Town Meta Perspective 2020

[Cabd]

the onus is on the individual to take pride in their scumgame and play it as close to their towngame. you're only half a mafia player if you're not willing to burn your town meta (or at the very least curtail behaviours as town you can't replicate as scum). i find it hard to respect players who only have a town game but phone it in when scum.

^^^

[northsidegal]

the onus is on the individual to take pride in their scumgame and play it as close to their towngame. you're only half a mafia player if you're not willing to burn your town meta

(or at the very least curtail behaviours as town you can't replicate as scum)

. i find it hard to respect players who only have a town game but phone it in when scum.

i agree that being unwilling as scum to replicate things you do as town is a bad thing, but i'm not really a fan of the kind of self-meta manipulation where you intentionally hamper your towngame for the sake of being better at scum. i've read a little bit from ellibereth about how for a theoretical perfect town player looking to maximize overall winrate (for town and scum) it would make sense, but for most non-theoretical people i would say that it's a form of not playing to your win condition. (of course, it's easy to say i'm biased here as someone with a relatively poor scumgame, but still)

as for my take on the meta, hyperposting complaints have been a thing for at least as long as i've been on-site, and to my knowledge a bit further back. i could be out of touch, but as far as i'm aware i don't think it's gotten worse particularly recently, so i probably wouldn't attribute any increase in town winrates to that.

my personal theory for if there were to be a recent increase in town winrates would be that, in general, the breadth of knowledge and techniques for town play is increasing faster than it is for scum play.

[Alisae]

as someone who has very distinct town meta and scum meta, I'm not sure how to go about making them not so distinct. I don't phone it in when I rand scum and I actually enjoy the alignment a lot, however my approach to both alignments is just super different and I'm not sure what to do about it (not that I think there is anything I can do). I think the problem lies in my scumgame so I'll explain it because I don't know how to fix it.

My towngame is Blue/Black with maybe some red. I actually very happy with how I approach town.
My early game is slow and not very controlling because I can't find myself putting the energy in and I'm okay with that. I can't really operate early and I need flips and generally I won't know exactly whats going on until later in the game. This ends up being I'm awful early but great late. Keep in mind I'll still try but I'm not very domant as a player early because I don't know what I want and I don't have enough information.

My scumgame is Red/Black and I feel like to align this with my townplay I have to completely relearn the alignment and I'm not sure how to do that.
I'm a powerwolf. I am 100% okay with getting my hands messy and being scumread to get my agenda. The way I win my games has been by brute forcing my agenda. However, this strategy also fails if I don't have a teammate that can support me. While I am open to strategical bussing, I don't like to most of the time mostly because it in most scenarios where I just don't have a teammate and they're being suspected, bussing would basically be giving up ground for no reason as well as putting all of the pressure on me to carry when quite frankly, I haven't won most of my F3s as scum, and as scum, I would prefer to win the game as soon as possible. It most scenarios, its not strategical bussing.
What tends to happen is I put a lot more energy into the alignment, a lot more than I normally would put as town.
The rules I hold myself to playing scum are pretty strict

1) Start Strong
This one is fairly self explanitory why its good.

2) Don't pretend to be town because quite frankly you're not town.
For awhile, most people didn't actually know how my town meta functioned, at least, not to the extent that I did. However people are starting to catch on.
I held myself to this for a long time because by pretending to be town it limits your options.

3) Control the Agenda, Drive the Narative
If I cannot do this, then town is doing it, and if I'm reacting to whatever town wants to do, we'll lose if its on point. Hence why I feel the need to control it myself

Thus this creates 2 different playstyles, 1 for each alignment.
I could change my town meta but that would require putting more energy into town and being more confident early when I feel like early game is the worst stage of the game for me. Why would I be confident early if my early reads historically sucked. While I have been confident early, and I've had good early reads in the past, it doesn't happen often and it usually happens due to bad scum rands or just really good town rands. I also am just really happy with how I play the game as town.

So the question I leave to this thread is
how do I change my scum meta? Should I even be worried about changing it?

