I was going to drag this lie through to obtain a vengeful kill shot on someone, but on further reflection I actually don't want to unnecessarily prolong things and thus get in the way of the next main.
I concede defeat. I am Ramirez. I am the Serial Killer.
For the threads amusement, I'll explain where my master plan went wrong. Essentially, Friday night, I was trying to get some sleep early because I was totally destroyed and had to wake up at 5 AM. In my lethargy, I failed to capitalize on Void Slayer's nonsense properly. A) I should have killed Vagrant Winds, not Egos. In my lethargy, I forgot to undo my Deluxe Kit action on 38th Doe. The Deluxe Kit action was there originally because I failed to realize the real implications of the 7/9 Mafia imbalance split bearing false on Ashan. I mistakenly assumed Mr.T was making shit up altogether and that it was an even 9/9 split. I thought the mafia hunt was going to go on a little longer. I didn't consider that Mr.T was telling the truth, but presenting the sides falsely.
Well, I figured that even though you had sufficiently confused 38thDoe, I'm pretty sure one of the other players who has not yet posted wouldn't have been so convinced.
Give me an hour to finish writing the final narration (I was already writing a little bit of it in expectation of Fiaryn getting voted out) and checking over my post-mortem notes, and I'll get the game ready for the wrapup.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
VW and I were talking about you being a SK after we got jdark. I'm a bit naive.
Oh yeah. My last ditch deception TODAY was totally just a defiance move I had no expectation of working. I was shocked I even managed to make 38th Doe unsure of himself.
I pretty much knew I was bonered after I fully processed what happened when jdark died. Everything after that was "why not" improv.
I was thinking along the lines of Blah, that 38th was something!
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
So would you guys have voted me out then? I was trying to come up with a way to have the three of us die to cover all the bases and still get a village victory.
So would you guys have voted me out then? I was trying to come up with a way to have the three of us die to cover all the bases and still get a village victory.
I wouldn't of, I forgot to vote yesterday I think, but I wouldn't of voted anyone out unless we all thought it was going to end the game. (I was suspicious of all the speed wax I had put on Fiaryn which is why I told you about it)
Fiaryn was so close, just a little more and he would have been able to call down the Rains of Destruction. Humanity was corrupt, and civilization needed to once again be reset. When the people of Phalladia received the power of flight, the power only caused conflict and pain; suffering that needed to be ended by cleansing the slate anew. Though Fiaryn was sent down by the Sylvites to try and make sure that the newfound power of flight was not abused, what he did not realize was that he too had a part in the fighting. Where there were originally minor disagreements between the Bravians and Ashans over territory, a war flared up from the theft of experimental technologies. The normally free Air Pirates were brought into conflict not only between themselves, but with the great nations who blamed piracy for contributing to their ails. But Fiaryn did not seem to realize his own role in the war, only that others had continued to battle. The Sailor's Guild was unable to bring in the Sylvite peacefully, and as Fiaryn sank to the darkness far below the land, he never gave up his sorrow that humanity would destroy themselves irreparably.
But the Silvite elders continued watching from above, and did not call down the Rains. They saw that humanity would be able to reconcile and that they would learn to use their power responsibly. Certainly, there would always be conflicts, but peace would also come after misunderstandings' end. Though it would take some time, the Bravian Empire and Kingdom of Ashan would eventually find understanding and help each other rebuild. And in the days after Fiaryn's death, the Blue Rogues and Black Pirates made peace with each other, even bringing some Black Rogues to the Blue Rogues' viewpoint. Throughout Phalladia, banners aligned with the Blue Rogues flew freely. The age of discovery and exploration flourished once more.
Eliminated Players
Fiaryn - Silvite Civilization
Surviving Players
38thDoe - Blue Rogues Alegis - Black Pirates Kaplar - Blue Rogues Retaba - Free Mercenaries vagrant_winds - Blue Rogues
The Blue Rogues have achieved victory for eliminating all hostile foes and outnumbering the Black Pirates! Retaba has achieved victory for surviving to the end of the game!
