Long term health of mafiascum

ISO · Post Post #850 (ISO) » Mon Apr 23, 2018 6:57 am

Yep, exactly. Relevant, useful content.

BBmolla · Post Post #851 (ISO) » Tue Apr 24, 2018 10:58 pm

In post 846, xRECKONERx wrote:good job kison

ISO · Post Post #852 (ISO) » Mon Apr 30, 2018 6:20 pm

I usually track SEO at the start of the month. Figured there's no reason not to share this here. Low numbers are better:

Spoiler:

Mathdino · Post Post #853 (ISO) » Mon Apr 30, 2018 6:22 pm

so the question we all want to know is

did "mfascm" successfully bring in millennials

Maruchan · Post Post #854 (ISO) » Thu May 03, 2018 3:47 pm

In post 820, BBmolla wrote:It’s like someone saying “team mafia will ruin the site,” it’s absolute nonsense.

Any arguments about people using it to show off or whatever are dumb arguments anyway. Any of us who have played league or over watch or whatever games know the “my stats are better, you play support.” But that shouldn’t stop ranked games it’s really not that big of a deal and that sort of thing happens at this site already so it won’t be any different.

this literally happened to me in my last scum-play. In scum PT we were like "maru: IDK what to do. Other person: I know this setup we do X, Y, then Z. M: Okay. Other person: do you want me to bus you or you to bus me? me" you should probably do all the heavy lifting idfk what I'm doing here..."

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.

so make a queue where the w/l record in that queue is tracked, and don't track it site-wide. Sometimes people play in some off-the-wall setups or some CRAZY mechanics and take some gambles they wouldn't take in a normal or in a oft-used setup, because it's a unique game or a unique mechanic. Those games shouldn't count against any form of officially recognized status (ranking, w/l record, etc)

If I play that one variant with 50 people all given unlimited dayvigs and a dayvig ends the day and rolls to d2 with a 24 hour delay on their dayvig usage, and i get shot in first day first post, then my team goes on to lose, do I want that in my "official" stats? Nah. I "played that game to have fun" not "played that game to win". Sure I wanted to win going into it, who doesn't? But nobody expects to go into a game like that and have a level of seriousness found in games like chess mafia, strategy mafia, or team mafia. And wouldn't want it compared to those types of games in an arbitrary stat.

if there is any form of officially-tracked stat (w/l, rank, skill, etc, whateverthefuck) it should be in it's own queue, or have theme queues or micro queue or SOMETHING be immune to it, so people can go there for the more whimsical less serious games (like my last Grand Idea uPick. Would you want a game where you changed roles three times, died twice, then deadlocked the voting pool from the grave on your third role to count against an officially tracked stat? lolno)

In post 852, Kison wrote:I usually track SEO at the start of the month. Figured there's no reason not to share this here. Low numbers are better:

Spoiler:
Mar 1 2017
Mar 6 2017
Mar 9 2017
Mar 14 2017
Mar 17 2017
Mar 20 2017
Apr 1 2017
Nov 13 2017
Mar 4 2018
Apr 1 2018
May 2018

mafia
35
19
43
33
33
35
30
35
78
-
17

forum mafia
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1

mafia game
14
14
20
8
20
17
18
30
22
43
23

mafia party game
21
29
25
18
15
14
14
32
58
61
56

play mafia
14
16
8
11
-
10
8
7
20
20
5

play mafia online
4
6
-
3
4
4
5
4
4
7
3

werewolf
-
-
10
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-

forum werewolf
13
-
-
11
10
15
10
10
90
29
75

werewolf game
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-

werewolf party game
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-

play werewolf
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
177
-
-
-

play werewolf online
48
47
-
45
45
48
44
60
69
76
50

mafia roles
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
3
2

mafia strategy
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
3
2

mafia setups
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1
1

mafia online
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
5

mafia game online
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
10

mafia card game
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
72

how to play mafia
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
20

werewolf game online
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-

mafia card game online
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
8

online mafia
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
9

mafia party game online
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
8

how to play mafia card game
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
39

Could we add to the mafiascum.net Page Title appended to every page to make it "mafiascum.net party game" to grab the mafia party game and the mafia game searches?

GreyICE · Post Post #855 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 4:13 am

I already suggested take it to normal queue, Maruchan. If you'd simply read anything rather than whining you'd have known that.

I swear people want this site to die.

Maruchan · Post Post #856 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 4:16 am

In post 855, GreyICE wrote:I already suggested take it to normal queue, Maruchan. If you'd simply read anything rather than whining you'd have known that.

This site doesn't want to be helped, it wants to die. I see no reason not to let it.

