Change the mindset around the game

[dbpeanut]

I'd like to start off by saying traditionally, I wouldn't think there'd be a need for this post... but clearly there's a problem with the overall mindset around the more vocal part of the community and overall how problems within the game are handled.

First and foremost, I've noticed a huge focus on snuffing out symptoms of problems rather than treating the problem itself- IE- a large focus on bans rather than finding out why so many people leave, gamethrow, or various other things. Granted, it's a deceit game, there will quite literally be a permanent number of people who leave or gamethrow because X, Y or Z. However, a large number of people who do leave or gamethrow do have a reason.
For starters, I've noticed that a lot of leavers feel like they're in a genuinely unwinnable situation, or feel like the odds are severely stacked against them. I comb through the reports from time to time, and read the things they're reported for, and it's still quite a bit of people who leave because of perceived unfairness or the like. Why not make the effort to figure out WHY they feel like the situation was unwinnable? Yes, there will be people you could call babies, but most people have legitimate criticism. If you were to take that criticism, you could very likely use it to solve the overarching issues.
Secondly, I've noticed that gamethrowers tend to a large variety of reasons, but generally, once again, to perceived unfairness. I've seen about 1/4th of them even do it to try and counteract another act of gamethrowing. It doesn't necessarily mean that they haven't done anything wrong of course, but there's underlying issues that still could be fixed rather than just punishing them.
Thirdly, there's this odd mindset around rule breaking. I've seen "Rule breaks don't justify rule breaks" and "Leavers are scum".

Rule breaks may not justify rule breaks, but obviously if someone leaves a game because a teammate gamethrew or because someone's screaming slurs- are you really going to blame them? If so, why?
I'll be honest, every time I see someone screaming slurs, I automatically consider that game null and void. There's literally no "deceit" or debate that's going to matter there. I've gamethrown because someone on my team was racist with a clearly racist name, with the mindset of "Rule breaks don't justify rule breaks", it ignores the overarching problems. I've seen plenty of people leave for the same reason- would YOU want to stay in a game with someone nonstop screaming slurs?
That mindset of rule breaks not justifying rule breaks needs to go so you can actually solve the problem.

The idea of people who break rules being scum also needs to go- for a very similar reason. Obviously, I don't like it when people leave. Nobody really does. But it doesn't mean you can't understand it. Realistically, people believing leavers are scum is going to make more people permanently quit the game rather than stay- because if mass toxicity builds at the idea of someone leaving, then how are people going to handle more serious rule breaks?

Realistically, how the rule breaks should go is being viewed in a tier-esc system.
Leaving is literally one of the most minor things you can do, even in the worst of circumstances.
Gamethrowing can actually be perceived as a strat - IE- making people believe you're gamethrowing or vice versa.
Spamming literally clogs chat and often leads to a massive shift.
Racism is used as a "strat" but really it's just because people find it so easy to do, that they either do it to get hung or to avoid it.
Cheating makes any game null and void.

Also, the idea that just because someone admits to something means they've done it, is a frankly stupid idea. In a deceit game, people will admit to ANYTHING. I randomly guess people literally all the time, half of the time I'm right. And if people pester me about cheating for long enough, I'll humor them and admit to it even though I've literally never done it.
Does this mean that people won't be legit about cheating? Of course not! Some people are really cocky and admit to the things they're actually doing- that's why you have to use context clues. If someone immediately pushes someone D1- but they have no way to know anything about their role such as not being a TI, and they're 100% right about what they are, that's kinda sus. But you know what's even more sus? Doing it again. If someone gets 2 people's exact roles right with literally no info, they're likely cheating.

But let's drift away from cheating for a second and talk about the three longest lasting problems in TOS.
Racism, spamming, and leaving.
Racism being the literal most easy to fix offense, let's focus on that for now.
Literally all you have to do to at least curb the amount of racism in game, is to go through literally all the people who get banned for hate speech, and ban the words that you banned them for. That's right- preventing people from saying racist words. Half of the time, people say racist crap because of how ridiculously easy it is. Just make it not as easy, and you'll have less hate speech violations.
Spamming is a very complex issue to fix, but there needs to be a more concrete set of guidelines or alternatively, reduce the amount of messages people can send per 10s.
It's not an exact science of course, and no singular person can tell you how to fix it, but you'll eventually get the feel for it.
Leaving, ultimately is a non-issue, but is caused primarily by in game situations caused by poor role design (see literal hundreds of threads by now) or bad game situations. Logically, just because someone mass leaves doesn't necessarily mean they're being an asshole, it can also mean that they're dissatisfied with roles/factions/situations. All of which are fixable.

