Throne of Lies®: Medieval Politics

Throne of Lies®: Medieval Politics

Planterror 11 Apr, 2020 @ 5:27pm
A Question to Newcomers:
Hi, I'm a veteran of this game and I want to ask one simple question. How well does the game teach the basics of a Social Deduction genre?

In case you aren't aware, Town of Salem and Throne of Lies operate on an "Informed Minority versus Uninformed Majority" where the majority (Town, BD) must gain information before the minority (Mafia, Coven, Unseen, Cult) take over the majority.

Also, if you have questions, feel free to ask me or join the ToL discord, lots of people are willing to assist you there (and not be toxic to you, but that's another story.)
>>> https://discord.gg/tol <<<
Last edited by Planterror; 11 Apr, 2020 @ 5:27pm
Originally posted by saturdaymidnights.:
I am going to be honest because I only have 20h in this game, so I'd consider myself still pretty new.

This game is really hard to understand as a newcomer. Some roles are really complex and because experienced players already know how to write their logs, I as a newcomer had a really hard time knowing what they were talking about nor did I know how to write logs.

Thankfully their is this really awesome guide here on steam which made things a lot more understandable and a really nice community on discord who explained stuff to me.

If I had to compare it to ToS it does make sense why it has a larger playerbase. And that being it is so much easier to understand. No complex roles, and they have lobbies that are meant for newcomers like me. You play with people that are on the same level as you and you do not feel left out because you can't understand what is happening around you.

That being said, with the amazing guide and a lovely community that ToS truly doesn't have, I started to fall in love with this game the more I play it.

I hope this was somewhat helpful x)
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Showing 1-15 of 23 comments
Coronatus 11 Apr, 2020 @ 8:07pm 
do people actually play town of salem
Planterror 12 Apr, 2020 @ 6:28am 
Originally posted by KAG 2020 Coronatus:
do people actually play town of salem
It's by far more popular than this game, considering some major youtubers have played it.
Kruniac Zio 23 Apr, 2020 @ 2:16pm 
The game teaches you how snowflake sensitive people can be. And how toxic morons can be. That's all.
MrLucid72 26 Apr, 2020 @ 8:40pm 
Originally posted by Kruniac Zio:
The game teaches you how snowflake sensitive people can be. And how toxic morons can be. That's all.
Can't do much about the 1st, but we take care of the second part fast ;D we have the most efficient moderation system in the indie+ industry ( https://toli.es/mod )! Report toxic baddies and we'll handle the rest.

Heck, we're so good at moderation that the average negative review for those with over 100 hrs isn't because they don't like the game, it's because they were caught being toxic. When we came out with our 2.0 moderation system, we dropped like 20% ratings instantly when we hit 0 reports (like the moderation version of "inbox 0"). It's the depressing thing that comes from efficient moderation.
Last edited by MrLucid72; 26 Apr, 2020 @ 8:50pm
The author of this thread has indicated that this post answers the original topic.
I am going to be honest because I only have 20h in this game, so I'd consider myself still pretty new.

This game is really hard to understand as a newcomer. Some roles are really complex and because experienced players already know how to write their logs, I as a newcomer had a really hard time knowing what they were talking about nor did I know how to write logs.

Thankfully their is this really awesome guide here on steam which made things a lot more understandable and a really nice community on discord who explained stuff to me.

If I had to compare it to ToS it does make sense why it has a larger playerbase. And that being it is so much easier to understand. No complex roles, and they have lobbies that are meant for newcomers like me. You play with people that are on the same level as you and you do not feel left out because you can't understand what is happening around you.

That being said, with the amazing guide and a lovely community that ToS truly doesn't have, I started to fall in love with this game the more I play it.

I hope this was somewhat helpful x)
Last edited by saturdaymidnights.; 9 Jan, 2021 @ 8:38am
Planterror 2 May, 2020 @ 1:47pm 
Finally, a serious answer. Thank you for your input. I'm currently working on my own steam guide dedicated to complete newcomers to social deduction games as a whole, so this input helps.

