Post by MetaFrosty on Mar 28, 2015 11:25:19 GMT
I'm making this thread so we can have a discussion about the modes and how they can be improved. The primary case is Umineko mode, which I may just scrap if nothing good can be decided on because I'm really at a loss over how to fix it.
One thing I'm dissatisfied with in the newer modes is the lack of the murder mystery aspect. While some of the modes retain this to an extent, some drop it entirely and some that do have it have roles with high visibility, so there's no sense of "whodunnit".
I don't know if it's possible to capture that with all of the modes while staying true to the source material, but it's something to consider.
Anyway let's look at the modes and my thoughts on them. Leaving out Tsukihime because I'm not overly familiar with it.
Normal mode
Normal mode is perfect, in my opinion. It has several variants for a number of different dynamics. I think any further changes to this mode would come off as gimmicky.
Death Note mode
I gave Death Note the detective role to counter the age-old problem of Kira and Eyes getting together easily while the ordinary students couldn't do anything about it without meta-gaming. Additionally, this meant that the detective could also trick the Eyes into thinking they were Kira, making it less safe to go about obvious methods of finding Kira.
Plus the announcement informs students to withhold their names and wallets offer a source of names for Kira that isn't the Eyes or the office.
Yet despite this, the mode still holds its reputation of "Meta note". Why is this, and what could be done to fix that?
Umineko mode
The real offender. Umineko is messy because it started off as just recreating Witch mode from Pyrce, as that was a favorite back then. Red and Blue truth were easy to add in but weren't intended to play a serious role in the mode's gameplay.
The idea is simply for the witch to kill all the other players, like a regular killer. The catch is that their magic can only be used in front of a limited number of people, thanks to the anti-magic toxin.
Umineko got kind of sidelined for other modes and the witch ended up with only a single magic attack, one that was meant to be defensive at that. The detective was added later so logic battles could be a thing, but they weren't intended to be the main focus.
They're popular, yes, but they leave all the normal students out of the RP.
Let's consider this. The premise is that the school is a catbox, so the students are pieces on the witch's gameboard. Naturally it doesn't make sense for the pieces to engage in logic battles with witches, but this leaves non-roles out of things and is counteractive to being enjoyable. So it makes sense that logic battles shouldn't be the main focus of the mode.
Next, the witch represents a human culprit. Although those watching the catbox will see a witch committing the crimes, the "truth" is that it was a human committing crimes with an ordinary method. Somebody who witnesses magic and goes on to tell the other students is simply a liar because the magic "doesn't really happen", if you get what I mean.
This is why the detective is a thing. They're around to ensure that everything the witch does with their magic could also be accomplished through human methods. Creating actual locked room mysteries in a game like this is a bit much to hope for, so the detective's role works best as a mediator of sorts. It's not like all of the murders in Umineko were actually locked room mysteries anyway, so it wouldn't be unfaithful to discard that aspect.
Perhaps the Witch and Detective could have their own meta-world to discuss things privately at any time, without having to meet up. For the relevant roles, this could be represented by their icons appearing in the corner of the screen, similarly to how they appear in the stats window for watchers. To talk with each other, they'd use a "Meta-chat" verb. This wouldn't be visible to players, but watchers would be able to see it so they could follow the game.
The anti-magic toxins currently works on a time basis. The more hours pass, the more people magic can be performed in front of. This occurs even if the witch is not killing anybody, which doesn't make much sense. The idea is that as the situation grows worse, the more people will believe in magic but if nobody is dying it's not likely that anything would change.
This system could use an overhaul. For one thing it should be based on the killcount of the witch, but for another, not all players should contribute the same to the anti-magic toxin, as some would be more or less likely to believe. This could be randomly generated but that might not fit with someone's roleplay. On the other hand, if it's a silent variable maybe it doesn't matter.
Anyway, point is that it should start off with the witch being unable to use magic in front of more than one person, or maybe not even that if the person in question has a very high anti-magic toxin.
