Provable randomness

[TheButtonmen]

Town on average in the early portions of the game lynches worse then randomly, in fact setups are generally created to be slightly town favouring which means dice tags are the optimal strategy if they're allowed.

[TheButtonmen]

You never stop lynching randomly so it's okay!

[TheButtonmen]

When you can go from this;

My ultimate take is verified randomness should be heavily discouraged but not banned.

To this;

At this point, it's actually exploitable

You begin to understand why they shouldn't be allowed.

Dice tags let players generate confirmed information, the entire point of mafia is that players don't have confirmed information which is why masons / innocent children and what not are so powerful. Dice tags eliminate the entire point of a informed minority vs a uninformed majority because they destroy any potential for the scum to leverage their voting block and there will always be that player who will abuse them as much as possible.

[TheButtonmen]

You're thinking too small; the power of dice tags in voting isn't one player using them, it's when literally everyone uses their results.

[TheButtonmen]

One player rolls a dX where X is number of players in game, the result is public and confirmed so it can't be faked.

All players lynch the chosen player.

No non-lynchs.

[TheButtonmen]

Who's turn it is doesn't matter, that's the entire issue!

The information produced by the dice tag is confirmed, it can't be faked, it can't be edited. The dice tags reduce the game down to a simple matter of EV and give how many of the more played opens are designed dicing is actually playing to win which is incredibly lame and hence why they were banned.

[TheButtonmen]

Back in my days if I remember correctly the newbie setup had a 55% Town EV and town won approximately 46% of them (aka town did 9% worse then if they just lynched randomly). The correct town would have been to just have a player go 1dx (where x is the number of players alive in the game) and everyone lynch slot X on the player list.

If dice tags are allowed then they make open setups incredibly dumb if players are truly playing to win (and that isn't even touching on their other uses for roles in games).

[TheButtonmen]

Back in my days if I remember correctly the newbie setup had a 55% Town EV and town won approximately 46% of them (aka town did 9% worse then if they just lynched randomly). The correct town would have been to just have a player go 1dx (where x is the number of players alive in the game) and everyone lynch slot X on the player list.

If dice tags are allowed then they make open setups incredibly dumb if players are truly playing to win (and that isn't even touching on their other uses for roles in games).

Why bother acting town, heck why bother posting.

Exactly, it ruins the game yet if you're playing to win it's the most optimal strategy for town.

[TheButtonmen]

You're objectively wrong.

[TheButtonmen]

My opinion is backed by win rates gathered from across hundreds of games over several queues and EV's gathered from literally tens of thousands of simulations. Your opinion is backed by your gut feeling?

Confirmable randomization is not a good addition to forum mafia, feel free to disagree but at least do some research before making your claims.

[TheButtonmen]

Many times when people are talking about EV, they are talking about mountainous setups that do not include any PRs at all.

You can EV setups with PR's.

[TheButtonmen]

Expected Value (of a town win). 2:11 mountainous has a 39.5% EV, so if town lynched randomly the entire game it would win 39.5% of games.

And no one would sign up for these games (I hope) sounds booooooooring.

Like if you ran one of these games with town PRs most would become obsolete, do it without......yeah a VT only town game isn't one i'd play.

Vengeful was and I believe still is the most popular micro setup and yet it only features VT's. White Flag has spawned a series of other Flag games that once again only feature VT's. There's plenty of other examples as well, the horror.

[TheButtonmen]

What exactly are you arguing in favour of here? We should allow dice tags again because players will probably not abuse them? What has you so determined to argue in favour of confirmable randomization? What are you so convinced it adds to the game?

[TheButtonmen]

If that's the issue then I think the real problem is that the game setup is not balanced well. If your setup gives town an advantage by being random then your setup sucks and you need to re-balance it before running it again. Don't ban randomness.

PokerFace are you claiming that any setup with a town sided EV in unbalanced? If so once again I'm going to have to say you're objectively wrong. Go design a 50% EV setup, run it twenty times and see what happens.

[TheButtonmen]

The issue isn't that randomness is a breaking strategy, it's that proveable randomness let's players generate information that isn't at all compromised by their alignment. It's the same issue that we have with the red text of truth and other trust tells. It's not on their level as being able to break the game but the issue is that it's a more winning strategy then actually playing the game. What exactly do you think we gain by allowing it?

[TheButtonmen]

So that is what you're claiming?

Town EV's > 50% it is (at least based off data culled from opens / newbies) to dice it then it is to play, MS has for at least the period of several years where I was active preformed worse then random in those areas. Quite literally randomness > scumhunting, it may not be glamourous but that's how it was. Proveable randomness wasn't removed on a lark, it was removed because if it is a legal play and players are playing by rule #1 (play to win) then you can have some truly truly dumb outcomes.

[TheButtonmen]

The issue isn't that randomness is a breaking strategy, it's that proveable randomness let's players generate information that isn't at all compromised by their alignment. It's the same issue that we have with the red text of truth and other trust tells. It's not on their level as being able to break the game but the issue is that it's a more winning strategy then actually playing the game. What exactly do you think we gain by allowing it?

Yay I never understood that red text of truth stuff. People can choose to lie and start using the text to lie, right? The only reason they don't is because they value how good they are as town more than how good they are at being scum. Any buddy that does that is an idiot. You should value your desire to win equally. You should want to win as town and win as scum equally. So if you aren't lying with red text next time you are scum, then you aren't playing to your win condition to the best of your ability. Which means you suck as a mafia player.

Back on the provable randomness topic I don't think it always let's you generate info regardless of your alignment. If the math ends up in your favor and you follow the plan, then you are the alignment that plan benefits. If the plan actually benefits scum and you are scum and you trick the town into thinking the plan benefits town, then well done!

Post one of each day a dice tag ranging from 1 to X where X is the number of living players will be rolled, each player will vote for the chosen player, this will continue until the game ends.

This plan benefits town, any player who deviates from it is either scum or breaking rule #1.

What a fun game of mafia.

[TheButtonmen]

Because in a random voting outcome you remove most of the scumteams power, you removed the informed portion of the minority and render the fact that the majority is uninformed irrelevant. This can't be solved its an inherent part of the game, randomness weakens scums and strengthens town.

[TheButtonmen]

Provable randomness can reduce mafia to a simple mathematical question of which side can absorb lynches proportionally better.

It is incredibly dumb, I don't understand why people are defending it.

[TheButtonmen]

It was banned no?

Why exactly do we want to bring it back?

[TheButtonmen]

I didn't think provable randomness was as strong as you say it is

You can check for yourself, math out some opens that have been run dozens of time and compare the expected EV to the actual outcomes we've gotten.

[TheButtonmen]

It was banned no?

Why exactly do we want to bring it back?

I didn't think this thread was about "bring it back!" I thought it was about "why was it banned?"

I've provided one of the reasons it was banned, can you provide a reason why it should be unbanned?