Newbie Setup (Matrix6 implemented)

[Muffin]

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.

Can I /in to this PT purely as an observer who wants to watch the creative process unfold and thus learn about setup design?

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

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.

Fair enough!

[quadz08]

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.

Can I /in to this PT purely as an observer who wants to watch the creative process unfold and thus learn about setup design?

You're gonna get weird stuff out of a newbie setup design - a fair chunk of what goes into designing a newbie setup doesn't matter elsewhere.

[Muffin]

I still find it interesting.

[Nero Cain]

I still think that mini normals would serve perfectly as newbie games.

[Fromage]

I think the setup is fine as it is.

As a VT you don't have to know all PRs. It's enough to read the wiki articles as soon as someone claims. As a PR it's possible to narrow down the setup to two possibilities. Not too much reading either. Scum is probably the hardest to play as a Newbie. However the likelihood that two of the 9 Newbies are scum is only 42%. Most often there is an experienced player around to help.

It's important to remember that mistakes happen. Nobody can expect perfect play of a Newbie. So if a Newbie doesn't know that he should counterclaim as doc/bulletproof, it doesn't really matter. The game isn't lost because of such an inaccuracy. The experienced players can kindly explain it afterwards and the Newbies learn something.

[N]

I still think that mini normals would serve perfectly as newbie games.

mini normals are not created nearly often enough to meet the demand of the newbie queue.

[Nero Cain]

*shrugz* I think if we were to put our minds and effort into it, it wouldn't be that hard to churn out a ton of min normals.

[N]

go ahead then

[Nero Cain]

gotta get rid of the newbie queue

[N]

gotta have a lot of setups ready before you can do that

[Fromage]

One simple idea: What do you think of changing the tracker into a watcher?

It would discourage scum from nightkilling the IC / strong town voices which quite often happens. Some have named it as

The change would certainly favor the town. However I don't know how much it would favor town over scum. Furthermore the tracker setups currently have the second and third lowest town winrates (42 and 44%).

[Cheery Dog]

Goon/Watcher/Doctor?

Town claims hoping for that setup, they have two confirmed town that can't be killed without giving away a scum.

[JasonWazza]

Then you instant lose one setup to win the other.

[Fromage]

Thanks for explaining why it's a bad idea.

[callforjudgement]

I think I might have just found a partial breaking strategy for Matrix6?

At the start of day 1, any town Tracker claims. If such a claim is made (meaning this is setup C or 3), the other town power role claims non-vanilla, but doesn't claim the details of their power role. Players counterclaim if they hear someone claim something impossible (note that a scum Tracker claim is

always

counterclaimable, by the JK in setup A or 1, Cop in setup B or 2, and the real Tracker in setup C or 3). This inevitably either leads to a day 1 1v1 (which is definitely beneficial to town), or else two confirmed townies, and town have power roles on top of that. (Additionally, scum won't know who to shoot; if they aim for the Tracker they'll run the risk of hitting a Doctor protection, and if they aim for the other PR they might be Bulletproof. Either way, the scum kill is probably being directed away from strong scumhunters, giving town a large advantage; it's almost like they get to play in a 2:5 with no kill N1 or N2, except they have the benefit either of a Tracker shot or of a hard-to-kill unkillable confirmed townie, and that's even if scum guess

right

about who to kill.)

If everyone's verified to not be a Tracker, then it's probably best to play as normal (although I can see an argument for using a similar procedure to the above in setups A and 2 by getting the Doctor/BP to claim, it probably isn't worth it due to the roleblocker; that said, the smaller lynchpool would improve the chance of lynching the roleblocker and almost guaranteeing a town win in setup 2). Nonetheless, town will get a small advantage from the additional information they have about the setup (there's a 50% chance scum knew anyway, but even if they didn't, the information probably helps town more).

[JasonWazza]

At the start of day 1, any town Tracker claims.

Scum just shoot the tracker, fact is you may as well 50/50 it and just try and make sure your not using who the tracker would likely be tracking.

I wouldn't really call it game breaking by any means, it just means your likely to lose a PR instantly 50% of the time for no real reward (having a known tracker claimed, he still has to actually be on the Scum that is killing the doctor)

[callforjudgement]

There's a 50% chance there'll be a Doctor protection on the Tracker, though. When that happens, it guarantees that the Tracker will get off two investigations and survive until mylo. So shooting the Tracker is a pretty risky move from scum's point of view. The reward is mainly in the dayplay, rather than the nightplay (you're confirming two players, thus shrinking the lynch pool, and you're also making it hard for scum to shut down strong townies with their kill); the nightplay stuff is just a bonus.

