Long term health of mafiascum

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Post Post #825 (ISO) » Thu Apr 12, 2018 10:53 pm

Post by BBmolla »

Like, epicmafia has a competitive system and we don't.

but I guess epicmafia is more competitive than here so *shrug*
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Post Post #826 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 6:35 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Arguably the existence of a ranked queue will make the others seem less competitive. That's probably a good thing, as many newer players are scared to play anything but Newbies. (That's the reason the rules are designed so that your third game has to be played outside the Newbie Queue, to give players experience of what at least one other queue is like.)
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Post Post #827 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 9:18 am

Post by GreyICE »

Again, I feel like W/L record is better. W/L record accomplishes the same goal of giving meaning to the games, without all the horror of a ranking system. Plus it matches what people are currently doing. Not reinventing the wheel is good!

Seriously, to start with, any ranking system for a team game has to approximately determine the strength of the team. Methods for doing this could probably fill a book, and are in all respects slightly arbitrary, as it's very hard to develop a methodology of quantifying both how much individual player skill contributes to team win, and how much a lack of other player skill contributes to team loss.
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Post Post #828 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 9:20 am

Post by Psyche »

well, consider it done
at some point this spring
or summer
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Post Post #829 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 9:29 am

Post by Mathdino »

In post 816, Kison wrote:
- List of games currently in signups (this is HUGE - but requires some work to automate queues more)
- List of games in need of replacements (optional, might not be our best foot forward)
- List of newbie queue games currently in signups

I'd love it if signups were automated, and could send out a specific email when the queue popped. Or maybe even the option for a text message? Is a text too complex?
These are all things we'll be doing immediately after we upgrade the board. Which is getting fairly close, by the way(if you're good with CSS, let me know as you'll speed up the process quite a bit).

Text notifications would be simple. If the demand is there, we could figure something out.

As for Marathons, I've dug into it a bit. It looks like we used to do them multiple times a year until about 2015. As far as I can tell, there's no real coordination for when the next one will be. I'll see if we can come up with some kind of schedule, or at the very least announce the next one well in advance.
Automation needs to be the next thing. I'm just not sure how much that meshes with the human element of listmodding.

On one hand, the listmod needs to verify all the /in's and confirmations for validity, along with certifying the mod. It's not as simple as having a bot scrub for /ins and automatically starting the game.

On the other hand, I have, twice in a row, had completely full games (filling in a week or less) in queue waiting 3-4 days to get permissions to start the game, while the listmods and administration were active onsite. This was a major blow to player interest, and someone almost out'd during that timeframe as a result.

While long deadlines and "slower" games are a draw to the site, the inactivity of a lot of former bulwarks of the community along with current higher-ups is always going to be an issue with keeping up with every new batch of players.

I want automation. My games would've run on Friday night rather than Monday/Tuesday afternoon otherwise. But I don't want automation to replace care and attention from game mods, listmods, and administration.
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Post Post #830 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 9:38 am

Post by BBmolla »

In post 827, GreyICE wrote:Again, I feel like W/L record is better. W/L record accomplishes the same goal of giving meaning to the games, without all the horror of a ranking system. Plus it matches what people are currently doing. Not reinventing the wheel is good!

Seriously, to start with, any ranking system for a team game has to approximately determine the strength of the team. Methods for doing this could probably fill a book, and are in all respects slightly arbitrary, as it's very hard to develop a methodology of quantifying both how much individual player skill contributes to team win, and how much a lack of other player skill contributes to team loss.
If we argue that a win/loss for each role is equally difficult, or not different enough to make it an issue, I’m fine with a W/L ELO system.

The nice thing about points is you can give scum victories more points which I think in general they deserve

The best way imo is to give points based off the EV value. Say 60% chance of victory, you get 40 points. 51% of victory you get 49 points. Etc.
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Post Post #831 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 10:48 am

Post by GreyICE »

What I mean is the old League of Legends problem. Say you have a message from God saying "at this point in time, every player in the world has these scores that reflect their ability." These scores are 100% accurate, guaranteed to be correct.

Now a game starts. In that game of 5v5, there is Team A {3900, 1400, 700, 800,500} vs. Team B {3300, 3100, 2900, 3000, 2700}. Team A loses. What were the odds that was the expected outcome? How many points do you remove from the 3900 player's score?

These questions are INCREDIBLY hard to answer. And now consider that the rankings we have are uncertain, not cast in stone. And it gets worse, we have an asymmetrical game. I bet a 3900,1400,400 scumteam is better than a 2200,2100,2100 scum team. But that might not be the case at all for town. You are simplifying a problem that is not simple in any way.

P.S. This won't get done because of this obnoxious insistence on developing a "rating" system that can't possibly work.
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Post Post #832 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:42 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Just to make it even more complicated: unbalanced towns are better in Nightless than they are in Day Start (where scum can kill the best townies early). So not only do you have to work out how much advantage/disadvantage towns get from being unbalanced, you also have to take the nature of the setup into account too.
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Post Post #833 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:49 am

Post by Mathdino »

I feel like we're going a bit far into the realm of things that are either not going to happen, or are going to be too controversial anyway.