The witch should gain more offensive powers too. The butterfly cloud is a defense oriented spell, making it dangerous to get close to the witch, but as far as killing goes, it's more efficient to attack with a weapon like normal. Of possible powers, we have the Seven Stakes, Goats, shoulder towers, barriers, etc. Anything that Beatrice does in the visual novel. Ideally these should have unique properties, like how the stakes would bounce off of walls until they hit a target.
The detective should probably be able to do more too, but I'm not sure what. Maybe something to do with dead players, I'm not sure.
In any case, for Umineko mode to work well, it can't rely on group RP. Giving purple or blue truths to ordinary players would not work out, I don't think. It'd be too easy to grief. I should say that umineko roles should be switched off by default, but by the same merits that might be better for all roles.
Shiki mode
Shiki mode recently got its overhaul but I feel like little changed in RP dynamics. The issue before was that it was too safe to reveal your identity as a shiki, because there was no opposition to it. The Hunter role offers this, so it should make shiki more cautious in revealing themselves.
Of course that won't stop everyone, especially because the shiki group is three strong. Perhaps the hunter could use additional support to discourage revealing your identity as a shiki, as well as making the jinrou and adoptive human roles randomly optional too.
With this the dynamics of the mode could shift around from round to round depending on how many players are on each side. If the shiki leader is all alone against three hunters, recruiting more shiki becomes a very dangerous but rewarding matter.
Basically, this encourages shiki to actually play their roles as antagonists and discourages people from willingly being converted for the fun of it.
Madoka mode
Madoka mode has a few updates already planned. I've kept them secret up until now but I don't know when they'll actually get added so here's what we've got.
-Other witches added besides just Charlotte (Getrude, Elsa and Oktavia). Though it wasn't something planned, these other witches could have different properties besides just appearance, though I'm not sure what.
-Upon death, the original Magi spawns Walpurgis Night. After appearing to all of the players, this boss witch vanishes for a few hours, returning at 5AM at the latest to unleash havoc on the remaining players.
-A skill button to fire projectile weapons instead of clicking the verb.
These are just new features though, not an overhaul. Let's consider what can be improved then.
First, Kyubey. The incubator role is a bit direction-less. The ultimate goal is for Kyubey to create as many witches as he can but the role message doesn't really make this too clear.
This could be aided by a clear win state for him. I would give the incubator a bar to fill up with the grief that the magi give off. The amount required to fill it would be dependent on the number of potential magi in the round (so in a round with only the original magi, they could still fill it so long as that magi succumbs to grief).
Next, if the first witch is defeated with no-one else dying, things grind to a halt and the round is often ended there. Ultimately it's the Incubator's job to cause conflict and keep things going but the magi could do with a reason to fight amongst themselves, or even with the normal students.
I don't really know what, but ideally I would like to give some legitimate reasons for stealing soul gems because as it is, people just bitch about griefing whenever it happens making the whole mechanic pointless.
Wishes in contracts could be a thing to consider but again, I don't really know what. Over to you.
(I maintain that only one gender should be contract-able at a time though, because if every player can form a contract then there's potentially no "normal" students to contrast against the magi. However, maybe the role could be weighted towards whichever gender is better represented in the round)
Psycho Pass mode
With the recent Season 2, Psycho Pass has gained new material to work with. Most notably an alternate antagonist role that functions like Kirito, meaning that dominators would not recognize them as a person and they would be able to lower somebody's crime coeffecient. In the anime, Kirito is able to disguise themselves with holograms, which could also play a part in the mode.
This role would be able to function alongside the outcast, or replace it for the round. Giving essentially three or four different variants to the mode depending on which one is the true culprit.
The time limit on dominators exists so that the police can't just go around scanning everyone in the round within the first few minutes, but it isn't an ideal solution.
The inspector and enforcer could use madoka-esque alternate outfits and spawn at the entrance, rather than in classrooms. Maybe even alias changes too. Basically they should be easily identified.
Destroy Decomposer mode has a three-use limit in the second season of the anime and needs time to recharge. This would carry over into the mode pretty easily.
