Whats your opinion on Town of Salem altogether?

[Mroz4k]

Poll Legend:
Answers:

1. I like the game in its current state, I dont have any problem with it.
2. I am loyal player of Town of Salem, even if I have a problem with the game. I am taking the B out, because it doesnt actually say anything about the "problems" of the game. People chose mostly B, which doesnt say anything about what they think is wrong with the game.
3. I dislike the state of ingame community (the players I meet in-game)
4. I dislike the state of game mechanics (balance of game, broken roles, bugs, etc.)
5. I dislike the approach of BMG (updates taking long, are dissapointing, community ideas ignored, etc)

To explain the Poll question better:
Imagine there are two Town of Salems - the current one, and a copycat which has less toxic community, better balanced roles, and updates that come out frequently, add new content into the game, using community ideas and such. Would you continue to play original Town of Salem, with the current community etc, or would you transfer over to the copycat, because it has better prospects for the future?

Purpose behind this is to find out what irritates people the most about the current state of the game.

I figured this topic is important to talk about, after having a brief chat with someone on Twitter yesterday. They said something that inspired me to make this thread.

Assume this other "game" is identical to Town of Salem in everything, but smaller in terms of community, and all the described issues are less frequent. This is a fictional scenario. For better example, compare the current game state with the early Beta state of the game (aka right after second Kickstarter).

The main purpose of this thread is the poll - to get feedback on what keeps people around, whether anything, and what they dislike, potentionally like on this game altogether (counting together the current game state, game mechanics, in-game community, and community management).That said, if you have something additional to add to your vote in the poll, feel free to include it. This is a conclusion of many sensitive topics that were the part of this game for a while, but noone really put them all together.

Please, include what you voted for in the poll, in your additional argument.

The topics to follow especially:

• Current state of ingame community
• Current state of game balance & mechanics
• Attitude of development team towards the game/community
• Your opinion on the future of the game.

______________________________
Current results for the Poll:

• 5 voters like the game as it is right now.
• 32 voters have some kind of a problem with the current state of the game.
• 23 of the voters have a problem with the state of in-game community.
• 17 of the voters have a problem with the state of game mechanics, roles and game balance.
• 18 of the voters have a problem with the general attitude of BMG (game management, updates, cooperation with community, etc)

86% of voters have some kind of a problem with the game, 14% voted they like the game the way it is right now. 22% of these voters have problem with all three issues.

[testaccount1234]

I picked B because wow, it's the only actual decent mafia simulator that is user-friendly in terms of design. Sure, epicmafia may be more balanced but it was a lot harder for me to grasp the concept than Town Of Salem. Also, in Town Of Salem, you can pick a nickname, remaining anonymous until the end of the game where in epicmafia, your username sticks out like a thumb, making it a bit too meta for me.

I like it and I won't be leaving even though it has it's problems. I can play a single game within 20 minutes and there's always people who keep playing it. I supported them for two years and I'll probably support them for another two years.

I repeat, there are some problems in the game but I can overlook them. I only play once a day in general as well.

[Mroz4k]

I think people are misunderstanding the question:
Imagine there are two Town of Salems - the current one, and a copycat which has less toxic community, better balanced roles, and updates that come out frequently, add new content into the game, using community ideas and such. Would you continue to play original Town of Salem, with the current community etc, or would you transfer over to the copycat, because it has better prospects for the future?

Purpose behind this is to find out what irritates people the most about the current state of the game.

Im not sure you understood the poll question correctly - the point here is if you would stick with TOS if nothing has changed from how it is now, just because its TOS, or if you would go for a game with better system, community & management.

The point behind this is to find out whats more important to people - whether to play TOS the way it works right now, or whether people would move to another game that has better system, friendlier ingame community and more frequent updates which actually add content into the game, like new roles, community favored suggestions, etc.

The essential idea behind this is to show what people are mostly dissatisfied with, and what needs to change if the game is to survive long-term. If nothing is wrong, then the first answer would need to have the most answers.

I also realize the B answer is probably bad to have in there. It doesnt actually tell anything about "what" is wrong with TOS, so I should probably remove it. Its inconclusive.