TLDR: change the mindset, fix the game.

[SilverCruz]

And also there's the unsung leaver reason. Sometimes one's connection just isn't stable.

Them having an unstable connection isn't the game's fault, but what is the game's fault is its response to people leaving. "Guess they'll die." is terrible and does nothing but ruin individual rounds. The best way to fix the most damaging quits (Mafia quits), I reckon, is to make dead Mafia act as sockpuppets that can be controlled by other living Mafia for voting and night abilities (make them automatically report their results from the previous night in Mafia night chat). That wouldn't require implementing a reconnect system, but it'd still help a lot. If that's still too much work, then a zero effort solution would be making it so that the Forger and Janitor can target Mafia at will so they can at least cover up Mafia quits by destroying information like they're supposed to be doing. If you want a more all-encompassing solution, have Mafia who quit and die solely by committing suicide automatically cleaned. Not a perfect solution, but it'll at least maybe make the town wonder if it was a Mafia quit or if there really is a Janitor and they took an opening.

But since the developers don't care about feedback, nothing will ever change. We're just going to get this update, whatever it is, and it'll either be a visual overhaul that'll be a complete waste of time and effort, or a new game that only serves either as a desperate money grab or, if if it's also an online game, the first step to this one getting dragged out behind the shed and shot.

[ScarfVendetta]

First and foremost, I've noticed a huge focus on snuffing out symptoms of problems rather than treating the problem itself- IE- a large focus on bans rather than finding out why so many people leave, gamethrow, or various other things.

Your comparison to hostile architecture doesn't really apply here, as the people in charge of the Trial System (1 paid programmer, rest unpaid volunteers) are not in a position to fix problems such as game imbalance. Only the core game developers at BMG can address that.

Logically, just because someone mass leaves doesn't necessarily mean they're being an asshole, it can also mean that they're dissatisfied with roles/factions/situations. All of which are fixable.

It's still selfish to abandon your teammates/ruin the game for other players. This is indefensible.

Them having an unstable connection isn't the game's fault, but what is the game's fault is its response to people leaving. "Guess they'll die." is terrible and does nothing but ruin individual rounds. The best way to fix the most damaging quits (Mafia quits), I reckon, is to make dead Mafia act as sockpuppets that can be controlled by other living Mafia for voting and night abilities (make them automatically report their results from the previous night in Mafia night chat). That wouldn't require implementing a reconnect system, but it'd still help a lot.

I don't see sockpuppets as a viable suggestion. How would Townie leavers be dealt with? It would be an unfair advantage to place them under the control of another Townie, placing them under communal control would be far too easy for evils to abuse, and changing nothing would immediately expose living sockpuppets as evil.

You can't pitch this suggestion as a serious solution until these issues are addressed.

If that's still too much work, then a zero effort solution would be making it so that the Forger and Janitor can target Mafia at will so they can at least cover up Mafia quits by destroying information like they're supposed to be doing.

I could support this. If this utility applies even without leavers, then this would also impact Spy's results, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

But since the developers don't care about feedback, nothing will ever change.

Some widely acknowledged issues are difficult to fix in a way that satisfies everyone, and on other issues the community is split on whether there's even a problem at all. Some of the more recent balance patches (3.2.5 for example) received mixed feedback, which has probably made the developers hesitant to make drastic changes to role mechanics again. At least most of the playerbase seems to be onboard with leaver-buster.

There are other suggestions for which the community have given unanimous support, such as certain bug fixes and smaller features. I do wish the developers were more interactive with the community on these topics.

[SilverCruz]

Well I may have not been clear, in this case the Mafia quits are no longer announced to the Town (and Witches are only told if they've already controlled the quitter, with them instead being told it's a quitter upon controlling them if the target had quit first), so they can't pin someone down as having turned into a sockpuppet on the grounds that they have a Disconnect icon and didn't commit sudoku. They might be able to nail them on the grounds that they've seemingly gone completely AFK, but that's still blowing a lynch, execution, or Vigilante shot on a sockpuppet instead of just getting the Mafia kill for free, which is still an improvement (nevermind that it would make the AFK Jester play more powerful, clunky as it'd be with Un/Ranked having a static Witch and Executioner).

