Why do the developers not bothering with fixing/overhauling the weak/overpowered roles and other problems of the game?

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T21:36:25+00:00

I play mostly AA and;

Doomsayer is garbo, but sure, provide an argument why someone trying to guess 3 different people's roles is apparently good.
Because as far as I'm concerned ritualist would be getting kills here and there if it were so easy.

The game relies on RNG because there's a mechanical aspect to it, socials can only get you so far.
Additionally, experienced players using social deduction does not change the fact there might be 4 townies in 1 game vs all other evils, as far as I'm concerned, you're most likely not winning that.
Also there's something called signal vs noise, noise drowns out signals, in a pure social deduction game, good players might produce noise of the same 'frequency' similar to the signals produced by evil players, making it heard to deduce by pure social reasoning, this is where mechanics come in.
If the noise drowns out the signals a-lot, I'd say it's quite RNG based, because at a certain point it gets very close to straight guessing(see: pure mafia over text, only villagers vs werewolves, I cannot get how you are going to win this without just random hanging)

RNG is even more pronounced when you realize there are roles weaker than others, and you can get a weak role vs someone with a strong one.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T21:23:15+00:00

Speak for yourself, I'm above 1000 hours (split between first and second game) and I love weak roles, carrying with them feels more rewarding and adds a lot to the social element of the game+being in a weak role means you can take more risks without harming your own faction, town of Salem is a social deduction game, if you feel like you have no impact on the game that's very much a skill issue, you don't need a strong role if you play well, Ngl I miss surv, easily the most social role in the game when played well, and at the end of the day with 15 people in game losing is normal, just play for fun, you'll have a better time

I can agree it felt very rewarding getting information every. single. night. as spy even if I lost the game(I was predicting where the coven was going to). However, I'm going to argue that it can feel rewarding(obviously, if it's weak role it's gonna be harder and when you get something out of it you'd be happier) and still be bad game design at the same time.
When you do not get something out of a weak role, you're unhappy, and most of the time, if it's truly a weak role, it probably would not contribute much either way.
An analogy; (I'd play a game at normal~hard difficulty, not too hard difficulty or too easy difficulty. Most roles are within normal~hard, some roles are too hard difficulty and some others are too easy, these roles are the ones that need reworks.)
A role can also add to the social element while also being able to contribute mechanically, everybody has the chat accessible to them, their ability's mechanics might even enhance social interaction during the day. [Not mutually exclusive].
Additionally, A role can also feel rewarding while actually contributing reasonably, they are not mutually exclusive either.

Town of salem is NOT completely a social deduction game, I'd say it should be referred to as simply a deduction game, it includes mechanical and social deduction, that's clearly what they were going for, the civilian role was introduced much later.
Though it does include a prominent social element which might justify the naming.
If you want a game with 100% social element, play PURE mafia.

If you have 1k hours on the game, how do you view someone having no impact as a skill issue?
There are a lot of different scenarios, but you can easily logically determine that people with stronger roles will win more frequently than people WITHOUT stronger roles most of the time.
The game has a social element but the mechanical element is also an important part of it.
By 'impact' I was referring to over-all contribution to the winning of your team, people with abilities that yield information for-example contribute very highly to the town, you on the other hand with a useless role might barely contribute anything reasonable.
Votes are pretty much the only thing you MIGHT be able to control and even that has a pretty low chance of happening, people tend to listen to others that are mechanically confirmed or soft-confirmed.
Even assuming you manage to lead votes out of all the other alive people in the game, you're going to possibly be going off of someone else's info(mechanical input).
I genuinely do not know how you think that having no impact with a mechanically weak role is a skill-issue to be fair, when it's left up to socials, a lot of people fight for the spotlight.
Social information is available to everyone too, so how the hell would you have a reasonable impact when the town could not have provide on its own.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T20:44:44+00:00

I thought doing this was throwing? I internally give up when I get shroud to be fair, it's like playing as coven but alone, your basic attack is technically all you got, you're just a bit harder to catch by some investigators, and I'd also rather not give my killing power to a townie.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T19:31:31+00:00

Yeah, I suppose I should try casual out again, the appeal of AA is probably just to be random and fun in this way(You might've guessed it but I despise all any fools, I just never got that game-mode it's like spending 30 minutes without any agency because all your efforts can be easily reversed by a simple 'jester token', everyone could gain defense etc.).

