On Self-Appraisal (How To Become Great)

[mastina]

I disagree about pushing hard. That's the last thing mafia in general needs, and let alone mafiascum. You have to understand that every action has an advantage and a disadvantage. Pushing people can ilicit genuine reactions, but it creates a ton of negative things for the game state as well.

Pushing hard probably doesn't meant to me what it means to you then.

Asking questions can be a hard push, if those questions have follow-through and purpose/intent behind them, where they are meant to lead somewhere and are clearly being used to either raise or build up to a point of some kind. Pointing out inconsistencies and explaining your viewpoint can count as a strong push if you put enough time, effort, and posts into showing, "this is what I see; seeing that makes me think this".

The idea isn't to shout "PLAYER IS SCUM" 100 times over and over again, though that can be

part

of an effective hard push. (Part, not all.) The idea is to get a high level of engagement and dialogs started with multiple players--as many as you can handle interacting with. (Preferably all.)

Pushing doesn't have to be pushing scum, either; you can push that a player is town/a mislynch just as much as you can push that a player is scum/who you should be lynching. The theory behind it is that the more you push, the more useful information is generated...provided that key factor of the ability to back up, reassess, and then from the reevaluation, form reads. If the answer to "Is X actually scum like I have said?" "Actually? Yes.", then highlight why with a case; if the answer comes out as 'no', then explain your change/shift in read and push elsewhere if you are satisfied, more or less.

[Mathdino]

The problem isn't in scumhunting, the problem there is political. The harder you push something that was wrong, the more confidence town loses in you, and the more you fall victim to Burden of Proficiency.

Regardless, I patiently await the article so we can discuss it with more depth!

[Mulch]

I disagree about pushing hard. That's the last thing mafia in general needs, and let alone mafiascum. You have to understand that every action has an advantage and a disadvantage. Pushing people can ilicit genuine reactions, but it creates a ton of negative things for the game state as well.

Pushing hard probably doesn't meant to me what it means to you then.

Asking questions can be a hard push, if those questions have follow-through and purpose/intent behind them, where they are meant to lead somewhere and are clearly being used to either raise or build up to a point of some kind. Pointing out inconsistencies and explaining your viewpoint can count as a strong push if you put enough time, effort, and posts into showing, "this is what I see; seeing that makes me think this".

The idea isn't to shout "PLAYER IS SCUM" 100 times over and over again, though that can be

part

of an effective hard push. (Part, not all.) The idea is to get a high level of engagement and dialogs started with multiple players--as many as you can handle interacting with. (Preferably all.)

Pushing doesn't have to be pushing scum, either; you can push that a player is town/a mislynch just as much as you can push that a player is scum/who you should be lynching. The theory behind it is that the more you push, the more useful information is generated...provided that key factor of the ability to back up, reassess, and then from the reevaluation, form reads. If the answer to "Is X actually scum like I have said?" "Actually? Yes.", then highlight why with a case; if the answer comes out as 'no', then explain your change/shift in read and push elsewhere if you are satisfied, more or less.

Solid answer actually;

I see what you mean now by pushing.

I just think that the whole heavy thought proess analyzation will only work for some people

Examples:

Whiskeyjack (MU)
Regfan (MS)

These type of people are really good at asking a ton of questions, gathering information, and making a decision

But even these types of people, respect as they are, irk the rest of the game sometimes because

1) Its impossible to know whether questions come from town or scum
2) It can exhaust people trying to explain every little detail (we aren't in a perfect world)
3) In general, this extends the page count
4) It goes contrary to a lot of people's playstyles, especially ones that townhunt or do more intuition. And it can end up badly.
For example, whenever I try to do these hard question playstyle pushing type of things and look for logic/intuition, I get horrible reads.
Case in point: Wrangle.

So I think that if pushing works for you, do it; but I don't really think it belongs in a strategy guide in the sense of "this is what everyone should do."

I also think that pushing, even with questions, does make it harder to be charismatic. Just my two cents.

[mastina]

As an example which Mathdino was annoyed with--an example of a hard push from me would be when I quote a player asking some innocuous question about another player...and then I ask a question of my own, along the lines of, "And what, do you suppose, that actually means?" (Pretty much those words exactly.)

This is intended to serve both as an engagement with the player who asked the question, and a push on the player they asked the question to. String a bunch of those together on a single player, and I have essentially made a makeshift case--
"Playername did this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. When you add all of those up, what alignment do you think is more likely for playername?"

As I said--the pushes are disproportionately likely to be wrong, but the idea goes, more or less, that it is not a sin to be wrong in a push, so you shouldn't be afraid of making a wrong push. Especially if what was generated from the push proves more useful than the actual push itself. Someone actually being able to demonstrate a reasonable position on Playername in response to the case, for instance, can give you a better read on said someone.

