Long term health of mafiascum

[GreyICE]

Zoroaster, maybe this is unfair: I get the feeling you don't want to make any changes, and won't hear any arguments in favor of them.

not in the least. I'm pretty receptive to changes, but I'm not receptive to "let's just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" because we also have to consider maintaining our present state as well as grow future ms members. Any change needs to be pretty well thought through.

[GreyICE]

Low hanging fruit is probably a better start page and a better newbie queue. The entire splash page screams "early on 2000s"

[GreyICE]

Oh here's some SUPER low-hanging fruit. The post button currently works by finding the absolute post number, instead of the post number relative to the thread.

So

Code: Select all

[post]800[/post]

Does nothing.

Code: Select all

[post]p10093577[/post]

Also does nothing.

Code: Select all

[post=#10093577]Some stupid text here[/post]

This works.

Now intuitive programming wise, the first one should produce #800 instead of what I ACTUALLY had to type to get that output.

[GreyICE]

800

Edit: Huh, so it does, but it shifts the code to the older version. The mouseover text is still the same though. Nice upgrade.

[GreyICE]

Low hanging fruit is probably a better start page and a better newbie queue. The entire splash page screams "early on 2000s"

I certainly agree on the home page and would like to tackle that at some point soon. I think the main goal should be to explain the site better & do away with the

how to join

graphic. While the latter is informative, it's a bit overwhelming & having to view it on a completely separate page is not very friendly. We should probably link directly to the registration page as well.

In other news, just a few days ago we launched an automatic "welcome PM" that is sent to non-alt users on their first login:

Spoiler:

Welcome to MafiaScum, NewUser! We're glad to have you!

To sign up for your first newbie game, visit the

Newbie Queue

and post

/in

. You will be added to the queue & receive a private message when your game begins.

If you're a more experienced player, you can find more games in the

Queue

forum.

Good luck & we hope you have fun!

I'm sure the messaging can be improved, but several new users have already clicked through to the queue from the message itself.

Some more ideas, in no particular order. Some of these are trivial, some of these are probably a bit of coding

- Links to Scummies-Awarded games
- Date for next Marathon weekend
- 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?

[GreyICE]

Exactly. All of that on the start page when you log in. You know, how Amazon shows product selections, new stuff, top picks. Show games in signup, games needing replacements, top completed games, that sort of thing. Not as cluttered as something like www.boardgamegeek.com, but something more like a modern splash page for a website. The nonfunctional landing site is dying thanks to the irritation of "clicking through" on mobile phones. I think mobile and tablet devices are climbing north of half of all internet usage, and the splash page is remarkably unfriendly to them. Giving them things they can click on in a landing page is not.

[GreyICE]

- 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).

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[GreyICE]

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.

[GreyICE]

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.

[GreyICE]

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.

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?