As for Town quits, well first off I just feel like doing something about the Mafia first is more important since unless it's the Almighty Wesley Jailor that quit (because balancing the game around a single role being blatantly overpowered is such a good idea, riiight?), there's no good answer. Investigatives have the common problem of their results becoming nearly infallible the moment it becomes known that they're a bot, and you can't really do anything to mitigate that (Investigator, for example, it would have to report every day, report only when voted up, report after it has no repeat targets, or never report and just quietly Will its results, the first three are no good because it can be trusted implicitly, and the fourth is no good because it'll just become a Mafia VIP that they intentionally ignore so that its results never get out, forcing the town to lynch it or waste resources to get its information). The Almighty Wesley Jailor, Vigilante, Escort, and Transporter are too volatile to do anything after they quit thanks to killing and/or disrupting others as a result of visiting, Doctor and Bodyguard would probably be the least trouble (though God forbid the Bodyguard RNG-targets a Mafia that the Vigilante is taking a shot at), Retributionist would be incredibly prone to wasting its ability, and there's nothing meaningful you could do with Medium and Mayor as they exist now.

The game is already asymmetrical, so having a double-standard on quit policy between Town and Mafia (plus Coven I guess?) isn't a terrible thing, if you ask me.

P.S. I'm massively against the leaver buster because it will not see nuance, and there's a PTR for a reason. But yes, the core of all this game's problems is that the developers are too friggin' opaque.

[Joacgroso]

First of all, leaving is the lowest priority offense. Leavers are rarely punished, unless they confirm they are intentionally leaving. If that's the case, they are literally gamethrowing, and they shouldn't receive a different treatment from other throwers.
I don't think having someone screaming slurs is a justifiable reason to leave the game when there is an /ignore command everyone can use.

My personal theory is that this game has so many trolls because it's one of the best games to ruin, since trolls can have a huge impact on the game and no one can really defend against them (compare that to games like LoL where trolls can only feed the other team, which isn't enough to guarantee a loss). Also, since it's centered around the chat, people will probably express their frustration more. Another reason why trolling in this game can be tempting is that gamethrowers and cheaters are rarely punished, since proving they intentionally threw is pretty much impossible unless they admit it. If we don't consider admissions enough evidence, then we simply can't punish anyone. It's not hard to gamethrow in an unpunishable way, especially now that the Syanna rule is no more.

[dbpeanut]

First and foremost, I've noticed a huge focus on snuffing out symptoms of problems rather than treating the problem itself- IE- a large focus on bans rather than finding out why so many people leave, gamethrow, or various other things.

Your comparison to hostile architecture doesn't really apply here, as the people in charge of the Trial System (1 paid programmer, rest unpaid volunteers) are not in a position to fix problems such as game imbalance. Only the core game developers at BMG can address that.

Logically, just because someone mass leaves doesn't necessarily mean they're being an asshole, it can also mean that they're dissatisfied with roles/factions/situations. All of which are fixable.

It's still selfish to abandon your teammates/ruin the game for other players. This is indefensible.

Them having an unstable connection isn't the game's fault, but what is the game's fault is its response to people leaving. "Guess they'll die." is terrible and does nothing but ruin individual rounds. The best way to fix the most damaging quits (Mafia quits), I reckon, is to make dead Mafia act as sockpuppets that can be controlled by other living Mafia for voting and night abilities (make them automatically report their results from the previous night in Mafia night chat). That wouldn't require implementing a reconnect system, but it'd still help a lot.

I don't see sockpuppets as a viable suggestion. How would Townie leavers be dealt with? It would be an unfair advantage to place them under the control of another Townie, placing them under communal control would be far too easy for evils to abuse, and changing nothing would immediately expose living sockpuppets as evil.

You can't pitch this suggestion as a serious solution until these issues are addressed.

If that's still too much work, then a zero effort solution would be making it so that the Forger and Janitor can target Mafia at will so they can at least cover up Mafia quits by destroying information like they're supposed to be doing.

I could support this. If this utility applies even without leavers, then this would also impact Spy's results, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

But since the developers don't care about feedback, nothing will ever change.

Some widely acknowledged issues are difficult to fix in a way that satisfies everyone, and on other issues the community is split on whether there's even a problem at all. Some of the more recent balance patches (3.2.5 for example) received mixed feedback, which has probably made the developers hesitant to make drastic changes to role mechanics again. At least most of the playerbase seems to be onboard with leaver-buster.

There are other suggestions for which the community have given unanimous support, such as certain bug fixes and smaller features. I do wish the developers were more interactive with the community on these topics.

