Long term health of mafiascum

[wgeurts]

Yo chamber, I'm teaching myself web development and may soon be able to create a new skin for the wiki. It says in the to do list that this is wanted so I'm willing to do so and make a maf-black like wiki skin. Would you allow this?

[Empking]

As somebody who goes on the site almost exclusively via tablet I haven't experienced any problems. I think that redesigning the site based on fads is probably a bad idea, it might work for Youtube but they can hire better designers. I think adding new flashy stuff to complement the forum is a good idea, but stuff like making siteChat opt-out will hurt the core functionality. (I don't know if this is possible, but perhaps a clear link so you can see siteChat without opting into it?)

[GuyInFreezer]

Thoughts on just making mafblack default?

I don't like it. I think it's ugly and cold, with too much grey, and occasionally too high contrast (e.g. everything below 'who is online' on the front page, and coloured mod names, and scum/town colours in dead player lists in games.)

I think it would look a lot nicer if you imbued some red/dark red tones. The furthest I ever got working towards that was this. It was never shown outside of the Art forum, though, and UberNinja started making his own dark theme, so I lost interest after a while. I think it still looks pretty decent, especially as modern UI design trends more and more towards a typography-oriented, flat-colour approach.

I do agree that adding colors is much better than greyscale. When I first rolled an idea about it I did consider black/red and black/yellow tone but ultimately I went with greyscale for soft colors and simplicity because I thought the colors shouldn't be distracting people from reading posts. The grey color were cautiously picked for the best text visibility with most colors visible. (Emphasis on "most.")

[Bicephalous Bob]

I think that redesigning the site based on fads is probably a bad idea, it might work for Youtube but they can hire better designers.

You really don't need to be a good designer to improve on this design. For example, the full-width design is long outdated. Lines of body text should be 75 characters long at most, with 50-60 characters optimizing readability. This isn't a fad, this is a well-researched fact.

[chamber]

If sitechat is really going to be used for mafia, it'd make sense to have a fixed-link fullscreen version of the chat so votecount lines don't break and it's easier to look back in history, for example. It should really look like a place to play mafia, having all information (rooms, players online, xylbot docs) in one place, not just like a superimposed add-on.

It might not be immediately obvious but the windows can be resized. There is also a list of whos online and the rooms already?

[chamber]

Yo chamber, I'm teaching myself web development and may soon be able to create a new skin for the wiki. It says in the to do list that this is wanted so I'm willing to do so and make a maf-black like wiki skin. Would you allow this?

I don't make these choices. I'm just trying to lead the spit balling of ideas. I'd certainly welcome it in theory (though good designs are hard). But I need to actually sell mith on any major changes we wish to make.

[chamber]

ines of body text should be 75 characters long at most, with 50-60 characters optimizing readability.

This is extremely narrow. I'm not saying you are wrong but we'd need more than white space on either side if you are right.

[Faraday]

I don't think livestreaming would help, because it would be false advertising. Here's some face to face mafia! Wasn't that a great party game? Now go sign up and in a week you can post once a day for three months! Mafiascum the forum is never going to be a F2F mafia site.

I don't think it's false advertising if other types of mafia are focused on by the site. Like skype mafia has a decent popularity here, at least. Sure occasionally it goes without games for a while due to being difficult to organise but I wonder if more people were play if stuff like that was more visible (Not everyone visits GD)

[Faraday]

The website looking nicer would be cool, the default skin is my preference at the moment as I find black hard to bear with for long and sepia looks fucking awful so an alternative to those would be cool.

[Faraday]

What do you guys think about having the chat defaulting to on instead of off (in terms of hoping to increase user retention)? I think my graph clearly shows the bigger issue is just new players not showing up though. User retention seems decent.

I don't think it can do any harm. Having the chat on seems a better idea anyway, so newbies can actually find it straight away. *shrug*

Or just make it like more visible that we have a chatroom. It's in your user cp atm right? Which may escape the notice of quite a few.

[Psyche]

bring back the tiger theme

[Bicephalous Bob]

If sitechat is really going to be used for mafia, it'd make sense to have a fixed-link fullscreen version of the chat so votecount lines don't break and it's easier to look back in history, for example. It should really look like a place to play mafia, having all information (rooms, players online, xylbot docs) in one place, not just like a superimposed add-on.

It might not be immediately obvious but the windows can be resized. There is also a list of whos online and the rooms already?

I didn't know the former, but having one game type superimposed over the other doesn't make sense structurally. Having a separate chat for chat games at mafiascum.net/chatmafia also means you don't have to make the chat for chatting opt-out instead of opt-in.

ines of body text should be 75 characters long at most, with 50-60 characters optimizing readability.

This is extremely narrow. I'm not saying you are wrong but we'd need more than white space on either side if you are right.

This principle probably doesn't hold for forums, but a design with a centered wrapper and a max-width of 800 to 960 pixels would be nice.

[Bicephalous Bob]

It'll also help get the site indexed as a chat mafia site on google and give people the option to directly link to it. Since chat mafia is currently found within the forum, people still come here for the forum mafia and perhaps stay for the chat mafia. If you want to attract people who want to play live mafia, you have to present it as a distinct feature.

