Planned Changes: Newbie Game Deadlines
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I prefer shorter deadlines (at most 10 days) in general, but I think newbie games in particular would benefit from them
I feel like newbie games specifically are more prone to certain factors making them less fun. Two examples from personal experience are having a really flaky playerlist (which seems to happen like every other newbie game) and rolling scum without having played town before
Making them shorter would probably help a lot of new players go next faster rather than just being stuck in a really long game and deciding mafia isn't fun
I honestly don't think it's a bad thing that people who are too busy to play 7 day deadlines can't play, like if you're too busy for 7 day deadlines, chances are you're tilting half the playerlist in 14 day deadlines- Plotinus
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I implemented it after a micro i modded where there were 3 town slots who had posted nothing but "I'll get to this later" every 47 hours for weeks on end so i couldn't replace them. It was really frustrating.In post 23, Nexus wrote:
I have an issue (in general) with this idea. I think that it's not the game moderator's job to say if you're posting game advancing content, because that's overstepping the bounds. If a player wants to just prod dodge then it's a valid tactic and it's up to the rest of the players to decide what to do with that.In post 20, Plotinus wrote: If you haven't posted game advancing content in 7 days (on 14 day deadlines) or say 4 days (7 day deadlines) you get replaced, even if V/LA.
I hear what you're saying though and I think it would be really easy to overstep, so I try to be really really lenient with what counts. naked votes count. unvotes count. saying "x is kinda scummy" counts. answering a question or asking one counts, even if it's not a satisfying answer (that would be overstepping). most (probably all) ways of interacting with another player count.
You can still prod dodge in my rule set. The easiest way is probably a post like "i'll get to this later but I think i'm still happy with my vote." or "Got prodded; Plot is scum." and then later if they want they can say "oh that was just a prod dodge, I didn't really mean it." You can be a minimal content poster and skate by just fine.
Since I started paying attention, I've found that most of the time when someone posts "i'll get this later," that post doesn't count for activity but they still wind up posting something before they get into prod range, so it doesn't come up.
I've been using this ruleset for over a year and the only complaints I've gotten were that I was too lenient (counting an unvote as game advancing, for example). I think it's had a positive effect on the games I've modded, it encourages people to be more active.The failure mode of clever is asshole.
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This isn't going to work. I'm fine with the deadline going down, but 7 days isn't enough time for most players, especially on Day 1, and especially in Newbies where replacements and lurking tend to be on the higher side (at least in my experience.)In post 0, PenguinPower wrote:For the past three months, we have been soliciting feedback from Newbies at the conclusion of their games specifically focusing on their overall experience, IC/Mod quality, speed to start, and length of deadlines. Based on the feedback received so far (including some anecdotal rationale from Newbies who replaced out prior to the conclusion of their game), and after discussion with the Admin team during our quarterly staff meeting, I am planning to reduce the day phase for Newbie games from14 daysto7 days. Night length will remain the same at 48 hours.
This thread is an opportunity for the everyone to publicly comment on the planned changes. Please keep all feedback constructive and on topic. If you just want to gripe about something related to the Newbie Queue, feel free to shoot me a PM directly.
Furthermore, 7 day deadlines is nowhere close to standard on this site. I would start with going from 14 to 10 day deadlines and then see if site meta changes where 7 day deadlines are more common.
Edit: If we really want to shorten deadlines, I would also be perfectly fine with Nexus's suggestion D1 and D2 being 10 days and D3+ being 7 days. It is within site meta for latter days to occassionally have shorter deadlines than earlier days.
Edit2:
Umm... 24 hour prods aren't going to work. Multiple people have tried that in the past and were not satisfied with it. Like, it is fine if the game is really short (say Blitz pace), but exactly 24 hours can allow a person to be prodded who is active and just got unlucky with their scheduling. I feel that prod timers in normal games should be a minimum of 28 hours and preferably 36 hours or more.In post 18, wavemode wrote:7-day days and 24-hour nights and 24-hour prods is fine I think, if it's adjustable by common sense. Like if a player says they are v/la on weekends but the day started on a sunday, the mod could just make the day a few days longer so that it ends on a tuesday and the next day starts on a wednesday.
