Newbie Setup (Matrix6 implemented)

[Vi]

Somewhat farther off-topic:

4. town jailkeeper, mafia roleblocker, town 1-shot bulletproof

That'd be a fun game, soon as JK claims he is worthless (RB acts before JK) and BP is the only thing that can be slightly worthwhile from that point on.

I'm looking at it from the other direction: That's a lot of ways to miss a kill.

[JasonWazza]

Somewhat farther off-topic:

4. town jailkeeper, mafia roleblocker, town 1-shot bulletproof

That'd be a fun game, soon as JK claims he is worthless (RB acts before JK) and BP is the only thing that can be slightly worthwhile from that point on.

I'm looking at it from the other direction: That's a lot of ways to miss a kill.

Not really, avoiding a JK isn't that hard (and you'd know there's a 50% chance he exists) and then the BP is just a pain once.

[Phoenicks]

Unless the roleblocker gets lynched early and traps the last mafioso into nightkill paralysis.

Is that a big concern?

[Mr. Flay]

If you get your RB lynched early, you're already probably fucked. Only way it really goes south is for LYLO to be JK-BP-M, at which point...uhh, gg?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Unless the roleblocker gets lynched early and traps the last mafioso into nightkill paralysis.

Is that a big concern?

It's not that big an issue. If you fail to kill for any reason besides being jailkeeped, you might just out the jailkeeper and get a mislynch at the same time, so really it's just you vs. the jailkeeper for the most part and that's not too awful.

[Vel-Rahn Koon]

Off-topic: I ICd once and I think I chased my players away.

I'm noticing "you only need experience and a little bit of patience to be an IC" is clashing with "you need to break down everyone's play and your own and explain it all for the benefit of the class". The latter is certainly not a BAD thing, but most people would never do that outside a Newbie game - it's an example of the kind of instructional weight that gets placed on the role. I do agree that an IC should be willing to stick around for postgame and answer questions, but it's easy to want them to turn them into Pro Analysts.

Somewhat farther off-topic:

4. town jailkeeper, mafia roleblocker, town 1-shot bulletproof

Where do you see "you need to break down everyone's play and your own and explain it all for the benefit of the class" as an IC requirement? Is that actually written anywhere?

[Vi]

All you really need to do is answer questions for players when they have them or if they're not sure what to do, but aside from that the best thing you can do as an IC is teach by example by simply playing the game. You will teach newbies far more than you think by just playing. There's so much for them to learn just in breaking down your play after it's over and you explaining your play as necessary when it's over.

many people don't do it for silly "not good enough" reasons when they would do just fine playing as they normally do, and doing a more extensive past-mortem.

Then after the game, show the newer players where they went right, where they went wrong, and what they can improve on.

[Mr. Flay]

*shrug* There's a difference between ideal play and requirements for play. The requirements are to not flake, not be a dick, and play to win. Perhaps to explain terminology, but really you can aim somebody at the glossary for that.

[callforjudgement]

For what it's worth, I've ICed one game, and afterwards, I didn't really feel like I could cope with being an IC.

Part of it's just the expectations problem from the newbies; they expect you to be a lot better than you are, which sort of drags you down into a burden of proficiency minefield you might not be used to.

Also people will try to interpret trying to help them as a sign of weakness. (Or worse, a scumtell.) This makes it quite hard to play like you normally would, which also makes it basically impossible to look town or scumhunt. So it's not really that fun to play in an IC role; you're just being focused on and dissected too much (when it should be the other way round!). I did enjoy the postgame analysis, though.

[Mr. Flay]

Must be a very different world these days, then. Back when I had time to IC often the only difference was the "why are you still alive?" BoP, which I get anyway, so...

[AGar]

Requiring any "veteran" player to IC any newbie game they wish to join is bad for everyone.

I'd like to see a single legitimate argument made for this actually.

I've read of multiple accounts, and I know I do this too from time to time, of people using Newbie games as "tune-ups," if you will. It's a very good tool to have as a veteran player to be able to go into a game knowing you aren't going to have to worry about too many gambits, not much - if any - setup speculation (the amount of attempted gamebreaking in Newbie games is almost nonexistent in my experiences) and you can just focus on honing in on your own reads/tells. At the same time, games where veterans do this provide the new players an opportunity to play with a more experienced player in their midst aside from the IC (sometimes the player doing this is even more experienced/knowledgeable than the IC) without the pressure of worrying about "being a newbie." Veterans in these games expect the new players to make mistakes and do things that aren't otherwise really well-received in other queues. Allowing the veterans to occupy SE roles continues this trend and only makes for better players leaving the Newbie queue when they move on to other queues.

