Planned Changes: Newbie Game Deadlines

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Post Post #100 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 7:36 pm

Post by nancy »

In post 98, Sunlit Diamond wrote:
In post 97, nancy wrote:
In post 96, Sunlit Diamond wrote:From the being replaced side: I replace out because I DO care about the games I'm in and I'm cognizant that for whatever reason, I can't play to win condition for longer than I can reasonably ask my co-players to wait for me to return (usually it's a 7-10 day time frame where work pummels me six ways from Sunday, and then I'm free again). I replace out so my team can have someone who CAN commit.
You should only join games where it's not going to be a problem for you to be absent for that long of a period, or figure out a way to squeeze in enough time here and there in that time frame so that you can meet activity requirements at least enough to not be replaced. I've played mafia games while working ~120 hours and was working ~80 hours until this week, so I can appreciate how difficult it is. Is really something you need to think about before you join the game, imo.
I do think about that before I join games, which is why I haven't played in something like five months. The problem is that those surges in busy (and in my mental capacity to deal) are pretty close to unpredictable. I know better than to join a game when I'm *already* busy, but...for example, right now my work is dead as a doornail and looks like it will stay that way until September. Do I cross my fingers and jump into a game since it looks quiet, or do I just unilaterally declare I can't do something I enjoy because I MIGHT get busy?

Sorry, but the former is going to win.
I think just try to make sure the mod and the other players are aware that it might happen and if they're all okay with it, then join. If everyone has given their informed consent then if it does happen, no one is taken by surprise and it won't disrupt the game as much. And in those cases maybe you won't need to replace out. I think a lot of it is about awareness and managing expectations. If people know beforehand, they might be more understanding when your activity drops severely, you aren't able to make super good quality content, and you're posting without being fully caught up. I don't think you necessarily have to replace out.

Also, games on mafiascum tend to run pretty long. It might be helpful for you to find a site where deadlines are shorter and games don't last longer than a couple of weeks.
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Post Post #101 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 7:48 pm

Post by Sunlit Diamond »

*shrug* I'll do me the best way I know how. I'm trying something new this time, so we'll see how it goes.

Anyway, this is off topic for this thread.
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Post Post #102 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:03 pm

Post by nancy »

In post 99, Plotinus wrote:If we get into weighing whether a replaceout was legit or not and only replacements that aren't for good enough reasons are punished, then that leaks some information about the nature of the replacements. For example, in the last game I modded, two players were replaced because one posted their role PM and the other saw it before it was hidden. One of the players was banned -- but this wasn't announced until after the game, of course. The other player was allowed to start a new newbie game right away because he shouldn't be punished for his honesty. If we had a strict rule about replacing out that was enforced, then the fact that the other player is allowed to join a new game without punishment reveals something about the nature of the replacement.

If we expand the definition of legit to allow for stuff like sudden illness or whatever then players are forced to disclose something they may consider private or we have to figure out where we draw the line -- sudden serious illness is ok but not sudden headcold? sudden grounding from the internet by angry parents? final exams coming up, which couldn't have been anticipated because how was any student supposed to remember at the beginning of May that finals would come at the end of May?

In the last game I modded, a newbie replaced out because they were bored. It was kind of a lame reason because boredom is transient and is an easy problem to solve: just do stuff to make stuff happen, interact with other people more, start a conversation, suddenly you're not bored anymore yay. Also, with 2 week deadlines, if you're bored you can go do something else for a day and come back and find something has happened. But on the other hand, part of trying a new activity is figuring out if you like it or not, and sometimes you realise a few days into it that you don't. You tried a new thing but it's not your thing. You only have 24 hours each day, no more and no less. You only have so much free time. Should you spend your free time doing something you have realised isn't fun? Why? And, furthermore, suppose we have a system that punishes people for replacing out. The person who has realised mafia isn't fun and replaces out of their newbie game, closes the browser tab and never comes back, do they notice that they have been punished? Do they care? Does it have any deterrence? This is like telling a child who doesn't want to eat his broccoli, "if you don't eat your broccoli, you can't have any more broccoli tomorrow!" The child is going to say "uh, okay, great!"

