ESPIONAGE: Round Three (Spies & Informants Win)

[bash7353]

Congratulations to the Spy Team! You got away!

Since the the game ended a lot has been posted. I haven't read all of it, just skimmed over most of it, but I will get to that. Espeacially during the last couple of phases I was pretty busy and didn't have that much time to discuss things with my team mate. That always proved interesting as we often had different views on what was going on.

But then there's the issue about the broken rules, and quite frankly I don't see what the fuss is all about. I get that it is somewhat important for people to not post all their lists in the topic right from the get-go, but at the end of the game it doesn't make that big a difference as far as I'm concerned.

What happened as I understand is it:
When Team 9 was arrested and revealed to be the Detective, Jex and Miyano realised that Team 9 wasn't on their list. If the Detective isn't on your list, the Spy has to be, that's the conclusion they drew. Since some teams, including the one that was currently considered to be voted (Team 5), wasn't on their list they knew that we shouldn't vote Team 5.

The posts that are said to have contained illegal revelations have been edited and deleted before I was able to read them, so I can't really speak to how problematic those posts were. Maybe Miyano did go too far and has technically violated the rules of the game, but it wouldn't have required that much skill to relay the information to us in a way that, in my opinion anyway, would have been okay.

If she said, as she probably did, Based on our list we know..., that'd be problematic. What she should've done is say We strongly believe... In my opinion that would've been fine. It's what I would've done if I was in their position. If Miyano tells us she believes three teams to be Civilians right after the Detective Team dies she wouldn't have broken any rules. But we'd have understood where she's getting her information from and could've acted on it. And I don't think there's that big a problem there, either. We don't know if they're telling the truth. Maybe they're just pretending to have such a list and are actually the Informant. If I was the Informant and my objective was to protect the Spy Team 5 (that's about to be voted) I'd consider saying that to get people to change their vote.

The rules were broken, not just by Miyano, but I don't think this instance was a big deal. I don't think it justifies ending the game early or aborting altogether. Moving phase change up three hours was a decision I disagree with, but it was an understandable one given the situation. If we are to use lists the way they've been used in the three rounds so far, we have to accept that once the Detective dies some lists become that much more valuable. The lists are said to aid your decision-making which players will do. In a situation like this they're that much more powerful, though.

Even though the Spy got away this time, I'll maintain what I've said before. It is incredibly hard for the evil side in this game to win. In this round town had the bad luck that the two teams with the valuable lists Miyano/Jex and Miaka/Kleene were unavailable for the first phase after the Detective's arrest. If you look at their lists you'll see that only Teams 7 and 10 appear on both. The information contained in both lists combined tells us with certainty that the Spy is either Team 7 or Team 10. If both teams had hinted at that earlier and defended the teams they knew weren't the Spy, like Team 5, I'm sure there's a good chance that we'd have arrested them within the two tries we have after the Detective dies or is arrested.

I, for one, had a lot of fun during this round, and I hope most of you did, too!

[Jd-]

Even though the Spy got away this time, I'll maintain what I've said before. It is incredibly hard for the evil side in this game to win. In this round town had the bad luck that the two teams with the valuable lists Miyano/Jex and Miaka/Kleene were unavailable for the first phase after the Detective's arrest. If you look at their lists you'll see that only Teams 7 and 10 appear on both. The information contained in both lists combined tells us with certainty that the Spy is either Team 7 or Team 10. If both teams had hinted at that earlier and defended the teams they knew weren't the Spy, like Team 5, I'm sure there's a good chance that we'd have arrested them within the two tries we have after the Detective dies or is arrested.

It definitely is harder than it should be for the evil side to win, and we'll be addressing that in the days leading up to Round 4.

[Jd-]

A new proposal to fix the list problem has been posted in the central topic. Anyone that wants to do some experiments and statistics work, please come help test this idea out!

[miyano_shiho]

I didn't really want to post about the topic anymore after what happened, but I have respect for the game, and you all owe an apology from me. I am very sorry for having screwed up the balance of the game. It was never my intention to break the rules, but they were unclear and I was too confused on what to do. I won't be explaining my side on what happened (shinichi'sapprentice's post pretty much told about it), but if you have questions, just ask. I hope this problem would be addressed in case it happens again in the future.

[Jd-]

I didn't really want to post about the topic anymore after what happened, but I have respect for the game, and you all owe an apology from me. I am very sorry for having screwed up the balance of the game. It was never my intention to break the rules, but they were unclear and I was too confused on what to do. I won't be explaining my side on what happened (shinichi'sapprentice's post pretty much told about it), but if you have questions, just ask. I hope this problem would be addressed in case it happens again in the future.

No need to worry about it, never fear! As I said before, I don't think it was intentional and I was at fault for leaving that sort of ambiguity in the rules. Everything will be fully adjusted and remedied prior to the start of the next round. We're running numbers and brainstorming everything as it is and will have it all resolved very shortly, I hope.

Looking forward to you joining future rounds! In the meantime, enjoy consolatory flowers from Hamster the hamster:

[miyano_shiho]

I didn't really want to post about the topic anymore after what happened, but I have respect for the game, and you all owe an apology from me. I am very sorry for having screwed up the balance of the game. It was never my intention to break the rules, but they were unclear and I was too confused on what to do. I won't be explaining my side on what happened (shinichi'sapprentice's post pretty much told about it), but if you have questions, just ask. I hope this problem would be addressed in case it happens again in the future.

No need to worry about it, never fear! As I said before, I don't think it was intentional and I was at fault for leaving that sort of ambiguity in the rules. Everything will be fully adjusted and remedied prior to the start of the next round. We're running numbers and brainstorming everything as it is and will have it all resolved very shortly, I hope.

Looking forward to you joining future rounds! In the meantime, enjoy consolatory flowers from Hamster the hamster:

As much as I wanted to help with the math, I can't since I'm quite busy right now. I'm sure the pros will be able to handle it. Also, I should join when I'm not too busy anymore so I could play better than I did in the past rounds.
*accepts flowers from the cute hamster*

[miakakiri]

OK, I am going to conditionally volunteer to play in the next round. I won't actually sign up until the rules editing is fixed. (No I'm not going to help with that--I don't have a clear enough understanding of what went wrong to be of any use in fixing it.) Once they're all set for the next round, I will read the rules thourally before signing up, and mark the start date on my calendar, so that I don't get surprised by it. That's what happened this round.
Of course there's also the minor condition of 'if I can manage to have enough time', since I had an interview today with a staffing agency and might get work.

[Jd-]

ESPIONAGE ROUND 4 IS GO! Click here to check it out and sign-up!