Is everyone really that bad at mafia?

[NotAJumbleOfNumbers]

Jumble, everyone is bad at mafia. And I don't say that as an unironic meme, it's true

Is that

really

the case? In every game I've played, everyone seems more in control - and more knowledgeable than me, too. I feel like I'm the only person who doesn't know what they're doing. And what about everyone else who has a high winrate? Surely they can't be bad at the game, right?

[Ythan]

They are they're just pretending.

[the worst]

ythan said exactly what i was gonna say.

we're all pretending to be good. some of us just project confidence harder, or talk louder.


edit: except skitter30, she's actually good.

[schadd_]

i would say the jury is out for a large amt of people. it's definitely true that it's hard to be good at or improve at mafia, there's just a lot of epistemological obstacles - games take a long time so any sort of sample size for a person is actually quite low, and evaluating/reflecting on your performance is kind of hard to do when the game is stressful and also demands confidence from you. like i can say on my own behalf that there's a lot of games where i played badly that i would probably want to think through critically (if i were interested in being better at this point. lol) but, like, i just don't want to think about them. they sucked. and like the one thing i can tell you confidently is that everybody who has played enough of this game, hates it at least a little bit in their own way.

i can say with 30ish games played that my ability to be good as town is incredibly circumstantial and my ability to be good as mafia is some sort of crater / vortex / calamity / etc. i think one or more of these things is true for most players. there are plenty of people that are clearly good though, yes skitter is a shining example. i think the stratification is slightly more pronounced in the scum sphere.

[Ramcius]

I'll put this way - after played few games in like last year I miss "meta" meta despite the fact that despise meta really hard. At least having meta gave people something to do and sometimes hit scum. "Townhunting" meat (yes, "" is necessary) is so much bs that it's just made me stop playing - "This person said something sensible, so they must be town and no matter how many little scumslips you show to me, I will defend them to biter end", you can't imagine how much I wanted to slap every person, who were like this or "but this is town, it's gut feeling, so I won't let you lynch them"

Tbh, I disagree with idea that mafia is stressful, it might be frustrating, but it's not stressful, unless you make it stressful, but that's on you no, not on mafia. Very good tip to make mafia less stressful is to accept that town don't know who other townies are, so people might accuse you, they probably will, that's ok, that's natural, that's the part of the process. To make scum play less stressful just hink that townies aren't that good and they are just more or less blind guessing, so you aren't in any danger, unless you do something dumb, therefore think before posting, then think again, and only then post

Speaking of good players - RC is only person I don't want face as a scum, he's immune to bs

[northsidegal]

i would say the jury is out for a large amt of people. it's definitely true that it's hard to be good at or improve at mafia, there's just a lot of epistemological obstacles - games take a long time so any sort of sample size for a person is actually quite low, and evaluating/reflecting on your performance is kind of hard to do when the game is stressful and also demands confidence from you. like i can say on my own behalf that there's a lot of games where i played badly that i would probably want to think through critically (if i were interested in being better at this point. lol) but, like, i just don't want to think about them. they sucked. and like the one thing i can tell you confidently is that everybody who has played enough of this game, hates it at least a little bit in their own way.

i can say with 30ish games played that my ability to be good as town is incredibly circumstantial and my ability to be good as mafia is some sort of crater / vortex / calamity / etc. i think one or more of these things is true for most players. there are plenty of people that are clearly good though, yes skitter is a shining example. i think the stratification is slightly more pronounced in the scum sphere.

great post! i agree with basically everything said here: very hard to improve, sample size for anyone (even people considered great) is typically pretty low, and skill difference matters a lot more when playing scum than when playing town.

on top of this i think i would also say that another thing that makes it relatively difficult to evaluate whether or not someone is good at mafia is that—at least when it comes to playing town—what "good play" actually looks like might not really line up with what you imagine it looks like. what do i mean by that? well, i would imagine that most people would imagine "good play" as someone always pushing scum lynches, or something similar: basically, sort of "bombastic" plays that are really visible and end up in a scum lynch. while that theoretical person would certainly be great at mafia and would probably have a high winrate, i also think that someone who was just good at projecting towniness and who consistently acquired and defended ~2 townreads every game might have a completely comparable (or even possibly greater) effect on town winning, even if they don't consistently push scum lynches.

i'm certain it's been said to death, but i guess i'm just trying to say that "good play" (at least as town, which is all i know) can come in a lot of different forms.

