Replacing out

[Psyche]

It might be most productive to think about this in terms of game design.
If a significant people are leaving games early who really *could* be staying, then making games more engaging would keep a lot of them around.
We can try to identify factors that are limiting player engagement, and then brainstorm ways that changing the MS's game design meta might counter these factors.

For example, we know that people with scum roles are more likely to replace-out.
Maybe instead of trying to think through ways to encourage people to slog through games where they roll scum, we should brainstorm ways to improve games such that rolling scum is at least as fun as rolling town.
One possibility is to give them an outlet for scumhunting -- perhaps more openly multi-ball games where alternative scum teams are genuine threats to one another?

I have some other angles in my head...

[Psyche]

Here's another one:

One factor that might limit engagement is the raw amount of time that is required to keep up with active game threads. If you fall behind for a couple days, it's very plausible in a lot of games that there will be dozens of new pages you'll have to read in order to be able to contribute anything of value.

Maybe people who'd like to re-engage and keep playing end up replacing out when they fall behind in these situations.

If that's true, then it's possible that smaller playerlists, shorter games, more frequently scheduled posting breaks (e.g., Nights), or closer regulation of player activity to reduce either fluff or even game-relevant hyperposting could aid player engagement.

Another more far-out possibility is that players could be somehow offered daily or periodic summaries of key events and arguments (e.g., from a neutral facilitator who doesn't have setup knowledge) but I don't know a good way to implement that across many games. It might

still

be worth exploring.

[Psyche]

Some more angles:

- A stronger emphasis on ludonarrative harmony, even in normals. Ludonarrative harmony is when gameplay and story work together to create a meaningful and immersive experience. Some of the best-remembered games on mafiascum have this feature and there's a good chance it drives engagement. Maybe we should place greater emphasis on flavor quality during setup design and review than we do now.

- Reward strategy and risk-taking. Especially for scum, often the most strategically sound play in the typical game is the most boring: staying in the background, avoiding substantive controversy, and appearing helpful. Even town frequently don't feel strongly incentived to engage unless they are either close to being mislimmed or it's a lategame MYLO type of situation. Maybe designing setups to encourage attempts at the sort of high-risk/high-reward plays we frequently celebrate in our postgames would also make the games themselves more fun and engaging. Maybe scum can be offered extra advantages for exerting more control over day outcomes or associating more strongly with teammates or receiving negative attention.

- More interesting, agency-oriented roles. There's a good chance that this is not really true, but I suspect that more original roles with active abilities that can be used even during the day are substantially more engaging than more ordinary night-only reactive roles or being vanilla. The idea is that these add depth to gameplay, providing a player further options and making their contribution feel more indispensible/impactful. Complex setups are harder to balance and can be a bit annoying, but maybe there's a way to more consistently balance these concerns -- maybe by sharing the same abilities within a neighborhood of players?

[Psyche]

A key advantage of this broader approach is that moderator-focused ideas for improving player engagement and minimizing replacements don't have to be implemented and explored on a site-policy level:

Individual moderators concerned about replace-outs can take matters into their own hands and demonstrate with their own games that a different way of doing things actually helps the situation.

Even T3's controversial idea of banning players who have replaced out in the last 2 weeks from sign-ups can be implemented on the individual level if he simply decides to exclude applicable players from his own games.
If he then observed reasonable queue times along with reduced replace-outs, he could use that to drive broader buy-in across the community.

[Psyche]

no reason to debate it if you like the idea. run a few games w/ the mechanic and see how it pans out.