Acklow
I am always tired. Don't bother me.
HAH I BEAT QUAGSIRES TO POSTING UP OUR RESPECTIVE POSTGAMES
How to start…how to start…
Well to be quite honest, Final Fantasy V Mafia was intended to be a direct sequel to Final Fantasy III Mafia. The hype from FF3 Mafia, along with my experience from hosting a mafia game made me long for some more action. And so, I began building the next Final Fantasy Mafia. Originally the same roles were to be used, not too mention a new set up in the system that made MP and Exp viable. Factions would be preset like in FF3, but they would be slightly different, to give other roles that were weak (e.g. Dragoon) a buff. It was all great, and I thought I was doing such a fantastic job…until Johann pointed out that using the same role names and such would make it easy for those who were in FF3 to win, as they would know the boundaries and limits of the roles. Thus, we both began brainstorming for ways to recreate a game similar to FF3. I suggested that we started looking at different Final Fantasy games (especially the early ones) for ones that used the job system that FF3 used. We ran across FFV during our search, and I told him that we had hit the jackpot. From there, I thought long and hard about how to apply the roles, abilities, and items into a Mafia game. The first segment of this work took about 3 months (October-December). Finally mid-January, after taking a break from Smogon due to some school stuff I had been overwhelmed with, I restarted my work on FFV. The idea to make the game a sort of free-for-all began to develop in my mind, but I realized that I really didn't like the idea of a free-for-all to begin with. That is how "Open-Alliances" came about. I had experienced a little bit of Von's Card Game Mafia, and liked that I was able to be free as a bird, but I felt like the fact that we were pre-assigned our factions was a little too restricting. Therefore, I brainstormed various ways to best use an Open-Alliance set up. The thought of using letters as a way of forming alliances was quite a bizarre one, but I decided to put it up to a test, making it a staple in the game. Next up was the Level-Up system. Similar to a rogue who gained powers upon death, Leveling-Up was to become one of the biggest parts of this game because it had never been done before. I initially intended to have players be able to level up to Level 5, but Johann disagreed, saying that it would take too long if we were to require players to fulfill their Unique Missions. Thus, Level 4 became the Level Cap to this game. In order to help create a viable setting for Leveling-Up to occur, I decided to abandon the usual Single Win Condition in favor of multiple "mini-Win Conditions" in the form of Missions. Anyways, to make the rest of this long story short, all of these factors eventually helped create the game that you guys have played/watched.
Here are my reflections upon the experimental concepts of the game:
Level-Up: I would say that of all the 3 things I experimented in this game, this was probably the most successful. The concept adds a lot of depth to the game and allows players to use their roles in multiple ways. This game took advantage of it too since it used a Stat system, so votes, HP and other things would gain a bonus from leveling up. I would recommend that anyone who wishes to use a level-up system in their future Mafia games, that they utilize a Stat system in their game, since it seems like not using one would only be beneficial for abilities (in which case just make the role a rogue and don't call it leveling up…)
Missions: This concept was one tough cookie to handle. Especially the ones involving alliances (I'll delve into those in just a moment). Missions were originally intended to be the alternative to a normal Win-condition. Sadly, they degenerated into simple ways to level-up and therefore, they lost all meaning all together. I would say that most of the missions were actually too-easy to fulfill. I also should've made missions a bit tougher to accomplish, but I really had (and still have) no idea how I would reinforce missions any further. Missions were a pain in the ass to keep track of, and when you are trying to keep up with a ton of other things, everything easily became a train-wreck early-game. I would NOT recommend this concept to any host who isn't prepared to be working on an update for more than 6 or more hours. ESPECIALLY if they plan on using the Level-Up system.
Open-Alliances: This was to be the reinforcing factor to building relationships within the game. Back-stabs were to become a big deal in this game due to these. But as the saying goes, plans that you make never end up working the way you envisioned them. This was probably the concept that faired the worst in the game. Partly because it was a mission, and partly because it was too fucking hard to keep track of who was aligning with who. The reason this probably became a problem was because some players decided to abuse the system that was set up in order to just gain Experience Points. And to be quite honest, the system was set up in a way that this could be easily done. A way I think that it could've been a bit more tougher to abuse would be to give out only 1 expo point for whichever player would "lead" the alliance. Another way it could've been done was to restrict the creation of alliances by preventing players from being in more than 1-2 alliance at a time. The Open-Alliance system would've been more successful this way, and most likely would've been much more easier to work with. This concept I would recommend only in an environment where these changes would be reinforced.