[JasonWazza]

1. Your making the assumption that neither of the PR's are strong players.
2. If the kill fails on the tracker you just up and shoot the doctor (who has claimed) and as you said, you will enter a mylo state forcing a no lynch, so all you gain is an extra day, not anything useful.
3. The only reason the claims should affect the dayplay is because you are playing with new players, and this seems like a really shitty way to introduce them to Mafia.
4. it's basically the same reason we don't have a watcher/doctor, because you just lose 50% and win 50% in trades, one win rate will go up a lot, the other will go down, and in the end you have gained nothing.

[callforjudgement]

1. If they were, they'd be shot overnight anyway, so you aren't losing anything.
2. What you gain is a lynch from a pool of 7 on D1, followed by a lynch from a pool of 6 on D2, and a lynch from a pool of 5 on D3 (as opposed to the normal 9, 7, 5); additionally, if you hit scum on day 1, the pools are 7, 5, 3, 2 (compared to 9, 7, 5, 3) and if you hit scum on day 2, the pools are 7, 6, 4, 3 (again compared to 9, 7, 5, 3). This is because the Tracker is not only confirmed, but can also confirm townies without fear of dying. A D1 scum lynch when the Tracker is claimed and protected is almost unbeatable for scum. That's never going to happen if you don't claim. It's sometimes going to happen when you do.
3. I agree it's a bad way to introduce new players, but that's a fault of the setup, not the strategy itself. The claims affect the dayplay because, obviously, you don't lynch a confirmed townie (also, you know that their stated opinions are genuinely held). Innocent Child is a considerably stronger role than VT in terms of dayplay. Also, the statistics are quite clear that in Nightless games (where scum can't control who dies overnight), town winrates are

much

higher than predicted by EV theory; in games with a normal day/night cycle, town's success is comparable to chance or even worse. That's pretty strong evidence that the ability to control a kill is very valuable for scum.
4. I'm not quite sure what you mean by that.

[JasonWazza]

1. I disagree, you don't always shoot the strong players, but either way that doesn't really change the point, your only changing them from strongly seen as town to confirmed town, not really a benefit if they are shot either way (and protected either way).
2. I mean in most games the lynch pools are normally 7 on D1, you just don't out the PR's straight away (unless it's for a CC), i don't see any real benefit to early outting of your PR's when you can avoid it so much more by just getting claims before a lynch.
3. I don't see how the setup is at fault for what your calling a breaking strategy, that doesn't really break anything, all it does is increase one win rate and decreases the other one, you could do the same thing in most of the setups, but no benefits are really gained by doing so (as you're forcing more losses in certain setups.)
4. What i mean is that your giving up some of the win rate for one setup, to benefit the win rate of the other setup, no real benefit is actually gained, just a change in the win rates (tracker/doctor win rate would go up, while Tracker/BP win rate would go down, because optimal is always just to shoot the tracker and hope for the best).

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I would point out that it's not really a negative for the mafia to have shot the BP. It just puts the game to Evens and you might want to kill the BP at some point anyway. If I were scum and you tried your breaking strategy, I'd do the following: if my partner gets lynched D1, just take the risk of shooting the Tracker N1 (this is unquestionably a negative for the town); if a townie gets lynched, shoot the non-Tracker first which guarantees the Tracker only gets the pretty uninformative N1 result. Then you're mostly just dealing with 2 confirmed townies, which isn't town-sided as far as I know (the 7p set-up with 2 masons had a 8/9 scum win rate); certainly it's not uncommon for both PRs to go uncounterclaimed in a Matrix6 game anyway.

[Creature]

Tracker and 1-shot BP setup looks bad. It goes to even but it won't go to odds unless town nolynches.

[mhsmith0]

Yeah I'm not remotely surprised that it's the worst town win rate of all newbie setups.

[mhsmith0]

Also, I think the semi-open nature of the newbie setup is a good way to bring newbies along on the learning curve; among other things, a fully closed I think skews too heavily in favor of fake claims by veteran players, since newbies won't really have a sense of balance and what makes sense, while semi-open keeps it in range of where fake claiming is a PLAUSIBLE strategy even though it's still dangerous and risky. I also think that having an overall knowledge of what roles are or aren't in the game helps focus efforts and discussion on scumhunting and the day game, which is the the most useful thing for learning anyway.