Hydra free zones.

[Thestatusquo]

Hey Folks, I know this is going to probably be a contentious topic, but I'm not going to be attacking anything or spelling out why I think hydras are awful and don't enjoy playing with them. It's enough to simply state that I hate it.

This used to not be a big deal. Hydras were relatively uncommon, and you would see at most one in a game every few games you would play. That was fine, I could put up with that. Since then, hydras have become much more popular and common on the board. I understand why this is. Mafia is a social game and its fun to play with your friends in the same slot. The problem with this is that it does not leave much space in specific queues for players like me who strongly dislike both the concept of hydras and the experience of playing with them.

I was thinking about this today, as in another forum today someone posted a poll that asked "whats your favorite game to play." I answered mini normal, because normals are the only game queue I can play these days that doesn't have hydras everywhere.

This is unfortunate, as I actually like mini themes, but I can't play them anymore if I want to play mafia that does not involve hydras. The last 5 times I have been interested in a theme and have either thought about signing up or actually sign up I am unable to go through with it because the game has hydras in it.

Like I said, I long ago gave up the crusade for hydras to be banned as cheating outright, and this thread isn't about that. I understand why people like them and I'm happy for people to play with them, I'd just like to be able to play mini themes again.

The old system of allowing moderators to decide whether hydras were to be allowed in their games made a lot of sense on paper, and in theory it was supposed to create space for both players who liked and did not like hydras. In practice, it hasn't really worked. I think it would be nice if there were some sort of system which could create a place that was hydra free for mini themes. Maybe a restriction that one game has to allow hydras and one game has to not allow hydras in the queue at the time. This is not without precedent. We currently only allow one bastard game in queue at a time.

In case someone wants to be clever and point out that there is a mini theme in queue right now that does not allow hydras, that's ultimately irrelevant to both my point and my request, since I'm not claiming there are no mini themes without hydras ever, just that its pretty difficult to consistently get in them.

Keep it civil guys!

[Thestatusquo]

Are you like completely incapable of making substantive contributions to things?

[Thestatusquo]

I agree that it might not be the ideal fix. This thread is mainly brainstorming a solution to the issue that people who like themes but find hydras really detract from their experience in a game are really left out in the cold in the current system.

Open to other suggestions for how this might be fixed.

[Thestatusquo]

There are a couple of key points here.

First, this change would not force people to not have hydras if they didnt want them. It would just split the queue into two.

Second, even if it did do that, I think in general most people would agree that moderators can be forced to do things they dont want for the good of the players. This is why we review games for normalcy, for instance. I can't run a cult in my normal game even though I think cults are great. We routinely ask moderators to conform to certain requirements of the queues. This isn't any different from any of those other requirements.

Third, your example of closed games doesn't really work because what I'm suggesting here happened with open and closed games! Open and closed games both used to be run as mini normals or themes, until it was realized that this system didnt work and then the open game queue was created. People wanted to regularly have the option to play both open and non open setups, so that is why we have an open queue and an open forum.

Like your example is literally proof that what I'm suggesting has been done before and worked...

[Thestatusquo]

1) I think enough people don't care about whether they have hydras or not in their game that both games would fill at roughly the same pace. I think there are some people who really like hydras and some people who really hate hydras and a whole lot of people who don't care at all about them.

2) I don't think you understood my point. I was saying that restrictions are often put on moderators in response to you saying this would force moderators to do things they wouldn't otherwise do. My point has nothing to do with normalcy at all. I just used normal requirements of an example of one time when we do this. There are numerous other examples. For instance, we make people get backup mods for large games.

3) There is a high enough demand for mini themes. Are you making the argument that people who are not playing in a hydra would en masse decide that hydras not being allowed in that game was a reason for them not to play? Thats just silly. The people who don't care about hydras either way would play in both games, probably roughly equally.

your suggestions do nothing to change the problem, which is that there is a significant group of players that is currently basically excluded from playing mini themes.

[Thestatusquo]

I think its unreasonable to suggest that I should have to round up a group of friends and then forcefully exclude people from a game they /inned for each time I want to play a mini theme.

Especially when shifting the queue slightly would work perfectly and not be nearly that violent of a solution.

[Thestatusquo]

I dont see why that is preferable to my solution, firebringer.

[Thestatusquo]

cThat simple change would make it so that the default wouldn't necessarily be "hydras are allowed" or basically "I hadn't thought about hydras until one signed up and sure why not" into an actual decision a game mod would make. That in turn would make it easier for players to avoid or engage with hydra games as they want without signing up for a game and then later finding out the mod took a hydra.

I think this is a big part of the problem. I don't think mods are pro hydra so much as they are just ambivalent about hydras and if never asked to think about it they end up in the game.

That being said, I think some sort of split in the queue would probably be better from an administrative standpoint because it would allow for both pro and anti hydra players to be able to get in a game of their choosing at any time as opposed to wanting to sign up for a theme and not being able to until someone who has the right policy happens to be in signups.

Though in the end I'll just be happy when 9 out of 10 themes don't have hydras in them anymore.

[Thestatusquo]

Yeah, what I'm proposing isn't a split really, but rather just asking mods in advance for mini themes if they will allow hydras, and then having one queue game allow them and one not at a time.

I do think that the vast majority of the player base does not particularly care about hydras, it's the people on the margins that this change really effects. Most players will see no difference in how their mini theme queue experience works.

[Thestatusquo]

Which is why I think there should be plenty of opportunities for hydras to play mini normals.

[Thestatusquo]

Derp. Themes. I keep doing that.

[Thestatusquo]

I don't have any stats. Do many people replace in with hydras? This hasn't really been my experience, though.

[Thestatusquo]

I really really want to stop this thread from devolving into people bashing hydras.

Some people like them and there's nothing wrong with that. The issue isn't hydras per se, but rather that the board isn't currently set up to let people who don't like them play mini themes consistently. I don't want anyone who really likes hydras (and there are quite a few) to feel attacked by this thread.

There's room for all of us!

[Thestatusquo]

No, I don't like playing with any hydras. It's not an issue of quality.

[Thestatusquo]

I think theres a tone of "the good ol' days" in your post Glork that I just can't agree with. I think that there was a lot of "people caring a lot more about winning than they cared about the game or other players" going on back then too, its just that we've regulated a lot of the practices that were issues then. For instance, quoting role PMs had to be a rule because people made it have to be a rule. Trust tells are against the rules because people tried to use trust tells. People used to post in invisible text and fake hammer. People used to play without reading their role PM to not read as scum.

It's just the methods have changed. People on the internet are still people on the internet.

[Thestatusquo]

Most queues will now ask every mod whether or not they allow hydras. For queues with longer wait times for mods, it may be a bit before we see the change, but hopefully it'll bring about more games that don't allow hydras.

cheers, zora. Glad something came of this.

would still like a more hands on solution, but lets see if this one yields positive results before throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[Thestatusquo]

I think the issue with the normal queue is we have made the requirements for running a normal game so stringent and constraining that almost no mods want to run them after they get their mod rights. I think that could be a whole thread in and of itself but I think the normal requirements as currently written are very very stifling for mods. Right now that queue basically serves as a newbie mod queue, which isn't particularly exciting to players either in addition to the rules being so stifling that mods can't really make games that are that interesting there.

[Thestatusquo]

I think that the vast majority of the player base does not really like playing normals as they are currently conceived though.

[Thestatusquo]

Being relegated to normals because of hydras I will go ahead and disagree with your assertion that there are good players there.

[Thestatusquo]

This is cool, and should perhaps be advertised better but I don't see how vote counts would be a reason that so many fewer people want to mod normals compared to themes.