[Infinity 324]

i agree that being unwilling as scum to replicate things you do as town is a bad thing, but i'm not really a fan of the kind of self-meta manipulation where you intentionally hamper your towngame for the sake of being better at scum. i've read a little bit from ellibereth about how for a theoretical perfect town player looking to maximize overall winrate (for town and scum) it would make sense, but for most non-theoretical people i would say that it's a form of not playing to your win condition. (of course, it's easy to say i'm biased here as someone with a relatively poor scumgame, but still)

I agree with this.

as for my take on the meta, hyperposting complaints have been a thing for at least as long as i've been on-site, and to my knowledge a bit further back. i could be out of touch, but as far as i'm aware i don't think it's gotten worse particularly recently, so i probably wouldn't attribute any increase in town winrates to that.

I don't remember as much of a hyperposting issue in 2016-2017 when I was last active.

Alisae, I don't think anyone would argue that you don't try hard as scum, so it's not super relevant here and I'd suggest making a different thread to talk about that.

[Alisae]

did I misread?
I thought the msg that hoopla was saying was people who don't try to play their scumgame as close to their towngame means ur half a mafia player :/

Like I think its on topic but I can make a seperate thread I suppose

[Infinity 324]

I think hoopla was mostly objecting to people who don't try as hard as scum or sacrifice their scumgame intentionally so they can appear obvtown as town. You play scum differently from town for strategic reasons, and you can argue in what ways that is/isn't effective, but at least you make an effort to get townreads and win games as scum.

[northsidegal]

I don't remember as much of a hyperposting issue in 2016-2017 when I was last active.

i don't know, that sounds a little ahistorical. 2017 alone had a ton of hyperposters: mulch, fro99er, sheepsaysmeep, and creature were all pretty active around that time. maybe this is getting more into late 2017 and early 2018, though.

So the question I leave to this thread is
how do I change my scum meta? Should I even be worried about changing it?

to repeat what i've heard from people i trust when it comes to good scum play, the best scum play isn't about perfectly replicating your town game, it's about pushing your win condition as mafia as much as you can. for what it's worth though, i don't think that you're the kind of player that hoopla was talking about, and i don't think most people would say that you need to change your scum game. your scumgame i would say probably doesn't suffer from the fact that you don't replicate your style as town, whereas i think hoopla's point would apply more to someone like me where my scumgame does suffer from an inability to replicate my town play as scum.

[Infinity 324]

i don't know, that sounds a little ahistorical. 2017 alone had a ton of hyperposters: mulch, fro99er, sheepsaysmeep, and creature were all pretty active around that time. maybe this is getting more into late 2017 and early 2018, though.

I never played with the first three players, and creature is sort of his own case since he would post in bursts but I don't think he was often one of the top posters in a thread. To be fair, I mostly played early in 2017. I could also be misremembering.

[Alisae]

ah okay I misunderstood what hoopla was saying then

[unwnd]

I agree with north. If I were to break down your post into simple terms your town style isn't accentuated as well with scum. I understand how you might even worry about getting burned out because you know that the things you say don't really have an end benefit to you. You're just saying them for appearance and nothing else. If you want to combat this you just have to compensate by being more manipulative with your words and then you'd have a means to justify thread activity by forcing engagements with yourself and other players. That way you're not just post post posting for no reason. Don't try to force your stream of consciousness style if you're not town, just make your opponents look worse.

[unwnd]

I think where games suck is that the concept of playing Mafia lately is more about ensuring it's only

your

idea of how it should be played.

This makes everything more stale. Narrative-driven towngames leads to compliance and lack of variety in play-style. It also will lead to scum gaining credibility in the eyes of those who drive the narrative by simply following along, which someone already touched on already in this very thread.

Interesting tidbit: Narrative gameplay is not something that popped up just because of hyperposting. This is something deeply embedded within MS as old meta used to be way more stringent on what was good and bad play. To me, Narrative was a more ubiquitous way of the game was played back then and now Narrative has become contextual. I hardly ever see the term 'VI" thrown out anymore and advocacy of policy lims is practically non-existent.

[OkaPoka]

I think where games suck is that the concept of playing Mafia lately is more about ensuring it's only

your

idea of how it should be played.

This makes everything more stale. Narrative-driven towngames leads to compliance and lack of variety in play-style. It also will lead to scum gaining credibility in the eyes of those who drive the narrative by simply following along, which someone already touched on already in this very thread.