Edit3:
I see where you are coming with that, but honestly, prod dodging shouldn't be a valid tactic on-site. Why? Because the player is obviously not playing the game like they should. Furthermore, mafia is a scum-sided game already; letting players prod-dodge only makes the game more scum-sided by allowing players not to give information that can help others read their alignment. The main thing though is to be careful with what is considered a prod dodge and isn't, and the proposed definition for game-advancing content is imo objective enough and fair enough for moderators to apply consistently (as well as players). Also, I've used a rule for prod-dodging in practically every game I've modded on-site. I've never specified the criteria as to what counts as prod-dodging and what doesn't, and I actually do tolerate it to a certain extent. (My rule is that two prod dodges equals a prod, and if you get prodded due to a prod dodge, you can't prod dodge again until after you post content.) What I have found is that you really have to be trying to actually get prodded by my prod-dodging rule. Furthermore, I've never had a player complain about it in any game I've hosted. (At least, so far I haven't.)Nexus wrote:I have an issue (in general) with this idea. I think that it's not the game moderator's job to say if you're posting game advancing content, because that's overstepping the bounds. If a player wants to just prod dodge then it's a valid tactic and it's up to the rest of the players to decide what to do with that.Last edited by Ircher on Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:41 am, edited 3 times in total.- Performer
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I somewhat agree with mastina, but I do agree with nexus that feedback from those who play newbie games actively, is crucial.In post 10, Not_Mafia wrote:I agree with this, or maybe 10 just for day one, which was my initial thought at seeing the title
I also agree with what nm and nexus said, let's start trying 10 days instead of 7. 7 days is a massive change from 14. I say the change should be incremental at first.
I really like the trial of 10 days for d1 & d2, and less day lengths like 7 for d3 and beyond.I’m an informed Miller who knows there isn’t any Loyal modifiers and there is a total of 4 scum.-Morality
I'm easily the best person in the game at mechanics. I don't presume to be the best at anything else.-Jingle
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agreed, we have to retain people on the siteIn post 24, T-Bone wrote:Please keep in mind that this change is informed by feedback Penguin has been collecting for a long time, and the major complaint he gets from newbies is 'deadlines are too long'. 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?
We are not imposing this limit in other queues. Yes, it is likely that deadline averages will drop as a result. But, it does not prevent moderators from setting deadlines they prefer in other queues. There may even be solutions we can implement in other queues to preserve the longer deadline average the site currently has.
agreedIn post 19, Micc wrote:/support
Gotta give the newer generation of players what they want. If you’re not consistently breeding new young talent, then you’re growing older and falling behind the competition.I’m an informed Miller who knows there isn’t any Loyal modifiers and there is a total of 4 scum.-Morality
I'm easily the best person in the game at mechanics. I don't presume to be the best at anything else.-Jingle
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Replacements usually increase the deadline.In post 27, Ircher wrote:This isn't going to work. I'm fine with the deadline going down, but 7 days isn't enough time for most players, especially on Day 1, and especially in Newbies where replacements and lurking tend to be on the higher side (at least in my experience.)green shirt thursdays- Ircher
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I still don't think it is a great idea to jump straight to 7 day deadlines when practically none of the rest of the site uses that kind of deadline in games, especially on day 1. There are also other problems with 7 days that other people have pointed out.- xRECKONERx
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Part of the goal of newbies is to educate them and to expose them to site norms. Implementing deadlines that none of the rest of the site uses is not meeting the goal of exposing newbies to site norms.- T-Bone
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That goal doesn't matter if newbies are leaving because they don't like the length of games.
You're making the argument that 14->7 is too drastic a change.
Have you considered it from the opposite angle?