_______________________________
Guess I will explain why I voted for the last option

I am dissatisfied with all the three major aspects of the game.

First, In-game community. There is a lack of any effective countermeasures to have the bad players punished. The current system is just too easy-going, and making of new accounts is very easy, too. There need to be harder rules on punishments, with harder staff. Oh, and mostly - number of staff should increase drastically. Also talking about in-game punishments - there should be a system of ingame mods of some kind. The current Trials system is way too slowgoing.

Second - game mechanics. There are some faulty game-mechanics that were in place since the game came out into beta. Some were fixed, some were not. Now there are new roles pushed out which completedly break the balance of the game by going against some very simple, logical points. Good example is VH - a Town hard-counter role that goes specifically against Vampires, who are already heavily underpowered role as is.

Third - game management. Im sorry, but the time between upgrades grows gradually longer, while there seems to be less and less content, going out. Furthermore, community is completedly left out when it comes to changes in game. There were very strong voices against adding the conversion roles into the game, even before the development of these roles began. Yet, they came out in the exact manner nobody wanted them to have - except developers. There were some decisions that community was allowed to make - but those were pretty pitiful, for example what kind of color of hair will the Escort char skin have - red or orange.
These kind of changes had no effect on the game at all - so in other words, the Developers will be adding things the way they want, not the way community wants the things to be. Which makes hardly a sense, considering its the community that will play the game in the end, and pay for it, too.

Some of my personal projects that are coming in:
I plan to make a comparison with another Kickstarter-fired up game, which is a different game, but has similarly ran forums, and different management, and I will compare their success to the success of BMG.
I also plan to do a SWOT analysis on the game, using estimates and some facts I have gathered in my polls so far.
Finally I´d like to do marketing enviroment analysis, I have a plan for how to do that, but its going to take a while, I think.

There are so many basic errors in the concept of the way the game is run it hurts. And its sad because all these basic errors are the reason the game is getting into bigger and bigger decline.

[genericnpc]

Spoiler: smaller community?

no way i would leave

[jayden7710]

Good post. I hope this develops into a good discussion and none of this is censored.

Here's my opinion:

I feel D & E can be interlinked together. C is a problem that you always have in a community; especially one thats' host is generated off people who watch Markiplier videos. It's supposedly being helped by the Trial System, which by not being released/problems yet can be alluded to problem E.

And that's why I feel E is the biggest problem. It's an actual joke the amount of work BMG have put into this game since Vampires released/WW Immunity. 4 cosmetics and a map. That's it. That's a cosmetic per month since November. Nothing else. And somehow the amount of people playing this game has gone up. I see 6k players on at peak hours, few months ago that got as low as 3k.

Mobile? Supposed to be released last year. Delayed until after Summer. Delayed again until February. Still not released. How can you defend that inconsistency?

I get the excuses, I get they have a small team. Hire more people then. I'm pretty sure as hell there would be people on these forums volunteering to do work. I see BMG apologists beginning to lose faith in their approach, and it's totally justified. Bugs that have been found over a year ago have not been patched. Had I donated to the Kickstarter, I'd be genuinely let down. Nothing is even experimented on, I saw they closed the Testing forum just a few days ago. I think it's easy to interpret BMG's views on the game right now.

BMG did a great job to get the game where it is now, don't get me wrong, but at this rate they will not sustain it. Whatever the problem is, they need to work with the community to solve it. If it's another Kickstarter they need, if it's people volunteering. Whatever.

For people voting Option A, I would assume that's people relatively new to the game. I personally play nowhere near as much as I used to due to how stale the game is.

TLDR; TOS is a game that is good, and has the potential to be 50 fold better. And hasn't done so because of BMG's approach. My opinion.

[oliy]

Honestly, I don't mind BMG's little ads, and the game mechanics just need a little tweaking, of which we, the forumers, have suggested.
I still think the community is bad. There are cheaters, gamethrowers, dumb people in ranked, etc.
I probably wouldn't leave 100%, but I would play the other game more often.