We already have a system in place to punish people who only replace out of scum slots or whatever. We already have a system in place to punish people who excessively join and replace out of games. If you read the ban thread you'll see the listmods do that when it gets egregious. I don't think we need a system to punish ordinary levels of flaking, especially in the population of people we're trying to retain.
I don't think replace-outs or judgement about their legitimacy should ever be alignment indicative. Maybe a rule enforcing that would help to make that a non-issue? The "don't talk about replacements" rule is a thing on nearly every other site I've played on and I really like it.

I don't think that punishing replace-outs is for the newbies in the queue, it's for the SEs mostly. And I feel like you might be heading towards territory where the listmod is making personal judgements about the people or their character. In my mind, none of that is really part of it. I don't think the listmod or mod should have to consider personal reasons. That's really not something that someone in an anonymous game environment should have to evaluate and it's not something that the player should have to reveal or talk about. If someone replaces out for personal reasons, I think they should just be aware that they may have to sit things out until the game ends and they can join a new one again. (And if they're unwell then the restriction I suggested shouldn't affect them I don't think? What do you think?)

But if someone replaces out for reasons that are related to the game itself, the listmod or mods can evaluate that, and I don't think toxicity is related to alignment, so I don't know if that will really be a big issue? It's a little bit problematic, yeah, but everything is always going to be problematic in some way and I think the current situation is more problematic than that.

I hope you don't think this is about demonizing replacing out as a thing. For me it's just making sure that people know that they are expected not to replace out haphazardly or thoughtless or excessively and to make sure they don't over-commit themselves. When I first started on this site, I replaced out of a ton of games for bad reasons (sometimes for good reasons) and I think it would have been good for me as a player to have rules pushing me to not do that the way that I did.

Replacing out is an important thing to be able to do, sometimes you're not enjoying a game and it's driving you mad and you just can't deal with it anymore, sometimes life gets too much and you can't give what the game needs anymore, there are lots of reasons to replace out of a game, but at the moment I think there's a bit of a culture where replacing out is something you can do kind of flippantly and I don't think that's good. I think putting restrictions in place to counteract that is a good thing, even if it might be inconvenient for some people who aren't part of the problem. I don't really know, though. It's hard to think about this stuff and it's really hard to balance it all.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding anything that you were trying to say, or talking past you, or just being stupid or ignorant about something. Please let me know if you don't feel understood, or try to convince me of your opinion more if you just think I'm wrong.
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Post Post #103 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:19 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 48, T-Bone wrote:You...have played mafia on this site recently right? (I know mastina has)
Like, these comments hearken back to 2008, not 2018. Our games are MASSIVE now. People post and post and post and post. If you are a player who can only post once a day, then our games aren't for you, not with 3 week deadlines, not with 3 day deadlines.
And in my experience from actually playing games--which as you yourself noted, I am in fact actually doing--I hard, HARD disagree with this.

People don't actually post and post and post and post and post. I have that 20 pages/day limitation, but in 80% of my games, I don't reach it. 80% of the time, I am fine. 80% of the time, I can play and function in my games just perfectly well and fine. And those 80% of the games I don't imagine are exceptions to the rule. Either I have gotten very, very, very, VERY lucky, or it's not nearly as bad as you seem to think it is, as a whole.

Yes, if you compare thread sizes of games in 2018 to those of 2008, the game thread size will unmistakenly be larger--however, I'm fairly certain from what I've seen that in the last little while (a year, two years, maybe even three years), the size of games has actually been going
back down
rather than up. Or at the very least...has stagnated, such that you see more consistent game lengths that are usually around the same level rather than each game being progressively larger than the last in number of posts.

A mini game seems to last somewhere in the range of ~75 pages, give or take 50. A large game seems to last somewhere in the range of ~175 pages, give or take 50. Normals are usually shorter than these numbers; themes are right around these or slightly higher. Those numbers are usually manageable, because they aren't produced in a short duration of time; these game lengths are generated over the course of weeks, even months, and thus the pages/day rate for them is like a few pages per day.
In post 48, T-Bone wrote:The idea that shortening deadlines are going to make games unplayable for people who want slower experiences is ludicrous...because games are unplayable for those players in the current meta!
Except I am telling you
as a player who is actually actively playing in games right now
that no, that's not the case; games are currently playable, but only BECAUSE of that extra time.

