Daytalk for Newbies

[Plotinus]

+1

I think that would be really great. I think newbie scumslots would probably flake a lot less too if they had daytalk. It is really hard for a newer player in their first or second game when they’ve never been town before and have no idea what to even be doing.

[Plotinus]

Stats on newbie replacement rate and other newbie related things: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=39739

If you see a slot that needs replacing in a newbie game and it has already been replaced twice, it is overwhelmingly likely to be a scum slot. If you’re town and a slot in a newbie game is replaced once, it’s more likely to be scum but not so much more likely that you shouldn’t do normal scumhunting, but if it’s been replaced 2-3 times then yeah it’s probably scum. (I use this more for determining which slot that I want to replace into rather than who to vote for)

[Plotinus]

It's better than not having it, but barely so.

This is false. Daytalk is insanely powerful, although it's utility scales with skill (like masons)

and many newbies don’t have enough skill for it to be insanely powerful for them. but it will still help them more than not, and it will make the game more fun for them.

The times I’ve had a newbie scum buddy, I couldn’t tie myself to them in public so I just had to let them sink once it was clear that they were dead in the water. If I’d had daytalk with them, I could have at least tried to help them some before tunnelling them into the ground; and I would have felt better about tunnelling them if I could have said in private “hey this isn’t personal I don’t actually hate you but I can win this for us even if you die.”

Also it would be fun to cheerlead them in private everytime they do something well I could say “hey great post you’re doing great keep doing that”.

[Plotinus]

my scum IC wall that i post pregame is really really long but it’s not enough. being able to help in real time would be better.

I tell them to try to make some allies in the town but in real time i could say hey Ranmaru is townreading you, you should townread him back and try to work together with him.

I tell them not to get too defensive, just explain once why the other person is wrong and move on, but in real time i could tell them hey that’s enough defending yourself for now go attack Fink now.

I tell them that if they see me coaching somebody else in public and giving advice that I’m secretly talking to them, but it would be easier if I could say in public "Toomai you need to be more active what do you think of Porochaz" and in private I could say to my buddy "you need to be more active too how can I help what’s going on what are you struggling with. let’s figure out who you’re going to pretend to scumread and why”

[Plotinus]

A problem with daytalk is that skilled players can give very specific suggestions to the point that they are basically writing the newbie's posts.

and the SEs can watch for sudden improvements in a newbie’s play, changes in their writing voice, them having an unexpectedly good grasp of current site meta, etc. And two people writing in the same voice is going to be one heck of an associative tell.

[Plotinus]

A good compromise might be to limit daytalk to the first day. This gives scum the chance to coach each other on obvious playstyle flaws and to build a sense of team spirit, while also being introduced to rolling solo. The removal of daytalk on day 2 also works as a counterbalance.

I like this idea. Also means they won't be able to co-ordinate a quickhammer in private in LYLO but will have to do that dance in the thread where they're more likely to be caught.

I was scum in two of these games; in the one I ICed, I had an SE partner and I think that daytalk in MYLO played a good part in our win; in the other I replaced into an SE slot and immediately bussed my SE partner (who had replaced into a newbie slot). Daytalk wasn't used all that much before I got there, and I think town might have won if I had not replaced into that one, because my predecessor was a bit of a questionmark and everyone else looked pretty town.

[Plotinus]

what if it was a rule that day 1 daytalk is only if there's at least one newbie scum; daytalk is lost on day 2 or if the newbie is replaced by an SE. SE/SE scum or SE/IC scum wouldn't have daytalk at all.

Then it wouldn't be known if daytalk existed unless a newbie flips scum, and they would still only have it for the first day phase.

[Plotinus]

Maybe even just daytalk for the first 72 hours of the game, not counting pregame chat which they would also have? Because if it's someone's first time being scum there's only so much you can do in pregame to teach them and it is better to see what they can do on their own and then build from that rather than trying to sculpt them into somebody they're not.

I dunno, I think 3 days of "you're doing great, just keep doing just like that, we can do this, ask them why they think that, that's good" might have the desired effect (reducing newbie scum replaceouts) without making this 90% scum win.

I think there's always going to the risk of the newbie looking coached, but the experienced player can try to coach the newbie into looking like a newbie town instead of like a coached newbie or the experienced player can just do more encouragement type things instead of "how to play" stuff. If a newbie looks really good for 3 days and then suddenly looks less good that could be A Sign but again I'd blame that on the more experienced player for not coaching more subtly.