[Bicephalous Bob]

There is also a list of whos online and the rooms already?

Yeah, but who ever checks if there are multiple rooms without someone telling them to do it? What I mean with having everything in one place is a layout like the fullscreen Facebook chat, where all rooms are on the left and everyone online is on the right.

[chamber]

It'll also help get the site indexed as a chat mafia site on google and give people the option to directly link to it. Since chat mafia is currently found within the forum, people still come here for the forum mafia and perhaps stay for the chat mafia. If you want to attract people who want to play live mafia, you have to present it as a distinct feature.

Given infinite resources, sure. It's about prioritizing things given limited resources though. A lot of these things are already functionally accomplished, so I think they are likely to land a lower priority in my book.

[chamber]

There is also a list of whos online and the rooms already?

Yeah, but who ever checks if there are multiple rooms without someone telling them to do it? What I mean with having everything in one place is a layout like the fullscreen Facebook chat, where all rooms are on the left and everyone online is on the right.

Chicken egg issue. People don't check because there are never any I think?

[Bicephalous Bob]

How about the site chat tab popping open on rooms if a new room is created?

[chamber]

That... seems like it would scale really poorly. It's an idea though.

[Bicephalous Bob]

yeah that's unnecessary

a new standard chat that's always open like lobby for chat mafia will do if you aren't moving from the forum chat

[chamber]

I have valued all of your input btw. I don't want to seem like I'm shutting anyone down. I'm just trying to work through what people are asking for and comparing it to what exists for myself.

[GuyInFreezer]

I feel like if sitechat is gonna have a mafiabot in it, we might as well create our own irc server and put a bot there.
Also if the site skin structure is being redesigned, it would be cool to have an index page announcing games in signup.

[Psyche]

i sort of agree that an irc thing would be better since it would enable direct use without requiring navigation to ms.net
but we'd need to integrate that into the site as well ofc

[Howl]

Links and cross promotional stuff on social media is a strong tool for any multi-platform stuff. Also, by virtue of being a chatroom, irc is an easy to use to refer people. In the post game you could easily have as part of the automated message, "Be sure to visit our mother site <link> for even more mafia action."

[BBmolla]

If sitechat is really going to be used for mafia, it'd make sense to have a fixed-link fullscreen version of the chat so votecount lines don't break and it's easier to look back in history, for example. It should really look like a place to play mafia, having all information (rooms, players online, xylbot docs) in one place, not just like a superimposed add-on.

^this, so much this.

xylbot for sitechat would be pretty cool.

I agree

I'm really interested in the whole automation thing and there's really little limit to how much time I'd volunteer to help out with that. I don't think it's that big of a deal for attracting people, but anything that accelerates the engagement of new users with the site seems like a great idea to me.

I think it really comes down to lack of people who are able/willing to code/program it.

Mafiascum the forum is never going to be a F2F mafia site.

This is a pretty silly thing to say imo. Have you not been to a meetup?

Oh, I use the default skin, so that is such a nonfactor to me.

With that being said, I think if we're serious about making chat mafia work, I think it could use the icons that epicmafia has. Epicmafia is honestly a really good implementation of chat mafia, it just sucks ass for various reasons:
-Way roles are programmed limits creativity (no x-shot, no modifiers in general, no custom roles)
-The meta there is beyond garbage, more about figuring out counter claims than scum hunting. They play 1 cop, 1 doc, 2 maf, 3 vanilla simply because "that's how it's always been."
-Lobby system has devolved into a clusterfuck.

Like, if the above were fixed, I'd honestly probably go back to EM. But the fact of the matter is, the quality of the players here is so immensely better it's not even funny. The playerbase being terrible is largely influenced by the above issues imo.

I love chat mafia. I really do. The fact of the matter is all chat mafia options at the moment are TERRIBLE.

Instead of making the chat like a facebook chatroom, it should be its own section. Like, is it possible to have it so that at the index, include another section under Mish Mash called "chat mafia." Maybe make it to make a new game, you make a new topic. When someone enters the topic, it opens up the chatroom? I donno. But having the chat mafia be a section of site is a step in the right direction, it's like would you ever want to run a game in a facebook chatroom? Probably not.

This of course assumes unlimited manpower which is ridiculous.

I know I'm someone who would play chat mafia, and I'm trying to give answers as to why I don't. And it simply comes down to:
-Too much of a pain in the ass to play in the current chat thing.
-There are better automated chat systems
-...but unfortunately they all have terrible metas (Mafia is SC2 and Epicmafia come to mind).

[4nxi3ty]

I don't think livestreaming would help, because it would be false advertising.

It wouldn't hurt though. Might not be the best to focus on, and advertising in a stream could be tacky, but we can't close the door on people who want to stream games.

The goal seems to be to expand the mafia experience here. Here's a place to play chat-mafia. A place to play quick games that lasts only weeks(days?) as well. Over here is for people who want the slow burn of monthlong games. Here's a group who really enjoy skypeing and streaming together.

And to make these options accessible, have a comfortable environment for a wide variety of player types.