I think it's a lot simpler than "the lack of my pet idea".

From reviewing a lot of things around site since necroing this, I believe the site is dying because
- The code hasn't been overhauled in years
- The wiki hasn't been updated in years
- The users who make the decisions are not the users that are active in the mafia-playing community
- Other sites have caught up to MS and surpassed it in terms of new hip features
- Newbie retention is low because the site doesn't show enough interest in them or bringing them into the community (this should also be the job of the IC)

Automation is a major thing that fixes a lot of the issues with listmod inactivity, but obviously it doesn't replace the human element. And the site is just low on human capital.
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Post Post #834 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:55 am

Post by mastina »

In post 825, BBmolla wrote:Like, epicmafia has a competitive system and we don't.
And what, pray tell, did the competitive system do to the quality of site culture on EpicMafia including games?

EpicMafia was, back in the day, considered respectable.
Now the idea of EpicMafia and respectable in the same sentence is a laugh riot.
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Post Post #835 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 5:01 pm

Post by BBmolla »

In post 834, mastina wrote:
In post 825, BBmolla wrote:Like, epicmafia has a competitive system and we don't.
And what, pray tell, did the competitive system do to the quality of site culture on EpicMafia including games?

EpicMafia was, back in the day, considered respectable.
Now the idea of EpicMafia and respectable in the same sentence is a laugh riot.
Epic mafia died because lucid stopped any sort of quality control and added a bunch of awful roles, let’s not kid ourselves.
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Post Post #836 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 5:05 pm

Post by BBmolla »

In post 831, GreyICE wrote:What I mean is the old League of Legends problem. Say you have a message from God saying "at this point in time, every player in the world has these scores that reflect their ability." These scores are 100% accurate, guaranteed to be correct.

Now a game starts. In that game of 5v5, there is Team A {3900, 1400, 700, 800,500} vs. Team B {3300, 3100, 2900, 3000, 2700}. Team A loses. What were the odds that was the expected outcome? How many points do you remove from the 3900 player's score?

These questions are INCREDIBLY hard to answer. And now consider that the rankings we have are uncertain, not cast in stone. And it gets worse, we have an asymmetrical game. I bet a 3900,1400,400 scumteam is better than a 2200,2100,2100 scum team. But that might not be the case at all for town. You are simplifying a problem that is not simple in any way.

P.S. This won't get done because of this obnoxious insistence on developing a "rating" system that can't possibly work.
I could use this same argument to argue against having ICs in newbie games.

Sometimes players will lose games because of their team mates, it’s a team game, it happens. Sometimes teams will be unbalanced, it happens. If you really wanted to you could easily create a formula that accounts for a teams true odds of winning or losing and giving points accordingly but you wanted to keep it simple.

I don’t care how the ranking system works, it could just be W/L or more complicated, I’m simply arguing in favor of a queue that records those who do well in some way and has harsher punishments for flaking.
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Post Post #837 (ISO) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 5:07 pm

Post by BBmolla »

And if you look at my plan automation should be top priority anyway

I just wanted to create some micro transactions for ms to help with financials and a ranked queue with the features I described makes most sense for doing so without disrupting the freedom of the site.
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Post Post #838 (ISO) » Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:42 pm

Post by Fumuki »

At first I didn't thought that a competitive queue would be that bad, however, after thinking about it a little bit there's two major problems in my opinion:

1. It'll affect harshly all queues, it'll take way longer to start all kind of games with the division of "competitive vs casual".
2. If you think about it a little, you'll probably notice that win/lose rates are a kind of "superficials" skill indicatives in mafia. There's just too much to be put on the table, overly-simplifying it will make it a inaccurate indicative (when some players screw the entire team over or when someone/some people are carrying the team in the back, or even in situations where things rely on luck or circumstances) and even if we draw complex criteria, there's simply not that much people to read a lot of games and through analyze the player skill.

In other words, I think competitive ranking is a good concept, but simply isn't going to work once it's applied. At least not without a proper discussion with a proper thread made only to discuss about it and bring all kind of statistics to the table.

Now, something I really would like is a increase in the avatars size (even if just a little bit, like 128x128), the actual size is rather small and is hard to find good avatars to it...

About the new players not sticking around here...uh...

As someone that talks from experience, I think that a reorganization of the board/ homepage/ navigation system would be pretty effective. The first time I joined in I need to go over all the sub forums, see how things worked out around here and all. And yes, there's no problem here and I like how the site is.

But...

