Scummies Ideas, Suggestions and Comments Thread

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Post Post #1 (isolation #0) » Thu May 03, 2012 4:10 am

Post by IceGuy »

Thanks!

My thoughts:

The Best Role Claim award should be brought back because role claiming is an integral part of the game and concentrates a bunch of skill and fortune in one action. A good role claim can win you the game; a bad role claim can cost you the game. Alternatively, there could be some kind of "Daring Advance" award, honoring a risky and unusual gambit that turned out great.

On the other hand, the Smooth Operator should go. To me, it looks more like an award given to a mod who just does what a mod is supposed to do; providing vote counts, looking for replacements of the like. That award could be given to a number of good mods, and I don't think there needs to be an award to honor doing one's job. It's a bit like a "Didn't Flake" award for players.

With Best Newbie and Most Improved consolidated into Rising Star, and the site getting bigger and bigger, I can imagine Scummies being "shared", i.e. given to several people in categories such as Rising Star, Paragon and Don Corleone. Rising Star could be expanded to be a general award encompassing playing, modding and discussion, instead of just playing.

Some kind of Body of Work award should be given to a player who was not Scummies good in an individual category, but very good over several categories (such as being a good scum catcher, manipulator, setup designer and MD contributor).
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Post Post #4 (isolation #1) » Thu May 03, 2012 5:29 am

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In post 3, zoraster wrote:I don't think Best Role Claim is likely to come back. It's such a specific award that focuses on one very narrow element of playing when we don't do the same for other actions that are equally as worthy,


As I said, a role claim is a special action in the way it exerts a much bigger influence on the game than any other action. When a game makes a 180, there is almost always a role claim or a results claim involved.

it doesn't get much nomination love, it's extreeeemly context specific (whether someone wins the award or not depends heavily upon game elements), and it may negatively influence game behavior (though I doubt this).

That said, we are looking into adding an award that captures some of what we like about Best Role Claim: namely that it recognizes good play in an individual thread that doesn't require being good year round. We're still discussing what the best way to implement this is, however.

Best Gambit has been suggested before, but it's just not a good award. While I don't really believe Best Role Claim causes bad behavior, Best Gambit may well do so.


That holds for a bunch of awards; as of now, we have five categories without nominations and seven with just one, every award depends heavily on game elements, other players and the like, and I don't think "playing for the Scummies" is a real problem. Otherwise every Theme game would be full of odd roles to be taken into consideration for the "Best Role" award.

I understand your concern with Smooth Operator. That's one of the reasons we've made a few changes to the award. First, we changed the name it's being called in the award to Excellent Moderation. This isn't a true change as it's always been its "official" name, but I think that puts a broader look at moderation policies. Second, we changed it to a body of work award. While doing good vote counts, etc. in any individual game isn't all that special, being a consistently good moderator who acts swiftly, fairly, etc. is something we should want to celebrate.


It's not something we should celebrate. It's something we should
expect
.

I don't think we'll do shared scummies except where it makes sense. This is an awards show, not a participation trophy.


I'm thinking of cases where there are two people equally worthy of the award.

For instance, I could imagine two players in the Rising Star award category:
- A newbie playing very good in four or five games.
- A formerly mostly unknown player becomes a good and prolific player, a star mod, and a frequent and constructive contributor to discussion.

I see why you suggest the body of work award that you do (sort of a best rounded player), but I don't think it's a practical idea, and I like that we recognize the very different functions that scum and town players do.


Why wouldn't that be a practical idea? I agree it's a little more work to judge because you need to consider their entire oeuvre, but I don't see it as an unsolvable problem.
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Post Post #7 (isolation #2) » Thu May 03, 2012 5:37 am

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In post 5, chamber wrote:I was throwing around the idea of merit based achievements instead of the classical way scummies are handled with someone over aim the other day. The entire process for awarding them atm seems flawed because I think judges are rarely as invested as they'd need to be to make strong choices, and the nomination process requires you actually get nominated for a given award. Examples of achievements being something like winning > x% of your town games, winning > y% of your scum games, never getting mislynched as town, never getting lynched as mafia, being in a game where you were only on scum lynches. I'm sure you guys can think of more. The idea would be objective awards that could be handed out to any number of people.


The problem is that this kind of awards would lead to bad incentives, such as not joining a game when you're above your win rate or never got lynched, not replacing into "doomed" slots, getting modkilled or vigkilled instead of lynched, not getting on wagons after you've been on scum lynches, and so on.

It's also an entirely different beast whether you've only been on scum lynches in a 5p vengeful or in a 25 player Large Theme.
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Post Post #9 (isolation #3) » Thu May 03, 2012 5:44 am

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In post 8, chamber wrote:
I'm not too worried about negative incentives, people should play mafia to play mafia, the awards should be secondary.


What people should do and what people do are often two different things.

I'd consider such awards borderline to outside game influences, and they're banned for a reason.
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Post Post #14 (isolation #4) » Thu May 03, 2012 5:57 am

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In post 11, chamber wrote:
Surely these awards are less of an outside influence than the best claim and best gambit awards you were recently championing?


The main difference is that you can't rules lawyer the Scummies judges. If you do something that
technically
makes you eligible for the award, but was actually bad play, you simply won't be awarded a Scummy. Also, even if you fulfill all requirements, technical and unwritten, you're not guaranteed to win a Scummy. You need to be better than everyone else to win the Scummy, not just good enough.

