Reasonable Game Duration

[Trin]

This is inspired by Game 100.

_{Disclaimer: Santa I love you but uhgasjfldsakjdaslkjaslsdfjsalkfjdsalkfjaskldfjslakfjdasklfjdskagerjag THIS GAME but yeah love <>}

Also, let me say that I know this is a special game. I know this is Game 100. I know life is crazy and things pop up that are important and demand attention. I know sometimes there are reasons that things get delayed, and that sometimes the game needs to be pushed a little longer because of that.

However, the sign ups for this game were posted September 28th. It's now November 11th. I think that's a little long...

I'm not saying to end the game. I'm not even hinting at that. I would never do that. That's crazy and mean to the people currently playing.

However... I went back and saw this in the How to Play:

Each game there will be 5 15 to 10 30 players(rabbits/wolf). This is just to make sure the game doesn't go on forever, there will will be other games. the game does go on forever.

I know it's crossed out and that it says that the game will last forever... but I feel like the original intention here is not to make games too long.

Again, I know, 100 players. Lots of time needed. Yes. Understood. I know, this probably won't be happening again. Yes, again, I understand. But... it's been over a month. It's probably going to hit the two month mark.

Believe it or not, this suggestion has nothing to do with Game 100 itself. No, it's about the possible side effects of it.

This is my long way of saying that this game is way too long, and I will now get onto the actual purpose and suggestion of this post.

From this game... I am kind of assuming that some of the returning players might stay for a few games. I'm also thinking that some of the new players will too. Basically, I'm guessing that some of the 65(ish, I'm guessing) players that came here for game 100 might actually stick around for a little while.

Now, if we take into consideration that a lot of the games lately have had about 28-35 players... this kind of leads to games being longer.

In theory, long games are fun. They provide a lot of chances for rabbits to get the wolves. They also provide a challenge to the wolves to live that long. But lets be honest here, after a certain point players get bored/get busy/get inactive/do something else/stop caring... and the game just feels like it drags and lurches on when this happens.

What I'm suggesting is that some sort of action be taken or guideline created to prevent these really long games from happening.

Maybe a player limit? Maybe a round limit?

Bottom Line: This game can be fun, but an individual game should not last for an extremely long time. I think there should be some sort of way of keeping games within a reasonable time length.

The end.

[Deleted]

I think most of the players has similar concerns. I sign myself under it... no more no less.

[Nazo S⸸aRo]

A player limit would make a great measure to keep the games interesting until the end.

Personally I would suggest the Game Masters to be a little stricter as far as the inactivity limit is conserned. For example inactive players could be removed from the game in one round for a certain period of time, until we see some improvement of the players' activity in the game. Generally speaking.
Inactive players are making the games longer at some extend and so they can be used in the wolves' favor most of the time.
I completely support what Trinity said above and I would be very sad to notice any misunderstandings coming from anyone. The Game Masters have been doing a great job up until now. I think expressing my thoughts on this matter could make the games even better at some point.

[Kuro]

Yeah, it's a good point. Games shouldn’t drag very long because other people might want to get their chance as well.

I'm not sure how many players will join the next game and I'm not exactly sure what to do if there will be 40+ players.

There was actually a limit before: of 25 payers per game (back when we had games with 2 wolves).

Theoretically we could have 4 wolves for a 40+ game. But… I’m not really sure we’ll get there? I guess we’ll see.

Removing inactive players is also a must, but Nazo I don’t think removing someone for being inactive one round is a good idea. Maybe instead of 2 rounds and 2 hangings as we have now we should make it 2 rounds and 1 hanging.

I think a 5 or 6 round game is fine. Longer games usually happen when one wolf is caught early and people die more slowly. Maybe if there’s a risk of a game lasting too long we could continue with 2 kills and 2 hangings per round even if there is still just one wolf left?

That way, we could keep the game balanced?

Just for reference:

SPOILER: Click to show

Sign-ups: 1 day
First move by the wolves: 2 days
Round 1: 3 days
Hanging 1: 4 days
Round 2: 5 days
Hanging 2: 6 days
Round 3: 7 days
Hanging 3: 8 days
Round 4: 9 days
Hanging 4: 10 days
Round 5: 11 days
Hanging 5: 12 days
Round 6: 13 days
Hanging 6: 14 days

…assuming there are no delays.