[Mroz4k]

@Jayden - naturally, there will always be a part of community thats horrible. However, its a matter of whether its in reasonable bounds, or its way over threshold of whats acceptable. I suppose you will agree with me that having a game where you pretty much cant play a single match without someone cheating or just overal being toxic, is a little bit pitiful.

The Trials system has been released, and I believe that its existence has already made a difference. However, that difference is still significantly small. Its a matter of trying to invest time into figuring out how to block off people from creating new accounts to counter a ban, as well as improving the effectivness of the Trials, possibly implementing some sort of in-game observation functions as well. The toxic community is one of the biggest concerns that nothing all that much is done about.

As for game mechanics - this is when it comes down to "how quickly one can code" - honestly, I doubt its this slow. Since the time they "started" working on Vampire and Vampire Hunter, they finished and pushed the roles out soon afterwards, I doubt it was much longer then a month.

There are some very basic mistakes in the whole ordeal - the BMG actions are mostly not racional. This is a big reason behind why the game is just not working out as well. It might be a great game, great idea, but horribly executed.

I doubt BMG can afford to hire any more developers. They could if they had more money. Thats the final project I mentioned - I´d like to start developing some marketing background, applying them on Forum community, since its a community mostly collected out of people who play the game. Hence, an opinion of 200 people would deflect the opinions of entire community.

Spoiler: smaller community?

no way i would leave

You probably fail to realize a significant fact - the other game would started out as a smaller community, but long-term, it would take over majority of this game´s community, so in some time, the TOS would be the game with smaller community.

The question is an example of whether you would rather play TOS in the state its in right now, or whether you would transfer over to another game that is much better executed and maintained.

Honestly, I don't mind BMG's little ads, and the game mechanics just need a little tweaking, of which we, the forumers, have suggested.
I still think the community is bad. There are cheaters, gamethrowers, dumb people in ranked, etc.
I probably wouldn't leave 100%, but I would play the other game more often.

I never considered the ads to be a bad idea. It was only an issue when you were forced the ads all the time - thats what makes people deranged, so it had more of a negative effect before, now its fine.
Game mechanics not changing, despite community suggests so, is one of my major concerns. Shows both the problems of D and E together.

Its not really a matter of whether someone would leave or not - but mostly to point out how you feel about the current state of the game, and if there was another, better alternative, whether you would transfer over or not. I´d probably still play TOS on occasion, for the sake of it. But I would shamelessly transfer over if there was a concurention, but there is not, which is the problem.

[BananaMonkeyTaco]

For me, yeah the community has a few people that aren't as smart as I would like, and I'm talking about the forums right now. Most of those you can easily recognize and avoid though, and they usually are fairly brief residents on the forums. As for players in the game, yeah there's bad, horrible, and unspeakable. For the most part I almost only play this game if I'm streaming it so most of the people in my games at least aren't outright game throwers. If I was forced to play with the regular players then I probably wouldn't play the game much, if at all.

[shelboo]

[C]
I'm okay with the slower updates and since I'm not an avid ranked player, the balance issues don't personally mean too much to me. I'm a casual player. Just wanna go in to have a relaxing and good time.
With that said, I do play a lot less... due to toxic players. A week or two ago I played 4 games in a row which involved cheating and/or gamethrowing. It was very frustrating. Frustrating since I went online to enjoy myself... and ended up feeling grumpy as a result.

It's nice with the Trial System being pushed forward, but one can't help but feel like garbage from the toxic players. My time was wasted from those who ruined the matches I was in. I can forgive bad gameplay moves, but cheating/gamethrowing just really sucks.

With that said, I wouldn't leave ToS. I do love the game and I hope it continues to grow and improve.

[SecretWeaponCoffee]

Unfortunately these suggestions are idealizations.

One of life's motifs: "We want more service!" "Would you mind higher charges?" "No!" "So what exactly pays for this?"

BMG are dealing with C right now anyway. I'm afraid I can find little issue.

[jayden7710]

Unfortunately these suggestions are idealizations.

One of life's motifs: "We want more service!" "Would you mind higher charges?" "No!" "So what exactly pays for this?"

BMG are dealing with C right now anyway. I'm afraid I can find little issue.