Originally posted by save little haven:
This game is really hard to understand as a newcomer. Some roles are really complex and *-snip-*

Notable point. Which classes do you find the hardest to grasp? When I first played 2 years ago, the Possessor was tricky for me.

Originally posted by save little haven:
*-snip-* and because experienced players already know how to write their logs, I as a newcomer had a really hard time knowing what they were talking about nor did I do know how to write logs.

Thankfully their is this really awesome guide here on steam which made things a lot more understandle and a really nice community on discord who explained stuff to me.

It seems you've already figured it out on your own, but for the most part, the logs are used exactly the same like in Town of Salem, writing what abilities you used and what others have claimed and what can or cannot exist.

Originally posted by save little haven:
If I had to compare it to ToS it does make sense why it has a larger playerbase and that being it is so much easier to understand. No complex roles, and they have lobbies that are meant for newcomers like me. You play with people that are on the same level as you and you do not feel left out because you can't understand what is happening around you.

The mechanics are much different than ToS, indeed, and there's a lot less complexity. But to a point, that is where ToS has it's downfall. The simplicity of roles gives roles easy confirmation, and to experienced players the game is town-sided.

Another thing to note is that ToS did have a big marketing campaign: Kickstarters, popular youtubers like Jacksepticeye and many other things introduced this game on a much bigger level. With an indie dev team there's not much resources to branch out.

As for playing with others on the same level, that's really hard to prove, considering anyone can be in any lobby, and in Ranked people with varying ELO can be placed in one game.

But enough of that mini rant. I'm glad you're enjoying this place.
Originally posted by Planterror:
Finally, a serious answer. Thank you for your input. I'm currently working on my own steam guide dedicated to complete newcomers to social deduction games as a whole, so this input helps.

Originally posted by save little haven:
This game is really hard to understand as a newcomer. Some roles are really complex and *-snip-*

Notable point. Which classes do you find the hardest to grasp? When I first played 2 years ago, the Possessor was tricky for me.

Originally posted by save little haven:
*-snip-* and because experienced players already know how to write their logs, I as a newcomer had a really hard time knowing what they were talking about nor did I do know how to write logs.

Thankfully their is this really awesome guide here on steam which made things a lot more understandle and a really nice community on discord who explained stuff to me.

It seems you've already figured it out on your own, but for the most part, the logs are used exactly the same like in Town of Salem, writing what abilities you used and what others have claimed and what can or cannot exist.

Originally posted by save little haven:
If I had to compare it to ToS it does make sense why it has a larger playerbase and that being it is so much easier to understand. No complex roles, and they have lobbies that are meant for newcomers like me. You play with people that are on the same level as you and you do not feel left out because you can't understand what is happening around you.

The mechanics are much different than ToS, indeed, and there's a lot less complexity. But to a point, that is where ToS has it's downfall. The simplicity of roles gives roles easy confirmation, and to experienced players the game is town-sided.

Another thing to note is that ToS did have a big marketing campaign: Kickstarters, popular youtubers like Jacksepticeye and many other things introduced this game on a much bigger level. With an indie dev team there's not much resources to branch out.

As for playing with others on the same level, that's really hard to prove, considering anyone can be in any lobby, and in Ranked people with varying ELO can be placed in one game.

But enough of that mini rant. I'm glad you're enjoying this place.

Originally posted by author:
Notable point. Which classes do you find the hardest to grasp? When I first played 2 years ago, the Possessor was tricky for me.

That's hard to say as I haven't gotten the chance to play all roles. But I am having issues with the neutral roles and the CW.

Originally posted by author:
The mechanics are much different than ToS, indeed, and there's a lot less complexity. But to a point, that is where ToS has it's downfall. The simplicity of roles gives roles easy confirmation, and to experienced players the game is town-sided.