Not really sure what else to do with this mode though.
So yeah, go nuts.
One thing I'm dissatisfied with in the newer modes is the lack of the murder mystery aspect. While some of the modes retain this to an extent, some drop it entirely and some that do have it have roles with high visibility, so there's no sense of "whodunnit".
I don't know if it's possible to capture that with all of the modes while staying true to the source material, but it's something to consider.
Anyway let's look at the modes and my thoughts on them. Leaving out Tsukihime because I'm not overly familiar with it.
Normal mode
Normal mode is perfect, in my opinion. It has several variants for a number of different dynamics. I think any further changes to this mode would come off as gimmicky.
Death Note mode
I gave Death Note the detective role to counter the age-old problem of Kira and Eyes getting together easily while the ordinary students couldn't do anything about it without meta-gaming. Additionally, this meant that the detective could also trick the Eyes into thinking they were Kira, making it less safe to go about obvious methods of finding Kira.
Plus the announcement informs students to withhold their names and wallets offer a source of names for Kira that isn't the Eyes or the office.
Yet despite this, the mode still holds its reputation of "Meta note". Why is this, and what could be done to fix that?
Umineko mode
The real offender. Umineko is messy because it started off as just recreating Witch mode from Pyrce, as that was a favorite back then. Red and Blue truth were easy to add in but weren't intended to play a serious role in the mode's gameplay.
The idea is simply for the witch to kill all the other players, like a regular killer. The catch is that their magic can only be used in front of a limited number of people, thanks to the anti-magic toxin.
Umineko got kind of sidelined for other modes and the witch ended up with only a single magic attack, one that was meant to be defensive at that. The detective was added later so logic battles could be a thing, but they weren't intended to be the main focus.
They're popular, yes, but they leave all the normal students out of the RP.
Let's consider this. The premise is that the school is a catbox, so the students are pieces on the witch's gameboard. Naturally it doesn't make sense for the pieces to engage in logic battles with witches, but this leaves non-roles out of things and is counteractive to being enjoyable. So it makes sense that logic battles shouldn't be the main focus of the mode.
Next, the witch represents a human culprit. Although those watching the catbox will see a witch committing the crimes, the "truth" is that it was a human committing crimes with an ordinary method. Somebody who witnesses magic and goes on to tell the other students is simply a liar because the magic "doesn't really happen", if you get what I mean.
This is why the detective is a thing. They're around to ensure that everything the witch does with their magic could also be accomplished through human methods. Creating actual locked room mysteries in a game like this is a bit much to hope for, so the detective's role works best as a mediator of sorts. It's not like all of the murders in Umineko were actually locked room mysteries anyway, so it wouldn't be unfaithful to discard that aspect.
Perhaps the Witch and Detective could have their own meta-world to discuss things privately at any time, without having to meet up. For the relevant roles, this could be represented by their icons appearing in the corner of the screen, similarly to how they appear in the stats window for watchers. To talk with each other, they'd use a "Meta-chat" verb. This wouldn't be visible to players, but watchers would be able to see it so they could follow the game.
The anti-magic toxins currently works on a time basis. The more hours pass, the more people magic can be performed in front of. This occurs even if the witch is not killing anybody, which doesn't make much sense. The idea is that as the situation grows worse, the more people will believe in magic but if nobody is dying it's not likely that anything would change.
This system could use an overhaul. For one thing it should be based on the killcount of the witch, but for another, not all players should contribute the same to the anti-magic toxin, as some would be more or less likely to believe. This could be randomly generated but that might not fit with someone's roleplay. On the other hand, if it's a silent variable maybe it doesn't matter.
Anyway, point is that it should start off with the witch being unable to use magic in front of more than one person, or maybe not even that if the person in question has a very high anti-magic toxin.