The trial system is flawed because it helped develop this mindset. I mean that quite literally. Regardless, my criticism is not aimed at the trial system. My criticism is aimed at the devs/higher ups because they have a toxic mindset towards problems that require solutions.

First of all, leaving is the lowest priority offense. Leavers are rarely punished, unless they confirm they are intentionally leaving. If that's the case, they are literally gamethrowing, and they shouldn't receive a different treatment from other throwers.
I don't think having someone screaming slurs is a justifiable reason to leave the game when there is an /ignore command everyone can use.

My personal theory is that this game has so many trolls because it's one of the best games to ruin, since trolls can have a huge impact on the game and no one can really defend against them (compare that to games like LoL where trolls can only feed the other team, which isn't enough to guarantee a loss). Also, since it's centered around the chat, people will probably express their frustration more. Another reason why trolling in this game can be tempting is that gamethrowers and cheaters are rarely punished, since proving they intentionally threw is pretty much impossible unless they admit it. If we don't consider admissions enough evidence, then we simply can't punish anyone. It's not hard to gamethrow in an unpunishable way, especially now that the Syanna rule is no more.

First of all, leaving is the lowest priority offense. Leavers are rarely punished, unless they confirm they are intentionally leaving. If that's the case, they are literally gamethrowing, and they shouldn't receive a different treatment from other throwers.
I don't think having someone screaming slurs is a justifiable reason to leave the game when there is an /ignore command everyone can use.

My personal theory is that this game has so many trolls because it's one of the best games to ruin, since trolls can have a huge impact on the game and no one can really defend against them (compare that to games like LoL where trolls can only feed the other team, which isn't enough to guarantee a loss). Also, since it's centered around the chat, people will probably express their frustration more. Another reason why trolling in this game can be tempting is that gamethrowers and cheaters are rarely punished, since proving they intentionally threw is pretty much impossible unless they admit it. If we don't consider admissions enough evidence, then we simply can't punish anyone. It's not hard to gamethrow in an unpunishable way, especially now that the Syanna rule is no more.

Leavers are rarely punished? Or leavers rarely appeal their punishment? Trust me, I've been pouring through the reports a lot. They do get punished. And the whole idea of a leaver buster IS to punish them.
Also, fuck off with an ignore function in a literal debate game. Have you no sense of irony?
If my solution of literally preventing people of saying the words that would get them banned is too hard to understand, then why do other games do it? Surely, it isn't that hard.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, needs to defend this game.
Defending games is a way to avoid criticism, and in this case my criticism isn't even pointed at the community, it's more pointed at the rules and how they're handled overall.
So why defend it?

[SilverCruz]

I'm just also gonna throw in, arbitrarily, that I feel that quitting Free To Play did more harm than good. I admit, I was tuned out for a long time so I'm missing context, but you ultimately have four brackets of players.

1 - The Grandfathers who do not have a Premium Account.
2 - Demo players who got referred in and have a limited amount of games.
3 - Those who have a Premium account, but no Coven.
4 - Those who have Coven.

Bracket 1, obviously, is not renewable because it's Exit Only. Nobody can become a Grandfather, it's only possible for Grandfathers with no Premium account to change to Bracket 3 or Bracket 4. Bracket 2 I argue is not particularly helpful for the game because they get five rounds to play that will probably be in Classic which presents an inaccurate, intentionally lopsided view of the game that has a significant probability of being further screwed up by people leaving or the demo player getting killed off Night 1, thereby instantly wasting one of their five rounds. I'd be interested in seeing the turnover rate of demo accounts that actually buy a Premium and stick around versus those who play the five rounds then fall off the face of the earth. Then you have Bracket 3, only set apart from Bracket 1 because they're treated better and it's not Exit Only, and Bracket 4 who gets a walled garden within a walled garden.

I feel like whether or not this game leaves a decent first impression is completely luck based. You might play five rounds and have them all go decently. Or you might have them all completely screw up by means of you getting killed off Night 1, Mafia quits, or any other manner of stupid thing (maybe that's why the devs are so hell-bent on this anti-quitting robot?). Because at that point a buy-in is required, if someone has had a bad experience in this game of high highs and low lows, they're probably just gonna walk because five bucks for a bad time is still a bad time, irrespective of that low cost. I'm not inclined to believe that the anemic playerbase can be fixed without crawling back to the free-to-play model because of all this, and continuing to have another divide between what's already around is, well uh, it's something, is what it is.