Money goes to money. If you want higher charges, make a game that's worth paying for. What is there to buy other than cosmetics which for the great majority can be bought by just playing the game for free.

If they want more money for the betterment of the game, don't force ads. Don't make promises you can't make with mobile, delayed about 3 times. The community is completely left in the dark. If they need money, they need another kick-starter (aka the most efficient way of making money on an 'indie' game). Which really would take a lot of credibility away from them considering they've not finished the objectives of the current one.

But it's better than the game continuing in decline, right? I'm not faulting the developers, I think they've created a very good game and did some good, but they've also did some bad and it's cost the people who actually still play/promote their game.

BMG went about it wrong. They promoted the game too fast by getting sponsors with famous Youtubers without the first Kickstarter being completed and now it's being shown. A toxic community begins with a game that people aren't happy with. That is instigated by the pure balancing/lack of updates, and that goes back to BMG.

[Mroz4k]

Unfortunately these suggestions are idealizations.

One of life's motifs: "We want more service!" "Would you mind higher charges?" "No!" "So what exactly pays for this?"

BMG are dealing with C right now anyway. I'm afraid I can find little issue.

If thats what you think, I am not really surprised. Since you obviously have very little idea how things actually work.

Thats why I will be including the side-by-side comparation with a different Indie company and their game and how they work side-by-side.

The reason game is doing so badly is because there is a number of very basic mistakes in lead that BMG is too ignorant to remove. In fact, applying certain procedures would increase money income, giving the Devs more money for further investments, gradually making the game better while updating it faster, gradually increasing the income.

Jayden clearly has more of an idea what the issues are, seeing his response.

Even so, if the BMG had someone with the know-how how to lead and manage things, the whole company and the game would be doing a lot better. But they dont, they run things their own way, being completedly ignorant to the community.

What I wanted to prove with this suggestion is to show these problems and eventually maybe suggest a solution to them, or at least some fixes.


____________________________
Just going to put down the results of the Poll so far:

• 3 people like the game as it is right now.
• 15 people have some kind of a problem with the current state of the game.
• 10 of the people have a problem with the state of in-game community.
• 8 of the people have a problem with the state of game mechanics, roles and game balance.
• 6 of the people have a problem with the general attitude of BMG (game management, updates, cooperation with community, etc)

I think the results so far already say something about itself. If we consider just the brute yes/no, its 3/15, therefore 83,33% of current voters have some sort of a problem with the game.
Thats alarming amount. Granted, 18 voters are so far not a big amount, still, if this percentage keeps up as the amount of voters rise, the BMG should really start focusing their absolute focus on appealing these major problems, fast.

[Tormental]

It's obvious BMG doesn't care about players. They actively ignore people unless there's something in it for them or one of their clique wants the change. When people demand change, members of their team get mean and sometimes issue threats. BMG doesn't care, so we either take what they give or leave I guess. That's all I have to say.

[Magnasword2]

I picked C and E. Why C? Because of People in ranked, And Goblin. Like Specifically goblin. If I post on the forums he's there giving me shit. Why E? Well as much as it pains me to criticise... Fuck all gets done. Trials has been being developed for what seems like and eternity and the thing that makes the game continually intresting (NEW ROLES) Will only be released one at a time every SIX MONTHS Im now being told.

It's sad to say that if an engine that came close to this one came out with more regular updates I would go play that instead.

[PolyesterHomes]

This is what I think of the community:

[SPAMbuca]

I'd still play on occasion but to me it's a mix of C D and E.

C: Maybe it's the age but I generally dislike all these "memes" and the useless spam that comes with it. Apparantly the same emoticons and terms that were "funny" 9 months ago are still "funny". I don't like the huge ego's that surface in games like these and some (I don't want to name anyone) really act that what they think or write is the "Mandate of Heaven". I just play ranked when I do so maybe the other modes have different kinds of players. I don't like the meta gaming approach, I don't like the rudeness of some players and I don't like people fighting out personal vendetta's in game. I'm just here to have fun and don't want any of that if possible. I might sound like I'm 70 years old right now while I'm "just 28".

