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MMM Whatchya Say posted:Ah my mistake. I've only recently been winning games at all. I honestly think I've won, like, 20 tops, if even that.
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Aug 16, 2015 08:15
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My last game with Ecco she correctly caught me as scum after I flavour claimed in my first post. He then failed to get me lynched, targeted the town doctor, got recruited by the other scum team and night killed. Skyrim was the best game 
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Aug 16, 2015 08:43
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Rarity posted:My last game with Ecco she correctly caught me as scum after I flavour claimed in my first post. He then failed to get me lynched, targeted the town doctor, got recruited by the other scum team and night killed. Plus, we got bitched out about it, which was fun for the two of us on the othet scum team.
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Aug 16, 2015 08:50
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Rarity posted:My last game with Ecco she correctly caught me as scum after I flavour claimed in my first post. He then failed to get me lynched, targeted the town doctor, got recruited by the other scum team and night killed. Let's see. 1) I didn't get you voted out through no fault of my own and every fault of the town not listening to me. There is ultimately a degree of town obstinancy that cannot be overcome (it didn't help Byers was so convinced I was scum for my case on you he literally went crazy irl). 2) I got the town to vote out the doctor after I was recruited (i.e. I was advancing my new scum win condition). 3) The game was super broken. Epsilon Plus posted:woof I recognized at the time that I was wrong for attacking you guys for recruiting me (though recruiting me was still a really dumb choice). I almost immediately shifted my criticisms to the mod (who made a super broken setup). EccoRaven fucked around with this message at 09:03 on Aug 16, 2015 |
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Aug 16, 2015 08:58
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EccoRaven posted:I think if most players treated cops with more skepticism and treated their results as just "indicative but not dispositive," the game overall would be better. Players would rely less and less on following roles and more on player behavior. Wouldn't it just be easier to combat the power of cops by just limiting their ability use to one or two times?
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Aug 16, 2015 09:20
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TMMadman posted:Wouldn't it just be easier to combat the power of cops by just limiting their ability use to one or two times? Limiting actions to, say, 2-shots, is one way to limit the influence of role information, but it also creates a number of other dynamics that mods often don't consider. E.g., you know how in almost every RPG ever made, you as the player will get to the final boss and have a million of every common item, as well as the One-Time Kills Everything Sword, but even then you get through the fight without touching your items once? There's a lot of weird psychological things that go on when you give someone a limited number of something, and mods rarely account for it. We're psychologically prone to avoid loss, even if it means not acquiring gains. Even if strictly rationally a cop would only, say, investigate twice during a game anyway, giving them limited use powers incentivizes them to withhold their power until absolutely necessary, which can - paradoxically - cause them to not use their power at all. The exception are generally when players act deliberately recklessly (see: every vig ever), but that, too, isn't necessarily ideal. But I am also a firm believer that anything can be balanced as long as the mod takes it into consideration.
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Aug 16, 2015 09:38
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EccoRaven posted:Limiting actions to, say, 2-shots, is one way to limit the influence of role information, but it also creates a number of other dynamics that mods often don't consider. E.g., you know how in almost every RPG ever made, you as the player will get to the final boss and have a million of every common item, as well as the One-Time Kills Everything Sword, but even then you get through the fight without touching your items once? Except in mafia where people usually (unless it is like a 2-shot vig or PGO or doc or something) use their limited investigation roles immediately. Because they want to be useful instead of just die. But with protective roles I agree.