Also, just gonna throw this out there, I feel like cosmetics are really weak in this game because your cosmetics are never the center of attention. The point of focus is always text in the bottom left or bottom right side of the screen, you'll never say "The guy with the Jester skin is Body/God/Arson", you'll say "13 is Body/God/Arson" or "William Hobbs is Body/God/Arson", so it'd be just as well if the game ran on a plain black screen and it wouldn't really change anything. I'm not a monetization scientist, so I don't really have any suggestions for that. Sorry.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, needs to defend this game.
Defending games is a way to avoid criticism, and in this case my criticism isn't even pointed at the community, it's more pointed at the rules and how they're handled overall.
So why defend it?

It's an unfortunate quirk of human psychology that people get testy when something they like gets criticized. Unfortunately I don't really know how to play around that, else I'd probably be in a better position in general as far as media goes.

[Joacgroso]

Leavers are rarely punished? Or leavers rarely appeal their punishment? Trust me, I've been pouring through the reports a lot. They do get punished. And the whole idea of a leaver buster IS to punish them.

Just because leavers are reported it doesn't mean they are punished. Jurors are instructed to always vote innocent on leavers unless they explicitly confirmed they are intentionally leaving, which is the same as gamethrowing. Here is a report where a person obviously left on purpose, but was deemed innocent because he never outright confirmed it. There are many cases where people leave intentionally but aren't punished because of a lack of confession. Even if it isn't obvious, jurors can't even check their leaving history to see if they usually leave d1 as certain roles, which is not ok.
I've been to the trial system, and leaving reports are extremely rare. Out of my last 100 reports voted, only 7 were leaving reports. And the last 4 were deemed innocent (I can't confirm the other 3 because they were archived and I can't see them).

Also, fuck off with an ignore function in a literal debate game. Have you no sense of irony?

That's not really an argument. If you prefer to dramatically exit the game instead of just muting the offensive person, then that's your problem. Someone who spams slurs is obviously not here to play, and they won't share any useful information. Just mute them and move on. Don't make the game even worse for other players.

If my solution of literally preventing people of saying the words that would get them banned is too hard to understand, then why do other games do it? Surely, it isn't that hard.

There are lots of ways to evade the filter, by just changing one letter in certain words. Trolls can also multiaccount and team up to spell the slur separately. If the filter becomes harder, trolls will just find ways around that.
Besides, this is just snuffing out the symptoms of the problem rather than treating the problem itself, as you said in your post. Trolls troll to make people angry, not "because they can". Even if they are unable to spam slurs, which won't happen, they will still just gamethrow and come back with new accounts.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, needs to defend this game.
Defending games is a way to avoid criticism, and in this case my criticism isn't even pointed at the community, it's more pointed at the rules and how they're handled overall.
So why defend it?

I wrote here mainly to state my theory about why people troll in this game. I also think that toxic players aren't judged hardly enough, so I don't really like suggestions that ask for the opposite.


Regarding what SilverCruz said, there are other ways of promoting the game. I'm totally in favor of the game being p2p, since as I said the game is very easy to troll, and if trolls can just come back after being banned, then there is no point in fighting them. That's why I'm also against people being able to play classic for free by watching some adds. It makes the whole paywall pointless. It would be fine if they were only able to play with each other (which would make the game even less tempting for newcomers, I admit), but they can play with grandfathered/premium players and ruin their games too.

I'm not a game developer, but my suggestion for promoting the game would be finally adding private lobbies. Make it so "demo" players can only use private lobbies with their friends. Maybe make it so there can only be up to X amount of players per game (for example, max 7 players), and maybe block some roles from spawning. Those last details could be tweaked, but they would prevent trolls from ruining classic games while it would help begginers grasp the concept of the game and also helping old players who just like private lobbies.

[dbpeanut]

Leavers are rarely punished? Or leavers rarely appeal their punishment? Trust me, I've been pouring through the reports a lot. They do get punished. And the whole idea of a leaver buster IS to punish them.

Just because leavers are reported it doesn't mean they are punished. Jurors are instructed to always vote innocent on leavers unless they explicitly confirmed they are intentionally leaving, which is the same as gamethrowing. Here is a report where a person obviously left on purpose, but was deemed innocent because he never outright confirmed it. There are many cases where people leave intentionally but aren't punished because of a lack of confession. Even if it isn't obvious, jurors can't even check their leaving history to see if they usually leave d1 as certain roles, which is not ok.
I've been to the trial system, and leaving reports are extremely rare. Out of my last 100 reports voted, only 7 were leaving reports. And the last 4 were deemed innocent (I can't confirm the other 3 because they were archived and I can't see them).