D: I feel this game is heavily biased towards town in ranked. Not much has really changed balance wise but it was even worse when the "any" was taken out. The meta gaming makes it worse obviously. I'm automatically less motivated when I roll mafia and if I have one of those days that I keep rolling mafia or neutral roles I tend to lose motivation. But honestly, the setup gf/mafioso/disguiser is just plain cruel. The disguiser is absolutely worthless at the moment.

E: It's been a while so maybe this is not a fair complaint (anymore), but first of all I find the moderators/admins quite unprofessional in their correspondense. I could look up very old discussions perhaps if I feel like it, but the general feeling was that these people did not always answer respectfully or simply ignored suggestions because they had their own plans. Best example to me was the discussion whether it should be allowed to leave a ranked game after you're dead or not. "No" was the answer; this is a real competitive game where people should watch until the very end for the sake of seeing the people that are still alive play. Why? Because that's how real competitive games do things. First of all, I don't consider this game as competitive as the developers first thought it would be. As far as I know ELO doesn't have a real ranking list and the ELO you receive or lose seems mostly random. Apart from that the community is way too small and the gameplay isn't that "deep" or "sophisticated". The best possibly strategy is something anyone can do; prove your role, demand all roles and lynch/shoot/execute/investigate all claims that do not add up. If you really want to spice things up you micromanage all town claims/roles for a guaranteed victory.

Secondly, if I die early it's 99% of the times because some asshole just happened to click my name night 1, 2 or 3 and not because I did something stupid. Maybe the culprit was salty from last game, considers me a good player/bad player and thus kills me, thinks I have a good role for whatever reason, or simply because he randomly picked a number and a name. I know how the game works and how it should be played; I do not have to be "educated" by being forced to watch how the "professionals" handle things. Especially as a neutral you have nothing left to root for and should just be allowed to leave. Right now, if I die early and am sure I won't be of help anymore to town/mafia/whatever while dead I watch something or play a quick game of chess. That's right, you have to find a way to amuse yourself while playing a game.


/salt

[Tormental]

- Suggest new skin.
- BMG staff member says "No, that's copyrighted."
- BMG adds Dexter.
- Suggest new skin.
- BMG staff member says "No, that's copyrighted."
- BMG adds Jessica Rabbit.
- Suggest new skin.
- BMG staff member says "No, that's copyrighted."
- BMG adds The Godfather.
- Point out that BMG doesn't care about spoofing copyrighted characters when it's one THEY want.
- Get sassed by staff, or worse, ignored.

That's just one easily illustrated example out of many, of course.

It's painfully obvious that there's a severe lack of communication within the BMG team and as a result the default position seems to be to ignore or openly discourage player comment/critique/suggestion/etc.

[Wirewolf]

I voted for C and E.

Look, whilst most websites have toxic members of the community, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I can be unpleasant on occasion. That's a fact of life. However, it is starting to ruin the game. While the Trial System is making progress and they are paying attention to it, it's still pretty bad. When I play, I repeatedly come across AFKers, spammers, gamethrowers and cheaters, regardless of the mode. It's both a waste of time and stressful, neither of which I want in a game.

I also agree with a great deal of what Tormental has said. Whilst the staff I've seen can often been great fun and really pleasant, and the game they've created is very good, they do seem to be disregarding the community too much and only seem to consider their own opinions. It is their game, but they seem to adopt a "with us or against us mentality" and to operate somewhat like a clique rather than a company and on occasion be snarky or confrontational when criticism is offered.

[Truecore]

As I've played through this game, I've seen mechanics that just bug the hell out of me, although this is probably because I've played sc2 mafia before I've played ToS.

Honestly, I see sc2mafia as a way better balanced version of ToS which has more roles, scum roles are a bit more powerful, the UI being far superior, you could customize certain attributes of each role, custom setups were more customizable and could be saved, rolecards on the top so you literally can't metagame as a jailor, and roles like jailor and cultist/vampire aren't complete bullshit because they had certain weaknesses (if there's a lynch, jailor doesn't jail) (max cap on cultists = 1/3 non-starting mafia, varying based on cult deaths). The only real downside is you can name yourself literally almost ANYTHING - the only restrictions being no numbers or symbols and max 20 characters (having points removes those restrictions) so it's easy to abuse names, but that's not enough of a deterrent for me tbh.