I really am too lazy to comment on the players and their roles. So for now, here are the links to the roles and the spreadsheet.
Spreadsheet
Role PMs Doc
My biggest comments in reflection to this entire game are the following:
-I should've not been lazy before starting this game and should've just made completed Role PMs with the abilities much more elaborated in order to prevent so much confusion.
-I should've been more concise and to the point about alliances, though to be quite honest I didn't want to reveal too much pre-game or early-game about those.
-Don't give Blue_Tornado such a fucking good role set-up ever again. The Bard was actually overpowered early-game. I should've given that Dark Breath to a different role (maybe the Berserker?). He was able to take out smashlloyd20 with little help C0, and that, my friends, would've never happened had the item been in different hands.
-I should've started this game at least 2-3 weeks later than when I originally started it.
-Next time, I will find another co-host who is willing to share more work with me and isn't afraid to ask me questions. Johann, I honestly am sorry about everything, but I do admit, good call on getting UncleSam to take over your position. You were able to find a good substitute, so I salute you on that (though you should've just let me know about everything ahead of time so that the transition would've been MUCH smoother.
-This is probably the first mafia game where there were a total of 4 hosts (1 of which goes inactive in favor of a sub).
So now for awards:
Best Troll: kingofkongs
Best Comeback: Lady Salamence
Biggest Fail: vonFiedler setting himself up for a win, but biting the dust in the end
Biggest Gamebreaker: vonFiedler alliance blitzing C0
Best Luck: Daenym/imperfectluck
Worst Luck: Wild Eep (claiming Mage when most other roles were "Wizard" wasn't too bright an idea)
Most-Deserved Win: Flamestrike (because he stayed 'till everyone of his mates was ready to win)/Blue_Tornado (because Flame insisted)
Least-Deserved Win: Yeti
Most Open-Alliances: Wild Eep
Feel free to add more to the list if you notice any I missed.
When leaving your comments here, please let me know how you felt about the three major experimental concepts in this game and whether or not you would change them (not to mention how you would change them as well).
Edit: Also, @ Unclesam, I'd say that a lot of this could've worked if my timing was better. I picked a bad time for myself and others to host the game, thus the reason we had such a clusterfuck early-game.
How to start…how to start…
Well to be quite honest, Final Fantasy V Mafia was intended to be a direct sequel to Final Fantasy III Mafia. The hype from FF3 Mafia, along with my experience from hosting a mafia game made me long for some more action. And so, I began building the next Final Fantasy Mafia. Originally the same roles were to be used, not too mention a new set up in the system that made MP and Exp viable. Factions would be preset like in FF3, but they would be slightly different, to give other roles that were weak (e.g. Dragoon) a buff. It was all great, and I thought I was doing such a fantastic job…until Johann pointed out that using the same role names and such would make it easy for those who were in FF3 to win, as they would know the boundaries and limits of the roles. Thus, we both began brainstorming for ways to recreate a game similar to FF3. I suggested that we started looking at different Final Fantasy games (especially the early ones) for ones that used the job system that FF3 used. We ran across FFV during our search, and I told him that we had hit the jackpot. From there, I thought long and hard about how to apply the roles, abilities, and items into a Mafia game. The first segment of this work took about 3 months (October-December). Finally mid-January, after taking a break from Smogon due to some school stuff I had been overwhelmed with, I restarted my work on FFV. The idea to make the game a sort of free-for-all began to develop in my mind, but I realized that I really didn't like the idea of a free-for-all to begin with. That is how "Open-Alliances" came about. I had experienced a little bit of Von's Card Game Mafia, and liked that I was able to be free as a bird, but I felt like the fact that we were pre-assigned our factions was a little too restricting. Therefore, I brainstormed various ways to best use an Open-Alliance set up. The thought of using letters as a way of forming alliances was quite a bizarre one, but I decided to put it up to a test, making it a staple in the game. Next up was the Level-Up system. Similar to a rogue who gained powers upon death, Leveling-Up was to become one of the biggest parts of this game because it had never been done before. I initially intended to have players be able to level up to Level 5, but Johann disagreed, saying that it would take too long if we were to require players to fulfill their Unique Missions. Thus, Level 4 became the Level Cap to this game. In order to help create a viable setting for Leveling-Up to occur, I decided to abandon the usual Single Win Condition in favor of multiple "mini-Win Conditions" in the form of Missions. Anyways, to make the rest of this long story short, all of these factors eventually helped create the game that you guys have played/watched.