Also, fuck off with an ignore function in a literal debate game. Have you no sense of irony?

That's not really an argument. If you prefer to dramatically exit the game instead of just muting the offensive person, then that's your problem. Someone who spams slurs is obviously not here to play, and they won't share any useful information. Just mute them and move on. Don't make the game even worse for other players.

If my solution of literally preventing people of saying the words that would get them banned is too hard to understand, then why do other games do it? Surely, it isn't that hard.

There are lots of ways to evade the filter, by just changing one letter in certain words. Trolls can also multiaccount and team up to spell the slur separately. If the filter becomes harder, trolls will just find ways around that.
Besides, this is just snuffing out the symptoms of the problem rather than treating the problem itself, as you said in your post. Trolls troll to make people angry, not "because they can". Even if they are unable to spam slurs, which won't happen, they will still just gamethrow and come back with new accounts.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, needs to defend this game.
Defending games is a way to avoid criticism, and in this case my criticism isn't even pointed at the community, it's more pointed at the rules and how they're handled overall.
So why defend it?

I wrote here mainly to state my theory about why people troll in this game. I also think that toxic players aren't judged hardly enough, so I don't really like suggestions that ask for the opposite.


Regarding what SilverCruz said, there are other ways of promoting the game. I'm totally in favor of the game being p2p, since as I said the game is very easy to troll, and if trolls can just come back after being banned, then there is no point in fighting them. That's why I'm also against people being able to play classic for free by watching some adds. It makes the whole paywall pointless. It would be fine if they were only able to play with each other (which would make the game even less tempting for newcomers, I admit), but they can play with grandfathered/premium players and ruin their games too.

I'm not a game developer, but my suggestion for promoting the game would be finally adding private lobbies. Make it so "demo" players can only use private lobbies with their friends. Maybe make it so there can only be up to X amount of players per game (for example, max 7 players), and maybe block some roles from spawning. Those last details could be tweaked, but they would prevent trolls from ruining classic games while it would help begginers grasp the concept of the game and also helping old players who just like private lobbies.

One, I'm not criticizing the trial system ultimately. Even if I was, my criticisms are about how rules are viewed and not even just about leavers.
Two, how can I put this? You literally don't understand the game if you think the ignore function is an actual useful thing. Obvious jesters lead the town literally all the time. Racists lead the town all the time. Ignoring them would LITERALLY lead to your death. Hell, just because someone says stupid crap worthy of being ignored doesn't mean they won't drop a truth bomb such as 10 being Coven Leader or something like that. The ignore function is quite literally something that causes more problems than it can even possibly fix.
Three, if there are a lot of ways to avoid the filter, fix that. Not hard to understand. Just because someone can find their way around the filter does not mean the filter shouldn't be updated. What the filter is meant to do anyways is make it to where the amount of effort put in is more than minimal- something nobody seems to understand. Is it snuffing out the symptoms of the problem if the problem is quite literally how easy it is to be racist in the game?
Four, you say that toxic players aren't judged hardly enough- and that's true- but toxicity CAN'T be fixed. Not with a debate game. What I am SPECIFICALLY asking for the mindset around the rules to be reelavulated for the game's health.

[dbpeanut]

I want to clarify two things.
One, every single issue I'm describing has been here from the beginning. The filter itself has either barely changed or not changed at all. People have been using the 1-2 character differences for racist words since at least 2015. Which is pathetic.
Two, the forums are the main way people can communicate with the devs and anybody in a position of power. So when people see the forums community mass defending problems that they have in the game, what do you think the reaction is? It's not good, I'll tell you that much.

[Joacgroso]

One, I'm not criticizing the trial system ultimately. Even if I was, my criticisms are about how rules are viewed and not even just about leavers.

I brought up the trial system because you mentioned it first, saying that leavers were usually punished, which is false.

Two, how can I put this? You literally don't understand the game if you think the ignore function is an actual useful thing. Obvious jesters lead the town literally all the time. Racists lead the town all the time. Ignoring them would LITERALLY lead to your death. Hell, just because someone says stupid crap worthy of being ignored doesn't mean they won't drop a truth bomb such as 10 being Coven Leader or something like that. The ignore function is quite literally something that causes more problems than it can even possibly fix.

