#TT Hunt Rework

66 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

bronze stirrup
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Hello!

TT Hunt is clearly a loved part of BToS2 because it adds a true measure of social deduction independent from all of the confirmability that the game provides through role mechanics. However, everyone has probably experienced the sheer pain of trying to deal with a 10 person TT hunt with no hard-confirmed townies when evils decide to not try or get found very early (by bussing or otherwise). With only three days and three hangs in the worst case (having a marshal and jailor/vig can help but those are in no way guaranteed), town gets punished hard for finding evils early with a massive TT hunt with too many question marks. Often times this is so appealing that if an evil is found on N1, coven/pand/apoc/evils pivot instantly to play for TT hunt.

At least to me, the natural thing to do if town is being punished for finding evils too efficiently is to allow for strategies that give town more of an advantage during or up to TT hunt. Why should town be punished for having TIs that do their job, or why should evils be rewarded for poor play? But no, we currently just outright ban any method of intentionally stalling hunt because stalling is too effective.

I don't think this is the right way to fix TT hunts. Fundamentally, rewarding a faction for being eliminated early is NOT balance. Imagine if you played a game of Chess, and you lose your queen, but there was a rule that if you lose your queen, you get two moves for every turn you get. Or imagine that you're playing a competitive shooter, and if an enemy player DCs, the enemy team unlocks significantly better weapons.

I mean, how many times have evils said, after the results of D2 where one or more pand/cov/apoc have been outed, "We play for TT hunt?" We know that playing for TT hunt is a powerful strategy. We have banned intentionally forcing TT hunt as evils because of this.

How about, instead of banning strategies around TT hunt, we just fix TT hunt so that it just works?

(Just to make this clear, I am not arguing that the TT Hunt is always advantaged to evils. That's an argument best saved for log file analysis, which I don't have the ability to do. What I am arguing is, fundamentally, evils should not be incentivized to play poorly just because they are outed early, or be rewarded for dying early.)

What could fixing TT Hunt look like? I have two categories of ideas.

Variable Hunt Length

This idea is simple. The length of the TT Hunt is determined by the number of players alive at the start of the hunt. For example, the length of a hunt could be given by ceil(players alive at start of hunt / 2). If all evils die quickly, then town gets more chances to eliminate the TT. This method would need to be balanced with the presence of extra eliminations in mind. One potential way to balance around this is to change the timer from number of days to number of eliminations - a counter that is set at the start of the hunt and decremented whenever a player dies for any reason (hung, shot, executed, etc). This has the additional benefit that Marshals do not necessarily need to feel pressured to hold Tribunals for TT hunt. This method would require that at least one hang occurs every day (or the TT wins on the spot) to avoid excessive stalling.

Penalty for Evil Faction

If we want to disincentivize evils from playing for a large or early TT Hunt, we can impose a penalty on the TT if certain criteria are met at the start of the hunt. Potential example criteria include:

  • Hunt starting on D4 or earlier.
  • Hunt starting with 8 or more people alive.
  • Hunt starting with no mislynches.
    The example numbers given are just that, examples for you to consider.
    Potential penalties include:
  • Being findable to TIs (sus, trespass on townies, etc)
  • Public information that eliminates TT possibilities

Thank you for considering! I understand that many people like social deduction in, well, a social deduction game! Let's make TT Hunts less frustrating for us all.

deep jolt
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You a bit late to this one

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This is like the community consensus and even the devs agree

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They just looking for a solution

dry verge
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Make it so if a TT spawns in game, everyone has one day to hang them, starting day 1

pallid escarp
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"we have banned intentionally forcing TT hunt" ok but rq who's 'we' like another server or like, games you host

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also yeah zelofa is right

fringe wadi
real crescent
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As pandora posting Jester wills is not considered throwing as it’s nots outing yourself it’s town finding your will incorrect (as punishing incorrect wills can’t be banned), it’s very fun to go for initiate TT hunt from N1. This balenced wise makes no sense, please make it so TT has a higher chance of winning the fewer ppl exist when they come out.

bronze stirrup
bronze stirrup
# real crescent As pandora posting Jester wills is not considered throwing as it’s nots outing y...

I can’t tell if you’re intentionally trolling or not.

Let’s say all evils except for TT go the jester route, never attack or confirm anyone as not TT, all evils get hanged on D2/D3/D4. Let’s say that there is no Marshal, Vigilante, or Jailor, now you have 12 people alive, one is NP, one is TT, you have three hangs.

