Hydra free zones.

[Thestatusquo]

Hey Folks, I know this is going to probably be a contentious topic, but I'm not going to be attacking anything or spelling out why I think hydras are awful and don't enjoy playing with them. It's enough to simply state that I hate it.

This used to not be a big deal. Hydras were relatively uncommon, and you would see at most one in a game every few games you would play. That was fine, I could put up with that. Since then, hydras have become much more popular and common on the board. I understand why this is. Mafia is a social game and its fun to play with your friends in the same slot. The problem with this is that it does not leave much space in specific queues for players like me who strongly dislike both the concept of hydras and the experience of playing with them.

I was thinking about this today, as in another forum today someone posted a poll that asked "whats your favorite game to play." I answered mini normal, because normals are the only game queue I can play these days that doesn't have hydras everywhere.

This is unfortunate, as I actually like mini themes, but I can't play them anymore if I want to play mafia that does not involve hydras. The last 5 times I have been interested in a theme and have either thought about signing up or actually sign up I am unable to go through with it because the game has hydras in it.

Like I said, I long ago gave up the crusade for hydras to be banned as cheating outright, and this thread isn't about that. I understand why people like them and I'm happy for people to play with them, I'd just like to be able to play mini themes again.

The old system of allowing moderators to decide whether hydras were to be allowed in their games made a lot of sense on paper, and in theory it was supposed to create space for both players who liked and did not like hydras. In practice, it hasn't really worked. I think it would be nice if there were some sort of system which could create a place that was hydra free for mini themes. Maybe a restriction that one game has to allow hydras and one game has to not allow hydras in the queue at the time. This is not without precedent. We currently only allow one bastard game in queue at a time.

In case someone wants to be clever and point out that there is a mini theme in queue right now that does not allow hydras, that's ultimately irrelevant to both my point and my request, since I'm not claiming there are no mini themes without hydras ever, just that its pretty difficult to consistently get in them.

Keep it civil guys!

[SleepyKrew]

I don't allow hydras in my games you should play the games I mod

[Firebringer]

I don't allow hydras in my games you should play the games I mod

You mod games?
Next you are going to tell me you play mafia.

[Thestatusquo]

Are you like completely incapable of making substantive contributions to things?

[Firebringer]

Are you like completely incapable of making substantive contributions to things?

Want to talk about your personal problems? We can PM man, I am here to talk.
You are obviously hurting if you want to lash out at everyone.

[Cheery Dog]

I don't think you can really restrict every second theme in that way, even if I mostly agree with there being too many hydras around, it's likely to just extend the problem into that other game.

Unless it manages to reduce the amount of hydras that are around, if that happens everyone wins

[Thestatusquo]

I agree that it might not be the ideal fix. This thread is mainly brainstorming a solution to the issue that people who like themes but find hydras really detract from their experience in a game are really left out in the cold in the current system.

Open to other suggestions for how this might be fixed.

[Firebringer]

The old system of allowing moderators to decide whether hydras were to be allowed in their games made a lot of sense on paper, and in theory it was supposed to create space for both players who liked and did not like hydras. In practice, it hasn't really worked. I think it would be nice if there were some sort of system which could create a place that was hydra free for mini themes. Maybe a restriction that one game has to allow hydras and one game has to not allow hydras in the queue at the time. This is not without precedent. We currently only allow one bastard game in queue at a time.

Wouldn't this require hosts who might actually want to have hydras in game to now force them to not have them? Essentially saying 'You gotta do no hydras if you want to run your game right now", so they wait till other hydra game finishes the queue to join.

I mean if more people want non hydra games. And saying their is an actual strong demand for it. That should mean mods would be filling that demand, but most mods are like most players. They don't mind hydras in their games.

So thats what you have. I don't think you can force a cultural change like this without outright banning their use. Which will create other problems.

Its like when I said I hated Closed games and wish there were few. The reality is that majority liked closed, and thats what we have. If more liked open. THats what we wouild have.

[Thestatusquo]

There are a couple of key points here.

