On Self-Appraisal
aka "Everyone On This Site Needs A Goddamn Reality Check"
I'm not currently a Great Player.
I can carry games in the Newbie Queue and the Open Queue, and I'd like to think I'm pretty good at reading newbies/lynchbait players. Part of why I don't play in the Newbie Queue that much is because I don't think me using newbie tells on everyone is representative of the rest of the site.
But outside of those queues, if you, for example, told me to get a solid confident read on xRECKONERx, or RadiantCowbells, I'd look at you like "Are you crazy?" Same goes for most 2016/17 players.
Playing Town Is Hard
Playing town in forum mafia is a game of probabilities (credit to mastina). Your job is to process a MASSIVE amount of input, weigh the evidence, and come out with people more likely to be town and more likely to be scum. Charisma and getting lynches is a different skill. The first step is scumreading scum and townreading town.
But how often do you do that? Really. Actually. Go back through your game history on, say, D1s, and check your top scumreads and townreads. How often are they correct? Here's 3 games of my own:
Spoiler: My Game History
These were strange circumstances at times, but we'll run with it.
3/8 correct scumreads (not counting cop guilty or Creature) = 37.5%
11/12 correct townreads = 92%
Completely random D1 reads gives 25% accurate scumreads and 75% accurate townreads. I did better than that. Should I be totally certain of my scumreads on D1? Of course not, I've been wrong before and have mislynched town on D1 a bunch. But what if everyone were 37.5% accurate?
I wrote a program that plurality lynches the town's top scumread on D1 with mountainous 10:3 (super scumsided setup). Scum's reads are random. My mode algorithm is slightly scumsided, so the program is about 1% off. Anyway.
If town is 37.5% accurate, scum is lynched D1 40% of the time.
That's VERY good.If town is random (25% accurate), scum is lynched only 21% of the time.
Why? Scum won't lynch themselves, so they're likely to be wrong!Feel free to input your own accuracy rates, or clone the program and change the player count and scumteam size.
The point is, while 37.5% accurate isn't the best thing ever, if we all followed our 37.5% accurate leads, town would easily win most games.
If your own reads are around random,
. Mafia is hard, scum is good on this site, and forum mafia lends itself to bad reads. that's okay
But you need to recognise when they are essentially random.
Play To Your Strengths
When I started out, my scumhunting was godawful (like all 3 scumreads are town). Over time, I realised that what I
can
do is townhunt players with a >90% accuracy rate. I'm a towntell reliant player; in a 13p game there are almost always 3 or more people that bleed town.What if you can lock 3 people as town and be confident about it?
If you can get to a 92% accuracy rate for your strong townreads, there is a 78% chance you're right about all of them. And if you can make sure town never lynches any of them?
The open setup Friends and Enemies with 3 masons vs 3 mafia is roughly balanced. So if you can make damn sure town doesn't lynch your 3 townreads, you've turned a 10:3 mountainous game into a balanced setup, 78% of the time.
That's the power of PoE.
Disclaimer: Of course, your townreads will probably also get shot, so it's not quite like masons, but you get the point.
There are a lot of strengths you can play to:
- Better at townhunting? Lynch anyone outside your 3 townreads and you'll lynch scum 33% of the time in minis.
- Recognise a player in game you know you can read? Sort just those players. Personal experience with players is invaluable; learn how to meta well and how not to meta badly.
- Does a player look easily readable? Read through their previous games, and try to predict their alignments. If they're always town when you townread them, you can townhunt them. If they're always scum when you scumread them, you can scumhunt then.
- Got charisma but bad reads? Convince the rest of the playerlist to play to THEIR strengths. Sort people by using everyone else.
Maybe you've done all you can, but you still can't solve enough.
Know Your Weaknesses
I can name dozens of players that I can't D1 read for shit. When you start out onsite, almost every player will be near unreadable. But consider this scenario:
- You're in a game, and Almost50 claims "northsidegal is definitely town this game". He has good reasons. You can't read Almost50 or northsidegal. But you notice that Almost50 has 90% accuracy at reading NSG when he's town.
This is a team game. Trust your fellow players' strengths.
The most probable scenario is that Almost50, if he's town, is correct. This means either:A. They are scum together.
B. Almost50 is scum who knows NSG is town.
C. Almost50 is town who is 95% likely to be right on NSG.
Can they be scum together? Remember, it's hard for scum to confidently defend their buddies; they know all their reasoning is wrong! Ask around, see if others can rule out A50/NSG.
...so you found A50/NSG isn't the scumteam? Great.
You should be townreading her with 90% confidence.
Sheeping players who you trust when they're town will do a lot to boost your accuracy. You just have to find out whether the player is lying scum (scum don't always lie, remember).
And when a player flips town, now it's a game of "how likely is it this dead townie was right?"
Here's another scenario:
- You're in a game, and Mathdino claims "I can read JaydragonKing with 90% accuracy, and he's scum here". But you found a towntell that makes JaydragonKing town with 90% confidence as well!
If and ONLY IF you have good self-appraisal skills
, you might be able to say "there's only a 10% chance I'm wrong here". If Mathdino is town, there's a 18% chance you'll ever disagree on a 90% confident read. Not. Good.Burden of Proficiency is a valid tell. If you KNOW you can read Jay, and you KNOW Mathdino should be able to read Jay, it's HIGHLY likely in a Bayesian way that Mathdino is lying scum. The correct move here is to lynch Mathdino.
Disclaimer: Remember to back up other players' skill! If I claim confidence in a read on someone that I am bad at reading, this shouldn't tell you much at all other than "Mathdino is overconfident". See if their reasons are any good.
Regardless, a great way to get solid reads on extremely good players is to find out how likely it is that they could be wrong. I've lynched otherwise incredible scum players just by pinpointing where they should know better.
Always Room For Improvement, For EVERYONE
Self-appraisal is an ongoing process. There are still tons of players I still can't read, and the players that I CAN read will evolve their scumgames to get townread.
After every game, figure out why you were wrong and why others were right.
That is how to get better as town.Spoiler: My Self-Appraisal (For example)
Maybe you've used a tell for years and realised it went horribly wrong in your last game. The site evolves, tells change. We've had an influx of good scum players in the past year or two. Learn new scumhunting tactics. Test your old ones. If a tell works with an accuracy equal to random chance, it's not a good tell.
Tells are about what ACTUALLY works, not what SHOULD work. Armchair scumhunting won't catch scum. Learn from every game what town ACTUALLY does, and what scum ACTUALLY does.
Honestly, this kind of Bayesian reasoning can apply to anything. Identify your strengths and how confident you can be in them. Identify your weaknesses and when you shouldn't be confident in something. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of others, compare, and teamwork becomes easy.
And always, always, improve, staying one step ahead of the rest. That's how to become a Great Player.
Mathdino out.
