Mini 1651: One Flew Over The Monkey's Nest(Scum Wins!)

RadiantCowbells · Post Post #1950 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 7:09 pm

I'm really trying not to just flame you here. I have some respect for the fact that you put effort into this game; if you learn from your mistakes you may become a skilled townie... but you have to acknowledge that claim was a mistake, and learn from it, or I've wasted my time talking and playing with you.

You're wasting my time talking to me then.

Did it turn out that the move was a mistake? Yes.

Would I do anything differently if that situation came up in the future? No.

I had every reason to believe that Pisskop had a shot (lied about his role), town or scum, and had good reason to believe he was scum (his fake claimed role was bogus, scummy behaviour), and had good reason to believe he planned to shoot me (that "FoS RC" line out of left field looked like he was laying a trail so that he could justify shooting me tomorrow.)

I tried to get town to leash him. They wouldn't, so I did the next best thing; I made it so that if Pisskop was to take out the cop, he'd have to scumclaim in the process.

It's unfortunate this situation arose but really 850 with it's bizarre formality and it was just SO FUCKING SCUMMY that it's fucking unbelievable and I couldn't muster up any town motive to deal with the situation so I did the next best thing.

It's a shitty thing, but the problem wasn't me. It was the apathetic town and most of all Pisskop for making that post.

"rxn test"

MonkeyMan576 · Post Post #1951 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 7:10 pm

I'd say the town was really only apathetic for maybe the last day. For the rest of the game, the town was fairly active as far as towns go. Lots of content posts, activity, etc. It just so happened scum played better.

RadiantCowbells · Post Post #1952 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 7:13 pm

Apathetic with regards to the specific situation; I could not get anyone to get on board with doing anything about Pisskop.

If I could, I wouldn't have had to claim.

RadiantCowbells · Post Post #1953 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 7:15 pm

If a townie is basically confirmed town by virtue of their role it gives them more latitude to make plays that don't make sense and which they don't explain for the purpose of reactions. They have less responsibility to be accountable for themselves. In my experience this often leads to them lurking and playing like rubbish - Pisskop did an okay job of defying that stereotype.

Yeah but when those actions include throwing a shot at town cop, which given the way he was repeatedly talking about how I was unreadable and that FoS out of nowhere I am not going to just sit there and hope that he doesn't shoot me when he just strongly indicated that he wants to.

MonkeyMan576 · Post Post #1954 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 7:17 pm

It's your job to convince your teammates of who is scum. Townies by nature are going to be skeptical(at least good ones). You should look at your own arguments for why town didn't follow your lead, not blame them.

MonkeyMan576 · Post Post #1955 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 7:22 pm

I nominated the scum team for a scummy if anyone is interested in seconding or thirding.

RadiantCowbells · Post Post #1956 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 7:27 pm

I don't really think that this game deserves one, not that any members of the scum team didn't play well. They were all solid, especially Elyse, but the game was just too easy for them.
Same scumteam could win a scummy in a different game, but not this one.

Not responding any more because Pisskop basically handed them the game in #850 and I've been sick of this game since that moment.

MonkeyMan576 · Post Post #1957 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 7:27 pm

In post 1948, Aquanim wrote:My problem goes more or less like this. I imagine I'm a fun person to play with, at least for some people. I put effort in, talk reasonably to people, don't just scream at my scumreads (mostly). (My attitude to Boonskiies was an aberration, which I'll get to.)

The trouble is, I'm not having fun. Joining this game was a mistake I regretted from start to finish. The last game I played, I played more or less like this, except I pretty much carried town to victory. Apart from the high from actually winning, playing that game was bloody miserable too. It's not always the fault of whoever I'm frusturated with. Going V/LA or replacing out is sometimes unexpected and unavoidable, but it messes up the game for me. I take care to play one game at once, so they can't get in each other's way, and play only when I know (barring some accident) I won't have to just ditch the thread for days at a time. Not being practiced or skilled isn't really a town player's fault either, but again (especially in extreme cases) it makes the game frusturating for me to play. I can deal with those. Sometimes I'll lose because of them. That I think I can deal with, but it does all add up.