This doesn't really make sense. People who spam slurs rarely try to lead the town. They are not there to play the game, just to ruin it for everyone. Only a very, very stupid town would follow the spammer. In most cases, the spammer will by lynched and reported. It doesn't matter if they were a jester, they will still be punished.
But here's the thing: if you ignore the troll, there's a low chance that he will try to lead the town, and an even lower chance that he will target you specifically. Even if he does, the chances of the town following the troll are still low. But if you leave the game, your chances of dying inmediately are 100%. So saying leaving is a viable option but not ignoring the troll is ridiculous. It doesn't matter how often you think town will follow a troll, your chances of dying greatly increase if you leave.

Three, if there are a lot of ways to avoid the filter, fix that. Not hard to understand. Just because someone can find their way around the filter does not mean the filter shouldn't be updated. What the filter is meant to do anyways is make it to where the amount of effort put in is more than minimal- something nobody seems to understand. Is it snuffing out the symptoms of the problem if the problem is quite literally how easy it is to be racist in the game?

There is already a filter, and people evade it. There are unlimited combinations that can be used to evade it, but to make a filter you have to take every single possibility into account, which is impossible. Also, you can't compare a small company like BMG with big companies that have high budgets. I really don't think making an advanced filter is as easy as you think it is.
But you know what? Improving the filter is still a valid suggestion and since I'm not a programmer, I can't really argue against that. I'll leave it up to the devs, if they read this.

Four, you say that toxic players aren't judged hardly enough- and that's true- but toxicity CAN'T be fixed. Not with a debate game. What I am SPECIFICALLY asking for the mindset around the rules to be reelavulated for the game's health.

Right. The original post was pretty long, so I may have missed the main point. I'll sum it up to see if I understood:
You say that we shouldn't be so hard on leavers or gamethrowers, and that what they do can be justified if they didn't like their role (because the game is flawed and unbalanced) or because someone else did the same before.
Right?

If those were your main points, I agree that preventing people from being toxic is better than punishing them, but even if that was possible we can't just ignore everyone who is toxic right now. Fixing those issues would take a lot of time, and the less we punish toxic players, the more tempted are players to troll.
In my experience, most people "gamethrow" out of ignorance (which isn't really gamethrowing) or malice. But if we consider that "counter throwing" is valid, then we would become hypocrites for punishing some kinds of gamethrowing and not others. Also, drawing a line to define when it's justifiable to gamethrow would be hard. I can see many noobs starting to gamethrow because they were being "random lynched" when they were just VFR'ed, or when anything they don't understand happens. And let's not even start with all the trolls who would use that as an excuse. We can't possibly tell when someone is dumb and when someone is malicious, so judgement would become irregular.
And finally, we can't just balance the game so some people don't leave, because it's impossible to please everyone. Even if you please those people, other people will be annoyed by the changes and might start leaving. Winrates are different at different skill levels too. Just because people leave as mafia in classic it doesn't mean mafia is UP, for example.

[SilverCruz]

Also, you can't compare a small company like BMG with big companies that have high budgets. I really don't think making an advanced filter is as easy as you think it is..

wordfilter = ["naughtyword1", "naughtyword2", "naughtyword3"]

Oh no! A new censor bypass has come up! What will we do!?

wordfilter = ["naughtyword1", "naughtyword2", "naughtyword3", "naughtyword4"]

Wow, that was hard. I better be paid five figures for that one.

Granted that's based on Python, so who knows the parallel for whatever this thing is actually coded up in, but a reactionary filter? Dead simple. It also really doesn't matter what the parallel is because they obviously have it set up since a filter already exists in the first place, so I would imagine they know how to add to it.

[Flavorable]

Yeah, no. Keeping up with every single way people can evade the already existing filter is something no one should be wasting their time on. If people break the rules, report them, simple as that. Let's have the Devs focus on actual important updates and bug fixes instead of having to spend every minute of their work days trying to keep up with every filter evasion ever.

The ignore function exists for a reason.

[SilverCruz]

So that part where adding a new word to a string list takes literally two seconds at most?

[dbpeanut]

Yeah, no. Keeping up with every single way people can evade the already existing filter is something no one should be wasting their time on. If people break the rules, report them, simple as that. Let's have the Devs focus on actual important updates and bug fixes instead of having to spend every minute of their work days trying to keep up with every filter evasion ever.

The ignore function exists for a reason.