This is also why I find it easier to play on later days; on later days, the fruits of those laborious pushes now have ripened with actual hard information.

Pushes don't need to be long (that's just my natural verbosity, I'm never going to be succinct); pushes don't need to involve spamfests; pushes don't need to be wall wars; pushes

certainly

don't need to be condescending (that's just a very bad trait I've picked up which is one of my largest weaknesses). They can be little things, added up over time, but given with gusto.

(Small caveat tho--this strategy tends to work best when you're not scumreading literally half the game. If you push everyone, then no push stands out. You need to pick and choose your pushes, and push the players you think most need to be pushed.)

[Ellibereth]

And always, always, improve, staying one step ahead of the rest. That's how to become a Great Player.

^^^
ironically sharing what you think/do makes it harder to stay ahead of the curve kekerino

[mutantdevle]

I just made a note of some stats for half of my games on this site.

(the average from each day per game):

My town reads are 50% accurate.
My scum reads are 20% accurate.
80% of my null reads are town.

Tbh, I'd probably win more if I just didn't have reads. If you were to compare random to lynching to only lynching my scum reads then random lynching would be more successful :/

[Harambey180]

I just play. For fun. Cuz it's a game. I honestly don't care a lot about statistics and such. They'd only change over time.

[AnonymousGhost]

I just play. For fun. Cuz it's a game. I honestly don't care a lot about statistics and such. They'd only change over time.

Same.

[mastina]

I just play. For fun. Cuz it's a game. I honestly don't care a lot about statistics and such. They'd only change over time.

I mean. The two aren't mutually exclusive. I play for fun, too, but I do care about statistics and I do try actively to improve my play. (The key word of course being "try". )

[Alisae]

Mafia is fun???

[mastina]

Mafia is fun???

I can't think of any other reason why I could still let myself suffer through it.

[Alisae]

Mafia is fun???

I can't think of any other reason why I could still let myself suffer through it.

Suffering is fun???

[Harambey180]

If you think mafia is not fun then why would you still play it...

[Mulch]

If you think mafia is not fun then why would you still play it...

Addiction

[Gamma Emerald]

If you think mafia is not fun then why would you still play it...

Addiction

[Ellibereth]

Winning is fun.

[GuiltyLion]

yo MD this article is great and overlaps a lot with the way I try to play the game, even put some ideas into words that were kicking around somewhere in my head but that I hadn't considered so explicitly before. Thanks for writing it

[GuiltyLion]

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.

also make sure to Bayesian analyze individual posts

like if you see a post that is absolutely super unfathomably unlikely to come from scum - such that Probability(Player made post [x] given that Player is scum) is ~0, then it doesn't really matter how much decent evidence you had before for them being scum, they're probably town. I have the highest success for accurate townreads when I find good towntell posts like this.

Same thing goes for scumreads if you find posts that are almost impossible to come from town. Unfortunately, those posts are more rare both because people are trying their hardest to avoid making them and because generally in your experience (and in each game), the volume of townposts >> volume of scumposts

[mhsmith0]

thing goes for scumreads if you find posts that are almost impossible to come from town. Unfortunately, those posts are more rare both because people are trying their hardest to avoid making them and because generally in your experience (and in each game), the volume of townposts >> volume of scumposts

Also (imo) because there’s a substantial source of error in using “well I would never make that post as town” as a proxy for “well THAT player would never make that post as town”

[Eddie Cane]

you took my post format

[callforjudgement]

80% of my null reads are town.

That seems about right. Most setups have around 80% of

players

as town. So if you have no information about a player (or think it all cancels out), they'll be about 80% likely to be town.

[Mulch]

80% of my null reads are town.

That seems about right. Most setups have around 80% of

players

as town. So if you have no information about a player (or think it all cancels out), they'll be about 80% likely to be town.

I can’t tell if this is right or wrong

Someone smart help me

[Mathdino]

standard size for micros, minis, and larges is designed such that 25% of all players other than you are scum, and 75% of players other than you are town

[mhsmith0]

80% of my null reads are town.

That seems about right. Most setups have around 80% of

players

as town. So if you have no information about a player (or think it all cancels out), they'll be about 80% likely to be town.

I can’t tell if this is right or wrong

Someone smart help me

Who can know if the path we choose is right or wrong? I will fear no reproach. For man is a creature of sorrow and regret, and ever will be.

[mhsmith0]

80% of my null reads are town.

That seems about right. Most setups have around 80% of

players

as town. So if you have no information about a player (or think it all cancels out), they'll be about 80% likely to be town.

If anything, that's actually something of a positive, as I think it's a fairly common bias for peoples' null zones to be unusually wolf-heavy.