The next game will be up within the next 24 hours.
I don't think that a reduction in player size is necessary. This is because we have enough active players in our community, see:
1. GM DracLord
2. Keeper of Night
3. Ice Espeon
4. Luispipe8
5. scattered mind
6. simsands
7. Reinforce
8. King Xerneas
9. Jabberwock
10. double o squirtle
11. Squirtle Squad
12. Professor Palutena
13. quakingpunch73
14. thegrovylekid
15. PikaMasterJesi
16. bbninjas
17. PMJ
18. Camoclone
19. TheAnticipationEevee
20. Celever
21. Mr.Muffin
22. NinjaPenguin
(List provided by bb, if you're not on there blame him
)
We have 22 active players within our community, and the current game sizes are around 16. If people put the effort in, we should actually be able to run 20 player games absolutely fine, too. The problem with the games are the players themselves and not the game size, as antagonistic as that may sound. If players joined in and fulfilled their roles as the more active players expect them to then hosts can keep designing fun games and players can keep enjoying them. I've been looking into the older games with less activity and have been trying to figure out why activity has dropped and I literally can't figure it out. The game design is fine, so the issue does lie with the mindset of the players. I think that half the game is so antagonistic that the other half is too scared to try to contribute out of fear of getting lynched, and this results in the former half getting killed by the scum team and then the latter half having no idea what's going on because they weren't contributing earlier on in the game. I don't know a solution to this because it's a lot to ask people to change their playstyles, but truthfully I just want people to come out of their shells and not be scared of getting lynched. It's better to die a legendary martyr than be a random victim lost to the tides of history!
My game has taken a while to get posted because the game design itself has been quite gruelling. I've designed the roles to be as dynamic as possible, which should hopefully keep people thinking, and this should by extension keep people passionate about the game. I want everyone to think that they've got a huge power role, even if in reality their role is pretty useless, and that's been a tough thing to both achieve in the first place and balance properly. I'm hoping that a game design focussed on fun above all else (but it's definitely not overpowered towards a certain faction, either) should help to get rid of the activity issues squandering our community right now.
For the record, my game is for 16 players. If everyone on that list signs up, we should have 5 subs, and if we have any inactivity it just doesn't really make sense. I'm also getting rid of arbitrary post limits as a means of measuring inactivity and just saying "if you're not doing enough I will warn and you if it persists I will sub you out" because sometimes the fear of vagueness is more effective than anything else.
