Games [GAME OVER] PokeMafia Generation I

[Sunflower]

2 minutes ago, OrangeP47 said:

Alakazam, and a haunter fan! Full of contradictions!

Well in the anime, Sabrina befriends a Haunter!

[OrangeP47]

1 minute ago, Sunflower said:

Well in the anime, Sabrina befriends a Haunter!

Oh yeah, forgot about that.

[Sunflower]

I taught my Alakazam Psywave too and I was going to use an X Special tonight... so if I rolled lucky I could have done 75 damage in one turn!!!!

[OrangeP47]

1 minute ago, Sunflower said:

I taught my Alakazam Psywave too and I was going to use an X Special tonight... so if I rolled lucky I could have done 75 damage in one turn!!!!

I think you have to wait until in a battle to us X items.

[Jeod]

Kanto News 6 reporting with breaking news! Police have just escorted a Team Rocket Admin, Killing_You, from the Silph company building. One Trainer, OrangeP47, was seen on a stretcher, but fortunately police tell us he is alive and will recover. The five other Trainers have exited the building to cheers from the citizens and police forces. It's thanks to good-hearted trainers like these that thugs such as Team Rocket don't dominate our peaceful world.

Our station was hijacked a few days ago. The Team Rocket Boss, identity unknown, had made a threat to the Trainers. Police have searched the Silph company building but were unable to apprehend a suspect. Team Rocket may no longer be a threat for now, but their organization is still at large. Still, now is a time to celebrate and...<fade to credits etc>

HALL OF FAME

 

OrangeP47 as Trainer!

There isn't much more to say. You came out the door with guns blazing and quickly tracked down scum. You made an excellent team composition, too.

Killing_You as Team Rocket Admin!

Despite the absence through the discussion phases, Killing_You came into the fights prepared. His Alakazam would have been a truly unstoppable force if he'd had more time to get items, and had his partner Shade939 still alive. If only he'd been present to use scum's greatest weapon--words.

Shade939 as Team Rocket Admin!

Shade had a few mistakes that we discussed in the Rocket Doc. Overall, I still think he did the best he could, and everyone slips up from time to time. If it wasn't for his logical comments on game mechanics, this game could have gone a bit more poorly and less optimized. In fact, you all were a great help in keeping a complex game like this running smoothly.

FRAYDO as Silph Executive!

FRAYDO was the only cop in the game, and even then scum had Fake IDs available to them. The way this was set up made town consider the presence of a godfather, and Giovanni's transmission only added to that. In retrospect, I should have started one of the admins off with a Fake ID, since this was a tad risky and dependent on town second-guessing themselves. Scum never went for the T3 Rocket Box though--they might have prioritized it had they known they could acquire a Fake ID item.

Sunflower as a Trainer!

Sunflower did really well in her battles, and I have to hand it to her--it's definitely one of her strengths. I'm looking forward to her continued show of force in PokeMafia 2.

TheIrishMan as a Trainer!

High HP matters. You knew this, didn't you? From the start of the game I figured you'd be one tough guy to take down, and I'm surprised nobody thought you might be scum after the second-guessing around the cop reports. Also, congrats on being the only player to fulfill their secondary objective (even though your rival turned out to be scum)!

Category 5 Hurricane as a Trainer!

I feel like it's been a while since you've been able to sit back and relax your brain during a mafia game. With your team and decisions, I could tell you were having fun with it instead of being the super-serious-sherlock you normally are. To be honest, I'm glad it turned out that way.

On Game Mechanics

Most of my opinions and observations on game balance can be found in the scumdoc, where you’ll see I actively tried to give advice to scum in sticky situations (but not to the point of making them insta-win). Remember that this is an experimental game. There are bound to be issues, especially with Gen1, which is why I was open to fixing certain aspects of the game as it was ongoing. Despite that, Shade and KY played extremely poorly—no amount of balance will fix that, and I had to refuse to add a handicap multiple times to the point of threatening a modkill.

The critical moment, I think, was Battle 5. Battle 2 was a hint to how this game would end up when Shade kept spamming a OHKO move with only 30% accuracy, but Battle 5 could have gone very well for them if they’d paid attention.  By that point Shade had several items at his disposal but used none of them, and KY could have been using Slash for critical hits over the lower-damaging Rage. I even coached them a bit before the battle out of pity, and they didn’t listen. They also took greater risks like not training Magikarp into Gyarados when it only needed one more VP, and putting Machop and Charmander into battle at a risk of losing the VP they had.

