Going Postal : Feedback

[Barbaro]

Now that Going Postal is largely over, we here at the Liar Game Tournament wish to know what your opinions of this game were, as well as how we conducted ourselves as Dealers.

So far, we have two pieces of feedback:

1) Dealers need to stop granting extensions to be fair to those that actually put decisions in before the deadline.
We agree with this, and will no longer be doing so. Thank you for the kick in the butt for this one.

2) This game involves luck.
Personally, I believe this is up for debate. While there is a 1/6 chance that you can pick the correct envelopes with absolutely no information, your objective in this game is to completely throw players off track to reduce the chance they will pick the correct envelopes, while increasing your chance of picking the correct envelopes.

Remember, all information a player receives is important, including obvious collusion to give false information. I won't name names, but I am positive that certain players who were "lucky" weren't actually lucky at all, but went on suppositions that "if they're all clearly against me now, they were likely lying to me before, so I'll go against what they said."



Along with this, please give us any other feedback and open it up for discussion! What did you like, what didn't you like, what was good but could've been improved? What did you think this game was really testing and did it succeed? What strategies worked or failed?

[Aitou Kaichi]

Some of these are for rules in general, so I'll just dump it all here.

I apologize for being harsh about #1 in my vault. I originally thought #2, but in the end, found that what you said there is pretty much spot on. My main concern with #1 was more that I had given other players X amount of time to work with information I was giving them, and the extention gets given, multiplying that time by 4. (I'd done stuff 7 hours before the deadline)

One that we did wrong in LGT1 and you guys continued with this round is the 24 hour deadline. We tried a 48 hour deadline in round 4 (neutral voting), and I didn't regret it, although Leronira went back to 24 hours for revival round 4 (chun).

Contracts were another note that Leronira and I disagreed on. I actually liked the idea of giving free contract uses. Not infinite, but 1 in a game. Lespar pointed out that by putting such a high price tag on them, they became unusable to most players. I completely understand if you guys prefer to limit the number of contracts, but I believe they do allow for interesting play.

The rules for substitute players is currently flawed. If a player feels that they will end up in debt from the current game, they can call on a sub, and get half their debt cancelled.

Once I clued on to what this game required, I was actually laughing. This game was delightfully evil on your parts, and I congratulate you on having this as your first game. However, I believe that the conditions for victory in this game may get some negative feedback, since it was your first game. I spoke to Forli about all this, and he actually disagreed with me on this. So, expect mixed opinions on that.

There were actually some moments of luck in this game, a few more than I expected, actually.

Overall, I liked this game. It had a clear strategic component (how best to weigh your envelopes) and a clear lying component. You win if you weigh properly, can determine what is the truth and what is a lie, and can confuse your opponents on either of those. With the exception of the long extention, and a small mishap on some technical issues, I had no problem with how this game was dealt.

[Takahashi Haruka]

I liked the game. It was awesome. I was thrilled with all the little nuances to it that you didn't quite see at first. :D Whichever person thought up this game is awesome, and I hope future games are equally entertaining.
(I never considered this a luck game. There were definitely enough ways to "Increase your chances.")

I agree that my only complaint so far is the long extension. I was very happy with the mechanics of this game, and I'm excited to continue the tournament.

[Kaitani Katsumi]

I enjoyed going postal, mostly for the great job at mood setting from the dealers and the little extras you can find if you look hard enough.

I'd like to note however that having an inactive player can change the game completely. An odd number of players means the majority can team up and if you know of certain technicalities - easily have a high chance of winning.

[Bara Sora]

I really liked this game ^^
The rules were straightforward enough but the behind-the-scenes wasn't that simple, which I think is perfect for the LGT ^^
I can't say anything about extensions... We went on without the inactives ^^;
사다 언니! 통과했어? 니 소식 없어서 걱정이라고!!!

[Kindai Ichii]

loved the game! even though I lost.

[Kindai Ichii]

oh I do have one point though -- i find that letting someone who was previously a dealer play in this game is obviously disadvantageous to new players.

aitou, this is quite plainly talking about you, though with no ill-feelings haha. just pointing out my thoughts.

[Barbaro]

Aug 9, 2011 16:01:55 GMT Kindai Ichii said:

oh I do have one point though -- i find that letting someone who was previously a dealer play in this game is obviously disadvantageous to new players.

