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I am putting this topic up so we can mention any tech upgrades we'd like to see implemented to make either the host or the players' lives easier. Please note that these suggestions might not all work, or there may be no good way to get them implemented by Wintermoot with the current tech, but it will help to brainstorm, I believe.

@Wintermoot, first suggestion: Can we add a "vote" button to the bar where "multiquote" and the other options are? This, along with an active tracker at the top of the game to show who has voted for who, would really make an improvement to the host's life as well as the players'.

I don't know how viable this is, but I would like to be able to navigate to other pages in the quote menu than from just the page with the post I'm quoting from. I am aware that Multiquote exists, but sometimes I forget to grab all the quotes I need and I already have everything set up so I have to open a new tab to go quote the post I want then copy-paste it in and it's a whole thing. If I'm just being ignorant about the process then I apologize.

@Laurentus: Eventually, but it definitely won't be during the current game.

There's a lot of design that has to go behind it, because it's really an entire system. Votes are going to need to be stored in the database, then retrieved when needed. It also raises questions such as what happens if a player withdraws their vote or changes their vote? Should that also be stored in the database and presented, and if so what's the best format to do that?

It may also change the way players play the game. If they're clicking a button to vote, do players no longer announce their vote in a post? Should there be a separate bot account to announce votes? If players do vote by button and announce, what happens if the person they vote for and the person they said they voted for aren't the same person?

Basically, a lot of thought and design needs to go into something like this before it's implemented.

I don't know how viable this is, but I would like to be able to navigate to other pages in the quote menu than from just the page with the post I'm quoting from. I am aware that Multiquote exists, but sometimes I forget to grab all the quotes I need and I already have everything set up so I have to open a new tab to go quote the post I want then copy-paste it in and it's a whole thing. If I'm just being ignorant about the process then I apologize.

What happens if you're looking for a quote in a hundred page topic? At that point is it any more convenient than opening a new tab to look for the post you want to quote?

A more realistic solution may be to just have more posts appear on the post page. It looks like it's showing the last 15 posts, changing it to the last 30 might be helpful without having to radically change anything.

@Laurentus: Eventually, but it definitely won't be during the current game.

There's a lot of design that has to go behind it, because it's really an entire system. Votes are going to need to be stored in the database, then retrieved when needed. It also raises questions such as what happens if a player withdraws their vote or changes their vote? Should that also be stored in the database and presented, and if so what's the best format to do that?

It may also change the way players play the game. If they're clicking a button to vote, do players no longer announce their vote in a post? Should there be a separate bot account to announce votes? If players do vote by button and announce, what happens if the person they vote for and the person they said they voted for aren't the same person?

Basically, a lot of thought and design needs to go into something like this before it's implemented.

I think the easiest way to explain it would simply be to play another test game on MU with you.

There, all the players can vote for another player by using the BBCode Vote: person in a post, but also click on a little vote button underneath the person's name they're voting for, which then basically just auto-generates the code necessary in a post, so it can be tracked exactly when the vote was cast, and the players can give their reasons for the vote, too.

Then you can query the system to show a vote-count, which demonstrates how many votes the person has, who voted for them, and takes you to the exact post where the vote was cast if you click on one of the voters' names.

Since we already have a poll option, though, I was thinking we could modify that system a bit.

Like, the way NS polls take place, where you can set it to show who voted, would actually kinda work, too, because if there is an inconsistency in a person's stated vote, and who they're actually voting for, then I think the players would sort it out themselves by finding such behaviour suspicious.

@Laurentus: If someone used this BBcode to vote and then edited their post to remove it, how does that system handle that? Does it still show that they voted or does that vote disappear?

Oh, yeah, that's one important difference between their forum and ours: you can't edit posts in game-threads. Probably to avoid the shenaniganry I pulled back with the Batman Werewolf.

Hmm, if you modify the Werewolf threads to have a special vote button, would it also be possible to disable editing? (or perhaps, editing by anyone other than the OP/host)

I'm going to second the edit disable and also the voting button or something.  Ideally you could breakdown who voted for who and when as well.  Scrolling through like 30 pages is no bueno our Werewolf has outgrown itself xD

@Laurentus: There's two ways in my mind to implement vote counting, and I experimented with the faster and easier way between the two, which is to simply read through all the posts in the topic and look for Vote:Player between bold tags. If it had worked it would have been easily adapted to our current game and system without having to do much more than write the script that pulls the posts with votes in them. However, I quickly found that it would be problematic...for example, what to do about votes with misspelled or wrong names? In some of the posts in our current game, a number of people voted for Michi using his old name Pengu, which obviously doesn't match any current player.

That means we're going to have to do this the hard way...create a system that checks for votes when players post, then checks if the name included is a valid player name, and if not take them back to their post and alert them in a way that doesn't eat their post and make them type it up again. From there a script that read votes from posts could work, but if you're going to do all that work then you might as well store the votes in a separate database table for efficiency's sake.

There's also the question of how to tie votes to rounds...besides RM volunteering to bookmark the start and end of days, there's no way to record that a post marks the start or end of a day, and even then, RM didn't use a consistent format to name the bookmarks (D1 vs Day 2), so for reliability's sake we also have to come up with a system to mark which posts signal the start and end of a day before we consider a system to record votes.

tl;dr: This is going to require making an entire system to record rounds and votes, and that's not something I'm going to be able to do in time for the current game.

@taulover: Technically yes. However, because permissions are based on forum, we would need to split Werewolf games from Werewolf discussion topics like this one if we still wanted people to edit their posts in the discussion topics. It's not a big deal, the easiest thing to do would be to move one or the other into a subforum.

Yeah, we're beginning to see the benefits of a forum specifically made for playing Mafia. They have a system that runs every aspect of the game for them: it sorts people into alignments and roles, it starts and ends phases with its own timer and then bookmarks each phase start and end automatically, it even has a separate system that allows power roles to submit their actions right on the game thread itself. There's very little host involvement beyond simply enforcing the rules and writing the flavour.

When you click on the "vote" button on their forum, it also gives you the list of people still alive in the thread, and restricts you to voting for only one of those listed.

Actually, a Werewolf Spectator subforum sounds kinda neat.  Let dead players and people watching the game weigh in with their thoughts, and remove the idea of Dead PMs and host revealing of roles when you die so that it keeps even the dead players guessing (Or allow host revealing still, but impose heavy rules against dead roles revealing that knowledge in there).

I'd definitely be all for that idea.

If it can be done where it doesn't overshadow the game (and vice versa), I'd recommend making a Werewolf Discussion/Mechanics subforum where all the tech topics and discussions could go, and make The Lost Village the main forum where only the games and signups would be...Or make the main forum for the tech talk/spectator discussion, and have the subforum be specifically for the games and signups only.

Either one.

@Laurentus: One thing at a time. Maybe our games will never be as automated as MU's, but I think we can make up for it with our unique flavor and we can make our own improvements as well.

@Michi: I take it that the active players shouldn't be able to see a Werewolf spectator topic for their own game, which means there would have to be some sort of check either by role or some sort of system that kept track of players. It would probably be part of a greater Werewolf system...the problem is, even then, I would be able to see it so if I were to play games people would have to take me at my word that I wouldn't check it.