Quote:
Originally Posted by CalledDownLight
why are votes like that? That was by far the most annoying and hardest thing to adjust to in my few times playing. The immunity with a no vote is weird to me and the fact that players don't have to vote simultaneously is also weird. It allows players to vote early or vote late to tip a lynch over the edge with the current setup.
It seems like simultaneous votes or regular votes where everyone votes throughout the day and you lynch either as time expires or at eod is a lot cleaner.
It also seems like days shouldn't really progress to extra time with randomness either. Why not just abide by the timer? This one would be by far the easiest thing to change without any confusion.
going to answer these out of order because the second question is contingent on the first:
with formals/votes the way they are, rng formals at the end of the day serve the purpose of severely discouraging mechanical endings to games, most importantly. without the possibility of rng formals, mafia would 100% of the time formal and second a town in lylo with ~4 mins left in the day (game), town would cry for 4 minutes after which mafia would invariably collect win.
well then town just has to formal earlier in potential lylo, you say? well, mafia can do that, too, and don't even necessarily have to out to do it. Mafia could formal a town (or mafia) at 7 minutes, essentially filibuster 3 minutes away, then rescind and snap formal a town with ~4 minutes remaining and you've got the initial situation again.
the fact that formals can be rescinded at any time is pro-mafia in this situation because town may not realize the situation they're in until it's too late. cron won this way on SMAS a few months ago, though it was in rng's and risky because he outed in order to accomplish it. it took town a few seconds to realize what was happening and they're probably still salty about it to this day. but at least town was on equal footing in this situation and it wasn't necessarily auto-loss. once every few years is acceptable (if town are proactive it's completely avoidable, anyway) and despite no rule changes it hasn't happened again since then.
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now, why is voting the way it is?
well, probably the biggest reason is - it's easy. you don't need any external voting module, you don't need props (like the red/green cards we tried out on SMAS a couple weeks), etc.
also, you're playing with people all around the world in relative real-time but there are still latency issues due to distance and internet quality. this is probably why you're given ~3 seconds to vote. getting around this requires some form of pre-voting with cards or somehow submitting votes before a simultaneous reveal that has dubious benefit tbh.
yes, it creates early/late voting, wifom, hammers, etc. both town and mafia take advantage of this as they can. it's probably not objectively good or bad, it just is. from a viewer's perspective, voting the way it's done is (usually) clear and some would say exciting. the late votes/hammers can be dramatic and the fact that these games are on twitch in part to entertain an audience shouldn't be lost when evaluating the mechanics of it all (be it voting, formals, rng's, night phases (read: salty cooldown), etc.)
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immunity is also a pretty important mechanic because of the way formals/voting occur. essentially every vote is like a mini EOD in forum.
think about a situation where two cops are in a CC situation. one gets formalled and you go to a vote. if the claimed cop survives, you have a crazy amount of information in combination with the two sets of checks, any other confirmed town (outed vigis, medic saves, etc.) you could very well realize that, if that cop claim was town, mafia could have voted to kill them. this situation can occur without claims as well, most importantly in lylo situations.
when you get information from a vote and realize you ****ed up, you shouldn't get a do-over and let the game mechanically solve itself. you still get a ton of information but you have to continue on and solve around it, even if you think someone is "outed" by a vote.
(additionally, immunity prevents some forms of in-game cancer where two players repeatedly formal and second and filibuster the same person over and over if they keep failing to get them lynched because of salt/being stupid/otherwise)
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tl;dr: bc reasons
long-winded af but hopefully that covers most of your questions >.>