What I saw when I looked at Boonskiies was a player who DELIBERATELY sabotages his towngame, so as to be able to have fun in and autowin his scumgames. That is pretty much everything I loathe about Mafia. I have to be able to know, as a townie, that everyone on my team is playing to their wincon first and foremost. (Some players' egos get in the way of their towngame - that really annoys me but even then at least they were trying.) I don't think I can play the game when I know some people care less about their wincon than deliberately fucking their town meta over. I can't even dodge all such players - I wouldn't have signed up for this game had I know Boonskiies was going to be in it, but what the hell am I supposed to do when he replaces in?

I've tried to quit Mafia for more-or-less these reasons before. The problem was, each time I was leaving on a win. I always kept looking back at random games and thinking "Jeez, those townies are awful. I could do better than that." , and remembering the high from winning my last game as opposed to the misery it was to actually play the game. I've also always wondered what my scumgame would be like, having never rolled scum before. But the game is seriously bad for me. I get stressed, it sucks up large quantities of time, and though I've learned how to persuasively argue with people that don't trust me (a useful skill which I perhaps needed) I'm now learning how to flame people who annoy me (which I think I should not learn).

I've lost games as town before (offsite); in each of them, the scumteam (and in one case, the third party) was entirely catchable, but the town was either mindbogglingly lazy or let their humongous egos draw them into dick-waving contests rather than actually playing the game. (I am no longer enamoured of my previous site.) It annoys me that in this game I might have seen a truly good scumteam that a good town would still not have caught, they played really very well... but I'll never know for sure whether you were that good, because instead you were playing against this clusterfuck of a town-team.

For the record, I don't have a problem with the play of Pisskop, or Eektor (though I wished you'd turned on a little sooner). Metalcyanide, Taly, Oddmusic, IL, and Bellaphant have a fair bit to learn, but all had the right attitude. I feel like Boonskiies, and to a lesser extent Mykonian and RC, just pissed some fraction of a month and a half of my time down the drain, and that makes me seriously mad.

I don't think Boonskies deliberatly sabotages his town games. I think he knows that it's beneficial in some instances to be difficult to read. A think a lot of players mistakingly take issue with players who don't play to their town meta, or don't have a town meta. Boonskies was more right about his reads than a lot of the players were. Now, he made it more difficult for himself to convince others of his reads by not appearing town, but I'm sure he'll realize that 2/3's of his games will be town and that might not be the best strategy. If it were me, I would adjust my scum game to fit my town game, not the other way around, but to each their own. I still feel like he was playing to his win condition, for the most part.

MonkeyMan576 · Post Post #1958 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 7:28 pm

In post 1956, RadiantCowbells wrote:I don't really think that this game deserves one, not that any members of the scum team didn't play well. They were all solid, especially Elyse, but the game was just too easy for them.
Same scumteam could win a scummy in a different game, but not this one.

Not responding any more because Pisskop basically handed them the game in #850 and I've been sick of this game since that moment.

I think you're being bitter. In my opinion they played really well.

RadiantCowbells · Post Post #1959 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 7:30 pm

not that any members of the scum team didn't play well

They were all solid, especially Elyse

Same scumteam could win a scummy in a different game

fin

Aquanim · Post Post #1960 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 8:25 pm

In post 1950, RadiantCowbells wrote:
I'm really trying not to just flame you here. I have some respect for the fact that you put effort into this game; if you learn from your mistakes you may become a skilled townie... but you have to acknowledge that claim was a mistake, and learn from it, or I've wasted my time talking and playing with you.

You're wasting my time talking to me then.

Did it turn out that the move was a mistake? Yes.

Would I do anything differently if that situation came up in the future? No.
...

Aaaand we're done. If you can't learn from your mistakes, then you've entirely pissed my time down the drain this game, just as badly as Boonskiies.

When was the last time you won a town game, RC? When was the last time scum felt you were worth shooting when you hadn't claimed a power role? Or even when you were literally modconfirmed...

I'm now being nasty and hurtful, and I know it. This is what playing Mafia does to me now. But there's only one person who's been on the town team in every one of the many, many games you've lost, RC. Maybe, instead of blaming everyone else, you should look at yourself.

In post 1951, MonkeyMan576 wrote:I'd say the town was really only apathetic for maybe the last day. For the rest of the game, the town was fairly active as far as towns go. Lots of content posts, activity, etc. It just so happened scum played better.

