Replace Outs

[the worst]

i feel like the king of this thread
outta my way people

Suggestion #2: track replace outs, and punish people who do it for non-documented reasons multiple times. A temporary ban on joining new games for a time period is good. If you want to allow redemption, let replacing into a game and playing it to completion, or maybe even mod a game to completion, count as community service hours or what have you.

nice work team!

so I kind of like, coincidentally already kind of track replace-outs which go through my queue. i also just tend towards celebrating those who do the right thing (rather than punishing those who don't) by nature. if we have a site policy shift towards punishing replace-outs i can help with that. i think this would be a great change.

in fairness to the subject i enthusiastically agree that every single replacement is a hefty blow against the game's integrity. sometimes one blow sends it crashing down. sometimes it survives ten by some miracle, but looks so shit at the end that nobody is actually impressed. sometimes (truly rare cases), it improves the quality of a game.

but basically yeah. a culture of excessive replacements is a culture where almost no part of a game is fun. scumming in particular becomes a huge pain in the ass, and townies learn absolutely nothing by being carried by a lategame replacement. the dream would be no replacements. not achievable, but we could be a lot closer than we are.



tangentially: while i'm writing this i'm wondering if i could do a large statistical study on the rate of replacements per game (e.g. are there an average of 5 replacements per 13p game?) per real life day (do we have one replacement per game per week?) but having actual accurate results is kind of outside the scope of my queue. if people would be potentially interested in helping out with the sheer admin of this kind of study hmu. this is probably manually poring through game mod ISOs to find replacement notices, which is unfortunately often how i update my spreadsheet. it's not for the faint of heart, or people who like, enjoy going outside or having hobbies or w/e



but yeah, constructively: if there's intent to enforce this in a serious fashion it would be very easy for me to contribute to the effort. i'm just kind of too lazy to write up a suggestion, or project manage a solution.

[Nero Cain]

I mean, come on how would games ever fill if we didn't let in flakes and nonparticipants? There's only lie 20 players on this site.

[Knightmare491]

Something like, if you replace out of "x" amount of games within a "y" period of time then you're banned from joining games for a "z" period of time could be implemented.

[mastina]

The game of mafia without replacing out would be ten times worse than the game of mafia allowing replace outs. You can't force people to stay in the game who don't want to be in the game. If they want out of the game, then let them get out of the game.

Similarly, you can't keep people onsite when they disappear from games and siteflake. If they siteflake then without replacements their slot would be empty the entire game.

We have replacements for good reason.

Replacing out is healthy to the game of mafia as a whole. If someone is in no state to play the game, let them out.
If someone needs to be forcefully removed from the game but their slot is not compromised beyond salvage, would you instantly modkill them? No, you'd force-replace them.
If someone disappears from the site for any reason, someone's gotta fill the slot, unless you want to modkill the slot for flaking.

And hint.
There's a reason the BAM modding ruleset fell out of favor.
It's not conductive to the game as a whole, and moreover, it was a relic from the past when the site lacked the playerbase to replace slots, where you could search days or even weeks and not get someone to replace in.

If that were still the case, then replacements would still be detrimental--but it's not. You usually get replacements in less than 24 hours after the mod starts to search for one. If not, it's in 24-48 hours. Rarely does a slot go more than 72 hours unfilled after a mod starts to search for a replacement.

Basically, most of the time, a failure to rapidly procure a replacement is a failure of the game moderator--not a failure in the system of seeking replacements. That can be solved by getting better game moderators.

And rapidly-procured replacements rarely create a negative environment for the game, because it is giving content fairly rapidly after the replacement was needed.

Yes, there will always be a jarring difference between the replacement and the replacee, but that's the lesser of two evils--between "this slot is different under its current holder", and, "this slot is literally not in the game due to the player exiting the game", I'll take the former 100% of the time over the latter.

[Xtoxm]

i agree that the culture of replacing out on this site is a big problem
i'd be willing to implement something like smart's suggestion on the occasions i mod

[Alyssa The Lamb]

The replacements taking so little time to fill is probably more likely due to the fewer amount of games taking place at a time. There are plenty of people around that are willing to join a game in progress, but the supply of such things have gotten lower over the past several years.

I used to be able to just jump into a game if I wanted to because there was basically always a game needing a replacement. That's no longer the case lol

[Porochaz]

I believe there was a wiki page set up a while ago to track this - "hall of shame" or something. I also remembering it had some fatal flaw (it also might no9t have been consistently updated) and I can't remember what it was. It's a recurring problem and it is viewed as very bad (?) but noones managed to find a sustainable solution to fixing it.

[Auro]

Game of Theseus

3 Mafia Masterminds

8 Disposable Townies

• 2 week days, 3 day nights.
  
• Masterminds
  always have daytalk.
  
• Masterminds
  are given 48 hours before the game starts to discuss and submit an ordering of all players.
  
• At any point in the game, anyone out of the game can /in to replace, and will replace the next un-replaced person on the original list.
  
• The replaced players retain their win-con.