Hm, I agree and disagree. Yes, ToS is rather kept simplistic compared to ToL but you can still trick people with writing wrong wills. I can't really tell if its "town-sided" because it always depends on who is the loudest. Let's say i am Mafioso and I control the town; Its an easy win for Mafia.
But I have to agree that playing Ranked Mafia is really hard because unlike in ToL, players tend to easily give up as Mafia or aren't even trying and leave D1.

Originally posted by author:
Another thing to note is that ToS did have a big marketing campaign: Kickstarters, popular youtubers like Jacksepticeye and many other things introduced this game on a much bigger level. With an indie dev team there's not much resources to branch out.

Yes, that is true. But I personally bought the game because of the original card game "Werewolf".

Originally posted by author:
As for playing with others on the same level, that's really hard to prove, considering anyone can be in any lobby, and in Ranked people with varying ELO can be placed in one game.

That is correct but in order to be able to play Ranked you first have to play 50 games of Classic and then 25 (?) games of Ranked Practise in order to play Ranked. In ToL there is no such thing, which I wish there was like in Classic you have the most common roles so you can get to the next stage of more complex roles.

But on the other hand those lobbies would most likely never be full because ToL gets max. 80 people playing and I can imagine there being a long waiting time. I know that the discord offers these newb-games but I always miss those, so...

Either way, good luck with your guide (:
Kitsunin 16 May, 2020 @ 10:23pm 
Originally posted by save little haven:
Hm, I agree and disagree. Yes, ToS is rather kept simplistic compared to ToL but you can still trick people with writing wrong wills. I can't really tell if its "town-sided" because it always depends on who is the loudest. Let's say i am Mafioso and I control the town; Its an easy win for Mafia.
But I have to agree that playing Ranked Mafia is really hard because unlike in ToL, players tend to easily give up as Mafia or aren't even trying and leave D1.
Having played a lot of ToS, yeah, it's very "town-sided". This is in the sense that town gets reliable information which can be used to find mafia in around 95% of cases if all town players play according to optimal strats. Now such games are rare, so it's still fun until you get into high Elo, at which point games are either boring (everybody is optimal, town wins) or toxic (people refuse to play optimally, others get pissed off because of it).
Last edited by Kitsunin; 16 May, 2020 @ 10:24pm
Originally posted by Kitsunin:
Originally posted by save little haven:
Hm, I agree and disagree. Yes, ToS is rather kept simplistic compared to ToL but you can still trick people with writing wrong wills. I can't really tell if its "town-sided" because it always depends on who is the loudest. Let's say i am Mafioso and I control the town; Its an easy win for Mafia.
But I have to agree that playing Ranked Mafia is really hard because unlike in ToL, players tend to easily give up as Mafia or aren't even trying and leave D1.
Having played a lot of ToS, yeah, it's very "town-sided". This is in the sense that town gets reliable information which can be used to find mafia in around 95% of cases if all town players play according to optimal strats. Now such games are rare, so it's still fun until you get into high Elo, at which point games are either boring (everybody is optimal, town wins) or toxic (people refuse to play optimally, others get pissed off because of it).

Hm, I nearly have 300h in ToS and it really just depends if you play with smart players. If you have a Ranked game and you're mafia, then yes, chances of you winning are very low because most leave or aren't even trying. But then you have games like All Any, where you barely have town wins...
Kitsunin 18 May, 2020 @ 8:22am 
It's definitely a mode thing. Ranked mode just makes it so crazy easy for townies to confirm. Even if we only count games where players are all competent and no mafia leaves, town gets way more than enough room to just kill e'rrybody who can't confirm and win, while maf has no room to make plays (because again, town only needs to rely on 100% sure-bet confirms if nobody outright screws up).

