Why isn't daytalking standard?

[Mr. Flay]

Yes - when scum can't coordinate behind the scenes, they're a lot more likely to make trackable strategic votes.

no

What is this I don't even... can you offer some sort of rebuttal, at least? Are we using strategic in different ways. Do you disagree with the ways people have talked about daytalk being used to mask scumminess and votes? Throw me a bone here, ort.

[Herodotus]

Nothing about the purpose nor the means of scum voting changes due to daytalk, unless they use votes as code. How do you think daytalk can mask votes?
"

vote: A

; but I have daytalk, so you can't see that I'm on this townie's wagon!"
Seems like a peculiar assertion that needs justification before ort will be able to rebut.

Overall, they never have to coordinate bandwagon hopping where the town can see them - it means that their general behavior is lost in the noise.

I don't think I've ever tried to "coordinate bandwagon hopping". I don't even know what that means.
Maybe that's why I don't play scum as well as town.

[popsofctown]

Mean Value Theorem:

Would a two man daytalking scumteam with no powers but nightkill have an be favored to win a 25 man game? No.

Would a nine man team with a doctor, a roleblock, and a godfather all with daytalk be favored to win a 25 man game? Yes.

Somewhere in between there a combination of scum population and townie population, powers and lack thereof, and daytalk and lack thereof that makes the setup balanced. Daytalk should be a popular item in the toolbox because it makes the game a lot more fun. That's like, the same reason the newbie setup is the way it is instead of a 10 man vanilla game. You add in fun things and adjust. Daytalk happens to be really, really fun, and undoubtedly increases the skill variable. I don't buy that it lets the best scum teammate paper over a bad teammate in a way that makes his skill matter less, he's going to seem to coached and have funny playstyle changes if coaching is heavily used and create a relation tell in that way.

[Vi]

I don't buy that it lets the best scum teammate paper over a bad teammate in a way that makes his skill matter less, he's going to seem to coached and have funny playstyle changes if coaching is heavily used and create a relation tell in that way.

Two words: Planned bussing.

[Mr. Flay]

Nothing about the purpose nor the means of scum voting changes due to daytalk, unless they use votes as code. How do you think daytalk can mask votes?
"

vote: A

; but I have daytalk, so you can't see that I'm on this townie's wagon!"
Seems like a peculiar assertion that needs justification before ort will be able to rebut.

Overall, they never have to coordinate bandwagon hopping where the town can see them - it means that their general behavior is lost in the noise.

I don't think I've ever tried to "coordinate bandwagon hopping". I don't even know what that means.
Maybe that's why I don't play scum as well as town.

Fine. It means scum never have to worry about hopping on a wagon to give it momentum, only to have their buddy do it five posts later. It means scum never have to worry about whether a quicklynch will work. It means scum will never have to worry about whether their buddy will flip out if they bus them. It means scum will never have to, in short, make

any mistakes

with respect to utilizing their votes (i.e. the main Day Power of the game) in a detectable way.

[popsofctown]

I don't buy that it lets the best scum teammate paper over a bad teammate in a way that makes his skill matter less, he's going to seem to coached and have funny playstyle changes if coaching is heavily used and create a relation tell in that way.

Two words: Planned bussing.

You're going to have to explain that.

[Vi]

I don't buy that it lets the best scum teammate paper over a bad teammate in a way that makes his skill matter less, he's going to seem to coached and have funny playstyle changes if coaching is heavily used and create a relation tell in that way.

Two words: Planned bussing.

You're going to have to explain that.

*Scum starts to go down
*Immediate engineering begins to make the other scumpartners look as good as possible coming out of it

[popsofctown]

So the newbie's poor skill WAS punished because he started to go down in the first place. And it's still going to matter that he defends himself from bussers in the same manner he defends himself from townies. If he is hardcore fed lines to use, there's going to be major playstyle changes.

[PranaDevil]

Except only a really really stupid scum team would outright feed him lines. They would just tell him to post "something along these lines", and he'd word it in his own way. You're confusing a bad scum player taking advice from a good scum player with a bad scum player taking advice from a bad scum player.