Isn’t coven just benefiting from playing poorly? Unless you call intentional play to be outted as evil “good play” town is getting hard punished for knowing game mechanics and finding evils

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What I want is a system that rewards town for finding evils, or at least doesn’t punish town for finding evils quickly

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Is this an extreme example? Maybe, but the only thing not in evil’s control here is whether extra kills exist or not. Some rulesets have a guaranteed Marshal but PTT does not. There is no guarantee extra hangs exist, so if Pand intentionally play poorly and do not confirm anyone, town has 3 essentially random shots on 11 players if they can determine who NP is.

If I could convince my pandora teammates to do this every time I’m pandora, I’d take this

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Why should having any incentive at all to play this way as pandora be considered good balance

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What if one pand claimed Seer 6,9 enemies, another claimed 6,9 friends, another claimed 6,9 uo

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Oops can’t punish for bad play, all pand are magically outed

real crescent
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You still can't ban someone for saying smth like "Trapper N1: :Build N2: Place @1 N3: Place @4 bc this is could be someone witout proper game knolgae or a mistake

deep jolt
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its technically not foul play if done in a certain way

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because it is hard to tell when intentional

bronze stirrup
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Exactly my point.

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It’s hard to tell what is intentional and what isn’t

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So nothing is stopping evils from just oops all pand got outed

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What’s wilder is that this isn’t even my main point

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It is possible that all pand just get accidentally outed whether by TIs or otherwise

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And you end up with the same end scenario where town did too good of a job finding pandora and are thus punished with a massive TT hunt

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Aka playing well as town results in town punished compared to a scenario where maybe TIs don’t find evils as fast and then the TT hunt is easier

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My central argument is not about how pand get found, my central argument is that if/when they get all found too fast, town is worse off than if they found evils slower.

viral raftBOT
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@bronze stirrup has leveled up! (10 ➜ 11)

levelup.png
deep jolt
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we are all agreeing with you

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nobody here is disagreeing

pallid escarp
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(im a balatro player)

fast spear
daring flare
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I still think TT hunt should just not be allowed at all until a certain point in the game. If I absolutely CRUSH coven I don’t want to spend half the game meaninglessly hanging people with few suspicions.

rancid acorn
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People make themselves sus as evil all the time if they are the last evil (heck they do this in ranked). Saying it's bannable is extreme

marsh vale
graceful fjord
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We could also make it scale with the amount of evil who died

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The TT hunt timer starts at 3 Days.
It's reduced by 1 each day that passes with at least one Factional Evil alive, and increased by 1 for every Factional Evil hung. (Min : 1 Days, Max : 7 Days (Note that for the 7Days hunt to happen all coven need to walk into a vet N1.)

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If the coven gets steamrolled, town got 7 Day to find the TT in the worst case scenario

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if the game is balanced, town will get around 2-3 days to find the TT

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if coven is stomping, the town will get 2 days to find the TT

marsh vale
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Shouldn't it be minimum 1 because it bounces back to 2 when the last coven/Pandora dies? I am thinking like a nitpicky computer don't worry about me lol.

graceful fjord
south orchid
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Holy wall of text

rancid acorn
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If it’s ceiling(3/2) isn’t that 2?

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doesn’t matter either way

daring flare
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Was a problem with town, now we want to make it happen the other way around?

graceful fjord
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Difference being

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town is the uninformed majority

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if you stall against town, you are giving them the tools to deduce who is evil

daring flare
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Still suboptimal. Making a problem slightly lessened when there’s ways to remove it completely makes it hard to choose.

rancid acorn
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wdym stalling for evils

pallid escarp
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though ofc this is hard to prove in some cases

rancid acorn
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I've seen it happen on the Tuba stream and nothing happened so idk

daring flare
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Nobody enforces the rules

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They’re just suggestions unless you’re really obnoxious about it

rancid acorn
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I think the stalling hunt one is more enforced

marsh vale
# rancid acorn If it’s ceiling(3/2) isn’t that 2?

Like as a human I understand he means the lowest timer is 2 days.

But technically the way math and computers would understand it is the minimum value is 2 and then coven dies which means I increment the timer by 1 day meaning the timer is 3, then I start tt hunt.

It's nitpicky and only really matters for programing but yeah.

digital prairie
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Also, how would it handle disconnects?