Running a game based off of Skies of Arcadia was something I had in mind for quite a while, and after completing Elementalist, my previous personal stat page game, I began to put work into getting Skies of Phalladia ready for play. I knew I wanted to make it a personal pages game, since it had so much opportunity with ship building to make it an interesting experience. The original design of the game included a map divided into regions through which players could travel and explore, but this was scrapped later on as it would have spread players out a bit too much. Instead, exploration and trade were abstracted as daily actions while retaining their properties of allowing players to earn money without conflict.
Based off of my experience from previous battle system games, I decided to utilize factions on top of the traditional village versus mafia approach. Since the general trend of battle games was leading towards softnetworking and organization of small, focused attack parties, I felt that having a factional system would provide for an interesting bit of intrigue. Instead of straightforwardly going towards a single goal, players would need to balance multiple concerns when moving towards victory. I feel like the 'hybrid' game works well in a battle game, since each player actually has something they can try to do. In most games, there may be a bit of a feeling of futility in a hybrid or faction setup, since a player can only focus on one front with their vote instead of being able to consider multiple fronts. With a battle game framework, players are able to go after one opponent in the vote while focusing on a different one in their daily action.
Originally, the game was set up with two villager factions, the Blue Rogues and Black Pirates, and only one mafia faction, the Bravian Empire (standing in for the original game's Valuan Empire). Since I was planning on including parts with special abilities, including traditional powers, I didn't want to double them up between factions out of fear of making the village too powerful. So the special abilities were split between the two factions with asymmetry in faction numbers since I felt the power strengths weren't quite equal. Late in the development cycle, I split the mafia side into two factions as well, adding in the Kingdom of Ashan (standing in for the original game's Kingdom of Nasr). There too was a bit of asymmetry: I made the nature of their group attacks different, with the Bravian group kill consisting of a single shot from the Moonstone Cannon superweapon, and the Ashan group attack one shot from each of the top-tier weapons. Since the Bravian kill was more consistent in nature, I increased the number of Ashan players compared to the Bravians as compensation.
Overall, however, I'm quite happy with how the game went. The pages worked nearly perfectly, save for a few minor bugfixes. The balance on ship parts was fairly good, though I probably should have made the larger hulls more accessible since so many people went for the lighter hulls and turret weapons. On the other hand, those that did select the large hulls generally ended up buffering the hits that they were supposed to be taking, demonstrating that the evasion-defense dynamic was working to a certain extent. As for the items, I think that the Repair Kits and Deluxe Kits were a little underpriced. They were probably at the right place in terms of effectiveness, however, considering the amount of times they saved a player from getting killed.
The dynamic of the game was also pretty incredible, with the mafia pulling out to a large lead in the early game, then the village putting things together to come back in the middle and endgame. At first, I thought that the mafia was too strong, given how many deaths there were in the first three days. However, with the way the village was so forthcoming with information to each other regardless of Blue or Black alignment, the mafia ended up getting snared fairly easily. It's hard to say whether or not the mafia was at a proper power level, since with a bit more boldness the mafia might have been able to stay hidden for a bit longer. At least the game was fairly exciting with the wild swing in momentum.
I realize that there may be some consternation regarding the lack of public information about the serial killer role until the end of the game. Being that historically, battle games induce quite a bit of soft networking, I felt the need to give a little bit of help to the serial killer so that they could hide a little better. By only revealing the vote and mafia group kill targets, their task would be a little bit easier as long as evidence of their existence remained unknown. But of course it would need to be hinted eventually that they were in the game, if a faction satisfied their win conditions but the game did not end. The later this occurred, the better chance they would have to take out the remaining players. Indeed, Fiaryn got quite close to his win, but allowed the seer and his confirmed contacts to live too long. If, on Day 10, Fiaryn had taken the risk to not heal 38thDoe to allow the Bravian Empire's final kill take him out, or perhaps better, fired on him personally, Fiaryn would have had a better chance at winning. I don't know if there's much I would change about the role, except perhaps instead of giving them a Moonstone Cannon and extra gold at the start, only give them the weapon. When you have an attack that can kill nearly anyone in one shot, you tend to earn a lot of money from bounties.