First, this change would not force people to not have hydras if they didnt want them. It would just split the queue into two.

Second, even if it did do that, I think in general most people would agree that moderators can be forced to do things they dont want for the good of the players. This is why we review games for normalcy, for instance. I can't run a cult in my normal game even though I think cults are great. We routinely ask moderators to conform to certain requirements of the queues. This isn't any different from any of those other requirements.

Third, your example of closed games doesn't really work because what I'm suggesting here happened with open and closed games! Open and closed games both used to be run as mini normals or themes, until it was realized that this system didnt work and then the open game queue was created. People wanted to regularly have the option to play both open and non open setups, so that is why we have an open queue and an open forum.

Like your example is literally proof that what I'm suggesting has been done before and worked...

[Firebringer]

There are a couple of key points here.

First, this change would not force people to not have hydras if they didnt want them. It would just split the queue into two.

Second, even if it did do that, I think in general most people would agree that moderators can be forced to do things they dont want for the good of the players. This is why we review games for normalcy, for instance. I can't run a cult in my normal game even though I think cults are great. We routinely ask moderators to conform to certain requirements of the queues. This isn't any different from any of those other requirements.

Third, your example of closed games doesn't really work because what I'm suggesting here happened with open and closed games! Open and closed games both used to be run as mini normals or themes, until it was realized that this system didnt work and then the open game queue was created. People wanted to regularly have the option to play both open and non open setups, so that is why we have an open queue and an open forum.

Like your example is literally proof that what I'm suggesting has been done before and worked...

Okay, going into this.

1) You are implying that again, their is enough demand for Non Hydra games to demand 50/50 split in the Mini Theme queue. I can't name the last Mini Theme that had 0 hydras. You see a problem with this?

2) Normalcy in a normal games isn't being argued here. There are standards for games. This is a change on player structure, not in actual setup.

3) This suggests there was a high enough demand at one point to cause this to happen though. If you only have 1-2 Open games every few months in the Normal Queue, I don't think there would be enough demand for people to want to create a separate queue for it. [Though open queue does feel pretty slow at times]

My suggestions are this:
Mod non hydra games yourself, to help increase their prevalence.
Ask your favorite mods to make their games no hydra games. Just a simple request.
Seek out like minded players and join a game in a group so that you ensure no hydras are in it.

[Thestatusquo]

1) I think enough people don't care about whether they have hydras or not in their game that both games would fill at roughly the same pace. I think there are some people who really like hydras and some people who really hate hydras and a whole lot of people who don't care at all about them.

2) I don't think you understood my point. I was saying that restrictions are often put on moderators in response to you saying this would force moderators to do things they wouldn't otherwise do. My point has nothing to do with normalcy at all. I just used normal requirements of an example of one time when we do this. There are numerous other examples. For instance, we make people get backup mods for large games.

3) There is a high enough demand for mini themes. Are you making the argument that people who are not playing in a hydra would en masse decide that hydras not being allowed in that game was a reason for them not to play? Thats just silly. The people who don't care about hydras either way would play in both games, probably roughly equally.

your suggestions do nothing to change the problem, which is that there is a significant group of players that is currently basically excluded from playing mini themes.

[Expedience]

I mildly dislike hydras.

An entire game of players wouldn't be necessary, you could join games together as groups of 3 / 4 people and abuse WOTC to prevent hydras from joining. Since according to the other thread WOTC is by default.

[Quilford]

you could do if there's a non-hydra game in the queue, it jumps a spot each time a hydras-allowed game fills

[Thestatusquo]

I think its unreasonable to suggest that I should have to round up a group of friends and then forcefully exclude people from a game they /inned for each time I want to play a mini theme.

Especially when shifting the queue slightly would work perfectly and not be nearly that violent of a solution.

[Firebringer]

I think its unreasonable to suggest that I should have to round up a group of friends and then forcefully exclude people from a game they /inned for each time I want to play a mini theme.

Especially when shifting the queue slightly would work perfectly and not be nearly that violent of a solution.

And asking a mod to make a game before it enters sign ups to make their game a "Non Hydra" Is also unreasonable?

