Daytalk for Newbies

[Nachomamma8]

Why isn't day talk standard for newbie games?

I realize there's a chance that giving scum daytalk will skew the careful balance towards scum, but I think it's helpful for new scum getting adjusted to the game (experienced partners can coach, newbie partners can coach/encourage each other), and I think it would help a bit in helping newbies stick around after their first game (it's a lot easier to bond with scumpartners when you have more opportunities to talk to them).

[Nachomamma8]

Is the winrate for scum lower with daytalk? I was under the impression that scum win most games, even without it. If adding it would only make it easier for scum I don't see how that's a good thing.

If adding daytalk can increase enjoyment of the game and increase the number of people who actually stick around, then I think that it's worth spending time to fix balance if needed.

[Nachomamma8]

No. We want games to match site meta as much as possible, this doesn't involve daytalk.

Also scumtalk in oldy mafia 2 made a huge difference to our scum win.

Mmmm I'd disagree that typical scum meta doesn't involve day talk. Most of my recent scumgames have had daytalk and I play a lot? Also I don't think that daytalk is a make or break type of deal, just a super helpful for new scum type of deal

[Nachomamma8]

I also think you are trying to keep things as simple as possible for newbies. Encryptor does complicate things, I think if you were to do this, it would have to be a blanket daytalk or no daytalk.

I do agree that I don't think I support an Encryptor being added to the setup; I'd much rather see blanket daychat added to the setups.

For one, the argument that Encryptors teach newbies what to do when they lose daytalk is sort of silly; when an encryptor dies in a 2 man scumteam, sure scum doesn't have daytalk anymore, but that's also much less of a blow than it would be if there were actually people around to talk to. Secondly, I'm arguing the Encryptor increases enjoyment of players in game; don't see why some scum in some setups should get a buff to enjoyment while other scum don't.

Im not sure why we have shifted focus on trying to get people to stay on site. Either they are going to enjoy the game or they aren't. Trying to cater for them in the newbie thread is a very dangerous game as it means that when they move on to the larger games they may see it's not sunshine and roses and replace out there at a later date. Newbies are a taster of the site at it's basics. There are good reasons for that. I don't see the point of adding bells and whistles and chocolate ice cream to it when it's not needed.

I'm not proposing that we give every player cop/doc/vigilantes so that no one has to worry about rolling Vanilla Townie ever again; I'm proposing something which doesn't radically change the game, but does make it more enjoyable as a whole, which is a worthy goal to me that I don't think will create a generation of "soft" players who would sort of crumple under the site's meta today. In fact, I have a belief of Mafia in that it doesn't really get fun until you have your first strong suspicion or you start really fooling people as scum; I think that daytalk will help scum plan better and keep them more engaged in the game which in turn will encourage town to be more engaged and play better and produce better players as a whole.

[Nachomamma8]

I am of the opinion that daytalk should not be shoehorned into the Matrix6 setup. If newbie games switch to using it, it should be with a setup designed for it.

I'm not sure how seriously daytalk will impact newbie game win percentages; it's a fairly hard advantage to calculate and I think that it would be easier to see what sort of effect daytalk has on these games and then balance around it as opposed to the other way around.

I think that making use of the night to talk and plan and strategize is a good experience for newbies that they won't have if they just have daytalk all the time

Why are newbies planning during the night specifically significant?
I think that daytalk will help newbies plan more in general, which will translate to future games whether they have daytalk or not, and I don't think not having daytalk is a better teacher than having daytalk.

The biggest problem with this is that it gives scum another advantage in setups where we're already struggling for balance in town win rates. It can commonly be used outside of newbie games because in most other types of games the mod can actually factor daytalk into balance.

I wouldn't characterize a 52% scum win rate as struggling for balance.

[Nachomamma8]

I think that daytalk pushing up the scum winrate when nothing else has changed is interesting and encouraging. I don't think it's making the town play suboptimally; I think that it's making scum play better and enjoy the game more, which is awesome. The problem with this is that balancing the advantage daytalk gives (which is essentially improved communication) seems difficult since there's no EV to it or anything along those lines, and I don't think the answer lies in strengthening investigative/protective roles.

I'd like to say that a step in the right direction would occasionally be adding a one shot town neighborizer, but I'm not sure if that would be too much (thanks to the IC bonus) or not enough (two players that know each others alignment and are coordinating from the start of the game versus neighborizer targeting unknown alignment), but I think it'd be a better move than adding additional cops or something.

[Nachomamma8]

I'm not really sure why JK/BP/RB is so scum-sided though. MAYBE making BP into 2-shot would help there too, I'm not really sure tbh.

BP isn't confirmed town unless roleblocker and jailkeeper are dead/confirmed. BP absorbing a nightkill also doesn't really offer any real benefit to town (all it does is put the game on evens, which isn't overly great).

[Nachomamma8]

The only problem with that is then BP has a pretty strong incentive to claim immediately (and become unkillable confirmed town), and mafia gets pretty heavily punished for fake claiming doctor and getting counter claimed by unkillable mostly-confirmed town.