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@taulover: Werewolf VI also had nearly 1500 posts and was the most active game until this year. Is that what we're going for in our casual games?

I suppose that raises the question...is our goal to merely create slower-paced games or to create classic games from before MU was an influence on our games? I'm not sure it's possible to do the latter...for better or for worse, as we've seen with Lil' Wolf it would be hard to keep out the lingo and the strategies such as read lists. I'm not even sure it'd be wise to try, especially if we aim for casual games to be a place where newer players can learn the game before considering moving on to the champion games. That would just give those players a steeper learning curve if they decided to move on.

That also brings us to the question of what kind of games would be played in casual? I imagine you wouldn't want all kinds of zany power roles, but you'd want to have some of the basic ones like seer or defender so players can get experience playing those.

The way this works in Champs games in MU is that there is a post limit, but about 3 hours or so before EoD, everyone can post as much as they want again.

That seems like it would reward people reorienting their sleep/work schedules around Werewolf, which would not be a good system for a casual setup.

@taulover: Werewolf VI also had nearly 1500 posts and was the most active game until this year. Is that what we're going for in our casual games?

I suppose that raises the question...is our goal to merely create slower-paced games or to create classic games from before MU was an influence on our games? I'm not sure it's possible to do the latter...for better or for worse, as we've seen with Lil' Wolf it would be hard to keep out the lingo and the strategies such as read lists. I'm not even sure it'd be wise to try, especially if we aim for casual games to be a place where newer players can learn the game before considering moving on to the champion games. That would just give those players a steeper learning curve if they decided to move on.

That also brings us to the question of what kind of games would be played in casual? I imagine you wouldn't want all kinds of zany power roles, but you'd want to have some of the basic ones like seer or defender so players can get experience playing those.

My personal feeling is that a somewhat heightened level of activity is fine over a longer period of time, but strong bursts of activity, especially if repeated in short succession, tend to be more overwhelming. (Remember that Werewolf VI had a high post count in large part because it was so long; its per-day post counts should be considered less anomalous I think.)

For comparison's sake, I've got the posting requirements for the lowest-requirement games I can host on MU. They're fairly popular, hosted once every month or so, and the limit is described as "extremely low volume".

"There will be a hard limit of 30 posts per day, with a character limit of 2000 characters per post, in order to keep the volume a bit more predictable."

So you're looking at similarly to the volume I posted on D1 in Michi's game as the maximum if you're wanting to compare it to something.

@Michi, did you get any complaints about it being too active on D1? My first recollection of the issue was Doc posting about it at the beginning of D2. If most people thought D1 was fine, then I wouldn't be opposed to raising it to 30 as @Legacy of Smiles posted in his comparison. The problem with raising the limit is that it could dramatically raise the activity as well if more than a few players get near the limit. Which means that activity is also based on the number of players in a game.

@taulover, I added a new column to our Werewolf data spreadsheet for posts/day. I'm using literal days instead of game days, cause that's the data we have already, so it's not quite apples to apples but should be fine for a rough approximation. I've listed the top 10 most active games based on posts per day here:

1. 22.1 - Of Cores and Turrets - 108 ppd - 35 players
2. 24 - Attack on Titan - 68 ppd - 21 players
3. 23 - A Lord of the Rings Adventure - 57 ppd - 20 players
4. 6 - Until Dawn: The New Chapter - 41 ppd - 25 players
5. 22.2 - Of Cores and Turrets? (Take 2) - 34 ppd - 18 players
6. 18 - Wintreath's Got Talent - Champions Edition - 18 ppd - 13 players
7. 9 - The SS Wintreath Sets Sail - 17 ppd - 14 players
8. 4 - Ye Olde Arthurian Legend - 16 ppd - 18 players
9. 21 - The Beginning of the End - 15 ppd - 14 players
10. 7 - Star Wars: The Battle Forgotten - 12 ppd* - 26 players
*7 is probably artificially low because of how the game dragged out and switched hosts multiple times

Even by that standard, WW6 comes in at 41 ppd, still by far the highest of the classic games. The next highest classic game was WW18 at 18 ppd. Interestingly enough, WW 6 also had far above the average number of players for a classic game (25 vs an average of 15), which probably also accounts for its relatively higher activity.

What if we had a higher post limit but a lower number of players?

Edit: Included number of players in the list.