I read the first five pages then everything posted this year. Didn't just whine. Was actively trying to help further discussion, sorry if that is not allowed. I could care less personally as my stats are shut so idgaf if it is or is not sitewide, was trying to be helpful to the topic under discussion

Maruchan · Post Post #857 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 4:19 am

In post 855, GreyICE wrote:I already suggested take it to normal queue, Maruchan. If you'd simply read anything rather than whining you'd have known that.

I swear people want this site to die.

Actually just isod you and searched for word normal and you not once mentioned take it to normal queue until this post.

So thanks for attacking me with baseless accusations of not reading. Would read again.

I'll just /out of this thread and go back to only being active on minecraft thread gghf

GreyICE · Post Post #858 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 4:21 am

All I've ever seen in response to an idea around here is a wall of fucking jacknapes hopping on and yelling "No! That idea will never work and you're dumb for having it!" There has never been the slightest amount of constructive criticism.

That's why the fact Mafiascum was dying was brought up fucking four years ago, and not one single thing was done except everyone sitting back and watching (Oh I guess MafBlack came out of it). Because every idea was systemically shot down with not the slightest bit of constructive feedback, and the fact the site was dying was somehow chalked up to "millennials don't read" or somesuch. Go read the original 2014 post, where Chamber says "I take issue with the idea that mafia is a dying game, board games are doing better than ever, and I feel like mafia should be caught in that upswing."

Since then we've seen the rise of Town of Salem, more mafia-style games take off, Secret Hitler become a big thing, and Mafiascum... keep dying, with no ideas implemented at all.

Edit: There was literally an entire thread about this where the only bits of feedback were "no you can never do that, the site will literally be doomed," and "we should develop some extremely complex algorithm to track the exact rating of every player on site, using voodoo mathematics, and no I have no idea how that will work". I'm sorry if I'm getting VERY TIRED of this sort of useless non-feedback.

MathBlade · Post Post #859 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 4:29 am

I mean I have taken it upon myself two years ago to plan and almost one to code an automated vote counter trying to get more people to mod. Now Psyche is doing his. I am not good at social aspects of some things but I wouldn’t say nothing.

ISO · Post Post #860 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 4:36 am

Which shot-down ideas are you referring to exactly, GreyICE? I can't speak for anyone else, but I haven't shot anything down.

Things have been done / are in progress, but coding is hard & everyone helping out is volunteering their time. I've tried to list out some things

non-coders

can do, because, well, I just don't have time to do them myself.

GreyICE · Post Post #861 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 4:54 am

In post 0, chamber wrote:I take issue with the idea that mafia is a dying game, board games are doing better than ever, and I feel like mafia should be caught in that upswing.

MS has always taken the meltingpot approach to multiculturalism if you will. We force everyone to play the same way. I think that way has become increasingly divergent from how mafia is played elsewhere. That we are a meltingpot is a natural byproduct of our queue structure. Everyone only has access to so many games at a given time so they all need to have a wide appeal. I think we need to seriously consider redesigning how games go through signups to allow for more niche subtypes. Continuing to just further divide the queue's isn't enough.

Is our wiki no longer sufficient for attracting new people? Has MBF's flash finally died out? Perhaps more people look to twitch these days for games. A lot of work has been getting done to the wiki recently, and I don't know how to make it more accessible, but I've talked about creating a new interactive game introduction tool as a form of advertising for MS for a long time. It's possible we need it now more than ever. Also I know some people stream mafia games on twitch, perhaps we could try to get a weekly group together to do the same.

Honestly, I look at what you've done, and what Mathblade has done, and it's impressive. But there's no overarching vision like Chamber discussed here. It's just what we've been doing, but with better/more accurate vote counts and better google page ranks. And if you look at his ideas and others, they got shot down in flames. I especially like the fact that we reach this post, where everything Chamber said gets restated - literally the exact observations - but like it's "the way things are" and that instead of adopting ideas what we need to do is keep doing what we're doing but FULL FORCE.

In post 423, zoraster wrote:It's always been slower, and we've always dealt with new players complaining -- many of whom go on to appreciate the slower pace. I think you have to understand that while newbie games are important for getting players to stick around, they're even more important to introducing new players to the way Mafiascum plays mafia (there is some question as to whether the semi-open nature does this, but little question that 2 weeks is more indicative of the experience than 1 week).

I also question whether really short newbie games really achieves what you think. One of the benefits of the longer games is that players who do newbie games are checking the site for longer. In that time, new players are more likely to venture outside of the newbie game, whereas providing a close and quick end goal may limit the newbie experience to just that game. The goal is integration, not just attraction.

As just an aside that has nothing to do with the quality of your ideas: could i interest you in a couple of paragraph breaks, Horse?