Aside from that, they really didn’t have a good plan with their primary weapon: words. Shade missed several opportunities to try to spin the votes onto Category 5, but didn’t take them. KY was virtually nonexistent in the early discussion phases. I’m confident that had any other duo been scum, they’d have won.

Mechanics-wise, I feel that some moves need work, especially the trapping moves, but other than that I can’t see any big issues. The power is with the players for this kind of game, so balance is a matter of perspective. Take away the mistakes players make and the game appears suitably balanced, although I would perhaps rework the cop mechanic given the amount of time it takes for even one player to be eliminated from the game. Changes include removing the GM-confirmation in PMs (checked your ID…) as well as giving scum a Fake ID from the start.

On Rivals, that system was meant to help scum keep things a little more chaotic and also keep players from deciding to gang up on any one other player. Unfortunately, the secondary objective was almost entirely ignored—the exact opposite of how I thought it would go, given previous games. Perhaps it could use some sort of reward or consequence for fulfilling or failing the objective (aside from post-game accolades).

Documents

Team Rocket Doc

Game Data

Giovanni will return

[OrangeP47]

Ha, Shade had a Lapras too.

[Jeod]

Some extras to note:

Hidden Machines were counted as a separate action from TMs in terms of teaching moves to Pokemon. They also weren't discarded after being used, though none of you knew this. Just a little easter egg one could figure out, as Category 5 inadvertently did.

Rocket Nightkills were initially a timed mechanic. They would be allowed to add a poison status condition to a Pokemon each night if they hadn't eliminated any Trainers past Battle 6. This would have been at a cost of 3 or 4 Pokecoins, but since Shade died on Battle 6, the mechanic got immediately shifted to a more potent poisoning with zero cost. The only drawback was that the targets had to have been seen first, either through scouting actions or battle.

[Category 5 Hurricane]

I actually figured that HMs were not discarded, by Pidgey was the only one who could learn Fly anyway, and Seel was the only one who could learn Surf, so I never had the opportunity to use one more than once.

[TheIrishman]

I feel like a true winner just for killing both Shade and Orange. Revenge has been had. I look forward to Gen 2 from you Orange.

[OrangeP47]

Just now, TheIrishman said:

I feel like a true winner just for killing both Shade and Orange. Revenge has been had. I look forward to Gen 2 from you Orange.

I feel as if everyone was more excited to take me out than they were to take KY out

[Sunflower]

18 minutes ago, OrangeP47 said:

I feel as if everyone was more excited to take me out than they were to take KY out

Tbf KY was afk a lot and I was kinda hoping for an Alakazam showdown next turn.

[Sunflower]

I guess one observation for balance and stuff with the moves.

Overall the battles were fun, but I think the direct damage moves were way too strong compared to the type formula moves. Like I spent a whole battle getting spammed with seismic toss and was just spamming potions and using support moves to try to survive even though I had a strong pokemon. It seemed like the direct damage moves consistently did way more damage than the type formula based moves. Night Shade, Seismic Toss, Dragon Rage, and moves like that all guarenteed massive damage output no matter what. That was why I taught my Kadabra/Alakazam psywave instead of psychic too.

[Killing_You]

The battles were pretty fun. Thing is, I'm absolutely terrible in battle based setups, and even worse at being scum. 

[Shade939]

12 hours ago, OrangeP47 said:

Generation III

Instead of doubling the Defense of affected Pokémon, Reflect now technically halves the damage done to them by physical moves; it still does not reduce damage done by moves that deal direct damage.

If multiple Pokémon are present on the user's side of the field, all of them are protected by Reflect, but physical damage is only reduced by a third rather than half.

Going to point out that second part again...

[Shade939]

Yeah, as I pointed out in the Rocket thread, my biggest complaint still amounts to Rocket just didn't have any actions to effectively hurt Town or punish them for fighting against each other during the battle phase.

The only effective strategy left for us was to try and manipulate the day vote so at least one of us would win that day's battle and prevent Town from winning instead, gaining three items and a VP  for their Pokemon and a Pokecoin, which easily countered the only Rocket action we really had of grabbing items for Pokecoins instead of strengthening our pokemon through training or learning new moves.

Also, been waiting all game for this.