[obidara]

I know I'm new, but isn't there a way to have two games running, each with a player limit so that way we could have more people getting experience as well as a bigger opportunity to play, because a two month game really discourages new players because they may feel like they will never have the opportunity to play, so they stop checking on the posts and eventually forget about the game in all. That's just my suggestion, there are two gms i am aware of, so running two games should be easy x.o i hope this helps, and hope kuro takes this into consideration

[Kuro]

Yeah... sorry, I’ve thought about parallel games and I’m not really willing to go with it. At least not as a permanent thing.

It’s just me and Santa right now and I’m kind of enjoying the break between my GMings. And I’m sure Santa will be enjoying hers after this game.

A game for only new players wouldn’t probably have a lot of (active) players. Also, do you forbid the other players from joining? If you don’t then we’d probably have too many players and this game will overlap with the main one.

The thing is… if we do a parallel game now we'd have to do one everytime someone asks.

Plus, a parallel game would present some complications:
Do you only accept players who are not in the other game?
What about dead players?
What if X wants to play with Y but Z doesn’t want to play with XY?
Etc, etc.

Unless we have about 60 players or something joining a game I don’t think I’m willing to do parallel games.

By the way Obidara are you on our Skype group? Sometimes people play there a mini-game or 2 if they are bored.

[obidara]

I'm not with the Skype group but i would love to, also with the two games, have a certain amount of people join, i understand the break from gming how does one achieve gm title, and there would be a certain thread with a list of dead players, so the dead couldn't join in a secondary game, there would be a list of alive players for each game so there would be no switching from this game to the other. But i understand the lack of gms right now so it's just a suggestion for the future. Please pm me the Skype group i would love to play some mini games you're awesome kuro cx

[Deleted]

Nov 18, 2013 16:44:57 GMT -5 Kuro said:

Theoretically we could have 4 wolves for a 40+ game. But… I’m not really sure we’ll get there? I guess we’ll see.

I hope we won’t. Balance in quantity is not equal to the balance in quality. Even in 35 player games we were ending up with around 2-3 inactives and 4-5 extreme lurkers… or more…it is hardly a fair deal for the third wolf. Soo… yeahh…

Nov 18, 2013 16:44:57 GMT -5 Kuro said:

Removing inactive players is also a must, but Nazo I don’t think removing someone for being inactive one round is a good idea. Maybe instead of 2 rounds and 2 hangings as we have now we should make it 2 rounds and 1 hanging.

I think one round+ one hanging could be enough… I mean it is 48 hours. Ok… I have an idea that I would like to dump here. Maybe instead of removing players for activity just replace them with other active ones? Like lets say that we have a 35-40 player game limit… in case a player stays inactive for one round the supplementary sign ups could be open in the hanging period. In case the player stays inactive for the hanging he/she could be replaced with one of the people who decided to sing in for his position? In case the removed inactive was a wolf then the new player becomes a wolf… in case he was a rabbit the removed player becomes a rabbit. In case the new player becomes inactive later on and the original becomes active… we could switch them around again?

It could also solve the imbalance that happens when a wolf is removed for inactivity. I mean… a new wolf shouldn’t be picked from the living players in this situation….

[obidara]

I like it but that would be oddly confusing in my opinion x.o

[Blood stained bunny]

Right... It could make it more difficult to catch the wolves since the people your assessing are always changing. Plus that wouldn't really help keep the games short.

[Deleted]

Not really. It would actually make it more fair for the rabbits. Since the replacer of an inactive wolf would become a wolf then we could prosecute him/her based on the actions of the player he/she replaced.

As it is now... when an inactive wolf is being removed another wolf is randomly selected from rabbits that are currently playing. Means... as it is now... the wolfs are also changing but all info that we had on the old wolf becomes useless... The mechanic I proposed helps to prevent that actually.

Yeah... on its own the inactive exchange strategy doesn't make the games shorter... The player limit could be there to make sure they dunn last too long... and the exchange strategy would be an extra chance for active players to hop in even if they were late for sing ups. It doesn't extend to game above the boundaries placed by the player limit... soo yup.