ISO · Post Post #862 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 10:27 am

Admittedly I missed most of the conversation in this thread when it happened. I was insanely busy with life for years and not around much. So, sorry about that. Anyways, I'm here now with what time I can spare. I definitely understand your frustration that not much changes. Pitch an idea and I'll hear it out. But realize I'm not a magician(I wish I was!) and only have so much time, so I have to choose carefully what I spend my time on.

I posted an outline of what I think we should work towards in

post 754

. Not sure if you've read it. A lot of it

is

"the same, but better", but that's because those are things we really need. Everyone who wants the "win / loss" stats, for example, we need certain things built before we can get there in a reasonable way. We can get there faster if people are willing to help.

There are other ideas there too. I want to move us beyond just forum mafia into more realtime apps(site chat, something standalone). Again though, these things take a lot of work.

I'm not sure if your complaint is more with changing policy in how the site operates.

ISO · Post Post #863 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 11:15 am

In post 862, Kison wrote:I posted an outline of what I think we should work towards in
post 754
.

For the record, I agree with everything in 754, I just didn't really have anything to say on the matter, but I think it should be emphasized that, yes, that is a good direction for things to be headed in.

It's just a matter of, "Okay, this is a good thing, but how do we get there?", more or less. We're trying in various different ways, it's largely "how do we get there sooner", essentially.

MathBlade · Post Post #864 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 12:00 pm

In post 754, Kison wrote:I think this is a great discussion to have. It's a topic I've recently been honing in on & working to make improvements towards.

It's difficult to pinpoint any one thing as a cause for the slowdown. My theory is it's a combination of:
1) More people use mobile devices. The site itself is not very mobile-friendly from a UI perspective & forum mafia is not easily played on a phone.
2) Alternatives. For the longest time, we were the goto place for forum mafia. Even though other communities played the game, it wasn't their niche. We've fallen behind a bit here with other sites offering better game automation.
3) SEO - it's not as strong as it once was. This is likely due to the first two points as well as Wiki falling out of date. Out of date info means fewer people link to us. Fewer people linking to us means lower search rankings.

There's a whole slew of things we can do to make improvements:
1) We need to upgrade the board. We're currently on a very-outdated 3.0.x version of phpBB. Upgrading to 3.2.x gives us a nice mobile responsive layout out of the box & allows us to make modifications much more easily.
2) Automating the queues to some extent - makes it easier to see what's coming up & allows us to begin tracking some stats, and also opens the door for...
3) Moderator tools. Even if we merely automated vote counts, the gameplay experience is greatly improved & eases the burden on the supply-strained moderator pool.

Just getting those 3 things done will put us in a much better place.

Beyond that, there are a lot of other things we can do:
- Fix up the home page. I've been watching things like a hawk lately, and a lot of people drop off either right there, or on the
how to join
graphic. I say put the info from the graphic right onto the home page.
- Fix up the Wiki. T-Bone has recently taken point on this, so
feel free to lend a hand
.
- Automated PM to new users explaining what to do. We lose a lot of people right after they activate their account. I have no proof for why, but my suspicion is they're overwhelmed with what to do next.
- Email/PM users who don't return after X days. This could just help retain people who have forgotten about us.
- Better social presence. We've had next to nothing here up to now. We've recently started ramping up our
Twitter
&
Facebook
accounts. Again, keeps people engaged if they don't visit the site for a while.
- Email newsletters: Maybe every 1-3 months. Keeps people engaged.

Longer term goals: Our main offering here is forum mafia, but if we expand to other areas, it gives us a new pool of players to tap into:
- Implosion had the idea of building a "xylbot" type tool right into sitechat, allowing people to play games in there. I think this is a great "low hanging fruit" project we can tackle relatively easily.
- Other realtime app - building an app out on an entirely different part of the website.

Anyways, that's just what's been going through my head for the past month or so on this topic & the path I think we need to take. But obviously I've been in the trenches so it's great to see what other people view as problem areas.

I have a mafiabot that I have been working on that it is a discord bot. C# language base No where near done yet keep getting sidetracked. If I fixed a bug I think I had I might have 5 P vanilla operational. A sitechat bot is not a simple task due to the networking and PHP ick (I hate PHP but understand it is a requirement with vbulletin) not to mention scum chat etc that would be needed.

Automating the queues I could probably put together a c# service as a stop gap. Borrow from the same fundamentals my votecounter works on. Was gonna do it past couple of weekends but something stopped me.

Entry points for users should be imho simple. Anything more than a page or two is just too damn much. It will have glaze over effect.