 

Edited September 20, 2018 by Shade939

[OrangeP47]

I think rivals were a good *attempt* to balance things out, it just didn't pan out that way.  I think i might rebalance it for next time to provide some incentive for chaos.

[Shade939]

2 minutes ago, OrangeP47 said:

I think rivals were a good *attempt* to balance things out, it just didn't pan out that way.  I think i might rebalance it for next time to provide some incentive for chaos.

Also, nerf item usage in battle so it doesn't amount to you can spam every item in your inventory and actually are limited in what you can use so you have to think about it instead...

[OrangeP47]

Just now, Shade939 said:

Also, nerf item usage in battle so it doesn't amount to you can spam every item in your inventory and actually are limited in what you can use so you have to think about it instead...

The very first change I came up with was a cap on how many items you can hold onto

[Shade939]

Just now, OrangeP47 said:

The very first change I came up with was a cap on how many items you can hold onto

In battle or?

[Jeod]

Just now, OrangeP47 said:

The very first change I came up with was a cap on how many items you can hold onto

Careful not to change too much of the game based on the needs of a less skilled player. There are plenty of opportunities for deception and word choices that weren't taken, and as scum in a mafia game one shouldn't expect to be able to give those abilities a backseat even in a "battle" styled game.

[OrangeP47]

It's actually going in both directions.  The number of items will be EXPANDED.  You'll even have a lot of options for acquring them without battle, you'll be able to go shopping, for instance, but the trade off is you can't horde.  Think of it as having a limited budget.

[Shade939]

Just now, OrangeP47 said:

It's actually going in both directions.  The number of items will be EXPANDED.  You'll even have a lot of options for acquring them without battle, you'll be able to go shopping, for instance, but the trade off is you can't horde.  Think of it as having a limited budget.

I'd be fine if there was just a limited number of times you could use items in battle. I don't mind having a massive inventory so you have options, but spamming healing items so you can win isn't exactly a balanced strategy...

[OrangeP47]

Just now, Shade939 said:

I'd be fine if there was just a limited number of times you could use items in battle. I don't mind having a massive inventory so you have options, but spamming healing items so you can win isn't exactly a balanced strategy...

The limits on items will be *per category*, not total items, so there's still room to have options in your inventory.  For example, if you had maxed out the number of held items you had, you could still go shopping at battle item shop for X Attacks or whatever.  Actually Shopping will be done with loot tables, so you can't 100% pick what you get, but you can narrow it down pretty well.

[Jeod]

1 minute ago, Shade939 said:

I'd be fine if there was just a limited number of times you could use items in battle. I don't mind having a massive inventory so you have options, but spamming healing items so you can win isn't exactly a balanced strategy...

I see where you're coming from but RNG is still a large factor in these games, and a large source of fun as well. Perhaps one alternative would be to add different rules to battle phases somehow. For instance, where I declare single or double battles at the daystart. If there were battle rules like "no items" or "base forms only", etc, then not only could things be a tad more fair, but the level of strategy in both town and scum choosing when to battle and when to back off would be astronomical.

[Jeod]

Adding on to it, trying to figure out who purchased a battle rule and why during the previous rest phase would make for excellent discussion during the day phase...

[Shade939]

1 minute ago, OrangeP47 said:

The limits on items will be *per category*, not total items, so there's still room to have options in your inventory.  For example, if you had maxed out the number of held items you had, you could still go shopping at battle item shop for X Attacks or whatever.  Actually Shopping will be done with loot tables, so you can't 100% pick what you get, but you can narrow it down pretty well.

Ok, tier based item shopping with an RNG element of something like only three to five options to pick from for that shop visit, with a chance of duplicates?

[OrangeP47]

With the number of things I have planned, that might be "feature creep" though, so I probably won't do something like that Jeod.

[Retaliation]

All I'm interested in is figuring out how to buy better underlings.

[OrangeP47]

1 minute ago, Shade939 said:

Ok, tier based item shopping with an RNG element of something like only three to five options to pick from for that shop visit, with a chance of duplicates?

I've not worked out the specifics yet.

[Jeod]

3 minutes ago, OrangeP47 said:

With the number of things I have planned, that might be "feature creep" though, so I probably won't do something like that Jeod.

I'll jot in down in my own notes then. A PokeMafia in Hoenn's Battle Tower setting is the perfect place to add things like per-phase battle rules.