Newbies are coming from sites that at most, have 3 day deadlines. I'd say 3->14 is a much more drastic change than 3->7 Once someone is playing at 7 days, then we can probably gradually bring them up outside of the newbie queue to where we as a site want them (10-14). But making that jump from 3 to 14 or even 10 is daunting.- Ircher
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That is a fair point.
That said, do you have any issues/concerns with having a 10 day D1 deadline and 7 days for the rest of the days? It seems to address some of the concerns that both sides are putting up.- PenguinPower
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This is the deadline that I am currently in favor of.In post 35, Ircher wrote:That said, do you have any issues/concerns with having a 10 day D1 deadline and 7 days for the rest of the days? It seems to address some of the concerns that both sides are putting up.<(") | (")>- Sunlit Diamond
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*lurks back from lurkerdom for anecdotal commentary*
I'm not a newbie anymore, but newbie games are my favorite.
I don't think seven days is long enough, but ten days I think could be reasonable.
I've had to drop out of more games than I've completed (which is why I've been MIA for so long, because SHAME) because RL would not allow me to maintain consistent attention for the duration of a game with multiple extensions, etc. It's frustrating as fuck; if vaguely shorter deadlines might help me get into playing regularly, I'd really love that.
*lurks back into lurkerdom*Bipolar • ADHD • Call me Sunny • GTKAS
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This change makes me ask a couple of questions:- First, if newbies feel that the game dragged on, shouldn't IC's be pushing more for lynching before deadline? That's a good habit to create in general.
- Secondly, shouldn't newbie games be a reflection of what you can expect on this site? Someone who feels the pace of a newbie game is too slow, is likely to feel the pace of games on the rest of the site is too slow as well.
- Thirdly, the deadlines we choose are strongly correlated to the expectations we put on our players regarding commitment. Were these taken into account? Because if this was an active point of discussion in the modteam, I would have expected to see some of the considerations in that discussion be shared in the thread I created on the topic.
- 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?
Finally, I would strongly urge against using 24 hour prod times, because these require a player who is meeting the 1 post/day requirement to post earlier and earlier each day to avoid being prodded. A 48 hour prodtimer guarantees that someone who posts in the morning of day 1, and in the evening of day 2, won't be prodded. If you want to go shorter, a 30 hour prod timer would be more logical.There is no 'a' in Michel.- Plotinus
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yeah, this.In post 38, Alisae wrote: What matters is the newbies not what the regulars here think.
in the last game i modded i had a few replaceouts that were probably due to the longer deadlines or due to boredom (which might be because of the longer deadline)
it's worth a try anyway. if it doesn't work we can always go back.The failure mode of clever is asshole.
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I don't specify it in my ruleset either; I'm vague about on purpose because I want people to read it and just try to be as active as they can, not read it and try to game the system, but I do have a pretty objective system in my head that I use that doesn't take into account player's alignment or require them to advance the game very far or in any particular direction.In post 27, Ircher wrote: I've never specified the criteria as to what counts as prod-dodging and what doesn't, and I actually do tolerate it to a certain extent. (My rule is that two prod dodges equals a prod, and if you get prodded due to a prod dodge, you can't prod dodge again until after you post content.) What I have found is that you really have to be trying to actually get prodded by my prod-dodging rule. Furthermore, I've never had a player complain about it in any game I've hosted. (At least, so far I haven't.)
I don't remember if I said this last night but I've hosted players that I expected would have difficulty with the rule (either due to low signal to noise ratio or to just being low content players in general) and been pleasantly surprised with their play. For example, in a recent game I modded, at the time I counted, about 80% of Not Mafia's posts were game advancing. Of the rest, most of them were posted close enough in time to game advancing posts that it didn't matter. He didn't come close to being replaced at any point and his contributions to the game were valuable and directly contributed to the town win.The failure mode of clever is asshole.
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One thing I would like to point out is that the newbies may have the expectation that the rest of the games on site are 7 days along and this simply isn’t the case.
