from the rest of them because for the most part there is no good or evil side. That gets rid of the necessity of random roles, and I think you should run with it: give everybody exactly the same options for their roles. The lovers are a good example of this; the variants might need a little tweaking, but the idea is solid.
In order to maintain variety give players a bunch of different options they can choose. Maybe players could choose to change their win condition to killing X number of players, or getting two kills with a spork, or any other difficult but entertaining goals you can think of. Allow anyone to choose to be a lone wolf, but weaken the role to have a 20% dodge bonus or something moderate like that.
You can't make the playing field totally level (because of items if nothing else), but I strongly feel opening up options for players would make the game even more fun.
Other assorted things:
Making move a free action is a good idea. Move + analyze might be overpowered though. It would make playing as a lone wolf very difficult, perhaps excessively so, and people would probably use it too much to run away.
If you maintain the vote kill it should either go before other kills, or not fall through a person who gets killed by other means. If you have a few votes on you there's the danger everyone above you has their collar deactivated, but that's a risk you can judge ahead of time. If the people above you happen to get killed though you pretty much get screwed, and the vast majority of the time you won't be able to see it coming. This mechanic was a flaw with the Soviet Phalla too, and it's one we (the bad guys) exploited multiple times.
Maybe have fewer teams with more people. My team this game had only four people, and I never managed to be in the same zone as two of them. Going too far with that is bad, but perhaps aim for five or six people per team, seven max.
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