Focusing it all into a much shorter duration would be overwhelming, but it doesn't happen.

...Well. 80% of the time, it doesn't happen, anyway.
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Post Post #104 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:20 pm

Post by RedFlavor »

In post 4, Nexus wrote:I can't find the last time you played a newbie game.

This is feedback from people who are actively playing the games. Therefore, their feedback is valuable and worth acting on.

Please can we stop being so negative about every single change we try to introduce. Give it a trial. See how it goes.
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Post Post #105 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:22 pm

Post by chamber »

It seems axiomatic that with shorter deadlines less content would be produced over the course of the game. Why are you assuming the same amount would be produced in a shorter time window? I often get the impression players are just talking and interacting for the sake of doing it.
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Post Post #106 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:29 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 51, xRECKONERx wrote:As a grumpy old-timer myself, to me, it seems like... the younger generation of players prefer faster games, so by not adopting, we'll just die off eventually.
My opinion is different--the younger generation of players is...inherently,
younger
. And when they get older, they'll want a place that adapts to their changed needs. mafiascum offers that because mafiascum offers a place where people who have the responsibilities associated with adulthood still have the capacity to play.

I can actually sum up my viewpoint with this:
By adapting not to what the current generation is
right now
, but what the current generation
will need
, mafiascum will have long-term longevity.


The current generation with their standards
right now
has a dime a dozen in terms of sites they can choose from to offer them the playstyle they prefer at the moment--but when they age, where will they find a playstyle suited for their more (so to speak) "mature" life? For their more responsible life? mafiascum, as it is right now, offers that to them.

That's why I presented a challenge to the players who have the more recentish joindates of, say, 2018 to keep playing mafia as they see fit, over the course of five or so years...and to reflect on their preferred style five years from now in contrast to their preferred style right now.

Obviously, that is a challenge which cannot be fulfilled for another five years--but I genuinely think my point can and will be proven if given that time, and that their future selves will vouch for my present viewpoint, or something close enough to it.
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Post Post #107 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:37 pm

Post by Zachrulez »

In post 103, mastina wrote:
In post 48, T-Bone wrote:You...have played mafia on this site recently right? (I know mastina has)
Like, these comments hearken back to 2008, not 2018. Our games are MASSIVE now. People post and post and post and post. If you are a player who can only post once a day, then our games aren't for you, not with 3 week deadlines, not with 3 day deadlines.
And in my experience from actually playing games--which as you yourself noted, I am in fact actually doing--I hard, HARD disagree with this.

People don't actually post and post and post and post and post. I have that 20 pages/day limitation, but in 80% of my games, I don't reach it. 80% of the time, I am fine. 80% of the time, I can play and function in my games just perfectly well and fine. And those 80% of the games I don't imagine are exceptions to the rule. Either I have gotten very, very, very, VERY lucky, or it's not nearly as bad as you seem to think it is, as a whole.
To expand on this I actually think learning when NOT to post is an important skill. Sometimes you need to just sit back and let others talk and pour information into the game. I don't actually mean that one should lurk and avoid posting in the game... but sometimes what other people are saying is more important than the 10 one liners you're so desperately wanting to throw out there to get your post count up. I generally dislike posting unless I actually have something worthwhile to add to the game. Not just a... post. If that makes sense.
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Post Post #108 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:42 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 58, AnonymousGhost wrote:
In post 56, Zachrulez wrote:They're not going to jump the rest of the way up. They are the site's future moderators. They'll be the ones running 7 day games. If you're looking to cater to them you might as well just go all the way to blitz deadlines.
Not to point out the obvious, but... The newbies that stick around, and
I mean stick around for the years to come
, will age and become the adults we are now with busy lives, jobs, families, college, and whatnot - if they're not doing it already.
This was the point I was getting at.