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Aug 16, 2015 09:43
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I think lots of things about mafia but a lot of it ties into what I think the game ultimately should be about. It has always been the case that players rely too much on role info in lieu of player behavior. That is, they view things the mod tells them (night results, in this case) as somewhat sacrosanct, and are willing to give role-based evidence top importance when determining someone's alignment. This can create situations where a cop gets a scum result on a player they were convinced was town (cough), but since the result the cop no longer believes they're town at all, and confirmation bias upon rereading supports it. Vice versa for town results on a scummy player. The only thing, really, that contradicts role-based conclusions are... other roles. The thing that causes us to say "maybe my town result on scummy player is mistaken?" is thinking they're a godfather. We don't seriously consider just discounting the results entirely; role information is dispositive and further role evidence must be brought in to discredit it. It's how we have always played the game, though, at least for as long as I've been playing here (which is equal to or greater than many of you) (because I am a loser). This issue with not giving player behavior the kind of primacy it deserves connects to other things, too. We as a community abhor flipless games - conventional wisdom holds that without flips, the game is pointless, and no better than random chance. "Why even bother playing," many said during my Madriu game with a scum janitor removing just a handful of flips. But if you base your scumhunting around player behavior rather than meta-information, the game remains largely the same. If a player is playing like scum and you vote them out, it's safe to assume they're scum and look for connections with other players. If those players happen to be playing like scum, too, then congrats you probably found the whole team, you get a trophy. If we as a community also focused more on player behavior, it would help motivate players to improve their game and actually put in the effort to appear townie rather than coasting and hoping for the best. Towns would misvote way less often as a result of their own incompetence (since in my experience most of those non-day-1 misvotes are role-based). Cases would necessarily be based on how the player was playing, and if the player was playing like scum, they'd have no one but themselves to blame for getting voted out. And I think it would lift the quality of game up, too. "Role madness" games are fun, sure, but they rapidly move away from what mafia is actually about. Games with a huge number of roles become less about player agency and interactions, and more about throwing dice and hoping you win. It also creates this weird kind of "arms race," where mods try to one-up each other for unique and creative roles, without considering how those roles actually work in a game or interact with each other. It can and does result in games where every player is a "role+role+role," and the mod either can't know how that affects the balance or they just don't care. In the games I run I try to get this message across. In my games towns are almost always cruising for defeat when they try to base their hunting around role information, or, even worse, try to game my setups. I deliberately plan my setups in such a way to induce mistaken assumptions and beliefs. Towns that dispense role information and focus on behavior fair much, much better overall. It's a lot harder to play that way of course. And this is just a hobby we all do for fun in our free time - there's no real motivation to play better short of us wanting to be better as a reward in and of itself. I have a huge ego and even I recognize I'm far, far from perfect at it. Still, I think the game would be very improved if we as a community moved away from relying on "meta-information" and focused on the deeper, true substance to the game: what people actually say and do. This is a lot of goonsay for so early in the morning but navel gazing is easier than writing role PMs so here we are.
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Aug 16, 2015 09:50
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EccoRaven posted:Limiting actions to, say, 2-shots, is one way to limit the influence of role information, but it also creates a number of other dynamics that mods often don't consider. E.g., you know how in almost every RPG ever made, you as the player will get to the final boss and have a million of every common item, as well as the One-Time Kills Everything Sword, but even then you get through the fight without touching your items once? How about instead limiting by the day? Like, a cop that can only investigate on odd number nights. It would both limit the influence of role information and remove the incentive to hold back the power.
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Aug 16, 2015 09:52
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BottleKnight posted:Except in mafia where people usually (unless it is like a 2-shot vig or PGO or doc or something) use their limited investigation roles immediately. Because they want to be useful instead of just die. But with protective roles I agree. Ehh. If you have a limited amount of something, in this case a cop investigation, there actually is a real strategic incentive to not use it immediately. A cop investigation early in the game is significantly less valuable than one later in the game if only because the chance of a player you investigated night 1 still being alive day 6 is way lower than if you investigated them night 5. Which is why it's reckless to use a power earlier rather than later, the player gambling on their own death like that. But like I said this can create paradoxical behavior where someone keeps holding off until they never use their action! It just adds a complicated dimension to the game is what I'm saying. It would be better imo if we as a community just learned to limit the influence of cop investigations altogether.
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Aug 16, 2015 09:55
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EccoRaven posted:I "got mad at you" for casing me so you'd stop casing me (which you did). Very few players thought I was actually scum by the end of the game, and we'd have won easily but for an unfortunate cop investigation (made by a player who thought I was town). Are you still not over this?
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Aug 16, 2015 09:58
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TMMadman posted:How about instead limiting by the day? Like, a cop that can only investigate on odd number nights. It would both limit the influence of role information and remove the incentive to hold back the power. Well and I don't mean to be a Contrarian Connie here but while that is a good way around the cop influence, it can create "unfun" situations for the player where they actually do really want to use their power but can't, which, well, limits their agency in another way. Again though neither method is "bad," it's just something mods should keep in mind. There's a lot of things going on with roles and, in my (oh so humble) opinion we should just move away from roles entirely rather than hurt them to make them more palatable. fiery_valkyrie posted:Are you still not over this? Am I not allowed to provide my side of the story to someone who brought it up apropos of nothing?