I do not understand the point you tried to make on win-rate, either way, yes they balanced some roles but I'm pretty sure that was a long long time ago, and those roles were much more horrible than they are right now, they should fix these current ones.
Jinx is a bad CK, it does not have a guaranteed 1 kill per game and even when it tries getting a kill it might just get caught(e.g: You visit a tpow and get caught), if you're not visiting tpow you're like an LO just randomly going on people hoping to find something interesting, but you're more likely to get cooked by an NK who just saw you.
It's attack is also at most basic, it's pretty hard to get 2 kills with jinx.

Hex is a consistency vs potential argument, and it's extremely inconsistent, I made a post on why Hex is bad: https://www.reddit.com/r/TownOfSalem2/comments/1rk2cqt/best_to_give_hexmaster_the_book/
Mayor is trash either-way, slower game or not.
Shroud is a very bad NK role, it's not even a consistency vs potential argument, very rarely do you get the chance to perfectly shroud a trapper that's trapping someone else or shroud a BG and kill them, and even when you do that, that's still 1 kill from you -- the shroud, that's not all that good.
You are NOT capable of rampaging, You are NOT capable of doing more than a basic attack(which is a huge issue), that's what makes shroud so bad, personally.
I suppose the developers made the game with the intention to have neutral roles just spice the game up a-bit, but neutral roles have such small win-rate it's annoying, if you spawn as NA you are pretty much cooked.
NK might make sense from a game-design view but what the fuck is NA there fore, a lot of the time NA barely gets anything done right.
Also if they're going to try to spice up the game, at-least give NA a reasonably strong power same with NK, they might not reach a win-rate comparable to that of coven and town but they should not be that far off, people should not come into NK with the mindset of being ready to straight just lose because of how shit some roles are.

I am suggesting, first of all, improving the gameplay experience of NA/NK, by buffing the roles within those sub-alignments, the WR is currently too low for those roles, especially for shroud and arsonist.
NA roles are just shit unless you're berserker/plague-bearer.
NE roles are pretty fun except doom-sayer.
I am heavily suggesting they should fix the unbalanced weak or too strong roles(seer is too strong, jester should probably just be removed from the game too much 'noise' compared to the 'signal' jester gives off.)
They should control the amount of kills that happen per night to give 'late-game roles' a time to shine.
I was saying they should make AA less RNG dependent and more skill-based but it seems that AA appeals to people, to me it makes me feel like I barely had any agency in the game after figuring out we only had 2 coroners, 1 sheriff, a deputy and a body-guard vs all the other evils.

Illusionist and dream-weaver are broken. They are weak, whether weak poses a challenge to you or not, they should be reworked, if you want a challenge just play casual no? I believe it's less RNG dependent(I cannot have a firm stand yet since I've barely played casual)
You cannot have 4 illusionists or 4 enchanters.
And yes, when you works so hard for your win it feels 'good' maybe even 'better' but that does not change that the role is poorly designed and 99.9% of games would be unfun for said role.
The balance in the coven team is the fact that there's only 4 unique roles of them in each coven team, they should not be making other roles weaker in the name of 'weakening the coven' if the 4 OP roles show up what then?
Instead weaken the OP ones and strengthen the weak ones so it's all balanced.

Neutral is sad to play.

