How or when have you felt you got better at playing mafia?

[Vampirate]

\o/ OH LORDS OF ZEEBUS, CANTAILS OF YANDER, BESTOW YOUR UNDERSTANDINGS OF WHEN YOU HAVE CROSSED THE YONDER TRAIL INTO THE NEW TERRITORY. \o/


Jokes aside, when have you felt that you have actually improved upon your game?

Personally I feel like I always have, I suck at the game.

[KuroiXHF]

It's when you insult people.

It's like when I bought a headset for my Playstation. I told people that they sucked much faster.

That's when I knew I was the best.

[Majiffy]

[kuribo]

The first time I saw people refer to me as an example of a good player in a game I wasn't in.

The first time I realized a term I had coined had fallen into usage among the Mafiascum lexicon

[zMuffinMan]

improving as a player is about incorporating things into your play that prevent you making mistakes that you've made in the past, or at least reduce the chance you make those mistakes again

really, any time you consider what you're doing, what you're trying to achieve and what strategies you've employed in the past (as well was how successful those strategies were) and then make an informed decision about a particular action based on this, you're improving as a player (because regardless of the outcome, approaching the game like that will slowly improve your overall play)

biggest examples for me personally are whenever i come up with something new to deceive players who are very familiar with me, or whenever i start seeing the cracks in the play of someone im familiar with

[Marquis]

I got better as town when

1) I near-completely stopped trying to apply across the board tells and generic reasons for someone being scum and instead tried to analyze others as individuals to get a sense of their personality and how comfortable they appear to be at any given moment and

2) when I prioritized townhunting over scumhunting because a) there's a lot more town than scum and if being right more often isn't a hell of a morale booster and b) town and scum will both say a lot of stupid scummy shit but you can still nail town down for sure when you see a single undeniably town post (in other words: a town player will make lots of posts that sound scummy but if they make even one post that screams town and you find it incredibly hard to believe it came from scum, go ahead and isolate that, throw the rest of their body of work away and call the slot town)

I got better as scum when

1) I started posting a lot and brainwashing myself that no matter what dumb shit I spewed, they wouldn't lynch me. No Fear is the best fake town mindset and the best defense

2) can't really think of a number 2 lol

[Marquis]

I started posting a lot

but honestly this is the easiest way to get townread as either alignment like it or not

big walls and people get scared that you're cunning and going to trick them

mindless spam and people will get annoyed but they'll reluctantly put you in their townreads because effort-is-town is the kind of subconscious read influences

[Cheery Dog]

When I stopped playing.

[McMenno]

that's the trick, right

I didn't

[KuroiXHF]

2) can't really think of a number 2 lol

I can.

[Infinity 324]

I got better as town when

1) I near-completely stopped trying to apply across the board tells and generic reasons for someone being scum and instead tried to analyze others as individuals to get a sense of their personality and how comfortable they appear to be at any given moment and

2) when I prioritized townhunting over scumhunting because a) there's a lot more town than scum and if being right more often isn't a hell of a morale booster and b) town and scum will both say a lot of stupid scummy shit but you can still nail town down for sure when you see a single undeniably town post (in other words: a town player will make lots of posts that sound scummy but if they make even one post that screams town and you find it incredibly hard to believe it came from scum, go ahead and isolate that, throw the rest of their body of work away and call the slot town)

This so much

[mastin2]

Wait.

People are supposed to get

better

at mafia over time?

Shit, I've been doing it wrong this whole time!

[Firebringer]

I always felt that the goal for every player, and myself included, was to improve to become better.
The thing about improvement in mafia, is you can get better in some areas, but its difficult to maintain.

The game evolves. The things you notice as incredible tells, change fast.

I have seen improvements in my play over a period of time.
I saw huge dips in my abilities.
At this moment, I am probably a worse player than when I started in some areas.

I think its hard to get a standard set of improvement you try to do in the game of Mafia versus almost any other game.

[callforjudgement]

Wait.

People are supposed to get

better

at mafia over time?

Shit, I've been doing it wrong this whole time!

You've been spending your time trying to make everyone else better so that you look worse in comparison.
That's a pretty worthy goal.

[BrainpanSonata]

Usually when The Power of Teamwork™ turns it into a (nearly) flawless victory.

[Davsto]

I felt I got significantly better after a drop in game count - that is, playing 2 or 3 games at once rather than 6 or 7.

[Accountant]

When I learned to stop tunnelling.

[Equinox]

I felt I got significantly better after a drop in game count - that is, playing 2 or 3 games at once rather than 6 or 7.

This cannot be stated enough. Playing well takes focus, and that is not possible when you are spreading limited amounts of free time and motivation across several games. Limiting yourself to one or two games also forces you to do as well as humanly possible because failures hit that much harder.

[Katsuki]

I got significantly better at mafia when I started sheeping Equinox.

[Postie]

When I learned to stop tunnelling.

This. Although I can't say I'm anywhere close to having fully unlearnt it yet.

[mastin2]

I got significantly better at playing mafia when I learned to tunnel.

[Postie]

Well there are good tunnels and bad tunnels. Good tunnels generate helpful content and/or result in scum getting lynched. Bad tunnels are where you dig yourself deeper and deeper into a confbiased hole that stops you from functioning properly and distracts everyone. The latter is what I'm trying to avoid.

[Accountant]

Accountant's Tunnelling Rule: If the tunnel is likely to be unproductive even if the tunnellee is indeed scum, it's a bad tunnel.

[Transcend]

when I get less L's than W's.

[kuribo]

I've only lost three games this year, two if you don't count the one where I was modules Day 1 because of someone else mentioning my alignment in another game. Which I don't. So I've only lost two games this year.


Course I've only played five so...



In 2015 I didn't lose any games I don't think, but I only played two and one was a tie.