[Meta] Newbie Experience (Formerly IC replace rate thread)

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Post Post #150 (ISO) » Thu Jul 27, 2017 12:11 pm

Post by PenguinPower »

Keep up the discussion, but note that before I start looking at changes I have to get acclimated to my role. If you have anything you would like to discuss directly with me in the meantime, feel free to shoot me a PM.
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Post Post #151 (ISO) » Thu Jul 27, 2017 12:12 pm

Post by Cabd »

In post 149, PenguinPower wrote:I swear, some of you are reading my mind.
That's because we can.
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Post Post #152 (ISO) » Thu Jul 27, 2017 5:13 pm

Post by Sunlit Diamond »

In post 139, Dunnstral wrote:
In post 138, Sunlit Diamond wrote:Going off the meta in my homesite alone I'd say MS gets a decent number of newbies who are not at all prepared for how intent people get in their play here.
What do you mean? Like, how serious non-newbies get about the game?
Yes, and even some other newbies :P

My original comment wasn't a criticism, by the way, just a thought on why some people may vanish.
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Post Post #153 (ISO) » Thu Jul 27, 2017 7:32 pm

Post by Gamma Emerald »

My homesite's players would have a hard time adapting to the escalation of the games here I think
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Post Post #154 (ISO) » Fri Jul 28, 2017 11:57 am

Post by mastina »

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Post Post #155 (ISO) » Fri Jul 28, 2017 3:17 pm

Post by Keychain »

Congratulations on the position, Penguin! You were a great mod for Emperor and I'm sure you'll be an equally great listmod.

I'm very much in favour of collecting information via survey from newbies and would be happy to help out with that.

Getting some more information directly from them regarding their experiences would do a lot to help figure out what factors are important (and which ones aren't) and which are actually within your control.
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Post Post #156 (ISO) » Fri Jul 28, 2017 5:28 pm

Post by Ircher »

In post 143, Cabd wrote:1. IC reviews
~As a IC review group?
~By the moderator of the game?
~By the skittle directly?

2. Newbie feedback
~By google forms?
~Something baked into the game?
~Just publicly in the thread post-game?
1a. Possibly
1b. Definitely -- I personally think the moderator is the most likely one to spot issues with ICs.
1c. Maybe, but a) sounds better.
2a. Sounds good.
2b. Um... Elaborate?
2c. That too I guess (harder ti track)
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Post Post #157 (ISO) » Sun Jul 30, 2017 8:35 pm

Post by JaeReed »

In post 145, fferyllt wrote:In terms of making queue transitions easier/more painless I have some thoughts (as a game mod) about designing and running some micro/mini games that are meant to be explicitly newbie-friendly though open to anyone who's ok with abiding by the ruleset I'd want to enforce.

I don't really have any details worth sharing about it atm, but I get the impression there might be a need/demand for that kind of game occasionally.
This would be a good idea, imo.
When I was forced outta the newbie queue it sucked hardcore. I felt way outta my league and also I felt like the general tone of players had changed. (Probably wasn't a good idea to go to the open queue first but meh.)
dunno if that would be a problem that all newbies feel but that was my experience anyways.
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Post Post #158 (ISO) » Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:42 am

Post by Srceenplay »

Why do you need an ic?
The are many good ic posts out there already. Can't one just be updated as a new generic post for the start of all games by the mod.

Have the mod and SE's share the burden of the ic slot.
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Post Post #159 (ISO) » Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:48 am

Post by mastina »

In post 158, Srceenplay wrote:Why do you need an ic?
Basically: There is no substitute for a player able to give live feedback without repercussions to the feedback containing game content--game moderators cannot give help without it being mod interference until postgame; SEs are under no obligation to teach and can themselves be essentially newbies experience-wise.
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Post Post #160 (ISO) » Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:51 am

Post by fferyllt »

In post 158, Srceenplay wrote:Why do you need an ic?
The are many good ic posts out there already. Can't one just be updated as a new generic post for the start of all games by the mod.

Have the mod and SE's share the burden of the ic slot.
Good ICs do more than this. They speak up when a "teachable moment" occurs. There is no way to lay out all the contingencies that can/are likely to come up in one post, and even if there were, a post that long and dense with general info not yet specific to the game would tend to be glossed over.

Good SEs (who are usually qualified to IC, too) could also speak up about how theory and the current gamestate apply, but that's not something that a player who might have as little as 3 games worth of experience should be expected to do. It would also basically require that all SEs agree to the constraints that ICs play under.

