The Syndicate

I'm sure a lot of us have noticed how difficult it seems to be to fill up a burglary in recent games. They're a really fun game mode and it's surprising that we often can't get the numbers to host these games which only last a couple of hours, despite the number of active players on the site and in the discord chat. It goes without saying that it's not anybody's fault, but I'm still curious about why this is.

The timing is probably the most important factor, because people on this site have families, jobs and other obligations. And then there are the individual time zone preferences. Most games tend to be planned in the early to mid afternoon EST in my experience, and it's often a guessing game as to whether even the players who signed up will be able to play. Sometimes hosts themselves are challenged by circumstances in finding time to run their games. But I'm sure there are underlying reasons why we can't seem to get these games to run.

So my question is: What can we do to make burglaries more enticing? Do we need to rethink when we run these games? Change the pacing? Something else?

I've not yet found a burglary in a time I can play. I doubt you'd get a full roster together at a time I can play. Such is life.

I very much like the idea I heard (I think it was from Dunya) to run it slightly differently and it ends up going over three days or so. But now I forget exactly how it worked and why I liked it.

We could run a poll in order to find out what time people prefer to play it overall.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:19 pm We could run a poll in order to find out what time people prefer to play it overall.

I was going to add one to this thread, but I couldn't figure out how to create one.

It can be a regular poll or just a discussion. The point is, we need to ask everyone to give their opinions on the best possible time slot.

There's no good time for me given that my timezone is almost opposite to the majority of players. I'm more than happy to get up early or stay up late to play every now and again.

Can we just make either burglaries, or another game mode, that are 24 hour full cycles instead? Run them on Greenwich Mean time. Literally have day from like 5.30am to 5.30pm.

MacDougall wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2018 10:49 pm Can we just make either burglaries, or another game mode, that are 24 hour full cycles instead? Run them on Greenwich Mean time. Literally have day from like 5.30am to 5.30pm.

i hesitate with the idea 12 hour phases just because the different time zones can screw with ones ability to participate depending on their timezone. It might be worth a test to see if it's at least feasible though, I've never seen one in action.

at the same time though, i like burglaries because they only take a couple of hours to run all the way through. i can mess around and focus on enjoying myself in them. 12 hour cycles would feel too much like a proper game to allow me that luxury.

Quin wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2018 10:54 pm

MacDougall wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2018 10:49 pm Can we just make either burglaries, or another game mode, that are 24 hour full cycles instead? Run them on Greenwich Mean time. Literally have day from like 5.30am to 5.30pm.

i hesitate with the idea 12 hour phases just because the different time zones can screw with ones ability to participate depending on their timezone. It might be worth a test to see if it's at least feasible though, I've never seen one in action.

Yeah it's possible it works out like you say but I am sure that short of someone who lives in complete reverse timezones there is going to be overlaps that give you some time in both phases.

MacDougall wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2018 10:49 pm Can we just make either burglaries, or another game mode, that are 24 hour full cycles instead? Run them on Greenwich Mean time. Literally have day from like 5.30am to 5.30pm.

The whole point of a Burglary is that it happens in real time.

What you are proposing is that we don't have Burglaries.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2018 6:56 am

MacDougall wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2018 10:49 pm Can we just make either burglaries, or another game mode, that are 24 hour full cycles instead? Run them on Greenwich Mean time. Literally have day from like 5.30am to 5.30pm.

The whole point of a Burglary is that it happens in real time.

What you are proposing is that we don't have Burglaries.

Bolded.

Burglary = entire game occurs while I sleep.

24 hour cycles = quick game but everyone should see action.

MacDougall wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2018 7:16 am Burglary = entire game occurs while I sleep.

24 hour cycles = quick game but everyone should see action.

At that point this may as well be an option for Side Missions.

IDK, 24 hour cycle is like the worst of both worlds. I could see myself missing an entire cycle on a busy day, easy. Whereas the reason burglaries work is that I'm just sitting at my computer for them.

Golden wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2018 8:19 pm I very much like the idea I heard (I think it was from Dunya) to run it slightly differently and it ends up going over three days or so. But now I forget exactly how it worked and why I liked it.

that's different, but it was very enjoyable and something I hope to run on here when the current burglary queue opens maybe.

it's a 7 player game, 5 civs and 2 scum. it's a 3day Day 1. The civs have 3 days to lynch 1 scum. There's 1 cop who gets one confirmed townie. And in the game I played, there was also BTSC between 2 players who aren't allowed to identify themselves to each other in the chat or in the game thread. And then the chaos begins. It's pretty fun and really demonstrates the importance of Day 1 lynches to Town and how it IS possible to catch scum on Day 1.

You do need 7 relatively active players though. The game would die if there were 2-3 inactives.

It was a blast, even though I played it with obnoxious people (and the lovely Kylemii)