I don't believe that catering completely to what the newbies want RIGHT NOW is, in of itself, going to be helpful for the site's long-term longevity. If we do, then what happens when their needs change? They'll leave the site because it was suited for their old self, but not their newer self.

mafiascum, as it currently is, however, provides an environment which is suited towards what their future selves will be, and thus, when they age, they'll stay around, because it's suited towards their current needs. And once that massive paradigm shift has happened in their needs, it's usually a one-time deal of sorts; while their lives will continue to change throughout their lives, these changes will be far more minor than the initial changes which adulthood brought on. And thus, once members, they are likely to stay members for a long time, if not life. Giving longevity.

Keeping members around not for a few years, but for life, is what I feel like the end goal should be.

Now, that does mean you still
need
the newbies to come in in the first place. They need to stick around in the first place for long enough where when they are adults they realize that mafiascum is a place well-suited to their life. And for that to happen, to some extent, yes, catering to what they need right now is necessary.

But I believe there's a fine balance between the two. Pushing too far to catering to what newbies want
in the now
is shooting them in the foot for long-term longevity because it will cause them to not stay around when they get older.

That's why the proposed middle-ground options are so appealing to me. Treating weekends as a single day, waiting for every player to post before starting day, D1 being ten days with future days being 7, all of these give newbies their faster-deadlined games they demand (catering to the newbies), while giving them a gateway into their future and showing them how they can still do this same thing years down the road.
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Post Post #109 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:44 pm

Post by Alisae »

OR MASTINA
OR
They won’t care about the game by then because they would have moved onto bigger and better thing
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Post Post #110 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:46 pm

Post by Alisae »

Like no one gives a fuck about the future they care about the now and what they want now.
By the time they become older they’ll likely not care about the game anymore.
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Post Post #111 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 8:52 pm

Post by TheButtonmen »

i think if we try to steal em or town of salems shtick we die because theyre better at it then us

bend with the change sure but dont break what ms is because thats just a losing proposition as you dont outcompete the competitors in a very crowded market and lose the niche player base you formally got to monopolize
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Post Post #112 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:29 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 105, chamber wrote:Why are you assuming the same amount would be produced in a shorter time window?
Literally hundreds of games and years of experience across all game types?

Marathon games, for instance, are usually of a much smaller size (you rarely see one which is above micro-size, yet alone above mini-size), but the length of their games are loosely comparable to those of games with equal numbers of players--except, their content is generated over the course of seconds and minutes, maaaaaybe hours. They may be a little bit shorter overall, but they're pages upon pages, in minutes.

That's probably not the best example, but I can think of many others. Such as how whenever moderators implement a previously-nonexistent deadline or shorten an existing deadline, activity in a game suddenly has a sharp uptake. (This is not something done fairly often in the current site meta, but was commonplace back in the day.) It's everywhere.

Longer deadlines might produce a slightly longer thread overall when the game is eventually finished--but that longer length was generated over a much greater period of time, meaning the page per day ratio was significantly lower.

I'm sure this could have hard data rather than anecdotal evidence gathered for it, too. Just track when a moderator declares a game starting and when a moderator declares a game over, the number of posts between the two, and the number of days between the two, and the length of their deadlines; that gives the relevant data points.
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Post Post #113 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:31 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 109, Alisae wrote:They won’t care about the game by then because they would have moved onto bigger and better thing
If that's the case then the site would be fucked no matter what, then, wouldn't it?

The whole idea is to make it so that they
do
care about the game in the future. Because if no matter what we do, five years from now they don't care...well then no matter what we do five years from now the site is dead. So the ASSUMPTION is that we want to do something that makes it so that five years from now they
do
care.
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Post Post #114 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:31 pm

Post by chamber »

In post 112, mastina wrote:I'm sure this could have hard data rather than anecdotal evidence gathered for it, too. Just track when a moderator declares a game starting and when a moderator declares a game over, the number of posts between the two, and the number of days between the two, and the length of their deadlines; that gives the relevant data points.
You can't assert something and expect others to gather the data to prove it for you.
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Post Post #115 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:34 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 111, TheButtonmen wrote:i think if we try to steal em or town of salems shtick we die because theyre better at it then us

bend with the change sure but dont break what ms is because thats just a losing proposition as you dont outcompete the competitors in a very crowded market and lose the niche player base you formally got to monopolize
This was also my point.

