Town Meta Perspective 2020

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Town Meta Perspective 2020

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Sun Nov 29, 2020 11:07 pm

Post by unwnd »

It's very clear to me that the town meta has changed. Raw interactions and the stimuli you receive by others responding to your posts has become the norm, while taking your time to articulate your thoughts and leave them for others to pick up on later is outdated. I think that town's motivation and perception of accountability with this in mind has become skewed. Current opinions are more favorable than old ones, so more people are less inclined to look backwards on days.
I think the cesspool also leads to unintentional lurking, burnout, and confusion, which leaves a few players not nearly enjoying the game as much.
I'm not sure if I have statistics at hand, but I think the process can be
overwhelming
, which in turn has become a tactic. Why even let scum play the game? Don't give them an inch, and the people who aren't as motivated (willing or not) can be figured out later.

Despite it seemingly being proactive, I think this is lazy and affects the quality of town games
. It feels like the concept of winning has become at no matter the cost. This in turn works great for town if they're right, but I believe that depending on the current momentum, it can easily favor scum. It's great until the feeling wears off and you're seeing more green in the graveyard. Days feel more like events of participation as hyperposting dominates all thought processes. You don't need to outplay your opponents if they're never given a chance.
People are often asserting themselves in ways that (hope to) demand respect, and it feels in some sense townies are always competing against each other to be the strongest asset.

The idea of relevancy and vying for thread control plays in part with the concept of hyperposting. This is a tired topic that is buried somewhere in this very subforum and I don't want to get much into it. I do however feel strongly about the diminishing returns.
I don't think this style is healthy for the game or the players.
Over-indulgence is simply bad for you all facets of life, so I'm not sure where it became tolerated. I think a lot of people still play Mafia (and here, as well) because it is a sense of familiarity, even with changes to the meta such as posting frequency. People are willing to undergo changes in order to maintain relevancy. I do the same thing too.

I really would like see others discuss and observe this however. I think when the game is going on you start to forget these are people you're responding to. We all want to pretend our emotions don't seep into our arguments but
it has become more common to use emotional behavior as an advantage.
I don't mean this as a mechanic either. The mods have tried to do their best efforts to not longer promote toxic behavior, but I think people are relenting and finding ways to promote it either way. What I think is a cause of all these factors is the competitiveness of the game as well. I won't get too much into it but games are played more fiercely, and it's almost like the equivalent of modern matchmaking. We're given longer deadlines yet you hardly see days ever reach them.
I believe that current town meta breeds a toxic environment for anyone who is not participating and I hope discussion can incite change.
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Sun Nov 29, 2020 11:41 pm

Post by Infinity 324 »

I agree tbh. I’ve had basically nothing going on for the past few weeks and it’s been draining to keep up with 3-4 games. These are minis and micros. I’ve been trying to get myself to post less but you’re right, it’s really whoever posts more has more influence and is less likely to be limmed.
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Mon Nov 30, 2020 1:03 am

Post by Awoo »

I'm going to play devil's advocate. No matter what format of mafia you play, this is sort of process is inevitable. Mafia is a game where the team that is able to push agenda more effectively will win. In order to push agenda, you take up a part of the information space. If you take up all of the information space, you are de facto in control of the game, and can advance towards your wincon unimpeded.

In IRL/F2F/Video mafia, the information space is very small, since the natural limits of human hearing make it so you can only really have one conversation at a time. This leads to some situations like 4-3 LYLO where mafia can monopolize the information space, simply by talking in circles and running out the clock, and completely decimate town's chances of making it another day. In my experience, any LYLO of 4-3 or greater in a F2F situation is completely hopeless as town.

A similar phenomenon happens in chatroom mafia. The information space is larger, because you can have lots of conversations at once as the stream of messages flies by. Learn to watch for your name and important stuff in the logs, and suddenly town is able to co-ordinate better. The information space is now several conversations instead of just one. That being said, the most effective way, in my experience, to win chatroom mafia as scum is to swiftly nightkill anyone who displays signs of being able to lead or co-ordinate town, then step in and take their role along with your team. I have funny memories of rolling groupscum without a nightkill in a chatroom game, and co-ordinating and hard aligning with my mafia partners each night on which name we were going to spam in all caps lock the next day and get votes on. We ended up endgaming and winning with only one bus because we completely controlled the information space of the game. As town, putting in a lot of effort to become the town leader and voting off suspicious people is also extremely effective and gets me a lot of wins. It's also not toxic, since the game doesn't last 40 days.