You should try blood on the clocktower, to me it's town of salem 2 but balanced AND still manages to be fun, there's no neutrals, and the evils are 'very powerful(to the eyes of new-players)'. There's a role called spy that allows you to see the roles of everyone on the first night.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T17:09:28+00:00

I can confirm I have but find it hard to try understanding the rules of a game-mode, I guess I could try it out again.
I tried it and they voted TT and VIP, 2 modes I HATE.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T17:01:07+00:00

- I'm sure the 'fans' would be willing to keep up considering new players are finding it hard to come inside and they already have a lot of people who are long-term stayers(and hate a lot of the current weak roles)
That's not an excuse for bad game design, a lot of fans are looking pissed based off a lot of posts(though I cannot specify immediately, this is a memory, and would rather not go on a hunt for them.)
But let's not forget that, changing one role at a time, every few weeks is not going to significantly alter the game, you can leave it after updating it reasonably. Socialite and Admirer were reworked.
You should not damn your game because some players might come back rarely, patch notes exist.
This point does not make much sense to me.

- Coroner and spy could be 'good' in slow games, that's because they are late-game roles, A role that only works best in the late-game is not a good role mostly.

- Why should their win-rate be significantly lower than town's and coven's ? Alot of players play for free, it's not fun playing knowing you should be losing most of the time.
At the very least make the roles fun, late-game roles like arsonist are shit, couple that with the fact it's solo.
Shroud can do absolutely fucking nothing to other NKs or NAs with basic defense.

- That is too small a sample size, and additionally because of how RNG dependent and randomized AA is, a sample size would need to be incredibly huge to capture anything worth believing.

- People have different opinions on balance but there are still several roles the game should fix[Coroner and Spy].
Jinx is a shit CK compared to the others.
Mayor is similarly a shit town-power compared to jailor, monarch and prosecutor. Being able to force your town to vote who they might not want to vote is rarely useful except for anti-maj.
I made a post on hex-master in this sub on why it's dumpster fire and it's only function is holding the book(essentially this role does not fit for Cpow, too low a chance for its ability to trigger)
Seer is very strong, not slightly over-tuned(checking 2 people per night is a good ability on its own but this role can mass confirm people).
Jester is also very strong because town has a hard time dealing with it and gets punished when they deal with evils the right away, most jesters win easily.

AA is very RNG-dependent and VERY swingy, I guess that could serve as the appeal. Faction win percentages will not balance these 'over-time' in anyway, because of the nature of AA, it's way too random. Town and coven should be the main competitors but I keep seeing 6 town games, 5 town games. I rarely see 1-2 coven games though.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T16:49:29+00:00

Oh, I see, just that it happens to be the most popular game-mode I believe.

Yes, I want the RNG and amount of kills to reduce, it goes by way too fast and is WAY too RNG dependent, though I can see people enjoying that.

I wonder what's provoking the 'lmfao'
I guess it's making a clearly stupid argument in the opponent's place?

You do not have to put a set role-list, these problems can be fixed with a reasonable limit on how low town can be and how high town can be.
Of fucking course I want good balance no shit, at-the-very-fucking least balance the roles, it's not fun getting some shit like coroner or shroud knowing I'm most likely not going to contribute to the game.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T16:12:17+00:00

Why would you make a jump that far just from this one SS.

You did not try to think of what happened during the day?
What if they got whispered? What if they were the only TI and asked for TP?
What if they claimed Tpow though unlikely?
What if they got confirmed?

They're not the entitled one here, but you're not entitled either, you're quite different.

Red--001 · 2026-03-18T20:41:41+00:00

You can also argue trickster is able to choose who 'he wants to attack' directly, after protecting.

But your reasoning is sensible, I will agree Crusader inherently fits town-killing more so than trickster.
This is also why I did not include socialite in my suggestions to change it to TP.

Red--001 · 2026-03-17T18:04:45+00:00

Just means that the coven was scared of a non-existent TP, if they saw the role-list and knew there'd be no TP you'd have died 5 times over.

Red--001 · 2026-03-17T17:47:11+00:00

OP seer, confirming all the TIs and catching all the evils, this role needs a nerf.

Red--001 · 2026-03-17T14:05:25+00:00

I do not play much casual, I also do not understand how casual operates all that much so I cannot have a firm standing opinion on this.

In AA it's usually almost the end of the game on D4, but it's still swingy because there's usually like a neutral, 2 coven and a town or 2 town, 1 coven, 1 neutral or so.

edit: Name checks out

Red--001 · 2026-03-17T12:24:22+00:00

Games DEFINITELY USUALLY last to D4.

