Night Lengths

Mafia Discussion
#1

What’s the ideal night length? Does it vary based on the length of days?

What are the arguments for shorter nights?

  • maybe the early part of game days are less likely to stagnate if nights are shorter?
  • Do people stay more engaged with shorter nights?

What are the arguments for longer nights?

  • maybe people like having a breather?
  • maybe mafia and prs need the time to optimize their night actions?

“Obviously”(?) a 48-72 hour day doesn’t need a 48 hour night.
What night length makes sense at 5 or 7 calendar day game days? What about 10? 14?

I plan to mod games with varying day lengths. We already discuss preferred game day lengths in the sign-ups. Should there be night length guidelines? Night lengths should probably also be a discussion point.

#2

weve talked about this on discord but,

  • 2 weeks+ that ms runs is generally very excessive. we could do occasional “geriatric” style games with deadlines this long but definitely not as a standard please.

  • 36-48 days is too little imo. just not enough time. I know most small sites and MU use them but at the point you want to do that short, do something like blitzes instead imo.

  • A standard of 6-7 day days and 24 hour nights is good for me imo. A standard of day chat as well, but if theres no day chat then 48 hour nights is fine ig. Good compromise in the middle, long enough you cant lurk a day phase out but short enough that it doesnt raks months to finish games.

#3

What do you think are the drawbacks of longer nights? What are the advantages of shorter nights?

#4

Night length should depend on the general pace of the game aka day length.

As you’ve stated, night time is an essential time for townies to go over the thread if need with the newly gained flip information, catch up, or decide night actions. It is also a time for mafia to coordinate their actions, especially if they have no daytalk.

48hr is a nice length in general (24hr works for super fast paced games). Even for 7 day games I dislike 24hr for nights, because if say you happen to have a busy day and are out, you’ll have no time left for a critical phase of the game.

#5

Should be a function of median of time players have per day. 48 generally safer across the board unless the playerlist is sure they’ll be available in any 24 hours window.
(e.g. the day’s are sufficiently short that availability in the window was an implicit part of being in that game).