[popsofctown]

Even plagiarized ideas can be tracked. You can identify strategies other players in the game would use.

It's not any harder to divine than someone's alignment.

You can give the new player a post to copy and paste, or you can give him a paragraph he should paraphrase, or you can suggest a specific strategy, or you can vaguely describe kinda sorta what the guy should be doing.

As the usefulness of the coaching increases, so does the ability for it to be traced. There's a tradeoff.

[Vi]

So the newbie's poor skill WAS punished because he started to go down in the first place.

...Daytalk has nothing to do with that.

I would give an example but it's 21 pages long, so etc.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Except only a really really stupid scum team would outright feed him lines. They would just tell him to post "something along these lines", and he'd word it in his own way. You're confusing a bad scum player taking advice from a good scum player with a bad scum player taking advice from a bad scum player.

Prana, you're clearly not arguing from good faith. You've made up your mind already and are being unduly negative towards others.

[Mr. Flay]

We're kind of talking in circles here, Yos... you're starting from an assumption of no effect, and others are starting from an assumption of constant effect.

[popsofctown]

So the newbie's poor skill WAS punished because he started to go down in the first place.

...Daytalk has nothing to do with that.

I would give an example but it's 21 pages long, so etc.

No it doesn't have to do with daytalk, I was just trying to point out that the newbie still has facets of the game unaffected by daytalk in which he can fail.

In pure inhuman theory, scum can act exactly like townies and win games of random lynches every time, but due to psychology this doesn't happen. Daytalk fits the same mold, in pure inhuman theory a poor player can be instructed on what he would say if he were town so he can go say it in his or her own voice, but due to psychology that can't happen 100% of the time.

I think theoretical arguments against daytalking are worthless for this reason, but I

will

concede that

empirically

we could find that the psychological difficulties involved here are so much less, even for new players, that it does allow skilled scum players to white out most or too much of their teammate's inadequacies.

Unless this effect is proven horribly dramatic though, and even maybe if it is, I think it is great design for games because it's really fun, and it increases the skill factor. (though possibly mostly only that of the best scum teammate, as I admitted could be empirically demonstrated).


I don't think 1 game is enough evidence to say anything one way or another.

[Vi]

I think it's good (or at least interesting) design. We would have to throw out some of the nice things we give scum now to rebalance though. And daytalk is worthless against investigative roles.

[ReaperCharlie]

"No daytalk" seems like a balancing factor thrown into the system by a mod who didn't know how to properly balance the scum team.

Um... no.

Um... yes.

Not saying it can't also be useful. But this is not RL mafia, there is no need to restrict scum to speaking at night.

But it is based on it, so you would assume the default is to be reasonably similar. You suggested 'no daytalk' was an innovation by a mod to weaken the scum. This is emphatically not so. Daytalk was an innovation by mods to benefit the scum, not the converse.

Seeing as Meatworld mafia existed before Forum mafia, you are absolutely right.

I stand most thoroughly corrected.

[The Fonz]

Hey guys. Someone admitted they were wrong in MD. When's the parade?

[ReaperCharlie]

I think it's good (or at least interesting) design. We would have to throw out some of the nice things we give scum now to rebalance though. And daytalk is worthless against investigative roles.

As scum, when I get daytalk it makes me want to

♪ jizz.. in my pants.. ♫

[Yosarian2]

We're kind of talking in circles here, Yos... you're starting from an assumption of no effect, and others are starting from an assumption of constant effect.

I think I already clarified this, but it does have an effect. Just not one on the scale you're talking about.

With or without daytalk, town should be doing better then random on lynches and night actions. (If it's not, then the right stratagy becomes to just lynch with a dice roll or whatever, but I don't think anyone is arguing that.) Without daytalk, a setup might be balanced if town would win 35%-40% of the time with random lynches and targets; with daytalk, perhaps it should be bumped up to, I donno, 38%-43% random lynches or something like that. (I am assuming here that even with daytalk, town still lynch and use night actions better then random; I hope that's a good assumption to make, or frankly, the entire concept of mafia starts to look invalid.) It's a significant difference, but it's not a huge one; if a setup was balanced for 12 players, and you give the scum daytalk but add another vanilla townie in, the setup is probably either still balanced or now slightly town leaning.