The witch should gain more offensive powers too. The butterfly cloud is a defense oriented spell, making it dangerous to get close to the witch, but as far as killing goes, it's more efficient to attack with a weapon like normal. Of possible powers, we have the Seven Stakes, Goats, shoulder towers, barriers, etc. Anything that Beatrice does in the visual novel. Ideally these should have unique properties, like how the stakes would bounce off of walls until they hit a target.
The detective should probably be able to do more too, but I'm not sure what. Maybe something to do with dead players, I'm not sure.
In any case, for Umineko mode to work well, it can't rely on group RP. Giving purple or blue truths to ordinary players would not work out, I don't think. It'd be too easy to grief. I should say that umineko roles should be switched off by default, but by the same merits that might be better for all roles.
Shiki mode
Shiki mode recently got its overhaul but I feel like little changed in RP dynamics. The issue before was that it was too safe to reveal your identity as a shiki, because there was no opposition to it. The Hunter role offers this, so it should make shiki more cautious in revealing themselves.
Of course that won't stop everyone, especially because the shiki group is three strong. Perhaps the hunter could use additional support to discourage revealing your identity as a shiki, as well as making the jinrou and adoptive human roles randomly optional too.
With this the dynamics of the mode could shift around from round to round depending on how many players are on each side. If the shiki leader is all alone against three hunters, recruiting more shiki becomes a very dangerous but rewarding matter.
Basically, this encourages shiki to actually play their roles as antagonists and discourages people from willingly being converted for the fun of it.
Madoka mode
Madoka mode has a few updates already planned. I've kept them secret up until now but I don't know when they'll actually get added so here's what we've got.
-Other witches added besides just Charlotte (Getrude, Elsa and Oktavia). Though it wasn't something planned, these other witches could have different properties besides just appearance, though I'm not sure what.
-Upon death, the original Magi spawns Walpurgis Night. After appearing to all of the players, this boss witch vanishes for a few hours, returning at 5AM at the latest to unleash havoc on the remaining players.
-A skill button to fire projectile weapons instead of clicking the verb.
These are just new features though, not an overhaul. Let's consider what can be improved then.
First, Kyubey. The incubator role is a bit direction-less. The ultimate goal is for Kyubey to create as many witches as he can but the role message doesn't really make this too clear.
This could be aided by a clear win state for him. I would give the incubator a bar to fill up with the grief that the magi give off. The amount required to fill it would be dependent on the number of potential magi in the round (so in a round with only the original magi, they could still fill it so long as that magi succumbs to grief).
Next, if the first witch is defeated with no-one else dying, things grind to a halt and the round is often ended there. Ultimately it's the Incubator's job to cause conflict and keep things going but the magi could do with a reason to fight amongst themselves, or even with the normal students.
I don't really know what, but ideally I would like to give some legitimate reasons for stealing soul gems because as it is, people just bitch about griefing whenever it happens making the whole mechanic pointless.
Wishes in contracts could be a thing to consider but again, I don't really know what. Over to you.
(I maintain that only one gender should be contract-able at a time though, because if every player can form a contract then there's potentially no "normal" students to contrast against the magi. However, maybe the role could be weighted towards whichever gender is better represented in the round)
Psycho Pass mode
With the recent Season 2, Psycho Pass has gained new material to work with. Most notably an alternate antagonist role that functions like Kirito, meaning that dominators would not recognize them as a person and they would be able to lower somebody's crime coeffecient. In the anime, Kirito is able to disguise themselves with holograms, which could also play a part in the mode.
This role would be able to function alongside the outcast, or replace it for the round. Giving essentially three or four different variants to the mode depending on which one is the true culprit.
The time limit on dominators exists so that the police can't just go around scanning everyone in the round within the first few minutes, but it isn't an ideal solution.
The inspector and enforcer could use madoka-esque alternate outfits and spawn at the entrance, rather than in classrooms. Maybe even alias changes too. Basically they should be easily identified.
Destroy Decomposer mode has a three-use limit in the second season of the anime and needs time to recharge. This would carry over into the mode pretty easily.
Not really sure what else to do with this mode though.
So yeah, go nuts.