On a side note, late in the development process, I had a twinge of an idea to include an achievements system in the game, or as it would have been called in game terms, Ambitions. Fortunately for my sanity, I decided to put the idea aside to finish polishing up the core features of the game. Maybe some other time, then...
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
I look forward to the end of this game to discover how many sudden, but inevitable, soft-networking betrayals occurred over the course of it.
I'm fairly confident faction games increase grudges by a hundred fold every time we play them.
Ok, spill the deets, people. Regale me with your tales of betrayal.
I'll start. @Matev, assuming Fiaryn did as I asked, you got Day 1'ed when I told the now-known-SK to kill you after learning via a third-party that you claimed to a Black Pirate after trying to join my Blue Rogue hitsquad.
Also, Day 1 convo with Fiaryn after he came to me claiming to have a super powerful weapon.
"Fiaryn October 31
Now lets just hope I don't get voted out.
BaidolBaidol October 31
Pretty sure you're safe on that front.
My concern is you being an SK or some similar deal."
It was a nice game MrBlarney and I appreciated the neat features! I didn't really like the hidden-SK thing but only because I was a survivor neutral so of course once that happened, all eyes gazed upon me!
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Great game MrBlarney, thanks so much for hosting!
Phyphor I seered you early, and had indecision about trying to get my revenge on you by pretending I was a black seer. Then you died the next day.
AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
edited November 2012
Phyphor, your hit squad was a thorn in my side.
I'm pretty sure I had the most cash to start in my groups mafia, and I was put on the defensive and ended up selling equipment for heals directly as a result of your group attack.
You did well.
And of course, @Langly, I considered coming clean day 1 and day 2 and setting up a Spectrum, but by day 3 when you started asking for ship names, you were too powerful. Plus, we had contact with second mafia day 1 and I didn't need connected to them.
I only regret the mafia's didn't coordinate fire on you sooner.
Well played, Langly, well played.
Assuran on
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
It was a nice game MrBlarney and I appreciated the neat features! I didn't really like the hidden-SK thing but only because I was a survivor neutral so of course once that happened, all eyes gazed upon me!
Yeah, I have never played a game that didn't allow the possibility of another threat to the village. Usually I see eliminate all threats to the village. But this was eliminate the empires and outnumber. And I did that. So that added to my confusion.
Also like I said in IRC, it seems like I only win as village when I'm working with the mafia or SK.
I was so sure you were mafia, but I couldn't convince Langly to kill you.
Langly and I had about a 60 message chain going. To be fair, I only lied about attacking Phyphor and Bremen. If he would have had me attack anyone but Bremen, I only wouldn't have attacked Phyphor day 1. After that, I decided to play ball with him.
I'm pretty sure I had the most cash to start in my groups mafia, and I was put on the defensive and ended up selling equipment for heals directly as a result of your group attack.
You did well.
And of course, @Langly, I considered coming clean day 1 and day 2 and setting up a Spectrum, but by day 3 when you started asking for ship names, you were too powerful. Plus, we had contact with second mafia day 1 and I didn't need connected to them.
I only regret the mafia's didn't coordinate fire on you sooner.
Well played, Langly, well played.
You were lucky #4 in the list! You actually would have died on the second day if my sniper turret hadn't missed the first day
Posts
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
I seered everyone left alive except for retaba at this point. So. I don't know.
I concede defeat. I am Ramirez. I am the Serial Killer.
For the threads amusement, I'll explain where my master plan went wrong. Essentially, Friday night, I was trying to get some sleep early because I was totally destroyed and had to wake up at 5 AM. In my lethargy, I failed to capitalize on Void Slayer's nonsense properly. A) I should have killed Vagrant Winds, not Egos.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
KNOW THAT WHILE I HAVE NOT BEEN YOUR END THIS DAY, YOU MONKEYS WILL BRING ABOUT EXTINCTION EITHER WAY.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Give me an hour to finish writing the final narration (I was already writing a little bit of it in expectation of Fiaryn getting voted out) and checking over my post-mortem notes, and I'll get the game ready for the wrapup.