Forum mafia, especially in the iteration on mafiascum where days are weeks, and games last months, shouldn't have this problem of a very small information space at all, at least in theory. Quoting and replying to people lets you have an unbounded number of side conversations. All the time means no time is lost and you can read and re-read every post. In this case, I think the information space limitation ends up coming from human limits. People posting too much can overwhelm that. And then as OP says hyperposting and a #killallnonhyperposters meta kind of breaks human limits of having fun.

In terms of inciting change... posting a lot to take control of the game is a winning strategy! Unless players take action and start policying hyperposters (who you call town), there's no in-game reason not to follow a winning strategy. I also think based on the way you write this, you're thinking about the game of mafia in a bit of a narrow minded way. Mafia isn't just a game of argument VS argument. Reading people by emotion and manipulating people by emotion is part of the game. Truly, I think reading people based on human elements and intuition is far more effective than trying to find logical reasons why they're mafia. I don't know how effective it is over forum, but in other environments it can be very effective to make reads as town and trick people as scum. I might be missing your point though since I don't play on this site.

Also, "(e)lim" is such a lame word. Does not work well semantically or mechanically. Just say voted off, it's unambiguous and to the point. Every killing method results in elimination, but rarely is there more than one mechanic involving voting somebody off.
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Mon Nov 30, 2020 1:14 am

Post by Infinity 324 »

Wrt emotion, I think OP is talking about emotional manipulation/AtE. It’s another thing that makes the game more draining and more high-investment than is enjoyable.
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Mon Nov 30, 2020 1:30 am

Post by Awoo »

Yeah, AtE in chatroom mafia is literally a matter of minutes. It's not very draining whatsoever. F2F is draining because it requires you to actually feel the emotions you're projecting, and forum yikes one day is two weeks.
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Mon Nov 30, 2020 10:38 am

Post by Cabd »

Oh hey it's the thread that describes things that happened in large themes recently.
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Mon Nov 30, 2020 11:11 am

Post by Bell »

I'm allergic to talking about things I don't understand.
But I mean, if you put a wall poster and a spam poster side to side and placed a word counter on each of their posts how different would it be.
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Tue Dec 01, 2020 8:02 am

Post by Alisae »

If scum can’t control the agenda and drive the narrative, they will lose.
If town is all active and sorts each other, and the scum are inactive and let town decide the narrative and control the agenda, they will lose.
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Tue Dec 01, 2020 11:27 am

Post by mastina »

In post 7, Alisae wrote:If town is all active and sorts each other, and the scum are inactive and let town decide the narrative and control the agenda, they will lose.
Small caveat:
Requires the town to sort each other
correctly
and the town's decided narrative/agenda to be
pro-town
.
(When a huge portion of towns will self-destruct, sort each other as scum, and eliminate each other.)

But yes, town that sorts each other correctly and scum that're inactive and let this happen, will let town win and scum to lose.
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Tue Dec 01, 2020 12:10 pm

Post by unwnd »

Mastina brings up the point I was trying to get to succinctly

Everything is good when it isn't, and I think that this type of style is a flash in a pan. When it works, the feeling is euphoric

Wehn it doesn't? It's hell or high water. I don't think it's something that can be maintained, both hypothetically and literally
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Post Post #10 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:36 am

Post by Isis »

What changes are you hoping for, exactly? If having a strong postcount improves winrate, people are going to keep having a strong postcount.
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Post Post #11 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:38 am

Post by Alisae »

I feel like the change has to come from scum no?
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Post Post #12 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:41 am

Post by Cabd »

In post 11, Alisae wrote:I feel like the change has to come from scum no?
Scum has to stop trying to middle of pack lurk. The site meta will favor town until scum finds a winning strategy that breaks the ability of towns to throw "rock" and win 66 instead of 33 percent of the time outright. Towns would be silly not to keep playing it out.
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Post Post #13 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:42 am

Post by Alisae »

In post 12, Cabd wrote:
In post 11, Alisae wrote:I feel like the change has to come from scum no?
Scum has to stop trying to middle of pack lurk. The site meta will favor town until scum finds a winning strategy that breaks the ability of towns to throw "rock" and win 66 instead of 33 percent of the time outright. Towns would be silly not to keep playing it out.
My personal theory as to why scum try to be in the middle of the pack is because they don't want to play scum
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Post Post #14 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:43 am

