Should every game have a day lurker vig?

[Nancy Drew 39]

I’m referring of course

specifically

, to players who sign up for games and either require repeat prodding or outright flake on most of their games.

Obviously, players on V/LA and/or actually can’t help the reason for their lack of participation, would be immune from this.

I think games would be a lot better and more fun, if most mods had this mechanic in their games because it either winds up dragging down most games and forces mods to request replacements.

[Cheery Dog]

No

[Something_Smart]

It might be a good idea for more mods to adopt Kmd's rule, which is something like "you can't join this game if you've been replaced for inactivity in the past year." Maybe soften it to "more than once," or put some condition on the percentage of games you've lurked out of.

I would bet that among site-active players (i.e. ignoring siteflakes), it's something like an 80-20 situation-- 20% of players cause 80% of replacements.

[Oversoul]

Llamafluff ran a multi ball game where one of the scum factions could only kill the lowest posters of the day. I thought that was neat.

[The Fonz]

I've seen a few rule sets designed to make towns deal with lurkers.

Some disallowed replacements. One gave scum a bonus kill if a scum player managed to lurk beyond certain parameters, and made this parameter known to town.

[Nancy Drew 39]

It might be a good idea for more mods to adopt Kmd's rule, which is something like "you can't join this game if you've been replaced for inactivity in the past year." Maybe soften it to "more than once," or put some condition on the percentage of games you've lurked out of.

I would bet that among site-active players (i.e. ignoring siteflakes), it's something like an 80-20 situation-- 20% of players cause 80% of replacements.

Yeah, they sign up for games but feel no responsibility to be at all active and take up spots from more active players.

I think a lurker vig would greatly discourage this type of behaviour. I hear people talk about policy lynching a lot in games but you don’t want to really waste your one chance to lynch on a lurker, especially when there’s actually scummier slots to consider.

[Something_Smart]

I mean, that kinda just removes lurkers from the game indiscriminate of their role which can unbalance the game really easily.

I think the fairest way to combat games with lurkers is to have certain games that lurkers aren't allowed to join.

[popsofctown]

On the one hand the players who triple-prod -> replace-out of games are probably a small identifiable group that could just theoretically be barred at the signups step, where ingame mechanics don't need to make any compromises to.
On the other hand mafiascum leadership has always opposed collective blacklisting/public blacklisting for understandable reasons.

Back in the good ol' days I seem to remember lots of players who would actually post every single day and nothing they ever said even feigned being alignment indicative so you just have to lynch them or not lynch them whatever. I don't see that nowadays, so that at least is nice I guess.

[Something_Smart]

I mean mods are free to impose restrictions on who can join their game; public blacklisting if done for personal reasons can cause conflict but basing it on an objective criterion such as this shouldn't be a problem.

[popsofctown]

My understanding is that if you made a thread listing all the players on the site and their prod/replace history so people could use it to reject /in's the site mods would be against that and lock/delete it, no matter how objective it was, although I like the idea of such a thread.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I mean, that kinda just removes lurkers from the game indiscriminate of their role which can unbalance the game really easily.

I think the fairest way to combat games with lurkers is to have certain games that lurkers aren't allowed to join.

How would you control that? WOTM on repeat lurksacks?

[Something_Smart]

Sort of, yeah. Have a rule that players signing up who have been replaced for activity more than once in the past year will be rejected (or something to that effect). You wouldn't have to keep a running list, pops, you could just check people on a case-by-case basis.

[Nancy Drew 39]

On the one hand the players who triple-prod -> replace-out of games are probably a small identifiable group that could just theoretically be barred at the signups step, where ingame mechanics don't need to make any compromises to.
On the other hand mafiascum leadership has always opposed collective blacklisting/public blacklisting for understandable reasons.

Back in the good ol' days I seem to remember lots of players who would actually post every single day and nothing they ever said even feigned being alignment indicative so you just have to lynch them or not lynch them whatever. I don't see that nowadays, so that at least is nice I guess.

Some games on MU require you to make a minimum of X game-related posts per day but I think that kind of goes to far in the other direction.

I think allowing hydras also cuts down on this. I’ve seen very few extremely inactive hydras in general.

