Mini 1962: Magical Girls Mafia II (Day 4)

[Alisae]

I treat my neighbourhoods as masonries






Mostly because I turn them into masonries

mastina called me competent yay lol

[mastina]

idk if you remember but back in the day I took neighborizer everytime I could in PYP or anything similar because I basically think of it as a delayed cop + masonizer if they're town.

Yeah.
NEIGHBORIZER.

Not neighbor.

Neighborizers get to choose their neighbor--this means that, depending on who they pick, they can get a really good read on the player.

Neighbors you get no choice. You're stuck with who you're stuck with, regardless of their alignment or role. And if you have little in the way of baseline for them...then you have extra nothing in terms of reading them.

[Alisae]

Also honestly if we're talking hoods, scum neighbours (or more then one scum in a single hood) is a thing that should appear more often since people think "OH, THERE WAS A NEIGHBOURHOOD IN THAT SCUM???? THAT MOD MUST NOT BE COMPETENT TO PUT MORE THEN 1 WOLF IN THERE SO EVERYONE ELSE IN THE HOOD MUST BE TOWN LOOOOOL."

[Ellibereth]

idk if you remember but back in the day I took neighborizer everytime I could in PYP or anything similar because I basically think of it as a delayed cop + masonizer if they're town.

Yeah.
NEIGHBORIZER.

Not neighbor.

Neighborizers get to choose their neighbor--this means that, depending on who they pick, they can get a really good read on the player.

Neighbors you get no choice. You're stuck with who you're stuck with, regardless of their alignment or role. And if you have little in the way of baseline for them...then you have extra nothing in terms of reading them.

You have everything you would have had to read them with if there wasn't a neighborhood PLUS the neighorhood.

I don't see how that could make it anything but easier and at my personal statistics fall in line with that.

Maybe I'm the anamoly and we can check people's read accuracy on people they're in nhoods with sitewise vs. there normal read accuracy but I'm far too lazy for that.

[mastina]

I mean you only think they're net neutral because you don't think it makes it signifigantly easier to read people. That's where our core disagreement lies.

They make it significantly easier to read a player if you know the player before-hand. Give me a neighborhood with Ginngie and I'll peg her alignment before the game's even begun. (Easy reference for this, Yume's Cutsie UPick where there was a neighborhood which was essentially a masonry between The Wood Cutters--Nacho, Ginngie, and I--and Sappho, JaeReed/nancy. WAYYYYY before the game began, we had each other solidly down as town.)

In that scenario, I'd all too happily agree with you that it's easier to read the players.

In 90% of neighborhoods, this will not be the case.

And since players in the neighborhood knowing each other is not something the moderator can design balance around, it is NOT something the moderator can take into account when making the setup. It is overpowered when you have the perfect storm of town players, and utterly worthless if not detrimental when you have the wrong combo of players. What does that make the neighborhood? It makes it, from a moderator setup design point...net-neutral.

A neighborhood CAN be easier to read players in.
CAN.
But a neighborhood can ALSO be NOT-easier if not HARDER to read players in.
With no way, from the design of the neighborhood in of itself, to tell the difference between the two.

Only when you add players can a difference be made.

If it's only when you add the players that the difference between the two is made...then the neighborhood is NOT inherently one or the other.

[Ellibereth]

Yeah I disagree there.

I think it makes it signifigantly easier to read any arbitrary player.

[mastina]

You have everything you would have had to read them with if there wasn't a neighborhood PLUS the neighorhood.
I don't see how that could make it anything but easier and at my personal statistics fall in line with that.

Human nature doesn't match statistics. Human nature is prone to paranoia. Human nature says, "Oh you're NOT conftown to me? Well, then, you're probably scum!" to town neighbors, more or less. And human nature makes it so that scum neighbors can easily appeal to their target audience and say what they need to say, feed what needs to be fed, and the town neighbor will eat it up for the most part.

Human nature means that when you get the neighborhood, a town neighbor is unlikely to convince you they are town (especially if they are suspicious of YOU), whereas a scum neighbor is disproportionately likely to fool you into thinking you're town. I've seen literally hundreds of neighborhoods. The time I've seen accurate townreads from neighborhood content is a mere fraction of the total. The times I've seen pointless paranoia on the basis of "You're NOT conftown so I refuse to call you town!", and the times I've seen scum tailor their arguments to their specific smaller audience, make up the VAST majority of neighborhoods I see.

Maybe I'm the anamoly and we can check people's read accuracy on people they're in nhoods with sitewise vs. there normal read accuracy but I'm far too lazy for that.

The NRG may have done something like this.
Ask mhsmith--he won't back you up though, because anecdotal evidence is that neighborhoods are net-neutral and neighborhoods containing scum are MASSIVE +EV for the scum (and scum neighborizers have either a perfect win streak or NEAR perfect win streak).

