Long term health of mafiascum

[Master Mew]

I would also anticipate far more strategic replacing out, and replacing out is already something that happens too often.

This is something we can handle.

1.) Who says replacing out has to void the game from your record? If it's going to create problems, then maybe it shouldn't.

2.) Alternatively, track players' replace-out rates as well. If you start to abuse it, good luck getting into games.

[Master Mew]

Also, on newbie games:

I liked 2of4 much more than Matrix6, and stopped joining as an SE entirely because I didn't like the new setup. Am I the only one?.

I agree, Matrix6 is too complicated for Newbies.

[Master Mew]

I would also anticipate far more strategic replacing out, and replacing out is already something that happens too often.

This is something we can handle.

1.) Who says replacing out has to void the game from your record? If it's going to create problems, then maybe it shouldn't.

2.) Alternatively, track players' replace-out rates as well. If you start to abuse it, good luck getting into games.

That's what epicmafia did.
I remember it not helping.

I can't imagine it didn't help at least a little, but even if it didn't "help" - did it hurt? Because as long as we're still counting replacing out of a losing slot as a loss, I don't really see how tracking statistics would cause more replace-outs.

[Master Mew]

I ran a faster paced game not that long ago actually. It seems to be a somewhat untapped type of game. All it really needs is more mods willing to do it and accept not having a game last all that long. Personally I don't have a problem one way or another. A faster game has the advantage of me needing to tend to it over a shorter period of time.

I don't think it's the type of thing we need a policy/queue for. This is one of those things that moderators have the power to do literally right now.

I think you're right, however in the current setup the number of faster games (virtually zero) is limited by the number of mods willing to buck the trends in their respective queues, while a new queue would actually a.) encourage these setups, b.) be a great proving ground for entry-level mods, and c.) be a clearly designated place where players coming from a faster meta would feel comfortable easing into our community.

A new queue is almost like an official endorsement that says "Yes, Mafia Scum plays these types of games, too," and welcomes members from that (far more common) meta - so it really depends on whether or not we're open to adding that to our repertoire. If not, then yes I also hope more mods in other queues will try it out in the near future.

[Master Mew]

Yeah, but if we create a queue for every different idea we have, we'd have a lot of different queues

Well ignoring the slippery slope (we can say yes to this without saying yes to everything), it's not really a minor change. Short-deadline games have a very different dynamic. It's not completely crazy to designate them as "different" - they kind of are.

and the fact of the matter is unless I'm mistaken there's no queue outside of the newbie queue that actually mandates any deadline requirements. If you want that trend bucked in any meaningful way, it's probably more prudent to start with the newbie queue itself. That's where we're introducing that trend if anything.

And again, that's where I think the newbie queue might need some reform. We've been pretty firm on forcing newbies to play to our kind of deadline standards, but maybe we should be having different paced games there and worrying less about the setup. (Certainly sanctioning the idea of both faster and longer paced games there encourages that a variety of deadlines is acceptable in other queues.)

Yeah, varying the phase lengths in the Newbie Queue would be great - but that brings us back to "Why would we introduce newbies to a type of gameplay they'll probably never encounter outside the Newbie Queue?"

I still like the idea, just predicting the rebuttal.