About the expectations of investigative results

[StrangerCoug]

I feel like the overall site meta has shifted since my playing heyday to the point that people are taken by surprise when a role messes up their investigative results.

Why do people sometimes get a role and assume there are no other roles that could screw the results up? Let's say you draw cop. Barring sanity shenanigans, you should be able to trust your results

MOST

of the time, but the potential for things like godfathers, millers, etc. prevent you from trusting your results

ALL

the time. The problem I perceive there being is that players will sometimes be over-reliant on their results as a substitute for proper scumhunting and lose as a result.

This isn't a question about whether any particular role is good or bad or how a game should be balanced. I have my strongly-held opinions about both, but I will refrain from voicing them here. Me being a veteran player (though admittedly one that rarely plays anymore) and "growing up" with a different site meta, the failure to consider that there's another role that could have messed up your results seems like a glaring blunder to me. So why does it happen?

[Zachrulez]

The normal queue basically has removed everything that allows for cops to get anything but an accurate result... so that probably accounts for the expectation of accuracy.

[zoraster]

Well the overarching question is this: if you have a powerful power role that has a powerful result, you have two choices, really (a) accept the result with the relatively small chance that there might have been shenanigans or (b) doubt the result despite the fact that there's a small chance of shenanigans.

Played over a large number of games, you're better off just accepting your results unless there's a known reason for your results to be wrong.

[RadiantCowbells]

I once got an inno, said my target was probably godfather anyway, got lynched by town, and my target was in fact godfather and survived and won.

[SpyreX]

I like the interjection the ability to paint doubt brings. I mean i suppose.since statistically towns suck it makes.sense, but i don't like it

[callforjudgement]

I think it's most important that there's a known level of doubt.

A Cop result has very little doubt in a Normal at the moment, as most roles that can interfere with it are banned (and Miller is normally claimed).
A Gunsmith result has considerably more doubt, because there are a lot of known ways it can be interfered with and it's likely that one exists in the setup. (And even if it doesn't, scum can often claim out of a guilty.)
A Tracker result has rather one-sided doubt; if you track someone to a kill, they'd better have a pretty good explanation, whereas if you track them nowhere it doesn't really confirm anything until there's only one scum left.

All these roles are usable (although Cops typically need some sort of modifier to prevent the game being excessively swingy, unless the game is very small).

On the other hand, a role which has an unknown level of usability pretty much comes down to modWIFOM, which is normally considered undesirable. If I aim an unknown-quality investigative role at someone and it says that they're scum, what am I meant to do with that? And if we lynch them and they flip town, should the town then immediately lynch me? So although the ability to paint doubt can be valuable, people should know the circumstances under which it happens. (I've played many games offsite where it's known for a fact that there's a Mafia Tailor in the setup. I don't consider that problematic, even though I think a hidden Tailor is borderline bastard.)

[SpyreX]

I think the fine art of pushing lynches without claiming cop has been lost too.

[zoraster]

has it?

[callforjudgement]

In role madness games, it pretty much has, because night results tend to give enough information that the dayplay is almost worthless.

In more role-light games, though, dayplay (including pushing lynches) is alive and well.

[RadiantCowbells]

Even in role madness, if investigative results make day play unimportant I would say that makes the setup poorly designed, at least for the kind of game that I would want to play.

[SpyreX]

I meant more specific. Mr cop should be able to push his read through without claiming which should stop the whole do we lynch the lying cop

[RadiantCowbells]

Yeah, definitely. The real skill is the fine art of claiming cop with a guilty while not having one.

[callforjudgement]

That's nearly always an incredibly bad idea as town.

I also think it's not done nearly as often as it should be as scum.

[Antihero]

Well the overarching question is this: if you have a powerful power role that has a powerful result, you have two choices, really (a) accept the result with the relatively small chance that there might have been shenanigans or (b) doubt the result despite the fact that there's a small chance of shenanigans.

Played over a large number of games, you're better off just accepting your results unless there's a known reason for your results to be wrong.

^this^

people from when i started out on this site (late 2000s) had this weird idea that there's degrees of "reliance" on role-based info when really it's an all-or-nothing thing. you either accept the role-based information over your reads or you don't and the role-based info means jack shit to you. in other words, this sentence:

The problem I perceive there being is that players will sometimes be over-reliant on their results as a substitute for proper scumhunting and lose as a result.

is nonsense.

in the absence of any obvious reason to believe otherwise, the higher percentage play is always going to be to go with the role-based info over your reads. the reality is that the overwhelming majority of the time, your reads are very unreliable especially compared to investigative results.

[Antihero]

Yeah, definitely. The real skill is the fine art of claiming cop with a guilty while not having one.

if your goal is to destroy games and get yourself on as many blacklists as possible then i suppose you could call that "fine art"

[StrangerCoug]

Well the overarching question is this: if you have a powerful power role that has a powerful result, you have two choices, really (a) accept the result with the relatively small chance that there might have been shenanigans or (b) doubt the result despite the fact that there's a small chance of shenanigans.

Played over a large number of games, you're better off just accepting your results unless there's a known reason for your results to be wrong.