It looked that way because I spammed the game and the mafia played pretty good towngames. I honestly believe that (at least) Elyse contributed more to town wincon than (at least) Boonskiies. If you take out my posts, those of the scum, and the noise, I don't know that it looks all that impressive.

I think I'm with RC though about the scummy nomination. They played well... but had they been pressured by the presence of a competent and experienced town-team, their play might well have looked not nearly so impressive. TheDudeAbides lurked hard for a lot of the game, for instance - if he had not been able to hide amongst Boon, Bellaphant and Mykonian, he would quite possibly have been caught. When three of the four (to be safe, including Mykonian) most experienced players, by FAR, in the game are all mafia, it is not suprising that they should take the game by storm. If they were newbies or players who hadn't been around for long who'd done this to a town (even this town), I'd be with you all the way, but...

In post 1957, MonkeyMan576 wrote:
I don't think Boonskies deliberatly sabotages his town games. I think he knows that it's beneficial in some instances to be difficult to read. A think a lot of players mistakingly take issue with players who don't play to their town meta, or don't have a town meta. Boonskies was more right about his reads than a lot of the players were. Now, he made it more difficult for himself to convince others of his reads by not appearing town, but I'm sure he'll realize that 2/3's of his games will be town and that might not be the best strategy. If it were me, I would adjust my scum game to fit my town game, not the other way around, but to each their own. I still feel like he was playing to his win condition, for the most part.

I won't go looking for the posts now, but I believe Boonskiies has explicitly stated that he alters his town games such that he can get away with things as scum, by pointing out times he's done it as town.

For all I know, Boonskiies flipped some coins to get his reads, and the fact that some of them hit scum was pure chance. He never explained ANYTHING about his scumread of Elyse, or Eektor for that matter. I don't even care how scummy he made himself look, if he'd posted SOME argument for that read, I'd have read it and evaluated it. I might even have been persuaded by it. But if he isn't even attempting to convince other players his reads are right with arguments to that effect, that's not him playing to his wincon, as far as I'm concerned.

Aquanim · Post Post #1961 (ISO) » Thu Apr 23, 2015 8:28 pm

In all seriousness, if Pisskop actually flipped town, and nobody else in the game gave a flying fuck about #850 at any stage, maybe you should re-evaluate whether that post was in fact as scummy as you claim, RC. Mafia isn't mathematics, you can't *prove* your answer is correct and then reasonably defend it against the disagreement of everybody else who's ever seen it.

eektor · Post Post #1962 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 12:31 am

I'm sorry Bella. I really thought IL was scum and when you came in, you didn't change that opinion I had of him. I also was rereading the first part of the game and it confirmed my suspicion that IL was scum.

I have to admit this game was pretty frustrating, especially after day 1 which couldn't have ended worse for town. And everytime I'm town, my reads are always wrong. The only reade I was correct in was Aqua town but everyone had that. And also metal town but I wasn't too sure about that one.

In regards to Boons, I started Day 3 thinking Bella is scum and Elyse was probably scum (but most people thought she was town and so best to deal with it after Bella), then Boon posted and I went to Bella is scum and Boon is her scum buddy. Boon gave no explanation of reads and had a cocky attitude that he was 100% correct and since he had me as scum I knew his theory was full of crap. Figuring out the game is one thing, but if you make yourself look scummy or can't explain your reads, it is useless.

Scum team played well but town just couldn't get together and challenge the scum team at all. There were some clues, I think we should have lynched tool when he was asking Aqua to vote for metal so he would feel comfortable voting. I also thought it strange when I was questioning TDA and Elyse came on and tried to deflect the attention from him to other people. I thought that she defended TDA there, but I was set on Bella and Boon at that point.

Anyways, I think I will take a break from playing mafia. Maybe a month or two from now I can come back and see if I can learn how to effectively play the game.

TheDudeAbides · Post Post #1963 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:15 am

Sorry about my activity lately. Too many unexpected things came up in a row.

I'm surprised that no one noticed the mod making a rule stopping me from going V/LA that he enforced for me, but not Eektor. At the time I figured that was going to end up being an issue.

Thanks for the game. The no lynch on day one really hurt the town. Either slot being dead by endgame would have been better for the town than neither.

MonkeyMan576 · Post Post #1964 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:22 am

At the time my thinking was that you had more VLA days than Eektor, although you had the same number of VLA's. but you were right it needed to be evenly applied, so I changed it.

