The Root of Toxicity in Mafia Games

[Nancy Drew 39]

Disagree with you on that. In The Room Odds, I correctly nailed Persivul as scum right out of the gate but was unable to convince anyone of that, so we ultimately lost.

[Ramcius]

Disagree with you on that. In The Room Odds, I correctly nailed Persivul as scum right out of the gate but was unable to convince anyone of that, so we ultimately lost.

I dunno with what you disagree tbh. Being confident in your scumreads doesn't make everyone magically to trust you. All I say is if you say something like " I think X is scum and we should lynch them", people won't listen you ever, but dropping "I think" part and feigning confidence might work sometimes, when you have doubts

[Nancy Drew 39]

Disagree with you on that. In The Room Odds, I correctly nailed Persivul as scum right out of the gate but was unable to convince anyone of that, so we ultimately lost.

I dunno with what you disagree tbh. Being confident in your scumreads doesn't make everyone magically to trust you. All I say is if you say something like " I think X is scum and we should lynch them", people won't listen you ever, but dropping "I think" part and feigning confidence might work sometimes, when you have doubts

Yeah, people don’t like making decisions, so they are wont to sheep the confident player who assumes responsibility.

Like if you say, “I think X could be scum but I’m unsure”, then good luck with that.

[chennisden]

If there was ranked mafia this game would be very toxic too

This is the reason I haven't signed up for some other mafia sites.

[Nancy Drew 39]

If there was ranked mafia this game would be very toxic too

This is the reason I haven't signed up for some other mafia sites.

There are some sites where it’s actually the mods who are toxic. They abuse their powers to power trip and unfairly influence games.

[popsofctown]

Are there sites with ranked mafia??

[Ankamius]

That sounds like a great way to not accurately measure skill while simultaneously giving a lot of people room to flame people with lower 'skill' than them

[chennisden]

Postgame flaming in this site is already bad enough too

[Ramcius]

Postgame flaming in this site is already bad enough too

That's constructive criticism, not flaming

[chkflip]

ego

[Enter]

I think ranked mafia would be ridiculously difficult to pull off accurately given how often the effectiveness of a play style is determined by the hivemind

[Psyche]

itd be doable if games were shorter and more frequent but in our context it just wouldn't mean anything

if we were doing chat mafia games for instance...

[Enter]

I liked the BoP format. Perhaps with shorter days.

[RadiantCowbells]

I don't think it's generally hard to determine who is and isn't competent at mafia if you're not trying to determine who is better between players of similar skill levels.

[Enter]

I don't think it's generally hard to determine who is and isn't competent at mafia if you're not trying to determine who is better between players of similar skill levels.

I'd agree that discernment of capability is relatively trinary, at least as far as I'm concerned.

[Ramcius]

Rankings are for bragging rights, not for determining who's better

[popsofctown]

The sample size for forum mafia is too low so if you assess how good people are you have to make some subjective assessments about the way players played rather than plugging their win/loss record into a formula.

[NorwegianboyEE]

I’d say a player is good if they can point to at least a couple games where they performed to their win condition really well. Or if they can properly adapt to any situation snd turn it to their advantage. Win/lose ratios are a lame way of bragging.

[Krazy]

Realistically speaking a lot of these concerns are tied to setup philosophy. Ranked games need an agreed upon setup. It's also hard to do ranked in a forum because the pace is so slow and replacements so frequent. How would you calculate rank with a replaced player?

Toxicity is also separated by tilt, aggression, and the fundamentals of forum based communication. To say that mafia toxicity comes from the game requires showing that player toxicity in games is greater than the toxicity in forums generally, but I feel like people get banned from the normal talk forums frequently as well. In reality a lot of people are more toxic in a forum setting regardless of what they are doing there.

[teacher]

^ +1

[profii]

I'd rather see players get rated than ranked - I mean by that, you could lose but be a really swell guy who made good arguments and treated people well so it was enjoyable to play with you - here have 5 stars with your loss
You could be some awful toxic death tunnel winner cry baby (or whatever) that makes the game awful for everyone and win - sorry, just 1 star for you.

I think if everyone rated everyone after a game, getting say 12 ratings after a 13p game, you'd soon average out all the idiots and then in the playerlist you might even be able to get a 4 star plus queue for great players or whatever.

i've not really thought that through but just a spin on it I guess

[Krazy]

Probably too much to get everyone to vote on every player. But maybe people could do accolades to reward positive behavior.

[Ramcius]

You can't let people rate other people in the game, it literally invites more toxicity and ratings for likes/dislikes. But if good/experienced mods rated players in their games, then we might get something out of it

[Psyche]

i think winrates are fine! why can't we be happy with winrates
yeah people can fluke good winrates, but not over large samples
and if it's small samples, no good evaluative metric is possible
yall make this so complicated

[Dannflor]

because then ppl have to admit rc is good at mafia