On Improving In Mafia

[Zachrulez]

I can go into this more later, but I think the town winrates going up can be pretty easily explained in a way that still correlates with skill level average still going down.

Titus is the closest to my own theory, but more in the general thought process more than the details.

Winrate arguments are lazily easy to make in arguing town improvement. In my early days on the site town could be tasked to win a game where they had no power roles to combat the scum. This is not something that happens anymore with any kind of regularity and the fact that it doesn't happen naturally leads to higher town winrates. (Man I really miss playing and winning these kind of games. That level of satisfaction couldn't be topped in mafia.)

There was also a pretty active movement years ago to make normal games less 'scum sided'. (Another way of saying more town sided.) Town winrates go up so town must be doing better right?

[Zachrulez]

In my early days on the site town could be tasked to win a game where they had no power roles to combat the scum. This is not something that happens anymore with any kind of regularity and the fact that it doesn't happen naturally leads to higher town winrates.

I have a few things to say in response to this and some other points brought up earlier. First, is it really true that mountainous and other near-vanilla setups were won more often in the past?

I don't mean to call you a liar, it's just that this conflicts with what I thought I knew about those setups' history, as well as what information I can find on the subject. I can't find a single instance of Town winning a mountainous setup in the past: the wiki lists two losses, and searching reveals 1 2 3 losses that I could find. There is only one instance I know of personally of Town winning a 2:11 mountainous setup, and it happened relatively recently in the site's history. White Flag (Open Setup)'s history is similarly bad, as a look at the wiki's history shows.

Secondly, I believe there is a contradiction in your second sentence. If I understand correctly, you're saying that Town skill has dropped such that they now need power roles to win, and thus given these power roles it is natural that Town winrates would be higher. But, aren't you also saying that Town skill has gone down? Given both of the premises – Town skill dropping and the introduction of power roles, it doesn't seem natural to me that winrates would

necessarily

go up. Of course, you may say that the power roles offset the drop of skill in such a way that winrates still go up, which seems logically sound (even if I might disagree).

The F11 newbie setup routinely had no power roles vs the scum. Town wins exist in that format. I was never arguing that town winrates were ever anywhere near reasonable for these kind of setups. Naturally town win rates will rise once those setups and scenarios no longer exist. I'm operating under the assumption these setups are way less common now. F11 was being run all the time when it was active for example. (Has it even been run at all since it was deactivated?)

I also offer no commentary on the current site's skill level on townplay. I actually have no experience in the current meta as I haven't played in years. I just know from knowledge of where the site meta has been moving back when I was playing that the movement in setups is definitively conducive to town win rates getting higher and that it's lazy to use town winrates as any kind of argument toward the state of the quality of town play vs say a mafia generation or two ago. (From around maybe 2014 and before?) Because back then you were playing with much weaker town teams power role wise than you are today.

Finally, I thought I'd share some Normal game statistics which I thought would be interesting. Going by start date, there were 35 normal games across the year of 2018. Of these 35, I counted 19 Town victories, giving an overall town winrate of 54%. In 2019, there were 32, of which 17 were Town wins, giving a winrate of 53%.

I've been noticing a sentiment that people dislike too much complexity in Normal games for a long time now. I don't disagree – having recently updated the Mini Normal archives I saw no shortage of games that seemed very non-normal and some setups that I think should never have been run, yes. That being said, it seems to me like Normal game balance is in about as good a state as it could be.

This really saddens me : /

I personally get a lot more out of winning a difficult town game than an easy one but it's definitely clear the site has largely moved on from that idea.

[Zachrulez]

As a side note, I wonder if what I was trying to say about Normal games is the same as how it comes across to others. Is roughly 50/50 winrates

not

the goal? Should it be something else?

My worthless opinion is that we should be striving for 50/50 EV which is not the same as 50/50 observed. You could have a 70-30 EV setup achieving 50-50 winrate due to poor play by the advantageous side but that doesn't make the setup balanced. Observed winrate being close to 50-50 might be close to 50-50 EV much of the time but the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

[Zachrulez]

I wouldn't say nightplay wins aren't fun or satisfying, but the discussion aspect of the game quickly dies once you have a definitive win via night actions. Kind of the general reason I don't much care for them as a setup goal as they aren't really good learning tools for improving as a player generally for either side.