Originally posted by TryphonX:

1: The playerbase is big enough to get games going, not huge, but you can still get games going with little effort.
2: Not gonna lie, the learning curve is probably bigger here; however we have Community Guides and other experienced players who'd be willing to help you our on our discord server @ discord.gg/tol
3: The moderation is stricter here and the $10 paywall already stops lots of the trolls and toxic players on its own.

If you're still unsure, I guess you could try the game out. You can get a refund when you have <2 hours of gameplay in the first 14 days after the purchase of any game on steam.

Thanks for the into
One more question:how good is the role power-balance?
In TOS for example there is the jailor who is overall alot more powerfull than every other town-role , meaning that if he gets (un)luckily killed during N1 the game is already much in the evil-doers favor

You may get quicker answers in our Discord -- there's about 5 people lurking here, thousands lurking in Discord: https://discord.gg/tol

Originally posted by Terrarius:

Originally posted by TryphonX:

1: The playerbase is big enough to get games going, not huge, but you can still get games going with little effort.
2: Not gonna lie, the learning curve is probably bigger here; however we have Community Guides and other experienced players who'd be willing to help you our on our discord server @ discord.gg/tol
3: The moderation is stricter here and the $10 paywall already stops lots of the trolls and toxic players on its own.

If you're still unsure, I guess you could try the game out. You can get a refund when you have <2 hours of gameplay in the first 14 days after the purchase of any game on steam.

Thanks for the into
One more question:how good is the role power-balance?
In TOS for example there is the jailor who is overall alot more powerfull than every other town-role , meaning that if he gets (un)luckily killed during N1 the game is already much in the evil-doers favor

We have The Prince (who jails people), however there are many other powerful Blue Dragon classes and with some deduction, it's not impossible to win as Blue Dragon with the prince dead at all. The king adds a lot to this, but he's not always guaranteed to be good.

If you wait for the summer sale (probally a few weeks) you can probally get this for cheaper

Originally posted by Frosted Coctus:

If you wait for the summer sale (probably a few weeks) you can probally get this for cheaper

I'd also check out https://discord.gg/tol #news active promos (hint, hint).

The community is quite elitist half of the time, some times if you make a mistake and even explain the logic behind your decisions they will dog pile on you, threaten with reports etc and not stop chastising you until the game is over or you leave, in the worst cases. If you don't play how people expect/want you to play they often treat you like scum.

(which in my opinion probably explains the seemingly diminishing player base on certain days)

Sometimes when that happens they will execute you knowing you are on their team and scream things like "im going to report you" etc. The irony is half the time it's them that actually ends up breaking the guidelines by revenge lynching under intentionally going against your goal (rule 9) and harassement (rule 2).

So if you don't play "perfectly" expect to get a lot of hate even if it's as simple as missing out on one critical line because chat moves so fast that you WILL MISS SOMETHING at some point in a game or two on occasion.

If you don't refer to people as numbers you will always get some kind of wrath chat for not playing "properly" even though the code of conduct doesn't say you have to use numbers.

There is lots of swaring but that technically is ok and in the rules as long as you don't overdo it as targeted harassement, but be aware that it's there. Personally, the sewaring doesn't bother me as much. I have dropped a swear sometimes but if you don't like this then it's worth knowing too as part of an informed decision. That said, if this rule was changed to disallow it I wouldnt complain becuase the game would probably be more apporachable to more people, goodness knows it needs more people at the moment.

I'd second the wait for a sale or look for a discount based on that alone.
(by the sounds of the hint probably one on discord somewhere) but I wouldnt get it at full price now being how it currently is.

The player base is fairly slim, occasionally you can wait a good while to get a game started.

I've only just started playing again in the last few days after not playing any games in the last few months and nothing has changed really. In fact these issues seem to be exaccerbated more than anytyhing else because there seems to be less and less of your average player trying to have a good time.

It's fun... but if you don't have a thick skin mentally then you shouldn't play it.

I don't play TOS any more because of how bad they are at security (millions of account usernames hacked a few months back and barely a whisper about it) and this game seems to be a bit better for that. I would say overall TOS has more trolling but less of a problem with elitism.

On a gameplay level this one is much more complicated, you could be playing for a year and still be picking up little bits of information here and there. (hence paragraph 1)

While your opinion is your own, I'd like to add that the mentions above also generally described any online game with chat and moderation.

TL;DR: If you don't mind people saying "reported!" even though you'll likely be innocent, I wouldn't recommend any game with chat/moderation (eg, Hearthstone has emotes instead of chat - that would work).

However, if you know you're following the rules, simply ignore the people that report you (since if they actually report you for nothing, it'll backfire) and nothing will happen to you :P only 5% of reports actually receive disciplinary action. Whether it's our game or another game, these players will exist with RNG. New players will always receive warnings before suspension for accidental gamethrowing, even if it was a legit report.

We boast the most powerful moderation system in the indie industry: See our transparent practices @ https://toli.es/mod

-----

As for numbers, our playerbase is above-average for an online indie game: 8 out of 12 months (if games do sales roughly once per quarter), charts will always show a decline since it's natural that promos will do better than normal months and dwindle until the next promo. In our case, we've been alternating green red because we randomly found some extra partners to promo with, recently.