^this^

people from when i started out on this site (late 2000s) had this weird idea that there's degrees of "reliance" on role-based info when really it's an all-or-nothing thing. you either accept the role-based information over your reads or you don't and the role-based info means jack shit to you. in other words, this sentence:

The problem I perceive there being is that players will sometimes be over-reliant on their results as a substitute for proper scumhunting and lose as a result.

is nonsense.

in the absence of any obvious reason to believe otherwise, the higher percentage play is always going to be to go with the role-based info over your reads. the reality is that the overwhelming majority of the time, your reads are very unreliable especially compared to investigative results.

I'm not arguing that the correct play is to completely ignore your role-based information; if it were, then the role would be pointless. I'm arguing that there's the occasional player that goes with the role-based info over his or her reads

EVEN IN THE PRESENCE

of an obvious reason not to.

[MichelSableheart]

For me, the matter is the comparison of cop to gunsmith.

The mod tells the cop: "the person you investigated is innocent" and at the end of the game tells him "actually, he wasn't innocent, he was a godfather"
The mod tells the gunsmith: "the person you investigated does not have a gun" and at the end of the game tells him: "that did not mean he was not mafia though."

One is the mod intentionally giving incorrect information to the players, the other isn't.

I have played in a game where the mod used doc "sanities" when I was completely unaware that these could exist. The result was an extremely unpleasant experience for me, because I was not even aware that my role could do what it was actually doing. If you want unreliability in a role, it's better to make that unreliability explicit, so that you don't take newcomers by surprise.

[StrangerCoug]

For me, the matter is the comparison of cop to gunsmith.

The mod tells the cop: "the person you investigated is innocent" and at the end of the game tells him "actually, he wasn't innocent, he was a godfather"
The mod tells the gunsmith: "the person you investigated does not have a gun" and at the end of the game tells him: "that did not mean he was not mafia though."

One is the mod intentionally giving incorrect information to the players, the other isn't.

The mod doesn't lie to the cop entirely voluntarily, though, and I think it's this confusion that's led people to believe that cop is bastard. The presence of the godfather (or miller, framer, sanities, and the like) in the setup so that the mod could

potentially

lie to the cop

IS

voluntary by the mod. His hands become tied once the setup is approved, however, and the mod has to give results according to role being investigated and, depending on the setup, the other night actions. You don't tell cops someone is innocent or someone is guilty based on what you feel like at the moment unless you want to be called a bastard mod.

You have the point that a gunsmith knows he can potentially get false positives, though (the false negative you describe, too, but less frequently), and in a normal game the godfather is not immune to the gunsmith.

[SpyreX]

Your result is innocent versus the player is innocent. I don't think that is too much of a change but it should be how it is anywho.

[Antihero]

I'm not arguing that the correct play is to completely ignore your role-based information; if it were, then the role would be pointless. I'm arguing that there's the occasional player that goes with the role-based info over his or her reads EVEN IN THE PRESENCE of an obvious reason not to.

what you're describing (treating non-definitive innos like definitive innos) is just straight up bad play but i haven't really seen that be a common problem. you cited godfathers in your OP though, and that is very, very far from an obvious reason not to trust a cop inno considering godfather is not ubiquitous in the site meta. there's not really an intelligent way to speculate on the presence of a godfather in any given setup so if that's what you're supposed to be wary of, you're either stuck waiting for a godfather flip and hand waving away all your negative results for a role that may or may not be in the setup. it's a risk that's impossible to calculate from an uninformed position (i.e. while the game is ongoing) and that's why godfather is a shitty role that died the death it deserved.

gunsmith/scum doc is an improvement on the cop/godfather dynamic, but not much of one. hypothetically, a scum doc could claim their real role so that would render a gunsmith negative nondefinitive. but a savvy scum doc will probably not claim their real role which would functionally make them a godfather.

[mhsmith0]

Yeah, definitely. The real skill is the fine art of claiming cop with a guilty while not having one.

if your goal is to destroy games and get yourself on as many blacklists as possible then i suppose you could call that "fine art"

Softing a guilty, or "if I'm the cop he's mafia but I'm not hard claiming" are SUPER fun plays as VT on a scum read. But it's an art to do it without screwing up a game and to know when to back off. But when done right it's a thing of beauty. Best is when the actual cop has an actual guilty and you take the bullet for them.

[mhsmith0]

Also GF in an open or semi open or large theme is ok. In a closed mini its bullshit.

[Antihero]

my answer to the OP is that, generally, roles should do what the role PM says it does. if cops have an expectation they're getting alignments (which is what a standard cop role PM provides), they should get alignments.

[mhsmith0]

In an open setup though where it is KNOWN that result might be false, though, I still think that's fine. A surprise GF is bs tho.

[SpyreX]

my answer to the OP is that, generally, roles should do what the role PM says it does. if cops have an expectation they're getting alignments (which is what a standard cop role PM provides), they should get alignments.

The role does what it says. It's just that another role affected it.

Just like what millions of roles do. Unless were on the path of doc being bad cause a scum pm says a kill.