[Thestatusquo]

I dont see why that is preferable to my solution, firebringer.

[Wisdom]

An entire game of players wouldn't be necessary, you could join games together as groups of 3 / 4 people and abuse WOTC to prevent hydras from joining. Since according to the other thread WOTC is by default.

I think this happens in practice, I've seen mods saying they won't allow hydras because people who had signed up requested it.

[Firebringer]

Consider me officially on board for a second for the sake of argument TSQ.

Lets say that list mods decide not to change their policy though. Would you say my suggestion might be somewhat able to mitigate your problem?

Like, I wouldn't mind having it so we do 3 sign ups at once and 1 of those could be designated "non hydra" or something as such. I just don't see a portion of the site is anti hydra as you. I see anti hydra talk outside of games in GD and other areas, but not in the games themselves.

[Cheetory6]

but not in the games themselves.

That could be because the people who don't play aren't playing because there are hydras?

[zoraster]

I agree hydras are usually really only positive experiences for those in the hydras and even then often it ends in one of the users posting far more than the other.

One thing I think actually could make a difference is if at sign up, along with the other questions listmods ask to sign up (e.g. game name, etc.) every new game mod would be asked to answer whether or not hydras are allowed.

That simple change would make it so that the default wouldn't necessarily be "hydras are allowed" or basically "I hadn't thought about hydras until one signed up and sure why not" into an actual decision a game mod would make. That in turn would make it easier for players to avoid or engage with hydra games as they want without signing up for a game and then later finding out the mod took a hydra.

[Thestatusquo]

cThat simple change would make it so that the default wouldn't necessarily be "hydras are allowed" or basically "I hadn't thought about hydras until one signed up and sure why not" into an actual decision a game mod would make. That in turn would make it easier for players to avoid or engage with hydra games as they want without signing up for a game and then later finding out the mod took a hydra.

I think this is a big part of the problem. I don't think mods are pro hydra so much as they are just ambivalent about hydras and if never asked to think about it they end up in the game.

That being said, I think some sort of split in the queue would probably be better from an administrative standpoint because it would allow for both pro and anti hydra players to be able to get in a game of their choosing at any time as opposed to wanting to sign up for a theme and not being able to until someone who has the right policy happens to be in signups.

Though in the end I'll just be happy when 9 out of 10 themes don't have hydras in them anymore.

[Alchemist21]

Most Queues run two games at a time, so having one game allow hydras and the other to not allow hydras would probably work. Just have the mods say which they'll allow when they /in to mod. Since a lot of people don't care, I don't think it would be hard to find mods willing to ban hydras in their games if the Queue needs more non-hydra games, and a lot of players would sign up regardless of whether the game was anti-hydra or not.

[BNL]

I'm not sure if this is a concern, but I'm pretty sure one side effect of splitting hydra/non-hydra is that since the average number of hydras per game will likely not change, it will cause more hydras in games that do allow one. 1/2 hydra per game is usually fine while three is too much, so basically by turning 1/2 hydras into 0/3 hydras we've turned a non-problem into a problem.

[Cheetory6]

Hydra limits are a thing.

[Alchemist21]

I'm not sure if this is a concern, but I'm pretty sure one side effect of splitting hydra/non-hydra is that since the average number of hydras per game will likely not change, it will cause more hydras in games that do allow one. 1/2 hydra per game is usually fine while three is too much, so basically by turning 1/2 hydras into 0/3 hydras we've turned a non-problem into a problem.

I don't think that would be a problem since people who don't want that would now have the option of just joining the game with no hydras. If it is actually a problem, then what if intead of actually splitting we have the queues all run a third game from an indpendent queue for non-hydra games? This was my first idea but thought it might be too much for listmods to have 3 games in signups at once, so I went with Shea's idea.

If we can't get any changes to site policy, then alternatively I think we could make a usergroup of game mods who all agree upon joining that their games will explicitly not allow hydras. I think this would make non-hydra games appear less frequently than they would with the above ideas, but they would still appear with a regular frequency (given enough people join the group).