How exactly? He has no knowledge of any of our games. None have been recycled from the previous tournament. Though he has behind-the-scenes experience from a previous tournament, that doesn't make him any savvier when actually playing the game.

[Kuwabara Kimura]

I agree on the substitutes thing.

As for #2, the game is luck based in a way: Half of the game consists in increasing your own chances of getting the full 100M and decreasing everyone's else chances. But even with that, we're still talking about chances.
The other half is a good ol' Lie & Backstab that allowed you to directly hurt an enemy while profiting yourself.
Still, not everyone can manage to nap an envelope, as it's FCFS. So, even if you keep your possitive envelopes, any random player who was never a viewer nor got any information can guess them, tie with you and make you lose. Of course, it's an unlikely scenario, but it bugged me that it was possible and not THAT unlikely.

Other than that, I didn't like how inactivity could strongly affect the game. Having an inactive player on the game would mean an extra 100M on the tossed envelopes. Three inactive players would mean that you won't get any deduction at the game, so you can easily have a final score of 100M.

Still, the game was awesome and I really enjoyed it. I hope future games are as fun as this one. Also, loved the hidden stuff.

This feedback was carefully planned by
Kuwabara Kimura

[Barbaro]

Aug 8, 2011 22:02:24 GMT Aitou Kaichi said:

Contracts were another note that Leronira and I disagreed on. I actually liked the idea of giving free contract uses. Not infinite, but 1 in a game. Lespar pointed out that by putting such a high price tag on them, they became unusable to most players. I completely understand if you guys prefer to limit the number of contracts, but I believe they do allow for interesting play.

Sometimes this is the case, sometimes it is not. It depends on the game. We'll provide different costs for contracts based on how we feel the game runs best. Some games are easily ruined by contract use and complete honesty.

The rules for substitute players is currently flawed. If a player feels that they will end up in debt from the current game, they can call on a sub, and get half their debt cancelled.

While I agree with this sentiment, we're certainly not going to have a substitute get nothing for doing someone else's dirty work, or take no debt for sabotaging a player or losing a game. We have to provide these players incentives as well. Substitutes want to win just as much as players do this way.

If someone can provide a suggestion, we'll definitely take it into consideration.

[Aitou Kaichi]

Ichii's concern of me being a player: Best I can tell, any advantage I have comes from having watched the previous liar game. This gives me a larger sample of case studies, but no experience. In the meantime, other LGT1 players have a smaller sample, but have experience. Both of these are advantages, but I believe the experience has more value than you are giving credit for. If you are concerned about potential alliances, I believe some players from LGT1 will have a grudge against me, or a desire to prove themselves against me. Remember, I saw everyone lose at some stage. (Yes, even Dysania. He took part in some revival rounds.)

Contracts: I definitely understand that some games can't allow free contract use. Taxpayer game and the games done by the revival rounds in the manga are clear cases of this (150M given, 100M + game fines taken).

Substitutes: One strategy we used a few times in LGT1 was to let another player make all choices for the absentee. The absentee would have to agree to this before s/he leaves, of course. It does mean that the player making those decisions would be able to trust the absentee's decisions. Alternatively, give the sub the full debt, the original player the full debt, and zero-mean it afterwards.

[Sagaro]

It's also worth people noting that this tournament is not a continuation of the previous one. Just because there's a lot of the same handlers around, and the Carousel acted as an interim, this is a different game altogether. If it were honestly true that being closely involved in the conduct of one tournament gives you an edge over those who did not, I invite people to consider the players in the contest who are new. By rights, they would be in the worst possible position out of everyone. Having seen Postal draw to a close, it's safe to say this is certainly NOT the case.

Example: Aitou just mentioned the Taxpayer game from the previous tournament. This won't mean a thing to the fresh people. Are they ostracised because of not knowing what those rules were? No. Should they be for this reason? No. Why wouldn't they? Because it was mentioned as a worked example of a game mechanic and has zero bearing on any game anybody is going to face: past, present or future. Also, there's nothing stopping them researching; most of the site is infested with spambots public-facing now anyway, I believe.

Anyway, that's a digression from the original main question. The question of an ex-dealer playing in the new tourney actually came up, like..... in March or April. We all had a talk, and we couldn't see any issue with it. As Barbaro pointed out, it makes no difference. You're all in the same boat.

I went off-topic a bit there. I'm on a caffeine overdose right now

[Fukuda Atsuhiko]

Don't play, get debt ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Lol jk, no hard feelings.