Post by Infinity 324 »

I don’t hold out much hope for a change to happen, but if it does it will come from people who prioritize having fun over winning.
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Post Post #15 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:01 am

Post by petapan »

there's a lot to unpack here but fwiw the site culture is markedly less toxic than it was 5-8 years ago even with the change in game styles

the effects of excessive posting is its own discussion. it's not fun to get overwhelmed by the pace of a game and feel left out, and it's not unfair to want to curb that so people can play on more even ground without every game having to resort to using the geriatric ruleset.
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Post Post #16 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:06 am

Post by Isis »

I think from time to time there are some highposters that ought to be in multiple games to spread their volume out, but just aren't, for not good enough reasons such that it'd be great for everyone involved if maybe they picked up another game.
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Post Post #17 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:13 am

Post by Menalque »

is there like a better way to do geriatric? like if you hit >X% of the median post count you get a posting timeout or something?
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Post Post #18 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:14 am

Post by Alisae »

Well, the Vi battery was a thing
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Post Post #19 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:16 am

Post by Alisae »

you know the more I think on it the more I don't see how that relates to this situation.

I feel like playing scum is miserable in this meta
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Post Post #20 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:19 am

Post by Cabd »

In post 17, Menalque wrote:is there like a better way to do geriatric? like if you hit >X% of the median post count you get a posting timeout or something?

Fgo rules set worked fairly well imo?
5. A game phase is considered "exhausted" if a phase generated more than 60 new pages of posts. At that point, the game will enter "wind down" phase. The page count of the current player phase will be provided in each vote count.
6. During "wind down" each player is allowed a one post, and one additional post per vote on them at the time of the thread lock. (These counts will be mod-provided publicly)
7. Failure to comply with wind down rules will be met with loss of abilities, vote, or both. You REALLY don't want to do this.
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Post Post #21 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:26 am

Post by unwnd »

In post 19, Alisae wrote:you know the more I think on it the more I don't see how that relates to this situation.

I feel like playing scum is miserable in this meta

I absolutely agree. Furthermore, posting a lot in succession could easily be condensed into one singular post. Hyperposting is just feedback loop over and over until someone breaks through and responds to you. That's where the effectiveness lies, but if everyone has the same agenda then the game gets really confusing and unbearable to look at. It's organized chaos and I think we're smarter than that. I don't mind single sentence posting, but you could definitely space out your thoughts more and let others do the thinking for you instead of demanding attention

That is where I determine an issue
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Post Post #22 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 1:00 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 13, Alisae wrote:My personal theory as to why scum try to be in the middle of the pack is because they don't want to play scum
Well, yes, but also: lurking has been a widely-used, widely-accepted strategy for years that was incredibly effective, and to this day can still be if the town being active self-destructs. No need for scum to be active if the town is doing the scum's job for them.

I do feel that towns are getting better at identifying fellow town tho so lurking as scum is less effective than it used to be.
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Post Post #23 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 1:06 pm

Post by Menalque »

In post 20, Cabd wrote:
In post 17, Menalque wrote:is there like a better way to do geriatric? like if you hit >X% of the median post count you get a posting timeout or something?

Fgo rules set worked fairly well imo?
5. A game phase is considered "exhausted" if a phase generated more than 60 new pages of posts. At that point, the game will enter "wind down" phase. The page count of the current player phase will be provided in each vote count.
6. During "wind down" each player is allowed a one post, and one additional post per vote on them at the time of the thread lock. (These counts will be mod-provided publicly)
7. Failure to comply with wind down rules will be met with loss of abilities, vote, or both. You REALLY don't want to do this.
I’d 100% play a game under those rules
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Post Post #24 (ISO) » Wed Dec 02, 2020 1:08 pm

Post by Menalque »

In post 18, Alisae wrote:Well, the Vi battery was a thing
idk what this is
In post 19, Alisae wrote:you know the more I think on it the more I don't see how that relates to this situation.

I feel like playing scum is miserable in this meta
idk, I feel like this makes scum playing easier if you’re able to hyperpost as scum because you almost don’t have to worry about looking good or having convincing though processes as people will just TR the effort half the time
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