According to Steam charts, Witcher 3 dropped by 20% in population last month: But it's no indicator people are bored of the game, already: It's the rollercoaster game with charts. They were likely in between sales, as non-sale months will have less population - thus showing a decline -- so you see red, even though it's a "good" decline.

Similarly, we had a 44% gain last month: In the past 30 days, we had a 23% decline. However, that's still a 44-23=21% boost! It shows red, but it's actually higher than it was 2 months ago. While we may be having a promo now, the promo last month was more significant.

In this sense, even AAA games on a non-promo month will show drops. This is why most gamedevs say that charts are pretty useless for comparisons (only useful for current-month stats).

Here's a decent chart I made today: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/497425080448450560/590051121587027977/howToSteamCharts.jpg

Originally posted by i42-Xblade:

You may get quicker answers in our Discord -- there's about 5 people lurking here, thousands lurking in Discord: https://discord.gg/tol

Dont listen to these lying devs. LOTS of lies come from these devs. Not worth the money, Go get ToS.

@Ultima
I already play(ed) towns of salem which you would know had you read my coment
Devs banning everyone for the smallest of reasons seems unlikely given that someone like you is not yet banned

Originally posted by Terrarius:

@Ultima
I already play(ed) towns of salem which you would know had you read my coment
Devs banning everyone for the smallest of reasons seems unlikely given that someone like you is not yet banned

This player just got their second suspension in game (for using homophobic slurs). However since he made some "points", you can ask any streamer that's ever been sniped to tell you if we banned the sniper asap. It's impossible to prevent sniping, but we do punish snipers.

That said, you can indeed get banned for using the word mentioned in their post, since it's a homophobic slur. We try to keep the game fun for everyone (casual swearing is fine, as mentioned in our rules as well, just don't make it too targeted and don't use racial or homophobic slurs). Pretty normal rules if you ask me. Nothing extreme.

Originally posted by Ultima:

Dont listen to these lying devs. LOTS of lies come from these devs. Not worth the money, Go get ToS.

When you played only about half as much as I did, and manage to achieve 2 suspensions while I haven't even received a warning, you might need to take some time off to look in a mirror.
Instead of attributing blame squarely on "SJWs and streamers", your own behavior may have been the largest contributing factor.

I assure you the guy earlier above was posting a revenge post after getting the hammer ;p This is what that user was suspended for, and after a previous suspension for the same reasons: https://i.imgur.com/aF9Z2js.png

I can also assure that as fast as that guy was removed, the same toxicity in-game is removed equally fast; so rest assured if you don't want to see those things in that screenshot above.

As for sniping: It's not like we suspend 1 person then stop doing reports hehe -- we have a priority system, so cheaters are always bumped high: If the report above was at the top of the queue, it means no cheaters lately! Yay!

But yea, we're all over it. There's very little sniping (people know we ban and it's easy to catch since people often do it repeatedly, leaving behind patterns ... to a deduction team to find. Not super smart).

Anyway, welcome! There's a new patch coming soon that'll help onboarding a bit (still far away from being ideal): https://forum.imperium42.com/t/2-3-patch-notes-test-realm/77110

--Xblade
https://discord.gg/tol

I keep flipping between thumbs up and down for this game but one thing I will say about you, is that your moderation team does seem to be quite decent, I think it would be hard to find any one that played this for a long time to not have fallen short on occasion too.

It's clear that you do have passion for it at the very minimum and it's that which keeps me playing.

Sorry no discord here I deleted it (too many third party programs to use) but in my case I'm only critical because I want this game to be the best it can possibly be and I do recognise that i'm certainly no saint either. I genuinely do believe a vulgarity rule change would help a lot for new players coming in even though I would have to watch what I say myself too, it would be worth it in my own opinion.

Originally posted by MrLucid:

As for numbers, our playerbase is above-average for an online indie game: 8 out of 12 months (if games do sales roughly once per quarter), charts will always show a decline since it's natural that promos will do better than normal months and dwindle until the next promo. In our case, we've been alternating green red because we randomly found some extra partners to promo with, recently.

According to Steam charts, Witcher 3 dropped by 20% in population last month: But it's no indicator people are bored of the game, already: It's the rollercoaster game with charts. They were likely in between sales, as non-sale months will have less population - thus showing a decline -- so you see red, even though it's a "good" decline.

Similarly, we had a 44% gain last month: In the past 30 days, we had a 23% decline. However, that's still a 44-23=21% boost! It shows red, but it's actually higher than it was 2 months ago. While we may be having a promo now, the promo last month was more significant.

In this sense, even AAA games on a non-promo month will show drops. This is why most gamedevs say that charts are pretty useless for comparisons (only useful for current-month stats).

Here's a decent chart I made today: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/497425080448450560/590051121587027977/howToSteamCharts.jpg

I think I have to concede to this, you aren't a hugely well known indie developer but it is possible to get games, there are some days when it can be quite difficult though but based on what you said here you are also aware of that.

Any way the point is, I genuinely do admire that you keep fighting for what you want to make and the game that you believe in. This is how you take criticism and roll with it, I wish more developers did the same.

Thank you for challenging me :)

Originally posted by Brechnor:

[...]your moderation team does seem to be quite decent[...]

Appreciated <3