Once I get all the features of the bot tested and understood gotta build a python UI for the mod bot that will eventually just spit out vote counter settings and first post (minus events)

davesaz · Post Post #865 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 1:02 pm

In post 855, GreyICE wrote:I already suggested take it to normal queue, Maruchan. If you'd simply read anything rather than whining you'd have known that.

I swear people want this site to die.

This kind of snark is what kills the site.
If we want people to stay it would really help a lot to be courteous, kind, and friendly. Yeah hard to do in a game, but c'mon, snark in a discussion thread?

</soapbox>

In other news...
Even if it's manual to begin with, a one-stop shopping center for open slots would be huge. I bookmark a couple queue threads but the games that have signups in a separate thread come and go before I even know they're open. If there were a dashboard that shows type of game, flavor genre, and open slots it would be an immense help.

The ability to pull role cards directly from a set of standard ones would make modding much easier. Even for people like me who have only modded opens with no flavor, having to translate each role from wiki format to PM format is a real pain in the ass. Automated vote counts definitely nice, and I plan to hit Mathblade up for votecounter next time I mod. Better yet how about an interface that makes votes and perhaps night actions a button press? If NA's are standardized then automating the resolution is appealing too. Not that I mind doing that part, I actually like processing night -- it's one of the reasons I prefer to mod games that have lots of active roles.

I have back end and design skills. No experience at all in the web page coding/generating and UI part, but if you need conceptual user experience story design or data storage/processing/retrieval just say the word. The site needs a way to identify volunteers who have the skills it needs. And accept help...

Flubbernugget · Post Post #866 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 1:49 pm

Yeah imo the biggest issue right now is that there's a shitton of ideas and no labor to go with it.

Psyche · Post Post #867 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 3:16 pm

this thread is too glum for me imo
so much has happened and will happen since it’s started and i think that effort is accellerating with each passing day
i’m really excited about this challenge and have no doubt that we’ll be able to make the quality of life changes necessary to keep this forum healthy and active for years to come

i don’t want to sound...megalomaniacal, but right now i just feel it, sorry!
have more free time and less distraction than i ever had and probably ever will
and now that i have a truly worthy votecounter, nothing that needs to be done here seems even marginally hard to do
all of these problems are going to dissolve away
it’s just a matter of time and resolve — and we’ve got both!

tn5421 · Post Post #868 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 6:57 pm

Spoiler: reply to post 754

Spoiler: things i replied to uselessly that i ignored in my first go around that nobody probably cares about

Ranmaru · Post Post #869 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 8:10 pm

One of the things I realized is that there might be certain small things we (myself included) can do to help the site. I have realized I need to give a little more, and I'm going try to mod more games on the site, and I will consider helping out as a List Mod in the future (if needed). I also intend to IC in the future as well. (When I have enough time) I don't know how else I can help at the moment, but I'll try to find other ways as well.

Psyche · Post Post #870 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 8:17 pm

Yeah, I've sort of felt a similar impingement lately.

RadiantCowbells · Post Post #871 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 8:24 pm

In post 870, Psyche wrote:Yeah, I've sort of felt a similar impingement lately.

davesaz · Post Post #872 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 8:33 pm

Do the other sites being mentioned have an issue with spam in games?

Random idea, when a game ends use a "rate this site" 1-5 stars type thing with a comment box.

Mathdino · Post Post #873 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 8:38 pm

how often do you end a game feeling like "wow this site is 5/5 i love this place!!!"

RadiantCowbells · Post Post #874 (ISO) » Fri May 04, 2018 8:38 pm

oh boy i sure can't wait to check team mafia tonight

	Mar 1 2017	Mar 6 2017	Mar 9 2017	Mar 14 2017	Mar 17 2017	Mar 20 2017	Apr 1 2017	Nov 13 2017	Mar 4 2018	Apr 1 2018	May 2018
mafia	35	19	43	33	33	35	30	35	78	-	17
forum mafia	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
mafia game	14	14	20	8	20	17	18	30	22	43	23
mafia party game	21	29	25	18	15	14	14	32	58	61	56
play mafia	14	16	8	11	-	10	8	7	20	20	5
play mafia online	4	6	-	3	4	4	5	4	4	7	3
werewolf	-	-	10	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
forum werewolf	13	-	-	11	10	15	10	10	90	29	75
werewolf game	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
werewolf party game	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
play werewolf	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	177	-	-	-
play werewolf online	48	47	-	45	45	48	44	60	69	76	50
mafia roles	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	3	2
mafia strategy	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	3	2
mafia setups	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	1
mafia online	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	5
mafia game online	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	10
mafia card game	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	72
how to play mafia	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	20
werewolf game online	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
mafia card game online	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	8
online mafia	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	9
mafia party game online	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	8
how to play mafia card game	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	39