[Ramcius]

Improving in mafia isn't that hard, but getting better doesn't translates into better winrate sadly, I mean for town. Being good as a scum you can win alone, so your teams performance is less important. You can always try something new and see how that pans out for you. If you get misexecuted, think what you did wrong, if your read turns out wrong, think where you did a mistake. When you see people making correct reads, think how they did, what gave away alignment of that person. Also, drop "towny" and "scumy" from your arsenal, it's a big bait

[Ythan]

just pretending

[Nancy Drew 39]

[Ramcius]

Since when you into anime?

[Nancy Drew 39]

Since when you into anime?

[Ramcius]

Since when you into anime?

At least you should choose something good

[Ythan]

And I'm a troll.

[davesaz]

And I'm a troll.

That much is certain.

[Ythan]

Oh that's even better.

[BBmolla]

Jumble, everyone is bad at mafia. And I don't say that as an unironic meme, it's true

Is that

really

the case? In every game I've played, everyone seems more in control - and more knowledgeable than me, too. I feel like I'm the only person who doesn't know what they're doing. And what about everyone else who has a high winrate? Surely they can't be bad at the game, right?

yes

[Flavor Leaf]

Only because everyone’s reads are always bad unless they get lucky.

I don’t think wrong reads means bad, though, just do what you gotta do to get the right conclusion at the end if Town, and manipulate the game as scum.

Play to strengths as both alignments.

If you’re not good at scum hunting, be a voice of reason to stop arguments, that’s a strength. Being friendly, keeping the game lighthearted, i think are traits of a good town as long as they can hone in on it and support.

It’s like a sport or moba, they’re different positions players can fill, and being the one to “catch” the scum is like a player catching a football at the end zone.

Scum, to be good, you just gotta do stuff. Most scum just coast

[NotAJumbleOfNumbers]

Bumping thread because I still feel the same way. It's just that nothing seems to

click

for me whenever I play a game of Mafia, and I'm just left wandering around aimlessly. How do you even read a game effectively?

[Ythan]

I think I just harp on people I think are being dishonest.

[OkaPoka]

play mountainous setups and the noise will be gone

[Ythan]

If you're struggling to make sense of the game I don't think removing power roles is the way to go. Mountainous is of course entirely reliant on your reads.

[the worst]

play mountainous setups and the noise will be gone

Isn't this because everyone else has replaced out, though?

I don't think mountainous really fixes the problem - mid/lategame apathy is a whole thing too, and having mechanical stuff to prompt conversations helps a bunch.

[OkaPoka]

i dont mean only play mountainous game/games without prs, just playing one or two will help idk "deconstruct" the game to its bare parts without getting distracted or worried about anything superfluous

[the worst]

I don't disagree that you play mountainous well. I like mountainous, too! But the bulk of players don't seem very engaged in mountainous and I'm not sure how willing they are to open their third eye and learn how to get drastically better at sheer day play. I think it sounds great in theory but runs into problems in practice

Vanilla variant games are cool for dayplay with limited nightplay, too.

[OkaPoka]

lmao im not good at mountainous games - i just enjoy them because the thing about mountainous games is that its a game with absolutely no info so you need to play the part of creating info and then using your self-created info to win the game

maybe that's the key for you @najon? there are a lot of ways to play the game, you could do what I like to do and try and be the person who tries and generates content for the talented players to sort. be the person who tries and pushes wagons, writes up cases, fakes scum reads etc. etc. to keep the game rolling and the train chugging along.

if you are constantly on offense and engaged in the game i promise you, the game will make a path for you.