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Aug 16, 2015 09:58
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EccoRaven posted:I think lots of things about mafia but a lot of it ties into what I think the game ultimately should be about. It has always been the case that players rely too much on role info in lieu of player behavior. That is, they view things the mod tells them (night results, in this case) as somewhat sacrosanct, and are willing to give role-based evidence top importance when determining someone's alignment. This can create situations where a cop gets a scum result on a player they were convinced was town (cough), but since the result the cop no longer believes they're town at all, and confirmation bias upon rereading supports it. Vice versa for town results on a scummy player. In consideration of your points I've created All Vanilla Mafia where nobody has any night actions. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3736834
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Aug 16, 2015 09:59
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Quidnose posted:In consideration of your points I've created All Vanilla Mafia where nobody has any night actions. BUT see that's another thing, though. It's not that Roles are Bad and vanilla mafia is the purest and therefore best mafia. We as a community also have this weird fetishization almost of vanilla roles and players know they get some degree of "mafia cred" by saying "vanilla is the best role" or whatever. It's just that we put too much emphasis on roles and their power over our thinking. Role information should be "indicative but not dispositive" - information should be used to help praise or condemn someone rather than being an end in and of itself.
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Aug 16, 2015 10:03
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EccoRaven posted:And I think it would lift the quality of game up, too. "Role madness" games are fun, sure, but they rapidly move away from what mafia is actually about. Games with a huge number of roles become less about player agency and interactions, and more about throwing dice and hoping you win. It also creates this weird kind of "arms race," where mods try to one-up each other for unique and creative roles, without considering how those roles actually work in a game or interact with each other. It can and does result in games where every player is a "role+role+role," and the mod either can't know how that affects the balance or they just don't care. I do not think role madness games discourage effort. I anticipate you will say of course they don't always, but since you said here that role madness games are all about rolling the dice, I'm just saying that a lot of mafia is still played in games with a lot of craziness. The League 2 and Star Trek TNG are 2 examples I've seen of players being able to intelligently combine role information with player scumminess to advance their agendas, both for town and scum. I don't think role information is placed as a trump to intuition and scumhunting. I think a lot of scumhunting is still done in mafia, regardless of setup. But I do agree with some of your points about rolecharts and trying to map out setups in lieu of scumhunting. That actually did happen towards the end of The League 2 and it completely collapsed the scum teams, but I don't think anyone coasts/rolls the dice and sits back in those games either.
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Aug 16, 2015 10:11
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EccoRaven posted:Am I not allowed to provide my side of the story to someone who brought it up apropos of nothing? You lost a game. Get over it and move on.
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Aug 16, 2015 10:13
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BottleKnight posted:The League 2 Oh man, did I miss that one? Sad now 
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Aug 16, 2015 10:13
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Rarity posted:Oh man, did I miss that one? Sad now Yup, and it was pretty effin' cool.
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Aug 16, 2015 10:14
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fiery_valkyrie posted:You lost a game. Get over it and move on. BottleKnight posted:I do not think role madness games discourage effort. I anticipate you will say of course they don't always, but since you said here that role madness games are all about rolling the dice, I'm just saying that a lot of mafia is still played in games with a lot of craziness. The League 2 and Star Trek TNG are 2 examples I've seen of players being able to intelligently combine role information with player scumminess to advance their agendas, both for town and scum. My interpretation of role madness games may not have been too generous but I still feel more often than not they drift too far away from "mafia scumhunting." In role madness games where players engage in genuine scumhunting, in my experience, it stems from players consciously moving away from follow-the-role. But my larger point I suppose would be, players shouldn't have to consciously move away from it. It should be implicit to how we play the game. It's also worth remembering that how the game ultimately turns out doesn't change its balance; a town victory in a role madness game, e.g., is not evidence the town ignored roles. As you pointed out, players mindlessly "following-the-role" at endgame can collapse a scumteam if only through process of elimination. But it shouldn't ever be that way, ideally.
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Aug 16, 2015 10:22
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I am sleepy and supposed to go hiking in a few hours. Woo. I am sorry for stirring a pot and then running away but I hope my posts at least encourage a healthy discussion in this Our Fair Mafia Community. I know I am unorthodox and can oftentimes come off as quite rude with the way I express my opinions, so I hope you focus on what I'm actually saying rather than the (clumsy and arrogant) way I might have phrased them.
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Aug 16, 2015 10:25
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EccoRaven posted:I am sleepy and supposed to go hiking in a few hours. Woo. I don't think you're clumsy and arrogant Ecco, and as long as you're occasionally self-deprecating we're all good. Self-deprecation is the key to being a good human being. Nietzsche would hate us!
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Aug 16, 2015 10:37
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the fetishization of s c u m h u n t i n g is so loving tiresome
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Aug 16, 2015 10:37
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as is the idea that anyone is good at the game or that there's a right or wrong way to play
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Aug 16, 2015 10:39
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mafia is a bad game and trying to elevate it is pretentious jerkoffery. just play the game, try to have a good time.