I pretty much knew I was bonered after I fully processed what happened when jdark died. Everything after that was "why not" improv.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
I wouldn't of, I forgot to vote yesterday I think, but I wouldn't of voted anyone out unless we all thought it was going to end the game. (I was suspicious of all the speed wax I had put on Fiaryn which is why I told you about it)
Fiaryn was so close, just a little more and he would have been able to call down the Rains of Destruction. Humanity was corrupt, and civilization needed to once again be reset. When the people of Phalladia received the power of flight, the power only caused conflict and pain; suffering that needed to be ended by cleansing the slate anew. Though Fiaryn was sent down by the Sylvites to try and make sure that the newfound power of flight was not abused, what he did not realize was that he too had a part in the fighting. Where there were originally minor disagreements between the Bravians and Ashans over territory, a war flared up from the theft of experimental technologies. The normally free Air Pirates were brought into conflict not only between themselves, but with the great nations who blamed piracy for contributing to their ails. But Fiaryn did not seem to realize his own role in the war, only that others had continued to battle. The Sailor's Guild was unable to bring in the Sylvite peacefully, and as Fiaryn sank to the darkness far below the land, he never gave up his sorrow that humanity would destroy themselves irreparably.
But the Silvite elders continued watching from above, and did not call down the Rains. They saw that humanity would be able to reconcile and that they would learn to use their power responsibly. Certainly, there would always be conflicts, but peace would also come after misunderstandings' end. Though it would take some time, the Bravian Empire and Kingdom of Ashan would eventually find understanding and help each other rebuild. And in the days after Fiaryn's death, the Blue Rogues and Black Pirates made peace with each other, even bringing some Black Rogues to the Blue Rogues' viewpoint. Throughout Phalladia, banners aligned with the Blue Rogues flew freely. The age of discovery and exploration flourished once more.
Eliminated Players
Fiaryn - Silvite Civilization
Surviving Players
38thDoe - Blue Rogues
Alegis - Black Pirates
Kaplar - Blue Rogues
Retaba - Free Mercenaries
vagrant_winds - Blue Rogues
The Blue Rogues have achieved victory for eliminating all hostile foes and outnumbering the Black Pirates!
Retaba has achieved victory for surviving to the end of the game!
Host Proboards
Master Spreadsheet
Host Development Notes and Game Remarks
Running a game based off of Skies of Arcadia was something I had in mind for quite a while, and after completing Elementalist, my previous personal stat page game, I began to put work into getting Skies of Phalladia ready for play. I knew I wanted to make it a personal pages game, since it had so much opportunity with ship building to make it an interesting experience. The original design of the game included a map divided into regions through which players could travel and explore, but this was scrapped later on as it would have spread players out a bit too much. Instead, exploration and trade were abstracted as daily actions while retaining their properties of allowing players to earn money without conflict.
Based off of my experience from previous battle system games, I decided to utilize factions on top of the traditional village versus mafia approach. Since the general trend of battle games was leading towards softnetworking and organization of small, focused attack parties, I felt that having a factional system would provide for an interesting bit of intrigue. Instead of straightforwardly going towards a single goal, players would need to balance multiple concerns when moving towards victory. I feel like the 'hybrid' game works well in a battle game, since each player actually has something they can try to do. In most games, there may be a bit of a feeling of futility in a hybrid or faction setup, since a player can only focus on one front with their vote instead of being able to consider multiple fronts. With a battle game framework, players are able to go after one opponent in the vote while focusing on a different one in their daily action.
Originally, the game was set up with two villager factions, the Blue Rogues and Black Pirates, and only one mafia faction, the Bravian Empire (standing in for the original game's Valuan Empire). Since I was planning on including parts with special abilities, including traditional powers, I didn't want to double them up between factions out of fear of making the village too powerful. So the special abilities were split between the two factions with asymmetry in faction numbers since I felt the power strengths weren't quite equal. Late in the development cycle, I split the mafia side into two factions as well, adding in the Kingdom of Ashan (standing in for the original game's Kingdom of Nasr). There too was a bit of asymmetry: I made the nature of their group attacks different, with the Bravian group kill consisting of a single shot from the Moonstone Cannon superweapon, and the Ashan group attack one shot from each of the top-tier weapons. Since the Bravian kill was more consistent in nature, I increased the number of Ashan players compared to the Bravians as compensation.