A mod could also speak up, but there are two problems with that - it eats away a little at the real (in the mod's head) and perceived (in the newbie players' heads) impartiality of the mod. And it also requires a level of paying attention to what's happening in the game that would be similar to an IC player's involvement. I know some mods follow their games almost as immersed as if they were playing, but it's not a requirement of them, and if it were it would probably cut down on the number of people willing to mod
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Post Post #161 (ISO) » Tue Aug 01, 2017 9:06 am

Post by Firebringer »

90% of ICs are shit though.
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Post Post #162 (ISO) » Tue Aug 01, 2017 9:10 am

Post by mhsmith0 »

I'd say more like 60-70%, but yeah way too many :(
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Post Post #163 (ISO) » Tue Aug 01, 2017 9:22 am

Post by Keychain »

Having played as a newbie in a game that didn't really have an IC, it just happened that the SEs tried to pick up the slack.

That was great, but it didn't really negate the need for an IC-like player to generally help us figure out what to do. If you wanted to make this a more standard practice you would need to still make sure that one or more of the SEs is willing to take on this teaching kind of role (I'm just setting aside for now the idea of the mod doing it), in which case you've pretty much got yourself an IC situation going on by a different name but with less ability to troubleshoot it.

Can I ask - what do you consider a shit IC? Like is there some defining characteristic or is it a whole bunch of things?
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Post Post #164 (ISO) » Wed Aug 09, 2017 9:48 pm

Post by Nero Cain »

In post 161, Firebringer wrote:90% of ICs are shit though.
In post 162, mhsmith0 wrote:I'd say more like 60-70%, but yeah way too many :(
This was kinda my thinking with an IC "group". Like I guess it's a bit elitist and all but a group of "good ICs seemed like a good idea to me.
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edited c.s. lewis quote b/c limit
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Post Post #165 (ISO) » Fri Aug 11, 2017 5:56 am

Post by fferyllt »

In post 161, Firebringer wrote:90% of ICs are shit though.
If true, that's a problem to solve, but I don't think it's an argument for expecting SEs to play the way ICs are expected to play.
Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help.

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Post Post #166 (ISO) » Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:40 pm

Post by Lycanfire »

Current discussion can go here

Page 20 of the Mafiawiki thread has become a hit piece on ICs. Can the IC Review group chime in? Or at least can we put the complaints here.

I'll add my piece: there doesn't ever need to be more than 1 IC in a game. Having an IC to begin with is just an insurance policy of "hey at least one person is volunteering to answer questions and not show newbies how to game throw". If I can think of anything that would make the experience *better* it would be having interesting setups that people want to sign up for, and adding more SEs. Basically I'm suggesting the entire site meta improves and is never toxic. I know it's hard to accept, but this is what peak performance looks like.
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Post Post #167 (ISO) » Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:49 pm

Post by Katyusha »

In post 166, Lycanfire wrote:Basically I'm suggesting the entire site meta improves and is never toxic.
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Post Post #168 (ISO) » Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:55 pm

Post by Lycanfire »

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Post Post #169 (ISO) » Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:52 pm

Post by LicketyQuickety »

I would totally IC more than SE, but I am not suited for such things...
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Post Post #170 (ISO) » Fri Mar 30, 2018 3:36 am

Post by AnonymousGhost »

In post 23, singersigner wrote:To be honest, ICs don't need to be good. They just need to be able to answer questions and set some sort of minimal standard for posting and activity (i.e. one post per day that says literally anything substantial blah blah blah). Somehow it seems like ICing has turned into
a crazy standard of excellence
when it should really just be "this is how not to suck as a person...hopefully you don't suck as a player either."
This.

I don't know a lot of the in's and out's of various theories and how they can apply to an in-game situation - I still have difficulties recalling what makes MyLo different from LyLo (not the other way around though, thankfully).

Mostly, I'm afraid of giving the newbies bad advice about theories and then the use that bad advice in future games and screw up.
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Post Post #171 (ISO) » Fri Mar 30, 2018 5:07 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

It's not necessarily player skill I'm talking about though that's been an issue in the past for the record
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Post Post #172 (ISO) » Fri Mar 30, 2018 5:26 am

Post by mhsmith0 »

In post 166, Lycanfire wrote:I'll add my piece: there doesn't ever need to be more than 1 IC in a game. Having an IC to begin with is just an insurance policy of "hey at least one person is volunteering to answer questions and not show newbies how to game throw". If I can think of anything that would make the experience *better* it would be having interesting setups that people want to sign up for, and adding more SEs. Basically I'm suggesting the entire site meta improves and is never toxic. I know it's hard to accept, but this is what peak performance looks like.
Objectively speaking, if we had a stack of quality IC's who wanted to go in a bunch of newbie games, having newbie games with 2 IC's instead of 1 would be substantially better as a learning experience for newbies. There's a LOT to be said for being in a game with quality players who are willing to both teach where relevant and set a good example of play, while avoiding bad things like:

toxicity;
replacing out because they're losing / game isn't fun / game is too slow / game is too fast / there's someone in player list they don't like / etc etc;
lurking;
massively shitting up the thread;
etc