[Plotinus]

is there some way to account for all the christmas/new years replacements by comparing it to games run at a similar time in a previous year?

[Plotinus]

thanks!

I wonder what's going on with the SE replacement rate.

[Plotinus]

Those stats are interest, Toomai, thank you for doing them.

@elbirn: player retention was really good for the first few and then there was a batch that had a lot of replacements, but the retention rate is still currently better than it was without daytalk. I don't think anyone is suggesting to keep the current situation of 12% town win rate + daytalk. it would be best to have ~50% town win rate + daytalk.

[Plotinus]

agree.

there's a lot to be learned even from a loss, I think.

[Plotinus]

Even newbie+newbie is pretty powerful. I saw a game with two newbies coaching each other and they did very well and they won. n1670. The experienced players noticed that one of the newbies seemed coached and lynched him, but they couldn't believe a newbie was doing the coaching so they lynched the experienced players. Look at this great use of daytalk: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=64541.

[Plotinus]

In n1671, there was an SE and a newbie partner. The SE flaked and the newbie (ConvergentConclusion) was asking for help from their partner via daytalk and nothing from the SE at all (and then he was replaced) and then the newbie flaked too. I tihnk the newbie flaking was almost a direct result of their SE partner flaking and that if the SE had stayed around to answer their questions, the newbie would have been more likely to stay. http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=64614

[Plotinus]

You were so awesome that game, Dewy!

[Plotinus]

We can always do better, and there's always room for improvement. But you did well, and next time you'll do better.

[Plotinus]

in one game, the newbies were mentoring each other and then they won.

[Plotinus]

add get a room to matrix6

/halfjoking

[Plotinus]

10 days is around the time you start consolidating onto a lynch so that you don't end up deadline scrambling on the last day. If the deadline was 10 days, then the deadline scramble would be on day 9 and the consolidating would need to start around day 6, and in someone's very first game ever they might not even have reads yet six days into the game; I didn't when I was a newbie.

You don't need to use the full 15 days. You shouldn't. You should start pushing to lynch someone as soon as you have strong reads.

[Plotinus]

If nobody else is doing it, then you should do it. It might be that they don't know how -- 2/3rds of the players are brand new and the SEs might also be fairly new but they might not be --, or because they're lacking confidence, or their reads aren't very strong yet, or whatever.

The day phase has sort of a natural cycle to it: there's the beginning where people are still doing a lot of thinking and aren't ready to lynch, and there's the point where most people are pretty sure xxxx is scum and want to lynch them. This is when the lynch should happen. If you let it go much longer you get a lot of discussion that would really be better saved for the next day phase because nobody's going to change their minds and you need the flip to make sense of things.

Sometimes in newbie games it takes the full two weeks to get to the point where most people are on board with a lynch, other times it happens sooner. If people are talking in circles or taking it for granted that an unflipped player is scum and nothing they say is going to change your minds then that's a sign you should be trying to lynch then right now, not whenever the deadline is. If everybody's really unsure and you're feeling impatient, then take steps to help them be sure if you're ready for the day to end. Ask them about their reads. Try to convince them of yours or try to get them to convince you.

[Plotinus]

Most ICs do give postgame advice, and some of the newbie mods do as well.

[Plotinus]

they already don't tactical /in. they're brand new to the site, they don't visit this thread when they first join the site. they register and they /in to the newbie queue. they don't count how many people are ahead of them and which mod they're going to get and who are going to be their SEs and their IC.

[Plotinus]

I thought about that, because I think newbies can really blossom in neighbourhoods in exciting ways (for example Jae in the game you just played).

but it's a role that can confirm itself as town to one person and it sort of meshes badly with cops, and also a lot of newbies coming from places like epic mafia often expect to be able to find someone they can believe is town and then everyone should whisper their roles to that person and I feel like adding neighbourhoods to newbie games could complicate the issue of them getting used to the "no whispering" aspect of site meta.

So far 75% of the newbie games i've modded have involved someone suggesting that people should talk in private or people actually doing so. I think forcing all of the town discussions to happen in public is useful, alas, because I also really think that neighbourhoods are fun and engaging and that newbies with access to a neighbourhood would be less likely to flake and less likely to get mislynched.

I think if a newbie gets the 1-shot neighbourise, they probably neighbourise their IC and then get buddied (if the IC is scum).