Situation Room [Game Over!]

[Bingle]

Because if there is no one who can be scum with Yuri that makes Yuri town.

Do you feel like Yuri can have no partners?

I’d suggest reading literally a page ago.

[Bingle]

Because if there is no one who can be scum with Yuri that makes Yuri town.

Do you feel like Yuri can have no partners?

I’d suggest reading literally a page ago.

In the interest of being less snarky:

I think that the only people who really make sense as Yuri's partners are Dusa and DGB, and I therefore think that one of those two should go first. It's also why I was interested in specifically their takes on who might be partnered with Yuri.

With that said, I don't like the complete avoidance of sharing reads when he came into the thread and I'm probably gonna hammer sometime tonight if he doesn't show up.

I would suggest reads lists from anyone who hasn't given an up to date one, as we are nearly at the "Communication is hard" part of the game.

[Bingle]

Time to hammer, I guess.

VOTE: Yuri

[Bingle]

Eh. I stand by the judgment that this setup is in fact scumsided as hell. We had 4 nearly back to back scum eliminations with 0 basis from the setup itself. In a 17p game that's just going to lead to town being super far ahead.

Unfortunately, scum wasn't in the right headspace to put up a strong fight here.

[Bingle]

I feel kinda bad for the scumteam, tbh. It seems like they were the people who had the least fun with the setup and that was a major contributing factor to their loss. Reading the scum PT it feels like RL stacked this game to be against them and that's kind of bleh as a win.

OTOH, agreed that this player list was generally awesome (like half of the reason I signed up, tbh) and I'd love to play again with y'all, just hopefully with fewer people being demotivated by RL. Thanks for the game, nsg.

Well done in the neighborhoods, Titus. I definitely got fooled by the amount of energy you were putting up there at the end.

[Bingle]

this setup is quite poggers tho. imagine if this was a team mafia setup like oh my god look at that

I really do think that my suggestion to divorce the picking hoods part of the game from eliminations would make the setup more enjoyable. Like... half the player list was dead before the mutation even kicked into gear. If it was a pre-elimination phase thing like choosing partners in Dance Games I think it would still be engaging but also allow for a smaller playerlist and Dann to have a chance at taking a vig shot in a neighborhood.

[Bingle]

As an aside, related to reading the mod PT. I'm not sure where the tell originated, but I have a general feeling that scum don't like to appear incompetent. (I certainly don't) which results in them bussing and making more insightful commentary than they really should. You can sort of reverse this into a town read. For example, The more FG was wrong the more confident I was that he was town.

This is accurate in a lot of cases even for people who don't feel the need to be right. For example, I'm more than happy to be loudly wrong. But if I'm loudly right as scum and then flip, people are more likely to dismiss what I was saying.

It's my approach to mechplay as scum. Loudly argue what I think is the best town mechplay and then let town ignore it when/if I flip scum.

[Bingle]

Why did the dead PT scumread me (

I thought most of the tells people were using on you were personality instead of alignment and as such weren't a great reason to townread you. I had pretty solid reasons to townread basically everyone (I was locktowning FG/A50/GL at the end there and wouldn't have considered flipping any of the three). I was also pretty sold on Titus town based on the Yuri bus, although I like to think I would have reconsidered before endgame.

Basically, I was assuming you were playing a pretty solid scumgame, because that made the most sense to me.

OTOH, the comments from Yuri and GE in the deadthread did kind of make me think I was wrong on you, because they both heavily implied that there wasn't a well positioned deepwolf from the early game.

[Bingle]

GuiltyLion probably posted 37 town indicative observations about me an 17 scum indicative observations about me!
So much stuff!!
I have no idea how he will replicate his town meta if he rolls evil in the future!

GL's XLO wim is the stuff of legend.

I'm glad to have seen it twice and come out on top both times recently.

[Bingle]

anyways here's my excuse to use this image again

I think my only real complaint is the term distinction between the two phases (elim and kill).

I'd be interested in seeing it run the other way, as that turns what is a never bus setup into a setup where there is a clear upside and downside to bussing.

[Bingle]

Scum not getting vengekills in the room phase.

If a large number of scum make it to the room phase, they're already super ahead and likely to win on stealing control of hoods and losing access to those kills won't hurt them as much. It also shifts the optimal strategy away from neverbus towards bussing is maybe okay, which I think makes the dayplay more interesting.

[Bingle]

Talking about optimal strategy and scumsidedness isn't necessarily a judgment call on this run, specifically, btw. Just that scum is disproportionately more likely to win if they have more players going into the neighborhood phase and so if you can manage to keep scumbuddies alive over bussing them that's the right choice in a vacuum.

