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Over the last few games, it's become obvious that our Werewolf community has grown to the point that we have two distinct groups of players...dedicated players who are willing and able to invest a lot of time and effort into a game, and more casual players who either can't or won't. This isn't a bad thing...it means that our scene's grown into something that many different kinds of people want to be part of! But it is a challenge that frustrates players  when they're matched with others that prefer a different kind of game.

That is why I feel it's important that we build on the work that Michi has done in creating a Lil' Wolf series. In the future, we should have two different sorts of games based on which one their hosts would like to run: casual games that have limits on activity, and champion games that are free-for all but eligible for krone prizes. Maybe we could call it the Casual Series and the Champion Series. I don't know...but it'd be cool if they had names.

In any case, the purpose of this topic is the discuss this idea, and especially what our casual players want in a casual game and what sort of mechanic would be best to keep casual games from going too fast.

Let's improve our Werewolf scene, and show good games for all in the future!

I like the idea, but not the names. I would like to make it sillier. Something like the Casuals and Tryhards for the two different styles.

@Laurentus: I did the best I could in 10 minutes.

As weird as this sounds, I think a good start is to decide on: "How casual is casual?"

Do we want the average player in a casual go make 50 posts per day? 20? 10? 4? Are limited character counts in posts necessary to prevent massive walls? And from there, do we want to put a limit on certain things that make the game less casual? I feel that might be difficult though and might backfire (for example, I think limiting the use of reads list will honestly have the opposite effect in a game).

Keep in mind that reads lists in our games didn't really become a big thing until last year-ish.

So keeping them out of the casual games wouldn't be too bad if we did limit them.

Reads lists aren't the problem. The problem is the deep analysis players who use them tend to do, which they need to have a lot of activity for.

I've been actively resisting read lists in an "old man yells at cloud" sort of way (and also because I did not have the time/energy to go through all the posts and also assemble thoughts on literally everyone), but really it's just a systematized way of doing analysis that's always been done, and in a clearly parseable fashion. I think people ended up reconstructing a partial read list from my post last day phase, for instance. Encouraging people to post thoughts about at least several people who are likely villagers or wolves, and why, is something that has been done in Wintreath for many years now to drive up engagement from less active players, and it really is just a partial read list.

Yeah if we do do something like a limited, more casual game type, I strongly recommend a time limit and *not* a post limit.  Post limits aren't nearly as dynamic as Werewolf requires, especially if you're scumhunting.  I feel like one post per hour per player or one post per 2-3 hours per player would do far more benefit than a system with a hard post cap.  (Example: you've made 3 of your 4 posts in a day phase, and then someone does something completely obviously scummy, you post calling them out and encouraging the vote on them, and then someone asks you for further proof/elaboration)

Situations with a time cap just slow down the game, but they don't necessarily limit content as hard, which is much better imo.

Yeah if we do do something like a limited, more casual game type, I strongly recommend a time limit and *not* a post limit.  Post limits aren't nearly as dynamic as Werewolf requires, especially if you're scumhunting.  I feel like one post per hour per player or one post per 2-3 hours per player would do far more benefit than a system with a hard post cap.  (Example: you've made 3 of your 4 posts in a day phase, and then someone does something completely obviously scummy, you post calling them out and encouraging the vote on them, and then someone asks you for further proof/elaboration)

Situations with a time cap just slow down the game, but they don't necessarily limit content as hard, which is much better imo.

I think post limits work better when they're larger. I've talked about playing in games with a 150 post cap in a day (sometimes post limits are lifted ~1 hour before EoD in MU too) and those sorts of games work fine because it's a lot easier to leave yourself enough spare posts to work through big changes like you described. If you wanted a fixed limit of, say, 10 posts per game... that wouldn't really let you react to thread changes at all.

There's the option of having a fixed limit of, say, 10 posts and then increasing the limit to, say, 15 posts 2 hours before Day ends but then you run into the issues of people not being there at EoD and etc.

Yeah if we do do something like a limited, more casual game type, I strongly recommend a time limit and *not* a post limit.  Post limits aren't nearly as dynamic as Werewolf requires, especially if you're scumhunting.  I feel like one post per hour per player or one post per 2-3 hours per player would do far more benefit than a system with a hard post cap.  (Example: you've made 3 of your 4 posts in a day phase, and then someone does something completely obviously scummy, you post calling them out and encouraging the vote on them, and then someone asks you for further proof/elaboration)

Situations with a time cap just slow down the game, but they don't necessarily limit content as hard, which is much better imo.

I think post limits work better when they're larger. I've talked about playing in games with a 150 post cap in a day (sometimes post limits are lifted ~1 hour before EoD in MU too) and those sorts of games work fine because it's a lot easier to leave yourself enough spare posts to work through big changes like you described. If you wanted a fixed limit of, say, 10 posts per game... that wouldn't really let you react to thread changes at all.

There's the option of having a fixed limit of, say, 10 posts and then increasing the limit to, say, 15 posts 2 hours before Day ends but then you run into the issues of people not being there at EoD and etc.

I agree with this in principle - of course you're used to games with far higher post count, but I do think that having something like say, 25 or 50 post limit, where edit/correction posts don't count toward the limit, with the expectation that everyone should be typically posting much less than that on average, would make sense.

I put together some post stats on the first two days of Lil' Wolf, which I've posted below.

Spoiler

Not counting Laurentus, Legacy of Smiles, or Anubhav Ghosh (and Michi of course), most of the players posted less than 10 times a day. Out of the remaining players, Nyght posted the most on Day 1 (14) and Eastern New England posted the most on Day 2 (21), but I believe most of those were replies to Lau.

Personally, based on the fact that I'm going to have to eventually code this in, I would prefer a per day post count since that'd be easier than per hour, and based on the data, it seems to me a limit of 25 posts would be a good start with the understanding that most people won't get anywhere near that. If that proves to be too high, it can always be lowered in future games.

Would it be easier to code in if it were, say, a certain number of posts allocated per clock hour as opposed to a more traditional slowmode?

Perhaps from a coding standpoint, but I think that'd be harder to do from a balancing standpoint. A round can be relatively quiet until a certain point where it explodes in activity, especially end of day. I think an overall limit would be more accommodating to that situation than a per hour limit or even a slowmode. And based on the data we have so far, I don't think a limit would have to be too restrictive. I think minus activity-drivers like Lau, LoS, and Anubhav players won't even get close to 25 posts. In Lil' Wolf, you had a situation where half to two-thirds of posts in the day were from those 3 players.

That's a good point. However, I'm worried about 25 posts per day potentially being a bit too restrictive. I mentioned this in my post in the current Lil' Wolf game thread, but I think even back in the day we had a core group of more active players driving activity up, which isn't a bad thing as long as it's not overdone. I think giving them a bit more leeway than that might be a good thing still, though that might depend on what we're going for.

To test my theory, I think it might be worthwhile to gather some data points from Werewolf VI, which is probably the high point of "classic" Wintreath Werewolf. A quick search suggest that Laurentus averaged 25.6 posts/day and Lumenland averaged 20.6 posts/day; presumably there were times when they and others surpassed those numbers on a single day.

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.