This is the exact type of thing I mean.
It's been 6 years since any meaningful update has been made to the filter. Is it really that hard to update it? It shouldn't be.
Also, the ignore function does not solve the issue. The ignore function just puts you in a worse situation. The ignore function literally only works if everybody in a game ignores someone.

[dbpeanut]

Also, I want to add that you insinuated that updating a filter is not nearly as important as whatever graphical update they're working on right now. You know what the majority of the community could care less on? A graphical update. Nobody in their right mind cares about a graphical update for a game that has never looked particularly good. What they care about are game ruining issues that haven't been solved for years.

[Joacgroso]

Ignoring someone who only spams slurs doesn't make anything worse, though. And if you are annoyed by whatever they are saying, you don't need the other players to ignore them too. They are probably there to be banned as quick as possible or to ruin as many games as possible, not to lead or deceive the town. You won't miss anything from ignoring them.

Of course, it won't solve the issue. But I honestly doubt improving a filter will solve it either. People will always find ways around that.

[dbpeanut]

Ignoring someone who only spams slurs doesn't make anything worse, though. And if you are annoyed by whatever they are saying, you don't need the other players to ignore them too. They are probably there to be banned as quick as possible or to ruin as many games as possible, not to lead or deceive the town. You won't miss anything from ignoring them.

Of course, it won't solve the issue. But I honestly doubt improving a filter will solve it either. People will always find ways around that.

Improving a filter would at bare minimum show that BMG cares about their game. I mean, obviously BMG has an anti-hate speech rule but like, we're talking one character differences or even full racist words that shouldn't be allowed in the game. People can say that reporting fixes the issue, but it really doesn't. Ignoring doesn't either, I've seen towns blindly follow these people time and time again.
The only actual fix, or even just an attempt at an actual fix, would be to update an outdated filter. Which even if ultimately unsuccessful, it'd still give the impression that they're trying to fix the issue.
Just saying to report or ignore these guys is like saying "Racism is bad, m'kay?"
Instead you want a response more along the lines of "Racism will not be tolerated."
I personally could name at least 5 words that aren't banned that are fully racist and have been known as racist for decades. You don't even have to get rid of phrases, just really words, and that's effort that the majority of the community would appreciate.

[SilverCruz]

Well, the problem is this.

They don't care about it.

That's plain as day to me.

And if any of those developers want to contradict me, tell us what the hell you're doing. Your vague pseudo-updates aren't building hype, they're just aggravating people who are unsatisfied with this game. I swear, if it turns out they're trying to hype up a new game, that just means this game is completely dead and forgotten about.

[Joacgroso]

Well, updating the filter would be a good idea, if they have time. I really don't think it will solve the issue, but adding some blatant cases might help.
I don't know how much time it would take, though. Maybe their time is better off used in something else, since we already have the option to report and trolls will always find ways to evade the filter.

[dbpeanut]

Well, updating the filter would be a good idea, if they have time. I really don't think it will solve the issue, but adding some blatant cases might help.
I don't know how much time it would take, though. Maybe their time is better off used in something else, since we already have the option to report and trolls will always find ways to evade the filter.

It really, really shouldn't take a considerable amount of time even if they have to add 1000 entries.

[Joacgroso]

Aren't they only 4 people? And how do you know how programming a filter works?

Don't get me wrong, updating the filter would be good. I just don't think investing their limited resources into that is worth it.

[SilverCruz]

Again, if it's a string list, adding a new entry would take less than two seconds at max.

[dbpeanut]

Aren't they only 4 people? And how do you know how programming a filter works?

The filter should already be programmed. There is already a filter, all they should be doing is adding words to it.
If there isn't a filter in play, that's leagues more concerning.
Regardless, if there's only 4 people, they can decide how to spread their time. I assure you, I'm asking for the bare minimum a game should have, even an indie game.

[Flavorable]

I guess the two of you missed the fact that the filter quite literally got updated in the last patch.

And no, we're not going to add every single form of filter evasion ever to it, because people will keep finding ways to evade the filter anyway. It's a job that costs more time, effort and money than will ever be worth it.

I mean, I know it always seems easy to people on the other side of the screen, but trust me, it's really not that easy. There are a LOT of factors that go into updating a filter. And with 3 programmers, they should definitely not waste their time on that, because they would need to come up with every single possible filter evasion ever.

I can say with extremely reasonable certainty that this suggestion cannot and will not be implemented. However, if you see a hard filtered word that is evaded the same way consistently, you can always e-mail support and ask them if it's possible to include that combination in the filter.