[Bingle]

Read the Mod thread:

The two scumsided mechanics are the lack of easy discussion post room split and the potential for early parity post room split, both of which were showcased here.

I failed to note the potential for a forced top townread win as Oka discussed in the dead thread, which IS a townsiding factor. On the whole, I'd put this as a probably 70% scumsided setup as is, which is perfect for a townsided event like TM where scumwins are actually a desired outcome and reasonable for an open game in this meta, particularly because the players know exactly what they're signing on for. I had been assuming it was somewhere closer to 75-80%, but hadn't actually worked through the town siding implications of the majority instead of parity wincon.

I think my proposed split of venge in the first half/non venge in the second would make it closer to the actual vengescum 12v5 (62% scumwin) but would still be completely fair for a regular game. Honestly if this was going to be a TM setup (I'd endorse it) then I think the way it was run this time would be my preference between the two.

Also, on the note of this being a potential TM setup, it's functionally perfect for that. It has a larger than normal scumteam size, relies heavily on skill based play instead of the right people rolling power roles, and is more likely than not to be a scumwin in a vacuum, which means the event overall is more likely to be skill based than luck based.

[Bingle]

That sounds like an accurate summary of the contrast in our views. I think it would cause less problems in non-neighbourhood games tbh, I mean, I’d still absolutely fight you in the leashing and if I had a PR would do whatever I wanted but I think it wouldn’t lead to the fights that happened here/contribute to the total nixing of my enjoyment this game (which wasn’t you, but was a lot of things and not being able to fuck around with neighbourhoods was definitely part of it)

I think this was exasperated by the fact that from Oka's perspective getting into hoods was a necessary evil. Normally in neighborhood games people who want to be in hoods to chill get to do that and people who don't stay away from them.

Also, I touched briefly on this N2, but I think as town the best use of a neighborhood is to see if people change their play in the main thread based on neighborhood discussion when they're not themselves privy to it. I also tend to not enjoy being in a bunch of hoods as much as other people do though, so...

And yeah, my comments on scumsidedness/townsidedness are not about this particular run, just the setup in general. The lost on rand bit might've been a bit of an exaggeration, but this was definitely a townsided rand.

[Bingle]

I think the numbers assume a lobby of non-polarized players

The numbers are an attempt at simulating EV, yeah.

[Bingle]

Not really sure how to solve immensely polarized lobbies, but I do like playing with you, Mena. If you're looking for a middle ground between hiatus and burning out, newbies are somewhat less impacted by site culture, but do whatever you need to do to keep yourself happy.

[Bingle]

Yeah, but I genuinely enjoy scumgames far more than towngames. So my advice is... Enjoy scumgames more? Rand active scumteams? That's not useful advice. And even with that predisposition, I still get demotivated sometimes when my team just isn't there, so I can only imagine how much worse it is for people who just generally prefer the town side of the game.

[Bingle]

I kinda started trying to run more Secret Alt games this year to combat obvtown/scum meta tells, but I don't know if that really solves the issue because it seems to turn the game into "Figure out who person X is so that you can apply their obvtown meta to their play."

[Bingle]

omg u actually changed ur location

The cell is going to fill up quickly if players are honest

Just gonna go ahead and bring my harmonica to hang out with the cool kids.

[Bingle]

setup related solutions so if u hate scum u can be like ok i only need to play scum for one phase and then i can commit seppuku, might be more motivating for scum if they only need to survive for a single/two phases to help their team

This was the design conceit for innocent evil people, even if I goofed the math hard.

[Bingle]

maybe if there is a graph, scumplay remained steady up until 2019, while town play has been slowly increasing over time. and then scumplay hit a nosedive while townplay has continued to level up. i do agree that ms.net was scumsided maybe in 2018 because i remember reading about mu vs ms and how ms was the site for good scumplay and bad townplay.

I would say that overall the scumplay around when I joined was better than the scumplay in 2018, despite 2018 being a vaguely scum sided meta. And for good reason. One of my early games my strategy as scum was “bully mastina in the thread until she doesn’t have the motivation to solve the game.” That’s not healthy for anyone involved, but it used to be a fairly acceptable practice.

I would say that for people with a truly polarized scum meta they might try hydra-ing with someone who is better at scum, not necessarily as a crutch but to have someone who could keep them invested in the game. Also weaponized hydra dissonance is a powerful scum tool that no one seems to take into account anymore.

[Bingle]

There’s a reason toxic 1v1s tend to lead to scum wins, and being able to incite that without looking scummy used to be considered a skill.