For real, I don't play sc2mafia because the sc2 custom game community in general is dying, the creators refuse to switch to dota 2 for some stupid reason, and i think it was the sole cause of my comp crashing.

- Auditor is a funny role and I hope it gets added to this game (Scumbag would also need to be added since it's linked).
- Ok, fuck Judge though. I hate Judges.

D: I feel this game is heavily biased towards town in ranked. Not much has really changed balance wise but it was even worse when the "any" was taken out. The meta gaming makes it worse obviously. I'm automatically less motivated when I roll mafia and if I have one of those days that I keep rolling mafia or neutral roles I tend to lose motivation. But honestly, the setup gf/mafioso/disguiser is just plain cruel. The disguiser is absolutely worthless at the moment.

The game is so heavily town-biased it's insane. Every game I win as mafia/NE, I don't feel like I deserved the win, I feel like I happened to get lucky, all the stars aligned, and town went full retard or deliberately gamethrew so I took advantage of it. There's a reason I always joke about town = free mmr.

[cammi3]

C)

They need to be harsher on gamethrowers/trolls/cheaters. Permaban+IP Ban.
Trolls in every 3-4 games, is just ridiculous.

Because of these players, ranked is currently a huge joke and not much better than normal. I would literally have games where players asking what a disguiser does. 50 games is not enough as min requirement, also I think performance in normal games should also be taken into consideration when placing players into ranked.

[Mroz4k]

Permas are in place, but IP bans would do more harm then good. Im affraid thats not the solution.

[Mroz4k]

Updating the poll now.

Any more votes/opinions on this? This should be the top most important topic to discuss afterall. There needs to be something done about these things. And unless the community shows by proof what THEY want, the BMG is just going to discredit us who are in charge of these fights for change, and will continue to ignore this topic.

To get the discussion moving again: Do you have any suggestions how to fix these problems?

[SecretWeaponCoffee]

Well since you insistently enboldened the question (lol), if I was serious about instigating change I'd spend a couple of weeks conducting an investigation where I spoke to players directly one-on-one, organized their interests, then spent a couple of weeks composing a formal written evaluation positioned in a way where the benefits to BMG are clear in the changes you're representing. Then I'd send it to BMG directly via email or something. If I got no response I'd persist until I did, even if it was a "we appreciate your suggestions and will acknowledge them as the game progresses, however at this juncture--" bla bla bla.

However, I still see preferential gripes, not problems. If there were problems the game would be non-functional.

It basically depends on how significant you feel your points are. And if you're as democratic as you appear, you'll take note of the fact that you had to bump this topic, no?

[Mroz4k]

I did bump it, yea, because it was slowing down in progression. Nothing wrong about that.

Besides, I was more interesting in how these individual changes would be solved, as in "how would you solve the problem with bad ingame community" etc - by answer like "I would implement permanent IP bans" (which is obv a bad idea but hey, an idea none-the-less).

Im just trying to get a conversation going, to speak on the subject that is very dire.

As for your suggestion how to handle it - I will give you props for suprising me because I didnt expect that kind of answer. But no thanks - what you suggest is highly inneffective, it wouldnt have much of an effect.

This whole thread serves as some initial information collector for analysis. Im a bussiness & economics student, I have been collecting statistics about various aspects of the game and company for quite some time, once I get to it, I will create a more detailed pictures about the situation.

Going 1-to-1 is in general ineffective. Might as well create a poll or a survey where people will answer a couple of questions, giving me something to work with. A system like that, created by little-o-me is on the way, currently in the planning stages.

Purpose of this is to collect general data to build more detailed analysis later.

Purpose of my question was to get discussion going by putting it to the top of the page, and get people to share some of their ideas, which can also be used for statistical data.

[SecretWeaponCoffee]

So it's an experiment more than an honest rallying of opinion. I notice your original post lacks this information, and forgive me if I'm missing the part where this is explained.

I wonder how people feel about being reduced to variables?

Additionally, I assure you what I suggest is highly effective. I speak from experience.