Planned Changes: Newbie Game Deadlines

[Toomai]

I don't really have an opinion here, but consider the following:

1. 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
   likely
   for deadline length to affect winrate that much, but I do think it's
   possible
   .)
   
2. 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.
   
3. Shorter deadlines mean there will likely be fewer games going on at once. (Probably a good thing in general.)
   
4. So enough newbies think deadlines are too long for the mod team to say they're changing it. But
   why
   do 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.

[Toomai]

I’ve seen D1 deadlines with only 12 hours and there is definitely something productive happening in those 12 hours.
There could definitely be something productive in 7 days

But those are not Newbie Games. Newbie Games:

• feature at least 5/9 players who may not know how to scumhunt/generate discussion
  
• will always have a high rate of replacements due to players signing up but immediately forgetting about the site, or quickly realizing they don't like the game, or other similar reasons - and replacements take time to recognize, trigger, and fill
  
• can contain players who come from places with a different D1 meta (such as "always no-lynch"), which needs a long enough deadline for experienced players to phase away without it getting piled on by anxious newbies rushing to participate

[Toomai]

The first newbie game with deadline/prod changes has been assigned.

Deadlines have been updated to 10 days for Day 1, and 7 days for all further Day phases. Prodding now occurs after 30 hours of inactivity. (7/2/2018)

I will be watching winrate and replacement stats comparing old and new systems.

[Toomai]

I think 30 hours is a little harsh considering the rest of the site uses 48 hour deadlines... why should we be more strict about replacing newbies when they probably came to the site for the longer deadlines?

It's somewhat of a necessary evil. If we shorten deadlines but keep prods unchanged, that's actually kind of worse in terms of trying to counter game stagnation.

• 14-day dayphase (old), 48-hour prods (old): each prod is 1/7 of a phase (14.3%)
  
• 10-day dayphase (new day 1), 48-hour prods (unchanged): each prod is 1/5 of a phase (20.0%)
  
• 7-day dayphase (new days 2+), 48-hour prods (unchanged): each prod is 2/7 of a phase (28.6%)
  
• 10-day dayphase (new day 1), 30-hour prods (new): each prod is 1/8 of a phase (12.5%)
  
• 7-day dayphase (new days 2+), 30-hour prods (new): each prod is 5/28 of a phase (17.9%)

[Toomai]

1. Given that we now that we have daytalk for the scumteam, and given that the number of power roles is small and the interactions between them are well documented, I don't see the point of 48 hour nights at all. I think those can be completely eliminated in favor of instant nights. This will help speed up games and keep people engaged.

Disagree. Nights provide a flow to the game, a mental reset for town and a "I can stop being two people at once" relief for scum. It would also make inactivity far more likely to null night actions.

Instant night on global request on the other hand is perfectly fine, since it involves unanimous agreement.

2. Replacements really are killer.

This is the reality of newbie games - there will be more replacements than other games, guaranteed, because it's the group of players who haven't yet realized they can't keep interest in the game.

Additional note: So far, while the sample size isn't the best, the 2d3 newbie games have basically the same replacement rate as the Matrix6 ones. It's too early to tell if the deadline/prod changes have done anything.

a. Follow a BaM-like system. No prods, no replacements. If a slot doesn't post in a game day, modkill it.

I presume this is merely included for completeness because this a really bad idea - especially given the threat of a blindhammer/lolhammer from a newbie is higher than in other games.

Don't worry about trying to match experience levels with the player replacing in.

I assume with this you mean "don't give newbies a temporary priority over replacing into newbie slots". Which is fair enough if your prime goal is to get the slot filled as quickly as possible, but on the other hand you don't really want it to be easy for a game to turn into SEs only.

[Toomai]

So hey is this having any (positive) impact on the replacement rates or newbie satisfaction with games on this site? Based on what I'm seeing newbies are still replacing out at quite a high rate, and replacements out of a 1 week deadline game are going to be pretty devastating to the health of a game.

It'll be a while before we have enough stats to determine any change in replacement rate (currently only 3 completed games with new system).