@Michi, did you get any complaints about it being too active on D1? My first recollection of the issue was Doc posting about it at the beginning of D2. If most people thought D1 was fine, then I wouldn't be opposed to raising it to 30 as @Legacy of Smiles posted in his comparison. The problem with raising the limit is that it could dramatically raise the activity as well if more than a few players get near the limit. Which means that activity is also based on the number of players in a game.

@taulover, I added a new column to our Werewolf data spreadsheet for posts/day. I'm using literal days instead of game days, cause that's the data we have already, so it's not quite apples to apples but should be fine for a rough approximation. I've listed the top 10 most active games based on posts per day here:

1. 22.1 - Of Cores and Turrets - 108 ppd
2. 24 - Attack on Titan - 68 ppd
3. 23 - A Lord of the Rings Adventure - 57 ppd
4. 6 - Until Dawn: The New Chapter - 41 ppd
5. 22.2 - Of Cores and Turrets? (Take 2) - 34 ppd
6. 18 - Wintreath's Got Talent - Champions Edition - 18 ppd
7. 9 - The SS Wintreath Sets Sail - 17 ppd
8. 4 - Ye Olde Arthurian Legend - 16 ppd
9. 21 - The Beginning of the End - 15 ppd
10. 7 - Star Wars: The Battle Forgotten - 12 ppd

Even by that standard, WW6 comes in at 41 ppd, still by far the highest of the classic games. The next highest classic game was WW18 at 18 ppd. Interestingly enough, WW 6 also had far above the average number of players for a classic game (25 vs an average of 15), which probably also accounts for its relatively higher activity.

What if we had a higher post limit but a lower number of players?

I forgot to bring it up but the super low volume game I brought up was a 9 player game.

@Legacy of Smiles: 9 would be the lowest number of players we've ever had in a game (WW 1 and 15). I guess it depends...if we're having casual games all the time a really low number of players might be fine, but I worry that would make a game more limited than having a smaller post count limit. I think I was thinking more like 12-15. Currently the magic number for regular/champion/tryhard games seems to be at least 20 players.

I'm also worried whether hosts would want to do games for a small amount of players. We had some cases before WW was revived where hosts didn't want to run their games for a small number of players. I guess I'd like to hear from our WW hosts and potential hosts on that one.

Ideally, having some mini games with some sort of limit (whatever we decide on) and some games where players can feel free to 500-post post within reason seems the best bet. I think post limits should be clearly defined before any game starts too.

If light games are not treated as a replacement for in-light games but instead a side series then you'll probably get a lot of the more competitive players preferring to stick to the more active games anyway which will probably solve a lot of the issue.

I think a general post cap limit (or other limitation like a slowmode) for a light game should be at a point where the restrictions still allow people to actually have a reasonable chance of doing things in a theoretical game where there are no power roles (known as mountainous on MU. Waiting on the seer, for example, to win or lose the game isn't fun.

If a post cap is decided on, I would preferably say to have it at 30. 20 is the lowest I'd suggest before the games become brutal to try to actually solve. If a slow mode is better, I think in the range 3-5 posts per hour is probably the happy medium between allowing people to talk when both are available and not spamming up the thread.

@Legacy of Smiles: 9 would be the lowest number of players we've ever had in a game (WW 1 and 15). I guess it depends...if we're having casual games all the time a really low number of players might be fine, but I worry that would make a game more limited than having a smaller post count limit. I think I was thinking more like 12-15. Currently the magic number for regular/champion/tryhard games seems to be at least 20 players.

I'm also worried whether hosts would want to do games for a small amount of players. We had some cases before WW was revived where hosts didn't want to run their games for a small number of players. I guess I'd like to hear from our WW hosts and potential hosts on that one.

I think it depends on how much prevalence light games you believe light games should have. On CFC, there are a lot of 9 player (and even a few 7 player) games that are hosted as quick "in between" games without really needing the host to queue, probably the CFC equivalent to light games that we are discussing here.

I think it depends on how much prevalence light games you believe light games should have.

The problem is I don't know, and it's not really up to me. We've never had more than one series of games, and I don't know what might happen when we split them. Maybe people like casual games and we end up having a lot of those punctuated by rarer but more active champion games. Maybe people won't like the limitations of casual games once they've learned the basics and most of the activity will still be in the champion games. It also depends on what kind of games our hosts are willing to run. Even if you have lots of interest in casual games, that doesn't mean much if nobody will design and run a casual game.

We're just going to have to try it out, see what happens, and adjust as things go along.