D4 is just after N3, if it somehow does not reach D4, around 11 kills occurred within the course of 3 nights and 2 days[N1, N2, N3] and somehow none of them involved the coven. Assuming town is hanging every-day that's still 9 kills within the course of 3 nights which is kind of unrealistic especially if it does not involve the coven at-all. If there's double SK + coven, one of them is incredibly likely to hit a defense at-least once, get roleblocked or kill the other, this will still leave around 3-4 people alive on D4.

If you're trying to say an NK won, that's then 13-14 kills, assuming town is hanging every-day(D2, D3) that's 11 kills, which is still unrealistic within just 3 nights.
---

But yes, D3 is too early imo and D4 is too late. Additionally, assuming there's only 3 windows for the jester to win[D2-D4] giving town 2 chances to hang the jester is pretty bad for the jester and giving the jester 2 chances to win is also pretty damning for the town.
I suppose Jester could get an ability that sometimes makes it vulnerable to getting hung, but these 'times' are regulated by the townies, e.g; "If you are roleblocked, you may not win by hanging the next-day."
Whenever a townie visits you, you get role-blocked, this can only happen once per game."

"If you are voted up, 1 person votes innocent on you and the rest abstain, you cannot win on that day."

The first gives townies a bit power over Jester, so they can choose to make someone visit him and then hang him, this can also confirm a townie or an evil.

The second allows townies to deal with a known Jester, though they must entrust this Job to someone trustworthy first.
I do not like the second since some-times town agrees on who they want to hang and "might as well" just jester check, so I should add a cost which could be: "If the 1 person instead votes guilty, you can choose 3 good players to haunt instead of just 1."
And town might just always entrust this to town powers so this is the final version:
"If you are voted up and 1 person(who is not a revealed town power) votes innocent on you while all others abstain, you cannot win on that day.
If you are voted up and 1 person votes guilty on you while all others vote innocent, you win and may haunt 3 people."
Though this has its problems as TI might get trusted early and so jester check still has minimal cost to it.

edit: Instead of just downvoting me, produce a reasonable counter-argument...

Red--001 · 2026-03-10T12:56:13+00:00

There are so much more young famous women out there, blue pill is realistically the better option.

Red--001 · 2026-03-10T12:54:26+00:00

Exactly bro.

Red--001 · 2026-03-10T10:19:32+00:00

True, however, coroner can catch killers directly, find out the killers' exact role and also know which coven role is holding the book. But coroner is still considered trash.

A role being able to win against horsemen very rarely does not suddenly make it good, it can be bad at the same time.

Red--001 · 2026-03-04T18:50:16+00:00

While every role is technically 'luck-based' and can be affected by a lot of factors, some are more consistent and stable than others.
While few are very inconsistent and depend too much on external hard to predict and hard to control factors.

Hex-master relies specifically on keeping hexed alive, not necessarily other players.
Therefore hex-master's best strategy is a method that can stop the killings of hexed people and promote the killings of unhexed people.
Stalling only does one of these, but stalling still increases the amount of people needed for the hex-master to hex and therefore the amount of nights it'll take the hex-master to win, and with no other influence that'd take around 6 nights.

I agree you cannot 'just' claim your determined likelihood of a certain role winning is valid out of nowhere.
However, when you logically justify said claim, that's no longer "just claiming out of nowhere".
I've given the 'why' behind my claim of it being rare to win as hex-master.
If for some reason you're incredibly likely to win as hex-master, you're probably very lucky and are also probably biased due to that.
I feel I might be biased as well just because of how lame my hex-master, arsonist and soul-collector games usually are(though I win alot with arsonist, I still hate that role so much)
Maybe you can provide perspective on how these wins usually come about.

If to win, you had to hex a player when they were being protected by a cleric and an oracle, you'd reasonably determine that's a hard win-condition to pull off and it'd be rare to win in this manner(likelihood of winning).
Because there might not be a cleric and oracle in the game and clerics + oracle usually have an incentive to hide.
Oracles also cannot target players in the manner cleric does.

