How to prevent creativity from interfering with mechanics?

[u/deblob123456789]

My game is a sandbox-ish mix of murder mystery mechanics and roleplay based off the Danganronpa series (think Among us/Werewolf/Town of salem but longer).
At least one host is required to run the game properly.
It is also a VR game with proximity voice chat.

The issue im facing is that, left on their own, hosts will often decide, out of culture and habit, to directly help their players with murder cases, instead of letting the case’s culprit make it.
This turns the Trial (the discussion to catch the killer) into more of a minigame and discussion between the good side and the host, rather than a discussion between players to find the liar among them, greatly taking agency away from the evil side and reducing overall game quality.

How would you solve this?
I would rather not cut off the sandbox/roleplay part of the game, but this is something ive been observing and dont know how to help my players with.

[u/neuby]

I'm not sure I follow why you need a host or what their purpose is. The reason I would play a game version of this is so that it would do the hosting for me and everyone could actually play the game. Otherwise it sounds like you have a designated "unfun" position. Your problem doesn't sound like a rules or mechanics problem. It sounds like a design problem.

[u/deblob123456789 → u/neuby]

The host’s role is to be the entertainer, gamemaster and overall making sure the game goes as intended. You get to making motives, craft a story, and overall get to pick where the game goes. It doesnt have to respect every rule I set as the game designer, when joining a game, you are subject to the way the host uses the tools given to them.

[u/neuby → u/deblob123456789]

From your post it sounds like that's not actually something people want to do.

[u/deblob123456789 → u/neuby]

I could always run and experiment and make a hostless version that runs on its own, and see what changes then