[Santa †]

I think keeping players within the 3 wolf range should help with this. Four wolves+ are totally plausible, especially with the new polls, but then it makes things harder on the players to have to comb through all of the players in such a short time. If 4+ wolves were used, we'd probably need to lengthen the rounds to accommodate this [or go through another learning curve for the rabbits, which is not particularly encouraging].

Usually, the player/wolf ratio does set some form of round cap; it's the actions of wolf catching that lengthen the game. I had been shown this was 11 players per wolf, so that's ~6 rounds for even a "full" game with 43 players, 3 wolves, should no wolf catches happen and inactive aren't factored in. We can obviously cap things lower to keep it ~5. Setting an actual round limit, short of when they lag on too long due to mismanagement, doesn't really seem fair to those who are still playing. [I'm not totally sure how I feel about maintaining the kill pace, even though the wolves were captured; so I'll revisit this after I've thought on it more.]

I'm not horribly opposed to split games if the player pool grows too large but yeah, totally seconding Kuroro here. Breaks between games are lovely and parallel or even staggered games would possibly cause a bunch of problems [even if, hypothetically, one GM were to manage both.] If anything we'd need to hammer out specific circumstances for which to host parallel games and such.


…..Inactives. I have really mixed feelings on their removal because yes, inactives bad, but they do help lengthen the game for those who are trying. I think the 2 round/ 2 hangings or 2 round/ 1 hanging are the best ratios so far for handling them. 1 round, 1 hanging can make things drop too quickly, and honestly some folks do get busy/forget about the site for a couple days sometimes [especially if they aren't used to playing the games].

I'm kind of also opposed to the whole inactive stand-in lists thing. Inactive players being removed can help keep the game from drawing too long and stagnant; new players coming in could just become a new mystery from everyone when there's already enough on the table to analyze everyone still in the game. Those who start are building a profile; removing and adding profiles is problematic just because of someone being inactive. Either way, information is becoming invalidated and changed.

An inactive wolf replacement has happened very sparingly, maybe thrice max to my knowledge? Generally, the replacement is at the GM's discretion. Personally, past round 3 or so, I most likely would not replace a wolf, simply remove them. Let's take both methods [and if I'm misunderstanding the mechanic you're suggesting, please correct me]. Let's say it's round three and the wolf is being replaced. Option A will be the stand in from the inactive list, Option B will be the stand in from the current players. Both do come with the prospect of a change in kill profile, there's really no avoiding that; the old information is outdated and now faulty/useless. Option A would need to be without a real notice, otherwise the players would be outright lynched upon replacement. The change in kill profile would probably take 2+ rounds to notice solidly. Option B usually comes with some caveat for the players to alert them to the change, but it can also be done in a similar manner without notification. Option A is introducing another player into the game; this player may or may not already have past experience to be compared against so this profile has a chance to be completely new. Option B may result in a profile change in one of the existing players; there would be at least one round of reference to draw on regardless of the player status. Option A preserves the kill/hang proportions; Option B will hasten the game a touch, as the inactive will be removed without replacement, and a kill will occur. It can easily be modified so that the new wolf "kills" the inactive wolf, but then the rabbits would not have an accurate kill to profile against until the next round. This would really be up to the GM and which they feel is most fair. Also for the replacing player: Option A may lead them to be hanged based on someone's actions who are not their own. Admittedly, they should be aware about this prior to putting their name on the list, but I still kinda feel bad. Option B, they still bear their own profile. Any change in that is no one's fault but their own.

[Deleted]

I could pretty much argue against all of those arguments. If you want to hear meh reply feel free to skype me. I gave it some thoughts and I am convicted that it is more impartial then what we have now. Picking the replacer wolfs from the living rabbits is not a fair deal… It is kinda obvious that it tips the balance to the wolfs. Fact that it occurs only in the first three rounds doesn’t change that… plus assuming that we are aiming at 6 round game… 3 rounds make a half of it. Welp… thought that this would be a compromise between just kicking them inactive wolfs … without a replacement and the current style… but it is up to the GM to decide… soo no point in arguing. oO

[Kuro]

We could experiment with this next time we have an inactive player. See how it goes.

[Deleted]

Thx. :3 I hope it will go well.