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Post by Judge Sam on Jul 7, 2009 1:45:20 GMT -5
One thing that is making me pull my hair out is how everyone is taking a random division from 1.5 months ago and declaring that there must be two or three Spies in each group, no questions asked. I did try and squelch that in Rey's "Theory" thread day one but that obviously didn't do anything.
IT ACTUALLY IS COMPLETELY RANDOM. GRRR.
lol but okay here's the thing, it's obviously human nature to want to divide things up and it's probably going to happen in any game that I divide it up into teams.
But Teams are so cool. They help out so much and really the only drawback is what's going on now which I predicted but didn't think it would be this bad.
So what I want to know from you is... what can I do to make it go away in future games? (not this one) I want to use teams again, but not if things like this happen. So how can I change the structure so this sort of thing doesn't happen?
For example, no one is using the Team Live / Live divisions to find anything, even though they were equally as random as the first.
I have a few ideas but I want to know your thoughts. What can I do to get rid of this team division nonsense in future games?
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Post by sluticia on Jul 7, 2009 15:19:08 GMT -5
Hmmm.
Well from what I know families/gangs worked quite well. Of course they really weren't teams but it helped the beginning go smoothly. I bonded with my gang but never felt overwhelmed by the number of total people in the game.
For me if I was in the teams, I would KNOW that they were random, but a little piece of me would always think "Well there hasn't been a spy in this group yet so the chances are high there is one" no matter how wrong I knew I was.
I would say a good solution is to make the teams player divided. Not only does this clear up that the spies aren't divided evenly but it will also provide evidence further down the road. Another solution would be to let people pick their own teams they wanted to join and let them hash it out on their own. Perhaps let a deceased Spy or Citizen divide the teams.
Make a competition and say the top tier will be on one team, the middle on another, the bottom on another. Concoct a roll that decides team divisions. State in the very beginning of the game, in the introductions thread, "The first 16 to check in will be a part of team A. The rest will be on team B."
Another possibility is to give a list to everyone in the burg such as colors. Make everyone post the color they want from the list. Then write the code in another thread before everyone picks, say, all colors of ROY G. BIV are on one team, the rest on the other. Then reveal this to the group, and unlock the post earlier that says the team divisions so they know you posted the stipulations before everyone chose their color. Maybe get everyone into a chat and roll the dice, first 12 people to get even numbers are part of team A, the rest on team B. They just need proof that it's random, or know that it's not random and decided by someone other than you. You feeling me?
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DC
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Post by DC on Jul 13, 2009 9:31:08 GMT -5
I think several of Casey's suggestions are excellent.
However, I have so many issues with this group thing. This game is NOT Survivor. You are not eliminating just for the sake of eliminating. You MUST have at least 1 Spy in every group or else it is COMPLETELY unfair to the citizens.
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Post by Judge Sam on Jul 13, 2009 10:56:16 GMT -5
Thanks for thoughts. =) I'm glad the gang thing worked out, with 32 people, it definitely needs to be divided down someway. Yes we could just have less and we might do that haha but for now, that's gotta happen. I really like the idea of player-chosen teams. There's a lot of cool things we could do with that. For example, when the group split into two in Spies 4 I said a citizen picked the teams and that didn't cause any dumb assumptions haha. One thing I would avoid here is if I let one person pick, publicly naming them... just because it would be way dumb for that person to be "test lynched" to see if they are Citizen/Spy to get info about the teams. I also like publicly verifiable things as I think that factors into it too. I just hope that they still don't say "well, doesn't matter if sam or random or anyone else or a challenge picked it, it's still likely that's its 4-4! that's just math!" I agreed with you when making this game and Spies 3 but I don't think I agree with you now haha. I understand the feeling behind it, and a lot of people feel that way, which is probably why I wouldn't do it without it being really necessary. But there are a few ways I could see that being 'ok' off the top of my head: 1) We have a game created that is fair to both sides. Then for whatever reason I decide to A) throw in one extra person and B) throw in one extra exile between all citizens. At least in terms of game fairness, it's still fair, if anything that might still be an advantage for the citizens since they get more info to test each other.
2) Let's say there are 6 people in the game, 2 of them are Spies. I decide to split up the team into two teams of three randomly.
That means there's a 50% that it will be:
a) two spies in one group, none in the other
b) one spy in each group
Okay ignore the fact that the two spies would work together to control their vote haha, pretend each person votes randomly. Yes if a) happens, one group of 3 is screwed, they have no chance because there are no Spies in their group. But in this scenario the other team with 2 Spies has a higher chance of catching a Spy... which offsets the no chance the other team has.
The probability that they would catch one Spy in a) is 6/9ths and in b) it's 4/9ths for one Spy, 1/9th for two Spies which means a) with zero Spies on team is actually a better chance to catch at least one Spy overall. (compare these with a 3/5ths chance to catch at least one Spy if they did two Exiles with no teams.) But you could catch two with b) so I guess that offsets it. Okay blah blah, also on an unrelated note, I'm getting a fair bit of "So we've caught four girl Spies and two boy Spies, there must be another boy Spy let's find him teehee!  When making alignments I don't even know your character's name obv. until the game starts I go by real names not fake made up names argh that's so frustrating lol. |
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Post by DC on Jul 13, 2009 11:17:54 GMT -5
You can't ignore the fact that spies would work together to control the vote in a group. That's exactly what happened when Candy made the schisms in Spies 4.
For those unfamiliar with the game, there were two groups of Spies:
The Traditionalists, which had 4 members. and
The Orthodoxy, which had 3 members.
Candy, a citizen, got to divide all remaining players into 2 groups for exile 3. Somehow (so bizarre), she ended up putting all the Traditionalists in group 1, and all the Orthodoxy in group 2. The Spies had safety. Each group exiled a citizen.
What I described above is the problem with this scenario.
You've ensured that the first group will exile a citizen, since there are no Spies to exile.
You've given the Spies of the second group an advantage, since there are 2 people working together to control the exile. This does not equal the "if the group chose someone at random to exile, there's a higher chance they'll exile a Spy". You do not exile randomly in Spies. There is no offset.
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Post by Judge Sam on Jul 13, 2009 11:40:51 GMT -5
I agree with you, but the 2 spies 3 people scenario was just tiny numbers I picked to make it easier to think about.
The real scenario with these teams would be like 11 players in a team. 0-6 Spies in each team. With a team having 1 spy and another with 5 Spies, 'how much' more likely would the 5 spy team Exile a Spy versus the 1 spy team?
Well you'd say, 5 spies, they'd control the vote, but they just can't. With 5 spies there's a really good chance a spy is going to come up with some consideration. If they defend that person, and later down the line they are lynched, that looks bad. Or what if out of these 5 spies in the team, one sucks and gets targeted.
I don't even think it's possible to like numerically quantify 'how much' more likely it is with a 5-spy team or a 1-spy team, it'd be fun to talk about, but for my #s I use random votes just to get an idea at all.
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Post by DC on Jul 13, 2009 11:46:42 GMT -5
You're getting into a quantity v. quality argument here I think.
If a group of Spies sucks, then yes, having a group stuffed with Spies will be a disadvantage to the Spies. Spies 6 is a great example of this.
If a group of Spies is well-coordinated and organized, then no, having a group stuffed with Spies will be an advantage to the Spies. Spies 3 and Spies 4 are great examples of this.
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