All any is very fun but also super random and hard to really make a big difference in. Coven was incredibly fun but sadly can't be played.
Last edited by Kitsunin; 18 May, 2020 @ 8:26am
MrLucid72 18 May, 2020 @ 8:49am 
Off-topic, but how come folks over at ToS don't play Coven? I thought the latest + greatest modes would have the most populated queues? Or do you mean literally can't be played for some reason?
Last edited by MrLucid72; 18 May, 2020 @ 8:51am
Vandalay 18 May, 2020 @ 9:45am 
Originally posted by MrLucid:
Off-topic, but how come folks over at ToS don't play Coven? I thought the latest + greatest modes would have the most populated queues? Or do you mean literally can't be played for some reason?

I didn't buy coven because I waited around for reports of roughly how it worked. I think they just didn't sell enough copies of coven to build up that much of a player base or something. At least from my understanding. Coven ranked is unplayable because nobody plays it. (IE there's never enough people trying to play ranked to make a ranked game). From what I hear all any is fairly easy to get games in.


Lets face it though, coven is relatively underpopulated, because TOS's popularity is mostly a remenant of when it was fully f2p. Of course f2p has huge issues... but it's a guarantee of large amounts of people, in both the good and horrible ways.
Last edited by Vandalay; 18 May, 2020 @ 9:46am
Planterror 18 May, 2020 @ 10:02am 
Originally posted by MrLucid:
Off-topic, but how come folks over at ToS don't play Coven? I thought the latest + greatest modes would have the most populated queues? Or do you mean literally can't be played for some reason?
It's played, but only specific game modes. It's kind of like how in FPS games, gamers pick specific maps above others because of fine tuning or balance issues. A lot of coven game modes are either not balanced well or purely there because of chaos (All Any, Custom).
贪玩蓝月**YXR 23 May, 2020 @ 10:20pm 
Sin 10 Sep, 2020 @ 4:57am 
I am by now means a new comer to Throne of Lies, but I do remember my first attempts to play it.
I watched a popular town of salem player dabble in ToL after which my youtube feed got flodded by videos from a popular ToL streamed and eventually I did not want to play ToS anymore because this looked much more enjoyable.

I had over 200 hours in ToS when I started playing ToL and it took me almost 20 hours to get to a point where I felt like I was knowing what I was doing to an extent that would not kill me due to obvious mistakes in every round. 20 hours after preexisting experience with this kind of game is a ROUGH learning curve, but it was well worth it.

How well does the game itself teach you how to play?
I am afraid to say it does a bad job, that is partially because you can not hand hold social deduction and a large part of the learning curve is understanding skills and skill interactions in 1 to 2 minute intervalls while also keeping your own logs up to date and try not to fall into traps or go for nonsensical moves which will make you look guilty. It is simply too much with too many perlmutaions to teach in a pleasent and easy to understand way.

The other side o it is that the community insisted on Meta-Plays which reduced the actual SOCIAL deduction to an exercise in spread sheet usage, thereby making it alot easire to play, but also taking it away from what it was supposed to be. (Claim top to bottom D1, whisper king / prince meta ... ) The Devs did a good job in trying to snuff out these Meta attempts, but at least when I was actively playing it was still the dominant playstyle across the community.

That kind of play fostered a "generation" of new players who thought they learned how to play the game, while they were forced to ignore the more interesting half of it, which was a shame.
It is understandable though, since the barrier to entry is so harsh, people naturally look for easy fixes.

What helped me most was watching streamers, asking in lobbys or the forum when I encountered something that didn't make sense to me and for the most part responses were helpfull and not insulting.
This is why I am saying that the game itself does not do a good job - it's the players who help you, not the game itself, at least not after you have got most of the class skills down, those are something the game goes to tremendous length to try and teach you which is a very necessary and good thing, just not enough to actually understand how to play a Social Deduction game.

In case someone reads this in an attempt to figure out wether or not he / she should play ToL:
I played ToL for 1865 hours and do not regret a minute of it. If you are interested and willing to learn the hard way you may very well have one of the most thrilling and enjoyable multiplayer experiences right here.
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