People nowadays are all about doing things fast. They probably want to enter the site and instantly get a good idea of how things work, and not dig in around a little to see. Yeah...I know...it's like...everyone is just getting lazier and more uninterested, but it's true. If in the home page you can already see the games in sign up phase, and after creating the account start signing up/ playing, it would get a little better at least I suppose...however I don't know if it would change things drastically...and I like the forum in the way it is right now...

Btw, I read some thing about making micros in fast games. I approve. It's a very good idea to attract a certain public.
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Post Post #839 (ISO) » Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:45 pm

Post by Fumuki »

Oh, but the above is only a opinion from a newbie so maybe I said some bs there...
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Post Post #840 (ISO) » Tue Apr 17, 2018 7:38 am

Post by StefanB »

Fumiko: Actually in this topic, your opinion is probably of more value than the opinion of us oldtimmers.
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Post Post #841 (ISO) » Tue Apr 17, 2018 8:47 am

Post by zoraster »

I think EM can use a competitive queue in a way that would be difficult for us to replicate simply because we don't play as many games as you can on EM, etc. because our games last many, many times longer.

That said, I think RECORD KEEPING would be positive. Wins, losses, perhaps broken down in scum and town, etc. It doesn't have to be something where we publicize the "best" player on the site from it, but having some way to really look back at your games and make some comparisons would be neat.
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Post Post #842 (ISO) » Tue Apr 17, 2018 9:40 am

Post by Flubbernugget »

In post 821, GreyICE wrote:Unfortunately all my CSS experience is from around 2012 at the latest. Which, in internet terms, I think means I have a fine grasp on fire, and know how to build a square wheel. Otherwise I'd take you up on that.
I just found out you can script animations in CSS now
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Post Post #843 (ISO) » Tue Apr 17, 2018 6:28 pm

Post by SpyreX »

Automation, for years, is the next big step. I messed around with ways to automate a lot of things because the more "work" we can automate the more focus becomes on the "fun".

Queues, Votes, Day/Night locks, night action resolution for basic setups, hell even a full automated game. If the site looks clean and a lot of that is automated, I think that becomes a big draw and eliminates a lot of the differentiation from other sites.
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Post Post #844 (ISO) » Wed Apr 18, 2018 4:47 am

Post by BBmolla »

In post 841, zoraster wrote:I think EM can use a competitive queue in a way that would be difficult for us to replicate simply because we don't play as many games as you can on EM, etc. because our games last many, many times longer.

That said, I think RECORD KEEPING would be positive. Wins, losses, perhaps broken down in scum and town, etc. It doesn't have to be something where we publicize the "best" player on the site from it, but having some way to really look back at your games and make some comparisons would be neat.
I can live with that
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Post Post #845 (ISO) » Wed Apr 18, 2018 3:51 pm

Post by Kison »

Ranking queue
: I'd be fine with things like win/loss stats & have always thought that would be great. I definitely agree with those who say figuring out an actual "rank" would be very difficult. I'm sure we could figure it out but (1) there are many prerequisites to getting there, (2) whether it would actually be beneficial isn't guaranteed and (3) even if we were sure it'd be beneficial, I personally think there are many other more beneficial projects to tackle, so would leave that to someone else to figure out.

SEO
: I've been playing around with this a lot this month. I was able to increase our rank for the search term
mafia roles
just by modifying the title of the to "
Mafia Roles - MafiaWiki
". This brought us from position 3 to 2. Changed the home page title & meta description, our rank for
play mafia online
moved from 7 to 3.

This is proof to me that a low hanging fruit is optimizing content on the site.

Terms I know bring in some decent volume:
mafia card game
mafia online
mafia party game

We can & should create pages to fulfill clicks originating from those searches & optimize them for those specific keywords. That should help us rank better & also improve engagement for people who actually click through.

Otherwise, I think we just need to do some research on what terms would make sense to target.

Upgrade / Automation
: Still my main priority. We made some more progress on upgrading this weekend, knocking out a few more tough features. I probably won't have time to do much on it myself for another week, but we're getting there.
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Post Post #846 (ISO) » Wed Apr 18, 2018 4:07 pm

Post by xRECKONERx »

good job kison
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Post Post #847 (ISO) » Wed Apr 18, 2018 4:16 pm

Post by Espeonage »

Honestly, mentioning trending competitors will help us snipe people looking for alternatives.

If someone looks for Town of Salem alternative, we should be popping up. If someone looks up One Night Werewolf online, we need to be popping up.
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Post Post #848 (ISO) » Mon Apr 23, 2018 4:56 am

Post by Kison »

Well, if anyone is interested in writing content for pages that are relevant for any such search terms, let me know & I'll work with you to get the pages created. We should offer more than useless fluff though. For example, since we have our own Mafiascum Cards, it's a topic on which we can offer content for someone searching "mafia card game".
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Post Post #849 (ISO) » Mon Apr 23, 2018 6:45 am

Post by GreyICE »

Maybe an "alternative mafia forms" page for things like Town of Salem and Throne of Lies? I could write up a short description of each, and how gameplay differs.
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