Nobody intentionally loses a game or makes a bad play to possibly get nominated, possibly get seconded, and possibly get picked out from a bunch of other contenders to win a Scummy. Some people would do that if they're guaranteed the award.

(Also, the best claim/gambit award would only impact a rather small area of play. When there is an award for "not getting lynched", have fun trying to get a replacement for a slot that's at L-1. It's already hard enough without an incentive to not replace in.)
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Post Post #16 (isolation #5) » Thu May 03, 2012 6:10 am

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In post 15, chamber wrote:
This is a fair enough point, but you could simply apply a rule like awards are only for games you start in.


In this case, people will not play (or play under an alt) if they haven't been lynched.

All in all, I simply see no point in those awards, and a bunch of disadvantages.
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Post Post #18 (isolation #6) » Thu May 03, 2012 6:38 am

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In post 17, chamber wrote:The point is to reward good play in an objective way.


You're not rewarding "good play in an objective way", because that's impossible. You're giving out objective achievements which are somehow related to good play - some more, some less.

Be specific with disadvatages I'll continue to show that you are wrong.


You're not showing I'm wrong, you're just
claiming
I'm wrong.

You're saying you want good play to be rewarded, implying those rewards will be sought after by players, yet claim players will not try to actively get those awards.
Last edited by IceGuy on Thu May 03, 2012 7:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #32 (isolation #7) » Thu May 03, 2012 11:31 am

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In post 37, SleepyKrew wrote:So I agree with zor's proposals. Does anyone else agree with zor's proposals? Because I do.


I also agree.
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Post Post #186 (isolation #8) » Fri May 25, 2012 2:07 am

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You're not going to find an objective rating system that rates Mafia play.

Sure, you can have objective criteria, and you can consider good play, but the two things are mutually exclusive. Mafia depends too much on the set-up, the teammates and the opponents to objectively separate one player's play from the other players' play. The Elo rating system already has a bunch of problems although this is probably one of the most widely-studied rating systems, and the set-up is always the same, and there are only two players.

In the end, it will always boil down to subjective ratings and awards (or objective ratings and awards that have absolutely nothing to do with actual good Mafia play).

To reduce the nomination problem, I propose introducing "little awards".

After every game, the mod has to reveal all game information. Then, an MVP vote will be held. Every player gets one vote, the mod gets three votes (in small games) or five votes (in large games). If one player gets more than two-thirds of the votes, they'll be named MVP, and automatically be nominated for a Scummy. The MVP awards could be displayed in a microbadge-like fashion in the user box next to posts.

This would solve several problems at once:
- Some mods forget to share game information with the town at the end. Under the new system, this would be mandated by the list mod and lead to a temporary mod blacklisting if not executed.
- The larger possibility of winning an MVP award as opposed to a Scummie is a bigger incentive to actually play well.
- Players would be reminded that there is a Scummies nomination possibility, and be more inclined to nominate.
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Post Post #190 (isolation #9) » Sat May 26, 2012 12:31 am

Post by IceGuy »

In post 189, DeasVail wrote:Iceguy, would that be in addition to the scummies as they currently are?


Yes.
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Post Post #254 (isolation #10) » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:19 am

Post by IceGuy »

Support.
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Post Post #323 (isolation #11) » Sun Jan 06, 2013 9:53 pm

Post by IceGuy »

In post 1, IceGuy wrote:
Some kind of Body of Work award should be given to a player who was not Scummies good in an individual category, but very good over several categories (such as being a good scum catcher, manipulator, setup designer and MD contributor).
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Post Post #325 (isolation #12) » Sun Jan 06, 2013 10:56 pm

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Obviously.
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Post Post #330 (isolation #13) » Mon Jan 07, 2013 2:52 am

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In post 328, Faraday wrote:So basically people who are kind of on the fringe in every other award but not quite there?


Exactly. That's why "Jack of all trades" with the implied "master of none" fits perfectly. You aren't the best in any one category, but really good across categories.
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Post Post #332 (isolation #14) » Mon Jan 07, 2013 3:06 am

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In post 331, zoraster wrote:I think it's kind of weird to have an award where the explicit requirement is to not be particularly good in any one category.


It's about being good over several categories.
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Post Post #833 (isolation #15) » Fri Feb 26, 2016 8:41 am

Post by IceGuy »

Let me advance a radical idea: How about simply abolishing the fixed award categories?

Instead of nominating for categories, you could do nominations by type, such as "entire oeuvre" (a user is nominated for everything they did in the year - modding, playing, discussion), "action" (a player is nominated for a specific action), "game" (a mod is nominated for the design or modding of their game) or "team" (a team is nominated for their play in a game).

Every nomination has to come with a justification, a few sentences, possibly with links, that explain why that user(s) deserve(s) a Scummie.

At the end of the year, the Scummies judges debate which awards to give out to whom, and simply make up the awards as they go along (but, of course, reusing awards if they fit again). This is obviously going to be a bit more work than it currently is, but it should be mitigated by the requirement to explain nominations.

I would expect some awards to appear every year (such as Don Corleone), some to appear every two or three years (Third Party or Professor Mafia) and some to appear once for something that clearly deserves an award, but only the first time it was done, or something that only made sense in a very specific situation.

Remember the Scummies are supposed to be fun. They serve to reward actions that bring enjoyment to other users, and I think flexibility is the way to go.
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