BUT This may mark a starting point that MS starts to shorten their deadlines.
This is a good change.
Like, I remember there being several rep outs in newbie games and hopefully this fixes that issue| here.GTKAS- mastina
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I play in newbie games whenever I'm not busy modding games. (I can only do one of the two at a time, not both, because both are equivalent in the amount of required time/effort invested.) I've been modding more recently, but I still have been playing them with plans to play more of them in the future.
This would actually work for me!
Given that this actually
isa site standard, it would also be fairly viable, too. Doesn't solve the "encounter a bad week" problem altogether, but vastly mitigates it.
That's not how it currently works (the confirmation phase in newbies happens with a locked thread--confirmation is done via PM; by the time the thread has opened, day has already started), but this idea also has strong merit to it.
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In general, older individuals, whoIn 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?dostick 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.)
These players are not, inherently, by definition the same as Geriatric players, but there IS a fair amount of overlap in that this is a service only mafiascum has to offer--'younger' players, so to speak, can find shorter games anywhere.
Basically, in my experience, anecdotal evidence is that mafiascum's target demographic is simply a different userbase than other mafia sites; said target demographic is less-numerous, because there's a whole lot more teenagers using the internet for forum gaming than adults, and thus, we have less people sign up and stay because they're not part of the target demographic.
I do think that newbie games should serve as a bit of a gateway drug into mafiascum--introduce the people who are outside the target demographic yet more numerous (that is, teenagers) to the site in a way where it appeals to them, but I also think that it should be handled with care. We want the quality of play in Newbie games to remain the same (or better); we want the quantity of SEs/ICs to remain the same (or improve); we want the newbies who play in Newbies to venture out into other game types and not suddenly feel like everything they were learning in Newbies was a lie compared to the site proper.
Weekends counting as 24 hours, D1 being 10 days, 8 days instead of 7 days, days not starting until all players have posted, and similar ideas are all compromises I feel would help us have the best of both worlds.- Toomai
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I don't really have an opinion here, but consider the following:- Traditionally, longer days favour town because more discussion can occur. What happens if changing the deadline results in faction winrate skewing way out to 30/70 or worse? (I don't think it's likelyfor deadline length to affect winrate that much, but I do think it'spossible.)
- There's something I call "the school rollover problem": changing the 5th-grade curriculum based on the results of the 5th-graders doesn't help anyone because next year it affects the current 4th-graders, who may be wildly different. In this context, we might be shortening the deadlines based on one group of newbies' preferences, but might end up later finding that the next group of newbies (the ones actually affected by the shorter deadlines) really want longer deadlines.
- Shorter deadlines mean there will likely be fewer games going on at once. (Probably a good thing in general.)
- So enough newbies think deadlines are too long for the mod team to say they're changing it. But whydo the newbies think deadlines are too long? Did they roll scum/PRs and so get impatient about getting to night? Were they VTs who got bored with the day and want to wait for their PRs to do stuff at night? Did they end up in a game where D1 was five pages and nobody else cared? Are they just used to other places with faster days? Additional context might be important.
This should be required reading for...everyone for anything, really.- N
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is this actually trueIn post 45, Toomai wrote:Traditionally, longer days favour town because more discussion can occur.- chamber
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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]
You...have played mafia on this site recently right? (I know mastina has)In post 44, mastina wrote:
In general, older individuals, whoIn 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?dostick 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.)
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.- brassherald
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Why do we have a longer deadline average, though?In post 24, T-Bone wrote:Please keep in mind that this change is informed by feedback Penguin has been collecting for a long time, and the major complaint he gets from newbies is 'deadlines are too long'. 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?
We are not imposing this limit in other queues. Yes, it is likely that deadline averages will drop as a result. But, it does not prevent moderators from setting deadlines they prefer in other queues. There may even be solutions we can implement in other queues to preserve the longer deadline average the site currently has.I've only made one good post, and don't you dare accuse me of doing it again. - brassherald
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