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Aug 16, 2015 10:40
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also laaawl at "role madness creators are simultaneously caring a lot (because creativity) and not caring at all (because balance)" someone get the loving high horse out of here so people can get the gently caress off it
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Aug 16, 2015 10:42
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there's your hot take I'm going to bed.
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Aug 16, 2015 10:43
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Man Allen, what a good tone and response that elevates the level of this discussion adequately.
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Aug 16, 2015 10:44
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I am willing to concede that it is certainly possible that my view of what mafia "should be" is rooted less than I would like on some sort of nebulous "objective mafia principles" and more than I'd care to admit on "what does ecco like to do." I don't think that's the case but we are all prone to biases in our thinking that blind us to things that are obvious to everyone else. That being said Allen I think you are a butt and should consider pooping in a toilet rather than in your posts. Sleeping is hard when I keep coughing like there's a mote of dust right on the back of my throat.
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Aug 16, 2015 11:23
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Live blogging my cold: I am now at the point where I have a cough that makes me sound like a 2 pack a day smoker for the last 50 years. Being sick sucks.
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Aug 16, 2015 11:28
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MMM Whatchya Say posted:I should have got you and asiina to play the temple game rather than j and a this is a lovely thing to say~
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Aug 16, 2015 13:06
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I wasn't being serious! (Those were the teams that jumped into my head when making it though)
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Aug 16, 2015 13:08
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I think role madness games are usually less fun than non-role madness games. xopods had some Gnomish patent office games that were kind of role madness-like and were a lot of fun. The bottom line is that it's really tough to make a role madness game that is fun for the players because of balance issues and/or lack of agency. My rule of thumb (and I don't mod very often) is that I try to put myself in the players' shoes with every role that I create. If I'm ever thinking 'haha, this will be so fun to watch," then I am doing it wrong. The question is whether this will be fun to play. Of course, I've modded like ten total games, three of which were abysmal setup failures. I've played a lot, so my opinion is bias that way.
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Aug 16, 2015 15:01
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merk posted:I think role madness games are usually less fun than non-role madness games. xopods had some Gnomish patent office games that were kind of role madness-like and were a lot of fun. The bottom line is that it's really tough to make a role madness game that is fun for the players because of balance issues and/or lack of agency. I generally like role madness games and I find piecing together the puzzle of roles and how roles interact to be very fun. So that's my hot take on the matter.
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Aug 16, 2015 15:05
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Hot take: games that are less like mafia are the most fun. See: civ 1, final frontier, calvinball. Games are meant to be conducive to everyone having fun or to put everyone in a different state of mind. The minute you overvalue the game more than the people in it, because you have problems with being hypercompetitive or because the game is structured into dividing people, is the minute it stops being a good game and you stop being a good player. I've quit Avalon for months now and my leave of mafia followed by me returning and only playing one game at a time is half caused by me being busy and half caused by me honestly thinking that the general structure of the game engenders divisiveness over time.
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Aug 16, 2015 15:21
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Different people want different things from Mafia games and having a variety of offered games is the best so each player will get to play games that they find fun and satisfying! HOT TAKE
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Aug 16, 2015 15:28
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Look Under The Rock posted:Different people want different things from Mafia games and having a variety of offered games is the best so each player will get to play games that they find fun and satisfying! HOT TAKE It is best when people self-report that they are happy.
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Aug 16, 2015 15:32
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I feel like I've seen a lot of scum cops recently and that is the thing that makes me now pause, rather than questioning the sanity of the cop.
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Aug 16, 2015 15:55
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MMM Whatchya Say posted:Cops are poo poo I agree YES Worst role in the game.
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Aug 16, 2015 16:35
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EccoRaven posted:BUT see that's another thing, though. It's not that Roles are Bad and vanilla mafia is the purest and therefore best mafia. We as a community also have this weird fetishization almost of vanilla roles and players know they get some degree of "mafia cred" by saying "vanilla is the best role" or whatever. Agreed. If cops are in the game, I like there to be multiple cops of differing sanities. I played a game once with 4 cops, 1 sane, 1 insane (reverse views), 1 alternating (green/red), 1 that only gets greens. It was awesome. It was this great combination of reads and math. I love games where math is a thing.
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Aug 16, 2015 16:39
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My favorite role is vigilante. Everybody should make me a vigilante all the time.
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Aug 16, 2015 16:41
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