TheDudeAbides · Post Post #1965 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:27 am

Also, as far as the rule goes, on a site where weekend vlas aren't too uncommon, it doesn't seem like a good idea.

eektor · Post Post #1966 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:44 am

I didn't noticed it only applied to you, I saw it for both of us.

@Monkey is there a dead or scum thread?

toolenduso · Post Post #1967 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:04 am

Well...I don't know if I personally think we deserve a scummy for this game in particular, but I appreciate the nomination Monkeyman!

I do think the scum team played well overall. I was pretty sure we were going to win as soon as I saw that Elyse was on the team, and I'm happy I got to be on a scum team with her. The strength of this team, I think, was in the way we interacted with each other. I think each member did a good job of paying attention to the other two without giving them a free pass or bussing them outright, as well as avoiding suspicious statements/observations about them.

I don't know why y'all are so down on boonskiies, I enjoyed having him in the game. He's a fun player to have around and brings a more light-hearted style of play to the table which I think is often lacking in games. Plus his reads were scary good this game.

I also liked playing with Aqua and mykonian, you two were both active and thoughtful players who I believe would have figured out the scumteam either in different circumstances or just if given enough time. I know where you're coming from, Aqua, because I've felt similarly frustrated at times, but it kind of sounds to me like you might be taking the game a little too seriously. Not trying to lecture here, but if you'd like to give the game another shot then I think one thing that might help you enjoy it is if you let the game be more of a game and less of a XXXX, if that makes any sense.

Taly, I'm sorry if you felt attacked on a personal level in this game. It wasn't my intent and it's not something I want to do, even if it's scum theater. I do think you can take some lessons from this game, chief among them being that now that the scum team is revealed you can look at the stuff we used as arguments to push you -- I think those are things other scum teams will also see and try to use to their advantage.

And thanks to the mod for modding! As for the twilight mechanic, I wasn't a huge fan -- just because it lengthened the nights by quite a bit and honestly because it was something I didn't know how to deal with as scum. When I play scum I'm used to just scoring a mislynch and then allowing myself a bit of a cool-off period during the night where I can take a little focus away from the game for a couple days (not that I ignore the scum thread or anything), but twilight was kind of like this awkward place for me where I had to keep up the charade of not knowing what the person would flip.

If it's nice for players in different time zones to have, though, then I can definitely understand why more mods would consider doing it and I would accept it.

toolenduso · Post Post #1968 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:07 am

In post 1967, toolenduso wrote:Well...I don't know if I personally think we deserve a scummy for this game in particular, but I appreciate the nomination Monkeyman!

Let me clarify this a bit more because I don't want you guys to think that I think you played badly -- this is really more a reflection of myself, I feel like I didn't play up to my standards as scum.

In post 1967, toolenduso wrote:Not trying to lecture here, but if you'd like to give the game another shot then I think one thing that might help you enjoy it is if you let the game be more of a game and less of a XXXX, if that makes any sense.

Lol, forgot to replace the XXXX -- I was searching for the right word and put that in as a placeholder so I could come back later. What I meant was "more of a game and less of an emotional investment."

mykonian · Post Post #1969 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 5:12 am

In post 1949, Aquanim wrote:EBWOP: Flaming a small fraction of the town players, and then calling the town team a clusterfuck, may seem incongruous. Remember that between the vig shot and the modkill, we would have had barely enough lynches (possibly not enough) to policy lynch everyone in that pile. We're *stuck* with them, and it only takes one stupid town player at LYLO to lose the game.

You were at the center of this town. You had more than average say in who got lynched. But the posts here complain about people you dislike, and how you didn't win.

I'm very sorry aqua, but all that doesn't fit together. If you want to win and you are in the position to call the lynches,

go find the scum

. Elyse will always play as elyse, RC will play as RC, I will be myko.

You can't complain about scum's competency and how other people suck when you were basically at the center of this town.

And then, you complain about how RC can't learn from his mistakes. I see very little self criticism from you here either. Given how this town needed very little push from the scum to implode, I daresay there's not a single townie here who shouldn't be looking at what went wrong here.

RadiantCowbells · Post Post #1970 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 6:56 am

I'm now being nasty and hurtful, and I know it. This is what playing Mafia does to me now. But there's only one person who's been on the town team in every one of the many, many games you've lost, RC. Maybe, instead of blaming everyone else, you should look at yourself.