What do we have, unique to us, that they don't?

When you get down to it, longer deadlines really are pretty much the only thing.

We don't have a better site; we're technologically backwards.
We don't have better game types.
We don't have more diverse game types.
We don't have games more focused on dayplay. (Though this is the closest we have to one, many other sites have this and our focus on it has decayed and continues to decay.)
What does that leave us with?

Longer deadlines are what is unique about mafiascum. You don't outcompete other sites by mimicking what they do; you outcompete other sites by giving something they don't.
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Post Post #116 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:38 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 114, chamber wrote:
In post 112, mastina wrote:I'm sure this could have hard data rather than anecdotal evidence gathered for it, too. Just track when a moderator declares a game starting and when a moderator declares a game over, the number of posts between the two, and the number of days between the two, and the length of their deadlines; that gives the relevant data points.
You can't assert something and expect others to gather the data to prove it for you.
My stance already has backing: my experience. I don't need the data points. I'm confident that's what the data will show. A correlation to lower posts per day and longer deadlines.

Not only does it match my experience, it also matches logic, when you think about basic psychology.

If you have more time to accomplish a task, you are inclined to take that time; if you have less time to accomplish a task, you are more inclined to rush it. If you assume the task requires the same amount of large effort no matter what (that is, it won't be less effort if you rush it; it won't be more effort if you take your time; it won't be more effort if you rush it; it won't be less effort if you take your time)--and this is not an unreasonable assumption because the game of mafia is incredibly complex to handle--then that leads to more posts per day in a shorter-deadline game than in a longer-deadline game.
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Post Post #117 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:43 pm

Post by MichelSableheart »

In post 48, T-Bone wrote:
In post 39, MichelSableheart wrote: [*]The strength of mafiascum, as I see it, is it's ability to cater to players who don't have the time available to post multiple times per day. Our expectations have been that an active player makes at least one post a day. If we set a one week deadline, that means that a player who meets those expectations will post 7 times during a single day. Is that enough to play the game?[/list]
In post 44, mastina wrote:
In post 24, T-Bone wrote:If newbies think that deadlines are too long, and are not sticking around as a result...then who exactly are we catering to as a site?
In general, older individuals, who
do
stick around.

mafiascum is, to my knowledge, the only site which caters to the crowd of individuals with those particular habits: having real-life obligations such as full-time jobs, families to look after, finances to take care of, etc.; not being able to read too much content in a limited timeframe. (I know that, personally, I have an endurance limit of 20 pages/24 hours. If a game produces more than that amount, I simply can't keep up with it and my performance suffers as a result.)
You...have played mafia on this site recently right? (I know mastina has)

Like, these comments hearken back to 2008, not 2018. Our games are MASSIVE now. People post and post and post and post. If you are a player who can only post once a day, then our games aren't for you, not with 3 week deadlines, not with 3 day deadlines.

The idea that shortening deadlines are going to make games unplayable for people who want slower experiences is ludicrous...because games are unplayable for those players in the current meta!

My Newbie game was 17 pages long. Now, 17 pages are the average first 24 hours of a game. Our game right now is dominated by players who are able to post 24/7 and need to react to everything! It is those types of players we need to prepare newbies for...not the type of players who like to take 2 weeks to analyze a game. Only one of those players exists on site.

THIS is what the average game on this site looks like. 4 or 5 players who quickly have twice as many posts as the rest of the players in the game. THAT is what we need to prepare newbies for. Not some fantasy world where we are all adults who barely post and need longer deadlines to produce posts. Michel, your example player can't play here with 2 month deadlines. That is what mafiascum is now.
There is something very interesting in the game you linked, though. The mod announced that they would prod only after 48 hours of inactivity. If posting once a day is not enough to keep up with such a game, then the "prod after 48 hours, give 24 hours to respond" policy is wildly inadequate. That policy is catered to the expectation of posting once a day: 48 hours of inactivity guarantees there was at least one day where the player didn't post, and then they get an entire day to correct the situation.