I'm also not remotely opposed to a newbie game meta where there are fewer SE slots overall. IC slots exist to teach and set a good example; newbie slots are there to learn and grow. SE slots are mainly there to help fill up a game because there aren't enough IC's and/or newbies to make the game fire. SE players also have even less oversight than IC players (not that IC players currently have much in the way of oversight); as far as I can tell there is essentially nothing you can do as an SE to get banned from the newbie queue unless you're banned from the site and/or mafia games in general. So, for instance, all of the bad things listed above have, from what I can tell, no actual consequences beyond "toxicity that's so bad that you get banned".
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Post Post #173 (ISO) » Fri Mar 30, 2018 5:34 am

Post by mhsmith0 »

In post 163, Keychain wrote:Can I ask - what do you consider a shit IC? Like is there some defining characteristic or is it a whole bunch of things?
In terms of "shit IC", I'd probably say it's a pretty decent variety of things actually.

Some IC's put forth precisely zero effort into teaching anyone anything, beyond throwing up some intro post at the start and (maybe) answering questions directly addressed to them about theory
Some IC's replace out because they completely siteflaked, or because they made the thread toxic, or for various other reasons that should be completely unacceptable for IC's (an IC who replaces out barring a very good reason should just automatically be banned from the newbie queue for at least 2-3 months; I think SE's who do this should also have consequences, but that's something that is clearly not going to ever actually happen)
Some IC's have absolutely no clue what they're doing as players, and thus even if they're trying, are incapable of teaching anything useful
Some IC's lurk;
Some IC's decide that engaging in communication and back and forth with players is boring, and instead find it more fun to just derptunnel some random slot and hope it flips scum;
Almost certainly other shit that I'm forgetting off the cuff

And ftr, all of the above is stuff I've seen from TOWN IC's (in games I've played, or modded, or just observed), so I'm not even getting into the issues that exist when someone is a scum IC and needs to balance pursuit of wincon with the responsibilities of being an IC.
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Conq: you, sir, are great at being town.
BATMAN: Only jugg was the only one we didn’t scum read at least not me
Quick: There is little to no chance this slot is Power-Wolfing.
SR: I want to give him a day
Life is simply unfair, don't you think?
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Post Post #174 (ISO) » Fri Mar 30, 2018 7:39 am

Post by Zachrulez »

In post 158, Srceenplay wrote:Why do you need an ic?
The are many good ic posts out there already. Can't one just be updated as a new generic post for the start of all games by the mod.

Have the mod and SE's share the burden of the ic slot.
Given that people generally choose to SE because they don't want the burden of the IC slot this is a terrible idea.
In post 173, mhsmith0 wrote:
In post 163, Keychain wrote:Can I ask - what do you consider a shit IC? Like is there some defining characteristic or is it a whole bunch of things?
In terms of "shit IC", I'd probably say it's a pretty decent variety of things actually.

Some IC's put forth precisely zero effort into teaching anyone anything, beyond throwing up some intro post at the start and (maybe) answering questions directly addressed to them about theory
Some IC's replace out because they completely siteflaked, or because they made the thread toxic, or for various other reasons that should be completely unacceptable for IC's (an IC who replaces out barring a very good reason should just automatically be banned from the newbie queue for at least 2-3 months; I think SE's who do this should also have consequences, but that's something that is clearly not going to ever actually happen)
Some IC's have absolutely no clue what they're doing as players, and thus even if they're trying, are incapable of teaching anything useful
Some IC's lurk;
Some IC's decide that engaging in communication and back and forth with players is boring, and instead find it more fun to just derptunnel some random slot and hope it flips scum;
Almost certainly other shit that I'm forgetting off the cuff

And ftr, all of the above is stuff I've seen from TOWN IC's (in games I've played, or modded, or just observed), so I'm not even getting into the issues that exist when someone is a scum IC and needs to balance pursuit of wincon with the responsibilities of being an IC.
You make being an IC sound really complicated. An IC is really just more experienced than the other players in a newbie game on this site. Your main job is to teach people how to play on this site. For the most part all that requires is for you to play the game and then give post game tips after it's over. Occasionally you might find the odd player or two who have no idea what they're doing and you might need to prod/guide them into what to do. But really it's not that complicated. The experience is going to teach the players way more than the IC ever actually will. People tend to overvalue the role of the IC in general in the learning process.
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