Here are my reflections upon the experimental concepts of the game:
Level-Up: I would say that of all the 3 things I experimented in this game, this was probably the most successful. The concept adds a lot of depth to the game and allows players to use their roles in multiple ways. This game took advantage of it too since it used a Stat system, so votes, HP and other things would gain a bonus from leveling up. I would recommend that anyone who wishes to use a level-up system in their future Mafia games, that they utilize a Stat system in their game, since it seems like not using one would only be beneficial for abilities (in which case just make the role a rogue and don't call it leveling up…)
Missions: This concept was one tough cookie to handle. Especially the ones involving alliances (I'll delve into those in just a moment). Missions were originally intended to be the alternative to a normal Win-condition. Sadly, they degenerated into simple ways to level-up and therefore, they lost all meaning all together. I would say that most of the missions were actually too-easy to fulfill. I also should've made missions a bit tougher to accomplish, but I really had (and still have) no idea how I would reinforce missions any further. Missions were a pain in the ass to keep track of, and when you are trying to keep up with a ton of other things, everything easily became a train-wreck early-game. I would NOT recommend this concept to any host who isn't prepared to be working on an update for more than 6 or more hours. ESPECIALLY if they plan on using the Level-Up system.
Open-Alliances: This was to be the reinforcing factor to building relationships within the game. Back-stabs were to become a big deal in this game due to these. But as the saying goes, plans that you make never end up working the way you envisioned them. This was probably the concept that faired the worst in the game. Partly because it was a mission, and partly because it was too fucking hard to keep track of who was aligning with who. The reason this probably became a problem was because some players decided to abuse the system that was set up in order to just gain Experience Points. And to be quite honest, the system was set up in a way that this could be easily done. A way I think that it could've been a bit more tougher to abuse would be to give out only 1 expo point for whichever player would "lead" the alliance. Another way it could've been done was to restrict the creation of alliances by preventing players from being in more than 1-2 alliance at a time. The Open-Alliance system would've been more successful this way, and most likely would've been much more easier to work with. This concept I would recommend only in an environment where these changes would be reinforced.
I really am too lazy to comment on the players and their roles. So for now, here are the links to the roles and the spreadsheet.
Spreadsheet
Role PMs Doc
My biggest comments in reflection to this entire game are the following:
-I should've not been lazy before starting this game and should've just made completed Role PMs with the abilities much more elaborated in order to prevent so much confusion.
-I should've been more concise and to the point about alliances, though to be quite honest I didn't want to reveal too much pre-game or early-game about those.
-Don't give Blue_Tornado such a fucking good role set-up ever again. The Bard was actually overpowered early-game. I should've given that Dark Breath to a different role (maybe the Berserker?). He was able to take out smashlloyd20 with little help C0, and that, my friends, would've never happened had the item been in different hands.
-I should've started this game at least 2-3 weeks later than when I originally started it.
-Next time, I will find another co-host who is willing to share more work with me and isn't afraid to ask me questions. Johann, I honestly am sorry about everything, but I do admit, good call on getting UncleSam to take over your position. You were able to find a good substitute, so I salute you on that (though you should've just let me know about everything ahead of time so that the transition would've been MUCH smoother.
-This is probably the first mafia game where there were a total of 4 hosts (1 of which goes inactive in favor of a sub).
So now for awards:
Best Troll: kingofkongs
Best Comeback: Lady Salamence
Biggest Fail: vonFiedler setting himself up for a win, but biting the dust in the end
Biggest Gamebreaker: vonFiedler alliance blitzing C0
Best Luck: Daenym/imperfectluck
Worst Luck: Wild Eep (claiming Mage when most other roles were "Wizard" wasn't too bright an idea)
Most-Deserved Win: Flamestrike (because he stayed 'till everyone of his mates was ready to win)/Blue_Tornado (because Flame insisted)
Least-Deserved Win: Yeti
Most Open-Alliances: Wild Eep
Feel free to add more to the list if you notice any I missed.
When leaving your comments here, please let me know how you felt about the three major experimental concepts in this game and whether or not you would change them (not to mention how you would change them as well).
Edit: Also, @ Unclesam, I'd say that a lot of this could've worked if my timing was better. I picked a bad time for myself and others to host the game, thus the reason we had such a clusterfuck early-game.