If the staff makes the conscious decision that these higher activity requirements are what they want for the site, and decide to adjust the newbie deadlines accordingly, that can be a good decision. However, I want to make sure that they are aware of and have thought through the consequences:
  • It ensures that the niche of our site is not "players who can post only once a day". Because of this, a new answer will need to be formulated to the question why a player would play on mafiascum rather then somewhere else. Other sites handle the "regular activity with shorter deadlines" better then we do, so why should a player choose mafiascum?
  • If posting once a day is not enough to participate in our games, mods should be encouraged to specify this. If the only thing a game specifies is "post once every 48 hours" but the actual expectation is to post multiple times each day, a huge expectation mismatch can occur, with friction in the game as a result.
  • Thirdly, it ensures that you are excluding a part of your potential player base that is hardly catered to elsewhere, while focussing on a type of player who has the choice of various sites to play on.
  • Finally, be aware of the commitment you are asking of your players as a result of this decision. Even with seven day deadlines, you're asking them to be available multiple times a day, each day, for an entire month. There aren't that many players who can keep up such a commitment continuously for a longer period of time.
Simply put, I'm aware of the current status of our games, but have my doubts on the desirability of that situation. It is my belief that mafiascum would be better able to create an identity for itself by embracing our historically longer deadlines and focussing on those players who aren't able to be online 24/7.
In post 57, skitter30 wrote:i feel like some of the people in this thread are talking about the typical player from like ten years ago or whatever, and not the players who actually play now.
The complaint that our deadlines are slow is nothing new. It was also made regularly by newbies 10 years ago. Even then, other sites were using significantly quicker deadlines, and newbies were generally enthousiastic, and as a result far more active than the old timers. The difference, as I see it, is in who the site caters to. Back then, the answer to the newbies complaining was "this is how we do things here, there are plenty of other sites if you want quicker games". Now, the answer is "you're right, we're actually playing at a far higher tempo then our deadlines imply".

However, that doesn't mean that the typical player from ten years ago no longer exists. It just means that this site no longer caters to that player.
In post 81, ruru wrote:In my first game the IC was policy lynched for complete lack of activity and one of the SEs had to replace out because he was too busy. I don't think having an SE/IC in a game who replaces out d1 is nearly as positive for new player experience as having a 7th newbie who is actually committed to playing the game so no I don't think having SE/ICs should ever be valued over punishing excessive replacement.

This is strictly from a newbie experience perspective and obviously there are other benefits to teaching newbies, like them not ruining their 2nd game for the more experienced players or whatever else
I strongly agree that replacements based on inactivity are terrible for a game, and would expect IC's/SE's to set the example. If you can't play, at the very least make sure you let the game mod know rather then disappear without a word.

I also believe that making the requirements we place on player explicit can help reduce the number of replacements required. "If you join this game, you can expect to spend X amount of time every Y hours/days. By joining, you're making a commitment to the other players that you'll do what you can to meet these expectations. You're also making a guarantee to the other players that if they spend that amount of time, they'll be able to keep up." On the one hand, it discourages players who don't have enough time available to sign up in the first place. On the other hand, it prevents players who made a reasonable assumption that they had enough time from getting overburdened.
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Post Post #118 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:43 pm

Post by chamber »

In post 116, mastina wrote:If you assume the task requires the same amount of effort no matter what
Weren't you just talking about how games took significantly less posts in the far past earlier? I think that disproves this point.
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Post Post #119 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:49 pm

Post by MichelSableheart »

In post 74, nancy wrote: [...] newbie games seem to have become a lot more stagnant compared to how they used to be[...]
Are you sure about this? There were some extremely stagnant newbie games back in the day. My first newbie game comes to mind. It lasted almost half a year, mainly because town refused to lynch in the two counterclaiming doctors and instead entered a cycle of no lynch and successful doc protects.
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Post Post #120 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:52 pm

Post by Plotinus »

In post 102, nancy wrote:
Spoiler: length
In post 99, Plotinus wrote:If we get into weighing whether a replaceout was legit or not and only replacements that aren't for good enough reasons are punished, then that leaks some information about the nature of the replacements. For example, in the last game I modded, two players were replaced because one posted their role PM and the other saw it before it was hidden. One of the players was banned -- but this wasn't announced until after the game, of course. The other player was allowed to start a new newbie game right away because he shouldn't be punished for his honesty. If we had a strict rule about replacing out that was enforced, then the fact that the other player is allowed to join a new game without punishment reveals something about the nature of the replacement.