[PranaDevil]

Except only a really really stupid scum team would outright feed him lines. They would just tell him to post "something along these lines", and he'd word it in his own way. You're confusing a bad scum player taking advice from a good scum player with a bad scum player taking advice from a bad scum player.

Prana, you're clearly not arguing from good faith. You've made up your mind already and are being unduly negative towards others.

Talking from experience does that to you, strangely enough.

[SensFan]

Except only a really really stupid scum team would outright feed him lines. They would just tell him to post "something along these lines", and he'd word it in his own way. You're confusing a bad scum player taking advice from a good scum player with a bad scum player taking advice from a bad scum player.

Prana, you're clearly not arguing from good faith. You've made up your mind already and are being unduly negative towards others.

Talking from experience does that to you, strangely enough.

Forgive me, but last time you claimed this 'experience', it eventually led to the fact that when you claimed that 'Scum won every game where they didn't screw up badly' was based on 'Town and scum each won the same number of games in my sample'.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Except only a really really stupid scum team would outright feed him lines. They would just tell him to post "something along these lines", and he'd word it in his own way. You're confusing a bad scum player taking advice from a good scum player with a bad scum player taking advice from a bad scum player.

Prana, you're clearly not arguing from good faith. You've made up your mind already and are being unduly negative towards others.

Talking from experience does that to you, strangely enough.

The experience you described seems to match up fairly well to what I would expect to see happen whenever mafia is introduced to a new place. Playing scum half decently is easier than half decently scumhunting and it was fairly clear the townies had had little opportunity to really learn the latter. And that's not going into small sample size (3 games) and other potential factors that might apply in that forum that don't apply here (e.g. the set-ups used there may simply favoured scum and this was masked by initial bad play by scum.) I can see why you would think that daytalk

has

to be responsible, but really, your example is barely meaningful to this debate.

[PranaDevil]

Except only a really really stupid scum team would outright feed him lines. They would just tell him to post "something along these lines", and he'd word it in his own way. You're confusing a bad scum player taking advice from a good scum player with a bad scum player taking advice from a bad scum player.

Prana, you're clearly not arguing from good faith. You've made up your mind already and are being unduly negative towards others.

Talking from experience does that to you, strangely enough.

Forgive me, but last time you claimed this 'experience', it eventually led to the fact that when you claimed that 'Scum won every game where they didn't screw up badly' was based on 'Town and scum each won the same number of games in my sample'.

Except it only does if you go on the numbers, and not the additional information regarding the games. Numbers are only a small part of the equation, and to base the entire thing around that would lead to getting a false result.

But then, you know that already.

I can see why you would think that daytalk

has

to be responsible, but really, your example is barely meaningful to this debate.

Ah yes, because you've seen the games in question... or you haven't and aren't getting it.

One of the more recent games (which I'd link you to, but the mod chose to use his own forum for the scum discussion rather than anything useful like QT, meaning it's shut off to all but those with accounts there) was decided on pretty much solely based on scum being able to co-ordinate things throughout the entire game, and not just through short periods at night. It's pretty much one of the main reasons that both myself and Nexus have come to the conclusion that daytalk has to stop on that forum, it's way, way too powerful, and is akin to giving the scum a victory now.

In fact, Nexus ran the last game. Scum had daytalk. Scum obliterated town, again.

[popsofctown]

I think it's good (or at least interesting) design. We would have to throw out some of the nice things we give scum now to rebalance though. And daytalk is worthless against investigative roles.

Of course, that's what balancing is.

I don't understand the second comment. Are you saying it's good to add in investigative roles to thwart daytalkers, or..?

[SensFan]

It's pretty much one of the main reasons that both myself and Nexus have come to the conclusion that daytalk has to stop on that forum, it's way, way too powerful, and is akin to giving the scum a victory now.

Pick one:
a) The level of play on that forum doesn't compare to the level of play on MafiaScum
b) You're completely and totally wrong about the effect that Daytalk had on those games

There's no third option. It has to be one of those two.