Overall, however, I'm quite happy with how the game went. The pages worked nearly perfectly, save for a few minor bugfixes. The balance on ship parts was fairly good, though I probably should have made the larger hulls more accessible since so many people went for the lighter hulls and turret weapons. On the other hand, those that did select the large hulls generally ended up buffering the hits that they were supposed to be taking, demonstrating that the evasion-defense dynamic was working to a certain extent. As for the items, I think that the Repair Kits and Deluxe Kits were a little underpriced. They were probably at the right place in terms of effectiveness, however, considering the amount of times they saved a player from getting killed.
The dynamic of the game was also pretty incredible, with the mafia pulling out to a large lead in the early game, then the village putting things together to come back in the middle and endgame. At first, I thought that the mafia was too strong, given how many deaths there were in the first three days. However, with the way the village was so forthcoming with information to each other regardless of Blue or Black alignment, the mafia ended up getting snared fairly easily. It's hard to say whether or not the mafia was at a proper power level, since with a bit more boldness the mafia might have been able to stay hidden for a bit longer. At least the game was fairly exciting with the wild swing in momentum.
I realize that there may be some consternation regarding the lack of public information about the serial killer role until the end of the game. Being that historically, battle games induce quite a bit of soft networking, I felt the need to give a little bit of help to the serial killer so that they could hide a little better. By only revealing the vote and mafia group kill targets, their task would be a little bit easier as long as evidence of their existence remained unknown. But of course it would need to be hinted eventually that they were in the game, if a faction satisfied their win conditions but the game did not end. The later this occurred, the better chance they would have to take out the remaining players. Indeed, Fiaryn got quite close to his win, but allowed the seer and his confirmed contacts to live too long. If, on Day 10, Fiaryn had taken the risk to not heal 38thDoe to allow the Bravian Empire's final kill take him out, or perhaps better, fired on him personally, Fiaryn would have had a better chance at winning. I don't know if there's much I would change about the role, except perhaps instead of giving them a Moonstone Cannon and extra gold at the start, only give them the weapon. When you have an attack that can kill nearly anyone in one shot, you tend to earn a lot of money from bounties.
On a side note, late in the development process, I had a twinge of an idea to include an achievements system in the game, or as it would have been called in game terms, Ambitions. Fortunately for my sanity, I decided to put the idea aside to finish polishing up the core features of the game. Maybe some other time, then...
Ok, spill the deets, people. Regale me with your tales of betrayal.
I'll start. @Matev, assuming Fiaryn did as I asked, you got Day 1'ed when I told the now-known-SK to kill you after learning via a third-party that you claimed to a Black Pirate after trying to join my Blue Rogue hitsquad.
Also, Day 1 convo with Fiaryn after he came to me claiming to have a super powerful weapon.
"Fiaryn October 31
Now lets just hope I don't get voted out.
BaidolBaidol October 31
Pretty sure you're safe on that front.
My concern is you being an SK or some similar deal."
Excellent game.
Phyphor I seered you early, and had indecision about trying to get my revenge on you by pretending I was a black seer. Then you died the next day.
I'm pretty sure I had the most cash to start in my groups mafia, and I was put on the defensive and ended up selling equipment for heals directly as a result of your group attack.
You did well.
And of course, @Langly, I considered coming clean day 1 and day 2 and setting up a Spectrum, but by day 3 when you started asking for ship names, you were too powerful. Plus, we had contact with second mafia day 1 and I didn't need connected to them.
I only regret the mafia's didn't coordinate fire on you sooner.
Well played, Langly, well played.
Also like I said in IRC, it seems like I only win as village when I'm working with the mafia or SK.
http://bravianbooty.proboards.com/index.cgi
Langly and I had about a 60 message chain going. To be fair, I only lied about attacking Phyphor and Bremen. If he would have had me attack anyone but Bremen, I only wouldn't have attacked Phyphor day 1. After that, I decided to play ball with him.
You were lucky #4 in the list! You actually would have died on the second day if my sniper turret hadn't missed the first day