If we expand the definition of legit to allow for stuff like sudden illness or whatever then players are forced to disclose something they may consider private or we have to figure out where we draw the line -- sudden serious illness is ok but not sudden headcold? sudden grounding from the internet by angry parents? final exams coming up, which couldn't have been anticipated because how was any student supposed to remember at the beginning of May that finals would come at the end of May?

In the last game I modded, a newbie replaced out because they were bored. It was kind of a lame reason because boredom is transient and is an easy problem to solve: just do stuff to make stuff happen, interact with other people more, start a conversation, suddenly you're not bored anymore yay. Also, with 2 week deadlines, if you're bored you can go do something else for a day and come back and find something has happened. But on the other hand, part of trying a new activity is figuring out if you like it or not, and sometimes you realise a few days into it that you don't. You tried a new thing but it's not your thing. You only have 24 hours each day, no more and no less. You only have so much free time. Should you spend your free time doing something you have realised isn't fun? Why? And, furthermore, suppose we have a system that punishes people for replacing out. The person who has realised mafia isn't fun and replaces out of their newbie game, closes the browser tab and never comes back, do they notice that they have been punished? Do they care? Does it have any deterrence? This is like telling a child who doesn't want to eat his broccoli, "if you don't eat your broccoli, you can't have any more broccoli tomorrow!" The child is going to say "uh, okay, great!"

We already have a system in place to punish people who only replace out of scum slots or whatever. We already have a system in place to punish people who excessively join and replace out of games. If you read the ban thread you'll see the listmods do that when it gets egregious. I don't think we need a system to punish ordinary levels of flaking, especially in the population of people we're trying to retain.

I don't think replace-outs or judgement about their legitimacy should ever be alignment indicative. Maybe a rule enforcing that would help to make that a non-issue? The "don't talk about replacements" rule is a thing on nearly every other site I've played on and I really like it.

I don't think that punishing replace-outs is for the newbies in the queue, it's for the SEs mostly. And I feel like you might be heading towards territory where the listmod is making personal judgements about the people or their character. In my mind, none of that is really part of it. I don't think the listmod or mod should have to consider personal reasons. That's really not something that someone in an anonymous game environment should have to evaluate and it's not something that the player should have to reveal or talk about. If someone replaces out for personal reasons, I think they should just be aware that they may have to sit things out until the game ends and they can join a new one again. (And if they're unwell then the restriction I suggested shouldn't affect them I don't think? What do you think?)

But if someone replaces out for reasons that are related to the game itself, the listmod or mods can evaluate that, and I don't think toxicity is related to alignment, so I don't know if that will really be a big issue? It's a little bit problematic, yeah, but everything is always going to be problematic in some way and I think the current situation is more problematic than that.

I hope you don't think this is about demonizing replacing out as a thing. For me it's just making sure that people know that they are expected not to replace out haphazardly or thoughtless or excessively and to make sure they don't over-commit themselves. When I first started on this site, I replaced out of a ton of games for bad reasons (sometimes for good reasons) and I think it would have been good for me as a player to have rules pushing me to not do that the way that I did.

Replacing out is an important thing to be able to do, sometimes you're not enjoying a game and it's driving you mad and you just can't deal with it anymore, sometimes life gets too much and you can't give what the game needs anymore, there are lots of reasons to replace out of a game, but at the moment I think there's a bit of a culture where replacing out is something you can do kind of flippantly and I don't think that's good. I think putting restrictions in place to counteract that is a good thing, even if it might be inconvenient for some people who aren't part of the problem. I don't really know, though. It's hard to think about this stuff and it's really hard to balance it all.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding anything that you were trying to say, or talking past you, or just being stupid or ignorant about something. Please let me know if you don't feel understood, or try to convince me of your opinion more if you just think I'm wrong.
My point is that every replaceout is legit from the perspective of the person replacing out, and that trying to enforce special rules punishing replace outs would be ineffective. We already have rules about excessive replacing out that are enforced across the site. We don't need to punish non-excessive replacing out.