Allowing veteran players into Newbie games also allows us to forge bonds that will carry over into other games and the community at large. Allowing newbies to interact with multiple players more established on-site from the getgo helps foster some sorts of relationships that can help build familiarity in games going forward by going "Oh yeah, I played with those two guys in Newbie XXXX, and then these guys in Newbie XXXY." Letting them have a game experience with other players who they then might see in the discussion forums also allows them to feel a bit less intimidated walking into a thread. It's easy for those of us who have been here for years to forget that we are a fairly intimidating group at times - we have our own lingo/jargon outside of games, we have our own in-jokes, and there are some unspoken site norms that you aren't going to just know from the time you register.

There is always going to be the burden/expectation on ICs because that's what the site meta has crafted over the past 4 years (maybe more, I'm going by what I've seen since joining), and you're going to be hard pressed to change that. A scummie for the "Best IC" is doing nothing to help that cause, either. Quite frankly, I feel ICing personally forces me into what I feel to be restricted methods of play. That's why I don't do it - sometimes what I feel is the best play is not going to be something that a "teaching slot" should be showing to new players as the "site norm." I'm not a great player, but I also feel I have enough experience to know when what might be a normally sub-optimal play is the right call.

There are players who enjoy ICing, and that is excellent. There are players who are afraid of ICing who would likely do a great job, and we do need to encourage them into that role. But there are also players who do not want either the responsibility or the pressure associated with the role and should not be forced into it or barred from the queue because of that. We're only harming our growth by doing so.

[JasonWazza]

If you get your RB lynched early, you're already probably fucked. Only way it really goes south is for LYLO to be JK-BP-M, at which point...uhh, gg?

This is kinda like the rolecop in the old setup, if you lose him it's kinda your own fault (as a team) and i had this happened and just dragged my team as far as i could (i made it to LYLO) but the basic fact is if you lose a strong role, yes you can be fucked, but you could do it if you persist and do things right.

Also JK-BP-M would be an awesome fucking LYLO

[Vel-Rahn Koon]

For what it's worth, I've ICed one game, and afterwards, I didn't really feel like I could cope with being an IC.

Part of it's just the expectations problem from the newbies; they expect you to be a lot better than you are, which sort of drags you down into a burden of proficiency minefield you might not be used to.

Also people will try to interpret trying to help them as a sign of weakness. (Or worse, a scumtell.) This makes it quite hard to play like you normally would, which also makes it basically impossible to look town or scumhunt. So it's not really that fun to play in an IC role; you're just being focused on and dissected too much (when it should be the other way round!). I did enjoy the postgame analysis, though.

It's easy enough to say, at the beginning of the game "I'm human, I make mistakes, I'm not the greatest player, etc" to alleviate those issues. Honestly there's really no good reason for not ICing if you are so inclined to do so and you have 5 games or more on site, other than a lack of time.

[patzer]

Apologies if this is the wrong place to mention this
it seems for all current newbie games with the new setup have a far more complicated description than necessary. Plus the wiki article is like this too.
For example, take the wiki article. It says "The setup is determined by randomly selecting one row or one column from the above table, then filling in the remaining 6 roles with Vanilla Townies and Mafia Goons as necessary to create a 7-town, 2-mafia setup."

Why doesn't it simply say "The setup is determined by randomly selecting one row or one column from the above table, then adding 5 Vanilla Townies and 1 Mafia Goon"?

5 Vanilla Townies and 1 Mafia Goon will

always

be added, regardless of the row/column of the table of the table chosen, so why the need for the complicated explanation?

[Cheery Dog]

I believe because that sentence never changed (except from removing the diagonals) from 8Matrix which was orginally suggested in this thread before the one that was chosen.

[quadz08]

Good catch, patzer. I don't think anyone realized that your simpler version would cover it, to be honest.

[singersigner]

Oops, thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, we were using the original description from Quilford's, which accounted for the potential setup where 6 VTs and no goons were added. This makes much more sense.

[GuyInFreezer]

Bump.

I think change in current newbie setup is needed because I think the current setup punishes scum too hard for losing one member (excluding the inevitable numerical disadvantage).