Neighborhoods are player-dependent. If you get players who suck, so too will the neighborhood suck. And if the role is entirely player-dependent. Then it cannot be used as something inherently protown when it is only with specific players that it COULD be protown.

[Ellibereth]

I mean the whole human nature thing is why my first and primary line of investigation (time permitting) is as close to purely data-driven as possible. Often time my job in thread is just to generate the shit I need to analyze if other people are doing it for me already. A neighborhood only helps with that. Think about it this way: A well-programmed AI learning mafia would almost certainly want and perform better with more data (in this case the extra posts it would have access to in a neighborhood).

Also, the whole "more information is not necessarily good because most humans are bad at it" argument is one I find silly. A big part of this game is finding and adapting techniques that work and don't work and overcoming natural human tendecies is a big part of that. I actually think if everyone had this mindset being scum would be much harder because they have to find the metrics town are using first to adapt to them while town just has to find metrics that work and keep said metrics hidden. Just because most people don't bother trying shit to overcome what they're naturally not very good at doesn't mean that said techniques don't exist.

But I'll concede what you saying is probably true for most players and they're probably what games should be balanced around for the most part.

[Toranaga]

Lolufo

it was a pleasure losing again as town with you alisae

[mastina]

But I'll concede what you saying is probably true for most players and they're probably what games should be balanced around for the most part.

I mean.
Again.

You're a fucking paragon nominee and frankly have all-but won the award. I honestly would go so far as to say I legit don't think anyone else eligible deserves the award as much as you do.

Maybe you're right that others SHOULD think the way you do--but they

don't

. Maybe the way you think is why you're a paragon nominee and others not thinking that way aren't but the simple fact is, they don't think that way.

And for the most part, yes. Setups are in fact meant to be balanced around how most players play. You cannot account for the outliers who play particularly bad or the outliers who play as fucking Paragons (i.e., you); you CAN account for the play of those who are somewhere in the middle.

[Alisaes French Maid]

It's a set of info scum have 0 access to in terms of understanding what is going through towns head like the advantage of being mafia is you have all the info and town, you lose that advantage if the game has an all town neighborhood.
It allows town to outplay scum in a way they can't interact with to some degree. Yeah this helps town out and I have yet to see an argument on how an all town neighborhood harms town outside arguments of shit town being paranoid.

I've argued this a lot and the counter arguments are usually "lol wifom", "antidote about how i played a neighborhood badly before" and "people suck at mafia" and I don't really think any of those are good arguments since you shouldn't balance around wifom or bad play.
Vigs don't statistically help town if they shoot entirely at random but that is kinda pissing on what mafia is to assume everyone is stupid and will just do shit at random.

[PJ.]

Anecdote***

[Alisaes French Maid]

Thanks for having my back

[humaneatingmonkey]

This is a very very hard game I skim over Mastina every time.

[Maki Harukawa]

Maki was obvscum from her first post I don't know what ywall were talking about

should've kept pushing mev I knew you'd sr me but I didn't expect you to go for me so hard but my plan to get tr off it worked like a charm

Maki's "i am not sorry at all I am scum" post after the Kaito lynch was the best part of this game btw

m-me? S-scum? Never Maybe

[HolySpiritTurtle]

Scum PT

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=74015

[PJ.]

Thanks for having my back

I just didn't want to have to supply you with an antidote

[Ginngie]

Good game guys

We’ll get them next time

[Ellibereth]

Nhood QT's and Dead QT and any other QT's plzplz

[mhsmith0]

The only time a scum neighbor OR neighborizer has lost a mini normal was when it was multiball and the neighbor was shot n1 by other scum team. It is a substantial boost to MOST scum teams/players, and one that is rarely accounted for in balance.

Wrt this game specifically I probably couldn't comment well on balance without really looking at it. In particular town got a seemingly decent stack of roles but idk how the whole points thing actually worked so *shrugs*

[PJ.]

The only time a scum neighbor OR neighborizer has lost a mini normal was when it was multiball and the neighbor was shot n1 by other scum team. It is a substantial boost to MOST scum teams/players, and one that is rarely accounted for in balance.

that's a great stat, but there wasn't a scum neighbor or neighborizer

[Ellibereth]

Main argument me and the French maid are making is that all town neighborhoods are good for town. I'll agree that on average scum in neighborhoods are able to outplay the town in them.

[PJ.]

I'm assuming part of the argument is also that town neighbors just assume everyone in their hood is town.

[mhsmith0]

I think statswise all town hoods are relatively neutral, but power coordination there can be helpful.

[mhsmith0]

I'm assuming part of the argument is also that town neighbors just assume everyone in their hood is town.

Sometimes yes sometimes very much no