I've modded about 8 newbie games in the past year and I can't remember a single SE/IC replaceout that I thought was egregious or should have been punished. It's possible that I'm failing to remember something but I think if it was egregious it would've stuck in my memory and I would've talked to the listmods about it at the time if it bothered me and I definitely would remember something like that. I

I think that if an SE or IC replaces out and the moderator thinks the replaceout was alignment indicative (against site rules) or that the player has a problematic number of replaceouts, the moderator should contact the listmods about it. Or if you're playing a game and you think another player's replaceout was egregious or that they have a pattern of replacing out too much, talk to the listmods. But as a player you might not have all the information about why they replaced out; a few games ago a player replaced out because one of the other players was harrassing him via PM but in the game thread when he asked to be replaced he said he was tired of being bullied. The other players in the thread thought the player was being a bit of a baby because the in-thread content hadn't really been that bad.

I don't think we need a blanket rule against replacing out. I think the rules we already have are enough.
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Post Post #121 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 9:56 pm

Post by Plotinus »

Searching the ban thread for "excessive" shows the rules we already have about excessive replacing out of games and how it's dealt with.
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Post Post #122 (ISO) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 10:16 pm

Post by Postie »

I don't play mafia currently, but I just wanted to say that when I did a major reason I loved Plot's games was because of his rule on replacing people who didn't post game-relevant content. When I'm able to join games again, I will specifically be looking to join Plot's games for that reason, and if I mod again, that rule will be included in all my games.

I think if a rule on replacing people who didn't post game-relevant content were adopted universally it would have a very significant positive effect on the site meta.

Of course, it's important that the mod doesn't make qualitative judgements about posts that the players in the game can read into. Whether or not someone has made a post that's game-relevant/advancing shouldn't involve asking more than "does this post interact with events, opinions, or specific players in the game in some way?". As long as it's kept at that threshold, I don't think that's an unreasonable restriction. I definitely don't buy the argument that naked prodging or contentless posting should be okay because "it can be pro-wincon in some situations" (I'm not sure anyone in this thread has made this argument, but I've seen it before); you shouldn't get a free pass to do something for strategic reasons if it universally makes the game experience worse for everyone.

I've seen plenty of games ruined because of people repeatedly delaying engaging with the game for whole day phases at a time, whereas there have been exactly zero times I've thought "I'm glad contentless posting was allowed in this game."
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Post Post #123 (ISO) » Fri Jun 29, 2018 1:12 am

Post by nancy »

Blah. I don't think we will be able to agree with each other, Plot. I think I understand you, I just don't agree with much of what you are saying. Even if a replace out is legitimate from the perspective of the player replacing out, I don't think that means that it was necessarily okay from a site meta perspective for them to replace out, and I don't think it means that they necessarily had the right standards for what is a legitimate replace out. I think that's probably our main point of disagreement.
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Post Post #124 (ISO) » Fri Jun 29, 2018 2:52 am

Post by Papa Zito »

In post 85, ruru wrote:
In post 81, ruru wrote:(and the information they leak)
Examples of how bad this is
etc.
In post 82, T-Bone wrote:Modkills would be way more punitive to the remaining players than a replacement.
Well yes

I think if you commit to playing a team game and don't play, you deserve high loss equity, you deserve to get flamed by the remaining players, and if you do it a non-negligible portion of the time you should also not be allowed in future games

I think this comes from a difference in "competitive"/"for fun" mindset. My mindset is highly competitive and like I said I don't expect most people to agree with me on it. (Also modkilling AFKs probably isn't practical in newbie queue in particular because of how many newbies flake and I realize that too)

But I think the rest of my post still applies anyway because replacements are pretty objectively bad whether or not modkills are subjectively better
You should check out the BaM ruleset. Wouldn't work in the newbie queue tho.

edit: Nevermind, Zor already linked it boo.
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