Tracker/Doctor: scum gets lynched, the other scum basically can't kill otherwise it creates confirmed town or high risk getting caught. And if tracker tracks doctor while both alive, one scum dead means scum autolose. (Tracker claims cop, absorbs nightkill, scum autolose).
Jailkeeper/Goon: same as above, except for the autolose.
Cop/Doctor: If roleblocker is lynched D1, scum is bascially screwed and one wrong nightkill can cause scum to autolose.

All of the 6 setups available, there is no setup where town losing a PR can cause town in high disadvantage nor causing to autolose, but at least 3 of the setups can put scum in high disadvantage with one screw-up and potentially autolose.

As a newbie setup, where newbscums are liable to a lot of mistakes, scums shouldn't be screwed over by a setup with little mistakes.

[Quilford]

Swap out the Town Doctor for a Town Bodyguard and the Mafia Roleblocker for a Mafia Rolecop is my suggestion.

[pieguyn]

bodyguard is (in my opinion) a shit role and shouldn't be used ever, let alone in newbie setups

and regardless of what you think about the role, in an introductory setup, it is better to use the most straightforward protective role aka doctor as opposed to a lesser-used more-complicated protective role

essentially, I agree there are scenarios where the game can be unbalanced, but that kind of thing happens in every game. this is moreso the case in any 9p/micro game. the reason I like the current setup is because it provides a fair amount of variety, while still making use of a lot of the more common roles and not having anything be too completely unbalanced from the get go. if you flip this around (the game that I'm certain spawned this was the JK vs 2 goons setup) and, for example, the JK gets killed on N1, you could argue that the setup punishes town for.... what in a lot of cases can come entirely down to luck.... because they have absolutely no town power remaining nor any means of countering a potential fake claim (which scum would know is possible since they only have 2 goons).

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Bodyguards inherently work weird in Opens/semi-Opens because of the Named Townie effect.

GIF, every one of those scenarios can be avoided by the scum claiming Doctor and getting counterclaimed before getting lynched. I realize you can't always expect of newbiescum but let's not exaggerate the problems. You could make a similar point about the Jailkeeper/BP/Mafia RB set-up as you did about the Cop/Doc/RB set-up and yet the statistics suggest the former set-up is the most scum-sided of the six set-ups.

I also don't think particularly think this is an issue that can be avoided in Newbie games (we've generally had cop/doc/mafia RB, 2of3 had the dreadful Jailkeeper+Doctor set-up). But I've also told Mina previously that I'm willing to help trying to design a better set-up if she sets up a PT with some other smart set-up designers.

[N]

I'm interested to see what comes out of Llama's open design contest.

[GuyInFreezer]

Bodyguards inherently work weird in Opens/semi-Opens because of the Named Townie effect.

GIF, every one of those scenarios can be avoided by the scum claiming Doctor and getting counterclaimed before getting lynched. I realize you can't always expect of newbiescum but let's not exaggerate the problems. You could make a similar point about the Jailkeeper/BP/Mafia RB set-up as you did about the Cop/Doc/RB set-up and yet the statistics suggest the former set-up is the most scum-sided of the six set-ups.

I also don't think particularly think this is an issue that can be avoided in Newbie games (we've generally had cop/doc/mafia RB, 2of3 had the dreadful Jailkeeper+Doctor set-up). But I've also told Mina previously that I'm willing to help trying to design a better set-up if she sets up a PT with some other smart set-up designers.

I'm not saying that it has a general balance Issue but rather how it punishes scum too hard for losing a member. Also in this setup if scum claims doctor town doctor should counterclaim with "BP/doc" not just "doc".

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Also in this setup if scum claims doctor town doctor should counterclaim with "BP/doc" not just "doc".

If someone claimed BP/Doc, I would just shoot them anyway. And that scenario is only relevant in the Doctor/Tracker set-up.

But I'm also in favour of changing the 1-shot BP to Universal Back-up.

[Mina]

But I've also told Mina previously that I'm willing to help trying to design a better set-up if she sets up a PT with some other smart set-up designers.

I'd wanted to do newbie surveys first, so as to confirm that people were getting confused by the set-up in real life and not just in my imagination. Otherwise, I was afraid of investing too much time into solving a problem we don't have and then confirmation-biasing ourselves.

Reminder #22566 that I need to do newbie surveys.

I have no issue starting this PT if people want it, though, as long as there's no guarantee we use whatever design it comes up with.