Board Thread:Off-Topic Posts/@comment-39067078-20190814024731/@comment-35356104-20190814062945

RDN? You mean RedDeathNick? Me trapped in the dungeon for months, probably don't know what's happening here. It would be nice to know RDN by person.

Btw, I'm here because the title somehow caught my attention :P Somebody just found enlightenment in role reviewing. Your formatting is something I couldn't. IT IS MAH DEAD SPACE. My paragraphing sucks like hell too XD Pretty cool thing to start with.

But... Not to condemn anything, just a bit of disagreement, and I may be wrong. It just that the subjective matter weighs more than I expect. There aren't any concrete yardstick to measure cleverness, uniqueness & fun, which means 3 out of 5 criteria are more about way of looking & feeling. Someone says Retri is boring because it basically click only once in a game, but some might say Retri is fun because they find it amusing when people are so surprised of unexpected ressurection. PMer is criticized to be an unoriginal mashup of Doc, Vigi & Consig, but personally I find it quite special as there's no role being jack-of-all-trade as PMer does.

Human are lookism, I don't deny packaging of a role is important especially for marketing purpose, but once people sees it all within the content, looks serve little to no function eventually. At my first sight, Doctor looks so-so as it is everywhere a mediocre role in every single Mafia game, but I ended up finding Doc one of my favourite role among those fancy but not-that-balanced roles. Negative utility Crusader, don't-know-what-it-does Medium... Transporter? Meh. AFK machine & meatshield for GF, Mafioso. These roles are unique and exclusive to ToS, uncommonly designed among Mafia game. But they really serve purposes? Not really or sometimes, but those common classic roles like Doc, Bg, Sheriff, Inves, Esc/Cons, GF, SK are consistently supporting the flow of the game with very solid efficiency. Up to the current state, I don't really see people complain Doct or BG for being too mainstream, but they are praised to be the most balanced healthy role.

I try to use the review scheme for existing role.

Psyc: Creativity 10/10, Originality 10/10, Mechanic 10/10, Duality 6/10, Fun 10/10.

It has good synergism within its own mechanic, and interacts well with outer attribute. It is absolutely a whole innovative product to see. It's mechanic is healthily incline to Town by setting, and considerate of a lot of circumstances. A typical TI that check evil & good simultaneously. Because of the randomize style of investigation, things come out unexpectedly in an unorganized fashion. The surprise element can be excited to play with.

Sheriff: Creativity 10/10, Originality 2/10, Mechanic 10/10, Duality 6/10, Fun 8/10.

Good incorporation. Not so original, every Mafia game has it. Very balanced. Able to check good & evil. Not much fun until you find evil, but it can still be rewarding as you have clearer vision of overall progressively.

Tracker: Creativity 10/10, Originality 4/10, Mechanic 10/10, Duality 7/10, Fun 6/10.

Cleverly integrates visiting mechanic with this role, flawless incorporation. Being a reverse of LO, but since LO is pretty special to ToS, Tracker scores a little higher. Balanced. Generic TI, unexploitable finding, but there's ambiguity in finding. See who's visiting who, nothing exciting until witnesses a kill.

Psyc scores 46, Sheriff 36 & Tracker 37. Compare the result with common game knowledge we know, Psyc is never superior than Sheriff & Tracker. When we refer to the criteria, a lot of aspects were left omitted. These roles by default are pretty balanced, but consistency of producing good quality of outcome is different. Sheriff is the role that takes all initiative, Tracker is a semi-passive role that requires action of outer manipulator, while Psyc is all automated (RNG). By the mean of mechanic, they are on the same stage, but when the controller is different, the rate they creates different level of positive impact is different. Sheriff's independence can always get accurate result, and Tracker needs its target to visit to see things, so its result isn't always on the same degree of helpfulness, while Psyc's fully random result has no basis of persistency of quality. That is, firstly, the consistency aspects left out.

Secondly, versatility isn't as important as mastering their core ability. Sheriff and Psyc both investigate good & evil, so their versatility by right is in the same league. But the pattern they investigate is different, and that's where productivity comes in play. Sheriff up to D7 has easily 6 targets confirmed their affiliation by itself, while Psyc up to D7 couldn't exactly tell who is good or bad without intense deduction carry out assisted by outer sources. Productivity or efficiency of a role should be measured by compare and contrast to know whether the created role is worth a substitution of roles within the alignment to prevent swingyness. While there's alignment boundary to restrict their versatility, I don't think the creator will do much further than how the role should be.

And... I don't really feel comfortable with the originality thing. Taking inspiration from another source isn't a thing to be judged when it is done with healthy and good purpose. For creaitivity aspect, as long as the role isn't complicated, not much can be valued about, cause it don't cause any conflict for us to determine its cleverness. Like, when there's no problem, we wouldn't know how is their problem-solving ability, right?

I think your flavours part is good. It helps to analyse role in detail in all matters, especially the hinting part. It isn't hard to judge a role, but to fix it, I don't think I could bring myself to do it. My creativity went dry XD

Thanks for reading :P Good luck, and have a nice day~