[popsofctown]

Sort of, yeah. Have a rule that players signing up who have been replaced for activity more than once in the past year will be rejected (or something to that effect). You wouldn't have to keep a running list, pops, you could just check people on a case-by-case basis.

It seems like it would take a very long time per user to obtain this info.

And this info doesn't help with players like <redacted>, who slowly post less and less, get prodded once or twice, then take the prod as a sign they didn't care about their commitment in the first place, and request a replace out, and therefore were not "replaced for inactivity"

That's why I think a prod tally is needed. Lots of generally active players get a prod here and there though, so you need the full extent of the data to get an accurate picture.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I mean mods are free to impose restrictions on who can join their game; public blacklisting if done for personal reasons can cause conflict but basing it on an objective criterion such as this shouldn't be a problem.

There really should be one because it just isn’t fair to the active players who really want to play but we can’t do anything until lurker prods.

Maybe instead of 3 lurker prods with a 48 hr lapse, change it to 2 prods with a 72 hr lapse. So you get more leniency on time but only get 2 instead of 3 prods. I really don’t see why lurkers who don’t go V/LA should get more than 2. You can make the mistake once but you shouldn’t get more than 2 chances and with a 72 hr lapse time there would really be no excuse.

[Nero Cain]

in one of RC's upick games I made myself a lurker vig where I could only vig players with low post counts. That should be a role.

downside is that ppl fluff it up to avoid a lurker vig shot.

[Nancy Drew 39]

This tends to be more of an issue in smaller games, where the lurkers actually harm the integrity of the game.

[The Fonz]

I think allowing hydras also cuts down on this. I’ve seen very few extremely inactive hydras in general.

Sure, hydrae don't often lurk themselves, but they can make others lurk because they're annoying to deal with.

[tictac]

36/48h lapse means "post every day", but there is enough room than people don't need to be online at the same time every day.
72h lapse means "post every other day" and leads to way lurkier games in general -> leads to people losing interest and flaking.

As someone who has flaked out of a few games, I'd say it's way better to be in a routine of posting every day and not being able to tell myself:"eh, I can skip a day, and nothing bad will happen".
36h timer being standard would probably be a good thing IMO. As would some kind of automated prodding, so the amount of prods is not so mod-dependent.

I don't think the amount of allowed prods affects much, as long as it's not a large number.
I have never been prodded on purpose, and I don't think many people have.
Having that asterisk at the end of my name in the playerlist is a mark of shame, and already works as a motivator at least as well as threat of being replaced would.
2 prods overall would likely just lead to more replaces, which is not a good thing IMO.

Scaling by game-length would probably make sense.
2 prods in a same game-day should probably always mean a replace, cause it would mean no attempt to correct the behavior.
1 prod on day 1 and another on day 6 does not indicate a pattern of lurking IMO.

Using vigshots for lurkers is just good vig-play. I dunno why it would need to be mechanically enforced.
That way fluffing it up doesn't actually prevent you from getting shot.
The problem is that sometimes vigs don't play sensibly, but that

should

have negative consequences IMO.

side note: I dunno why the convention on hydrae is that they post from a shared account. Having them post from different accounts would make dealing with them way easier.

[Nero Cain]

Using vigshots for lurkers is just good vig-play.

I agree for the most part but everyone wants to make that hero vig shot and it's not like all lurkers are scum. I think the town has just as much responsibility in lynching lurkers as a vig does in shooting them.

[tictac]

Probably true that everyone wants to hero-shoot, but does that actually make it a good idea? Pretty sure people trying to do it loses more games than wins them.
It's not like all lurkers are town either tho. It's often possible to hero-shoot in the lurker-pool.

Agree that town bears

some

responsibility in lynching lurkers, but not just as much.
wagon on town-lurker is pretty low info if it's not a counter to something, so better to have that person vigged if the possibility exists.
CFD/consolidation on a lurker is often a good way to prevent a lynch on a TR tho, and day1 lurker policy is often a good idea, even if it rarely ever actually happens.

[Nibbui]

No

[the worst]

No

36h timer being standard would probably be a good thing IMO

[Pine]

No

[Nero Cain]

Says a bunch of lurkers that would get shot by a lurker vig. lo