You're assuming that my play or my win rate is below average. Even if it is on this site, that's not accurately representative.

When I play enough games here things will even out.

pisskop · Post Post #1971 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 7:09 am

I just won 4 games in a row, and now I've lost my last 3

Boonskiies · Post Post #1972 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 10:50 am

I'm sorry; it's not a coincidence that I keep calling out 2/3 of the scum team. It happened here as well recently. I'm fantastic at finding scum, I just can't convince others, which is what I need to work on.

I believe I actually put forth a good case on Tool, and I believe Tool felt it. I don't deliberately do things as town to get away with them as scum, I just have fun when I'm town, and do things that shouldn't be alignment indicative. It's hard for me to be active in early games, because when I am, I usually get night killed for finding scum Day 1. I believe when I came into this game, I played well, and I wouldn't change how I played this game at all. (Besides my activity issue, but that wasn't just this game.)

I replaced into a game Tool modded, and completely took that game by storm by calling out scum members that hadn't even had pressure from. People just auto assume that because I'm not following the current wagon or I'm completely changing everything, and make rash, TRUE statements, that I anything I say can't be true. I felt it was pretty obvious that Elyse/Tool were scum especially after the way they were reacting to me. Aqua set them up perfectly in that sense as well.

toolenduso · Post Post #1973 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:18 am

In post 1972, Boonskiies wrote:I believe I actually put forth a good case on Tool, and I believe Tool felt it.

Well.......sorta. Some of the things you said were spot-on, some were half-accurate and some were false. Which ultimately doesn't matter because you were right about me being scum, but I think it kind of points to you just having good gut reads.

It was more the method of delivery that made the case easy to dismiss, though -- it really did look like retroactive reasoning, which can be fixed with some wording changes/structure changes.

Aquanim · Post Post #1974 (ISO) » Fri Apr 24, 2015 12:25 pm

In post 1967, toolenduso wrote:I also liked playing with Aqua and mykonian, you two were both active and thoughtful players who I believe would have figured out the scumteam either in different circumstances or just if given enough time. I know where you're coming from, Aqua, because I've felt similarly frustrated at times, but it kind of sounds to me like you might be taking the game a little too seriously. Not trying to lecture here, but if you'd like to give the game another shot then I think one thing that might help you enjoy it is if you let the game be more of a game and less of a XXXX, if that makes any sense.

I walked into this game intending to take a back seat, mess around, and have some fun. I realised about halfway through day 1 that there were no other townies actively pushing for a lynch that made sense (whatever my reads on anyone else, the Taly wagon was always bad). Having realised that, I put myself forward and started totally directing the game, and made myself miserable doing it, because it was necessary if I were to be able to honestly say afterward "I played to my wincon as best I knew how".

There was ONE meaningful case this entire game (by Eektor on IL/Bellaphant) that wasn't made by either myself or the scumteam. Let that sink in.

In post 1969, mykonian wrote:You were at the center of this town. You had more than average say in who got lynched. But the posts here complain about people you dislike, and how you didn't win.

I'm very sorry aqua, but all that doesn't fit together. If you want to win and you are in the position to call the lynches, go find the scum. Elyse will always play as elyse, RC will play as RC, I will be myko.

I can go find scum in a game where the townies are actually trying and playing to wincon. I've done it frequently.

In post 1969, mykonian wrote:...
You can't complain about scum's competency and how other people suck when you were basically at the center of this town.

You lost all right to lecture me when TheDudeAbides asked you to explain your scumread on him and you refused. At that moment, you were not playing to wincon.

Like I said above, I'd have quite liked not to be at the centre of this town, and tried not to at the start. When nobody else would, I didn't have a choice, other than to let town totally crash and burn. Rather wish I had, in retrospect.

And then, you complain about how RC can't learn from his mistakes. I see very little self criticism from you here either. Given how this town needed very little push from the scum to implode, I daresay there's not a single townie here who shouldn't be looking at what went wrong here.

I got outplayed by the scumteam, I fully acknowledge that. If I ever intended to play a game again, I would go and look (privately!) at how my reads were wrong.

I've lost games before, and learned how to play better from them... but I look at this game, and what I see is "I could never have carried this town".