Townhunt or scumhunt

[Whatisswag]

Lets talk about scumhunting. Everyone knows that scum hunt is the method to catch scum. But it could also be possible that scum could be very careful to try to not make the slightest mistake. Hence scumhunting is not very effective isn't it? But no matter how scum tries to act like town, there will always be an area that scum can never act like town because of the midset. Town hunting by looking at what town does and from that, we get the town people and we eventually find the scum. Do you think townhunting or scumhunting is more effective?

[Kagami]

There are both reliably town behaviors and reliably scum behaviors. Your mission is to hunt for both types.

It's unreasonable to believe that one is better than the other when you have no control over which will arise.

[Cephrir]

Everyone should obviously have an eye out for both, but some players may be better at one than the other. Good for them.

[fferyllt]

Everyone should obviously have an eye out for both, but some players may be better at one than the other. Good for them.

I agree with this.

[RedCoyote]

Everyone should obviously have an eye out for both, but some players may be better at one than the other. Good for them.

Agreed. Neither is superior. If you play long enough, flips will surprise you, even if you could've sworn X was town or scum.

[Shadowmod]

The right way to do it is to combine both.

[Majiffy]

The right way to do it is to combine both.

[Jake from State Farm]

But how do you town hunt? As scum it's so easy to do things that a townie should do, so I have trouble just writing something off as town.

[Espeonage]

Por que no los dos

[TierShift]

Townhunting is so much easier for me than scumhunting. Later in the game, with flips and associatives, I can usually succesfully scumhunt. Combining em is key.

[Tammy]

Do both. Townhunting is sometimes underrated, but it's important. I don't really have a which one I particularly do. Sometimes I can pick out town easier and then poe, but there have been games I've had problems even finding enough town and have focused more on what looks like scum.

[kuribo]

Neither. Kill them all and let Mod sort them out.

[Majiffy]

Fucking Kuribo

[F-16_Fighting_Falcon]

I think both are important but townhunting is often underrated. A lot of players just pick at something they find scummy not knowing whether it is a difference in playstyle or genuinely alignment indicative. Townhunting helps put things in perspective. I don't think players should push scumreads before they have a decent number of reads on people they believe to be town and the scum are in the POE pool (there are rare exceptions when a player scumclaims to you alone for instance). This also helps with seeing how the people in your POE pool interact with each other.

[Wisdom]

Depends on playerlist. If there are players you can townread easily, do so and work with them. If there are players you can catch easily, hunt them and see their reactions. etc.

Generally, both are needed.

[mastin2]

There are more town than scum.

Your readslist should reflect this. (Note to the minority of players who have an unjustified fear of readslists being posted in-thread, and the even smaller minority who think a scumreads list is fine but a townreads one isn't, when I say readslist, in this case, it can be mental. In that whatever your MENTAL readslist is, it should have it. Players like me just happen to have mental be the same as public.)

If you have more scum than town...you've gone wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

A few extra in the scumzone is okay, but generally, you should have twice as many town at minimum as you do scum. Thus, your townhunting if it's not up to this par needs to be improved, and if your scumlist is entirely absent it might be a good idea to focus on improving

that

because unless you're playing istott's game, there's gonna be scum.

[eyestott]

There are more town than scum.

Your readslist should reflect this. (Note to the minority of players who have an unjustified fear of readslists being posted in-thread, and the even smaller minority who think a scumreads list is fine but a townreads one isn't, when I say readslist, in this case, it can be mental. In that whatever your MENTAL readslist is, it should have it. Players like me just happen to have mental be the same as public.)

If you have more scum than town...you've gone wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

A few extra in the scumzone is okay, but generally, you should have twice as many town at minimum as you do scum. Thus, your townhunting if it's not up to this par needs to be improved, and if your scumlist is entirely absent it might be a good idea to focus on improving

that

because unless you're playing istott's game, there's gonna be scum.

If I ever end up getting a title, I want it to be about how I take bastard to the extreme in my bastard games XD

[BROseidon]

Por que no los dos

You stole my shtick :/

[tn5421]

There are more town than scum.

Your readslist should reflect this. (Note to the minority of players who have an unjustified fear of readslists being posted in-thread, and the even smaller minority who think a scumreads list is fine but a townreads one isn't, when I say readslist, in this case, it can be mental. In that whatever your MENTAL readslist is, it should have it. Players like me just happen to have mental be the same as public.)

If you have more scum than town...you've gone wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

A few extra in the scumzone is okay, but generally, you should have twice as many town at minimum as you do scum. Thus, your townhunting if it's not up to this par needs to be improved, and if your scumlist is entirely absent it might be a good idea to focus on improving

that

because unless you're playing istott's game, there's gonna be scum.

Or you're playing Rebels in the Palace or a variant.

[TroubledTownie]

Taking a thread as a big pile of puzzle pieces, you should expect to be able to find town pieces for every player... scum would be doing their job very poorly otherwise. Because of that, I don't think much value should be given to those. Instead, you need to find the few scum pieces that actually fit together.

Focusing on townhunting is just an invitation for confirmation bias.

[TierShift]

I completely disagree with your post. Completely. There is usually a lot of scum pieces for any given player, but there are only a few consistent towntells. A lot of people do not realise that and take all kinds of bollocks as indicative of town. Those people are susceptible to confbias. As are the ones who focus only on not-very-indicative scumbits.
If you know how to actually townhunt, you can work from PoE. You basically said that townreads are useless. Good townreads aren't.

[TroubledTownie]

I don't think there are consistent towntells or scumtells... humans aren't so simple as to be easily categorized like that. Play has to be analyzed individually for each player. I guess we're on opposite sides of the fence, where I think people take a log of bollocks as indicative of scum.

If you're always analyzing every player, looking for scum motivation, you can't fall into confirmation bias because of a strong townread.

[TierShift]

There are a few towntells which have been without fail for me. Oh well.

[Cheetory6]

Can you tell me the towntells so I can fake them and ruin them from now on?

[TierShift]

I tell no one about them, for that specific reason! Generally, they are about (appearing to be) playing against your wincon, if you were scum.