In post 462, Ythan wrote:It's a negative stigma because if it was notable someone who wasn't on the team would have nominated it. Or will going forward if you have patience.
That's not always the case. I pulled off what I feel like was objectively a really top notch scum performance in SMITE (as did the SK, who lost out to me in a 1-1-2 final day). I replaced in to a team demoralized and inactive, who both could have prevented being lynched the days they got lynched, costing the town and buying me time, since I had really solid town credibility. Neither of them was really communicative. At one time both of them were literally idle in the main thread for something like 18 and 21 days. They didn't work with me at all, making me essentially a solo agent from day 3 onward. Both of them had role utility that could have made it way more easy for me, but neither would even do so much as just let me tell them what I would like them to do to help my own play.
It was, objectively, the best scum game I've ever played, and a friend who came from the same site as me said it was among the best scum games he's ever seen in over a decade playing forum mafia.
But ... nobody ever nominated. It was briefly discussed in the game thread, and I think someone simply said that another person was going to win the Master Manipulator so there wasn't any point in nominating. I didn't see any nomination in thread for the person they mentioned, so I have no idea why they thought that other than they said that this other guy did something a bit more impressive with much higher states. I'm new around here and if someone else did something even better, they should win, so I was a little bummed that nobody felt it warranted even being looked at, when I've been playing a really long time and put on the best performance I ever have, by a huge margin, and pulled out a win that any observer would have said simply wasn't possible at day 3 of the game.
I never came and self nominated (and won't do so) for that. I gave the details simply so I could say the next bit and you could have context for how good something has to be for me to second it when it's a self nomination and I am part of the team being nominated:
So when I say that I feel like The town play super early was so decisively good that it warrants nomination, even though I was part of that town ... I'm being as objective as I can possibly be.
In post 463, OceanWind wrote:I was a little uncertain on whether this thread was purely for nominations or debate was encouraged but since it is being discussed, I'll add my two cents.
I read the game really quickly. The scumteam wasn't all that impressive. At least two members (LicketyQuickety and Klingoncelt) had fairly weak games objectively and the remaining scum member was decent but not distinctive. They had the kind of playstyle that would have gotten them lynched regardless of alignment and didn't play a particularly strong or threatening game that would need town to put in extra effort to catch them.
I did not see where Titus had the scumteam pegged despite ISOing her so a link would be nice. I'll believe it though. In a different game I played with Titus, she had two members of our scumteam nailed on D1 in a Blitz game. We mislynched her but her reads were good:
Blitz 1. I'm against supporting the best town performance nomination as it currently stands.
Look in Jeanne11's posts for a post where Varsoon warned her not to copy and paste. There's two steps to it:
1.) Titus identified really hard to read people as town and put together a synergy of abilities and had correct town reads ridiculously early, and used the synergy of abilities to run a gambit that caught scum.
2.) Titus was concerned about dying and left Jeanne11 notes on who was scum, and she had the entire scum team listed in those notes. She also listed the mason pair, but it's understandable to misread masons as possible scum, especially when one of the masons white knights the other.
So she literally had pretty much the whole town figured out in the first few realtime days of the game, and by the time she made a note leaving instructions to Jeanne11 in case she were to be killed, she had correctly identified the entire scum team. On day one. A big part of how she did it was a gambit she organized and which was hampered by someone who was "in the know" about it and got overly anxious. She still managed to get it all right on day one when she literally had only one piece of information she knew for absolute certainty: Her own role.
I find that exceptionally impressive ... especially given how difficult a couple of the players in the game are to read. I think it's really easy to look at a finished product and say that the scum weren't impressive ... but they never stood a chance. Having been on a scum team that had a member lynched on each of the first three days of a game, I can tell you that it will really knock out the desire to dig in an invest when the chances are so slim.
I frequently find that when one team dominates, it's hard to objectively decide whether that team was just really very good or if the other team was just really bad. In this case, what made me decide the town was really good is primarily the way Titus had things nailed so early and the fact that other town players with powerful roles were able to trust her (Titus is really difficult to read for most people) and work together so that individually "so so" powers combined to basically make it game over early in day one.
Anyway ... I won't say more about it. I'll read some more of Titus from this year and possibly nom her for the single award. If there's a couple more games like this one, I think she should at least be considered.
![:]](./images/smilies/icon_smiling.png "Cheerful Smile"){kind=icon}