I would say 30 posts/15 players is a fine upper limit starting point. If it proves to make for game that are too limited or too active, we can always adjust. If hosts want to have fewer players/posts in a game, we can always leave that to their discretion.

I take it that those limits aren't considered detestable by anyone.

To summarize where I think the consensus is:

Werewolf Casual League (WAL)

• Maximum 30 posts per day phase per player
• Maximum 15 players per game
• Hosts can specify lower limits
• Basic roles only (seer, defender, etc.)
• Promoted as smaller, slower-paced games perfect for new players and people with less time to play

Werewolf Tryhard League (WTL)

• No post, role, or player limits
• Promoted as intense games among the best and most dedicated players in Wintreath
• Warning that games will be fast-paced and will require at least an hour a game day to play
• Krone prizes offered to surviving winners

I take it that those limits aren't considered detestable by anyone.

To summarize where I think the consensus is:

Werewolf Casual League (WAL)

• Maximum 30 posts per day phase per player
• Maximum 15 players per game
• Hosts can specify lower limits
• Basic roles only (seer, defender, etc.)
• Promoted as smaller, slower-paced games perfect for new players and people with less time to play

Werewolf Tryhard League (WTL)

• No post, role, or player limits
• Promoted as intense games among the best and most dedicated players in Wintreath
• Warning that games will be fast-paced and will require at least an hour a game day to play
• Krone prizes offered to surviving winners

Looks good to me!
9
Would you mind explaining the Krone prizes bit to me, please?

Would you mind explaining the Krone prizes bit to me, please?

They're used to redeem/"buy" Steam keys from the Monarch's Game Bag, typically given for service to the community or as prizes for special games/events.

I take it that those limits aren't considered detestable by anyone.

To summarize where I think the consensus is:

Werewolf Casual League (WAL)

• Maximum 30 posts per day phase per player
• Maximum 15 players per game
• Hosts can specify lower limits
• Basic roles only (seer, defender, etc.)
• Promoted as smaller, slower-paced games perfect for new players and people with less time to play

Werewolf Tryhard League (WTL)

• No post, role, or player limits
• Promoted as intense games among the best and most dedicated players in Wintreath
• Warning that games will be fast-paced and will require at least an hour a game day to play
• Krone prizes offered to surviving winners

I think that's a good starting point. I think games with more experimental roles/setup can potentially still do well in a more chill game (though it really depends); it might be worth trying that in the future.

One potential thought though is that the goal of Werewolf typically isn't to survive, so if you actually put material reward for surviving, that might change how people play the game.

Would you mind explaining the Krone prizes bit to me, please?

They're used to redeem/"buy" Steam keys from the Monarch's Game Bag, typically given for service to the community or as prizes for special games/events.

I take it that those limits aren't considered detestable by anyone.

To summarize where I think the consensus is:

Werewolf Casual League (WAL)

• Maximum 30 posts per day phase per player
• Maximum 15 players per game
• Hosts can specify lower limits
• Basic roles only (seer, defender, etc.)
• Promoted as smaller, slower-paced games perfect for new players and people with less time to play

Werewolf Tryhard League (WTL)

• No post, role, or player limits
• Promoted as intense games among the best and most dedicated players in Wintreath
• Warning that games will be fast-paced and will require at least an hour a game day to play
• Krone prizes offered to surviving winners

I think that's a good starting point. I think games with more experimental roles/setup can potentially still do well in a more chill game (though it really depends); it might be worth trying that in the future.

One potential thought though is that the goal of Werewolf typically isn't to survive, so if you actually put material reward for surviving, that might change how people play the game.

Thanks!

A reward is super cool but I'm going to give a +1 to the message in bold. As a general rule of thumb, if you're a vanilla townsperson and you alive at the end of the game then you have probably played worse than your fellow dead townspeople. Wolves need to kill the people who threaten, be that those who are hard to chop or those who have accurate reads.

I wouldn't want to change the way the game is played.

How about instead at the end of each game players voted for a town and wolf MVP, who would receive the reward? The host could also choose a host's MVP, meaning that 2-3 players would be rewarded each game depending on if the host picked someone that was voted as well.

I wouldn't want to change the way the game is played.

How about instead at the end of each game players voted for a town and wolf MVP, who would receive the reward? The host could also choose a host's MVP, meaning that 2-3 players would be rewarded each game depending on if the host picked someone that was voted as well.

That reminds me that I still need to get that done for my recent game.