Board Thread:Role Ideas (Mafia)/@comment-37648484-20181207145748/@comment-28112409-20181208152108

The role's concept is garbage and just doesn't work for the Mafia.

One integral concept within the Mafia as a whole is the fact that they all know who each other are and can actually plan things together, something Town doesn't possess from the get-go. To throw in a twist where the Incognito is completely disconnected from the Mafia, while it may seem interesting, can rival Framer for the #1 useless Mafia role.

You mention something about Incognito having advantages such as protecting the Mafia or a Town Investigative that can support them while saying that it'll eventually find the Mafia one way or another. Not knowing who the mafia are is not the only downside, and even then, you underestimate how detrimental that one downside is.

Unless your Mafia have a Consigliere, it is very unlikely for the Mafia to just find each other. Even if they do somehow someway using magical methods end up finding each other, they will be forced to use whispers. Forcing mafia to whisper in the day rather than use night chat? That would raise suspicion within the Town. Not only that, but if they do whisper, one mafia's death will link them to whoever they were whispering. The mafia role manages to somehow become negative utility because it forces the Mafia to chat in the day. Night chat is a core part of the Mafia and throwing it out the window for one specific niche is a terrible choice the other Mafia cannot do anything about once they get it.

Now about that specific niche, it's mostly crap. The investigative roles are 100% useless since you won't be finding the mafia early game without getting yourself at heavy risk for death or getting lynched. By the time you do find the mafia, numbers are already low and information has already been spilled enough to shut down most of the plays you can make with the information you gained. Town Investigative roles end up being worthless.

Town Protectives can be just as horrid. There's no point of being Doctor and healing the Mafia if you don't even know who the mafia are. You could end up healing Town and supporting your enemies instead, which is even worse negative utility.

Bodyguard is honestly not that much better, the best you can do is kill an NK or maybe a vig. However, if you think about it, killing an NK and killing yourself doesn't help Mafia win most of the time, it brings them closer to a loss. NKs are necessary for the mafia because they keep the KPN (Kills Per Night) high, which helps thin down the numbers of the Town. If you kill an NK, not only are you getting rid of a role that can help you dethrone the Town from their majority that they always start with, but you also sacrificed a member of the Mafia to do that. Who ends up winning? The Town, who lost no townies at all and 2 evils got killed for them. Considering the fact that Town is Mafia's main enemy, this is not a good outcome for the Mafia.

You can't even be a Town Killer, so all of that is worthless. Town Supports though, they're not that better. Retributionist can only revive Townies, so the role doesn't help Mafia. Medium gets information from the dead Town but most of said information is worthless because it doesn't help Mafia and you can't do anything with that information. You can't communicate with dead Mafia to know who the other Mafia members are either because the dead Mafia have no idea or way to prove that you really are the Incognito, and they are not giving away the names of all their mafia to someone who could be an actual Medium for the town. Being Escort is useless, because Consort is simply better. The only one that is of real use is the Transporter who can actually sabotage the Town.

But tough luck kiddo because guess what? The given role is decided by RNG. There are so many useless roles an Incognito can be and only 1 truly useful role that the player can take over, but that only spells "waste of space" and "waste of RM slot" because lo and behold, RNGesus gets to take the wheel and you have a high chance of being absolutely useless to your Mafia.

The fact that the Mafia can kill one of their own accidentally instead of having a confirmed ally on their side doesn't improve the situation in all honesty. Mafia already has to be careful in their targeting because of roles like Spy, Lookout, Bodyguard and others. Adding collateral damage and friendly fire along with all the aforementioned issues dethrones Framer from being the most useless Mafia role in the game and puts Incognito up there instead.

Like I started the reply with, the concept is worthless to the Mafia and brings a lot more harm/waste of space than good. Framer is at least a waste of space at most, it doesn't go out and cause negative utility. The fact that this role is worse than Framer is a testament to how terribly it would go if Incognito was implemented.

If you want to make a role that can disguise or blend in better with the Town, make a role that doesn't throw Mafia Chat out the window and has a real potential for skillful play instead of a blindfolded lottery simulator.