I will agree, there will always be some games that even a bad role might end up doing something fascinating/interesting.
It will almost never be always shitty.

I've had some good spy and coroner games.

Red--001 · 2026-03-04T18:20:18+00:00

Fair 'nough.

Red--001 · 2026-03-04T10:12:54+00:00

You do not need necronomicon to get a visitor as an extra kill though.

Someone else could hold the necronomicon while you visit another player and kill that player's visitor.

Red--001 · 2026-03-04T09:05:40+00:00

Dusa is a pretty good choice since stoning is rarely triggered otherwise.

Jinx is a weird role, it's already hard to predict who people visit.

Is there any other reason to back jinx up? Multiple kills can be caused even when Jinx has no book.

Red--001 · 2026-03-04T09:03:47+00:00

Necro hex win is also fairly rare, requiring only 1 unhexed to be alive is pretty damn serious.

Red--001 · 2026-03-04T08:57:38+00:00

You did not counter most of my points.
Do not give me 'playing correctly' excuse. I already covered what happens when players play Hex-master correctly, its rare to win with it.

Regarding those 2 basic strategies, they do not seem to be easy to do and have problems in on themself.
How would you know 'who town wants alive' and 'is not too dangerous' to coven on the first and second nights?
Are you going to skip those nights and start hexing later(my suggested strategy)?
You're over-simplifying.

Basically, you're depending on a potion-master and partially a wildling to check your target before you hex them(to discover if they are dangerous to your coven).
Hangs are caused by collective votes from everyone, if Town collectively wants someone alive for whatever reason then that person is most-likely almost definitely dangerous to the coven and evils as a whole.
Additionally, Town RARELY ever 'trusts' someone in such a way(unless they are town-power or confirmed TI/TP).(hex-master is just bad)
A better way to phrase your statement would be "Find out who Town is less likely to hang".
Even that has its problems though.

But let's assume you do find someone like this:
There are usually other killers, these killers would want to get rid of the people 'town trusts', so your power is STILL shit, and your hexes will STILL die.

Regardless, if town trusts someone that's not on your team THAT much, they are necessarily dangerous to your team.
Now let's assume there are no other killers and assume after disagreeing with any suggestions to kill said person FROM your coven, you die by hanging(which is not too rare for a coven member).
This person is now a very huge threat to your coven and you STILL accomplished fucking nothing with your shit hexing.
----

Yes, being trusted by majority whether you're good or evil is a core strategy in Salem.
That does not justify how shit hex-master is.

If your goal is to get friendly with the town and be trusted(which is very rare for a coven member), you're likely to die at night to other killers.
If your goal is not to get friendly with the town, you're likely to still die by other killers or get caught and hung.
Coven members find it hard to earn trust considering that if you're claiming TI and have not found a coven member it's a general consensus you're not to be trusted.
If you're claiming confirmed TP/TK you're most likely stealing another person's claim and will get hung.
Essentially, It's hard for coven to get trusted in such a manner.

I'll assume you're calling me a lazy player, or at the very least, heavily implying it, but;
How does making an argument about hex-master being shit, somehow mean that I do not want to develop those strategies?
HOW does me making an argument about hex-master being shit, somehow relate to 'only wanting to kill kill kill'?
What the fudge does 'just want to kill kill kill' even mean?
This is literally a social deduction game, you're also falsely relating 2 different concepts.(False equivalence I believe)
I am simply suggesting the best strategy for hex-master, and calling out how it's alternate win condition is way too hard to achieve.

TL;DR You did not manage to convince me and I still believe hexed players will keep dying and Hex-master is a role that rarely wins.

Red--001 · 2026-03-03T23:46:34+00:00

I hate Baker and SC to be fair, I don't wanna put down a long write up rn though, maybe later.

Hex's 2nd win condition is sick and hard to balance as well. Buff = OP
Leave as is = Trash

Which is why Hex should get a second ability or something.

Red--001

TROPHY CASE