Interesting tidbit: Narrative gameplay is not something that popped up just because of hyperposting. This is something deeply embedded within MS as old meta used to be way more stringent on what was good and bad play. To me, Narrative was a more ubiquitous way of the game was played back then and now Narrative has become contextual. I hardly ever see the term 'VI" thrown out anymore and advocacy of policy lims is practically non-existent.

wdym by narrative-driven?

[Hoopla]

I think hoopla was mostly objecting to people who don't try as hard as scum or sacrifice their scumgame intentionally so they can appear obvtown as town. You play scum differently from town for strategic reasons, and you can argue in what ways that is/isn't effective, but at least you make an effort to get townreads and win games as scum.

i mean, you'll never be able to

truly

replicate your town game as scum without dropping to the lowest common denominator of both alignments. a theoretically balanced unreadable player would probably be a lurker who votes randomly. so, i'm not advocating for a complete mirroring of one's town game. as scum, you have a different win condition, and to win you have to make (or promote) enough -EV actions for the town throughout the game. that will naturally create an imbalance between your town and scum games if you're a halfway decent town player.

but if you're noticing there are things you do as town every game that you never do as scum, it's worth reconsidering whether you're comfortable with that asymmetry, because after a while, savvy players will pick up on that, and it will completely tank your scumgame.

the unfiltered, stream-of-conscious, transparent hyperposting seems the hardest style to replicate as scum. from what i've seen, many of these players you can simply pick off on D3 or D4 once the game becomes more technical/PoE-heavy, as they slow down as scum, and need to think more. reading these players based on sustained energy levels seems to be most telling.

there's no doubt that posting style gives you a boost as town, as you're mostly un-elimable and get to call the shots early. but often it gets you NK'ed early as town (so you have less say in the game), and probably tanks your scumgame in the long run. even discounting the fun angle, it just seems sub-optimal to me.

[Isis]

I don't think playing scummy as town to dodge the NK is a good strategy

[petapan]

i can understand why some people would choose to play more low-impact, not necessarily scummy, to avoid the nk, but i pretty much play the same regardless of role

[Infinity 324]

but often it gets you NK'ed early as town (so you have less say in the game), and probably tanks your scumgame in the long run.

As for getting NK'ed, I'm very happy if I get NK'ed as town because it means some other player who is also obvtown and a threat to scum stays alive. I'm also not willing to sacrifice my towngame to make it easier to play as scum, because that means I'm playing to win some future game, not the current one. If it makes my scum game harder, so be it.

[petapan]

a theoretically balanced unreadable player would probably be a lurker who votes randomly.

i'm glad we have concluded not_mafia is the perfect player

[Gamma Emerald]

My scumplay MO is "emulate your towngame in order to further your agenda", which means to do the most wincon-furthering move you could see your town self doing in that scenario. As for dodging the NK I honestly think it's better for me to play to draw the NK since I'm practically always scumread at some point so taking myself off the table as a miselim option by any means is better.

[Ythan]

Any town player with an ounce of humility and not a great power role should be trying to draw the nk.

[northsidegal]

Any town player with an ounce of humility and not a great power role should be trying to draw the nk.

i'm the humblest person on site

this is a joke

, but even still i think there are scenarios where you can reasonably look at the gamestate and on balance come out thinking that your own continued survival is important to town winning. in general you're probably right though

that doesn't necessarily imply hampering your play to avoid drawing scum's ire, though. another thing i recall ellibereth talking about was analyzing scum PTs and looking at the reasons behind why they made the kills that they did to try to figure out ways to play while minimizing your chances of getting nightkilled. i do regret that in the time when i was more active i never really looked into that, because it sounds very interesting.

[Hoopla]

a theoretically balanced unreadable player would probably be a lurker who votes randomly.

i'm glad we have concluded not_mafia is the perfect player

^did chuckle;)

[OkaPoka]

you know, i wonder if a lot of these "problems" are a result of this site's love for dayplay and dislike of nightplay

we all love our nightless-esque mountainous-esque setups, but in a world with limited nks, the value of scumhunting goes down and the value of townhunting goes up (making hyperposting more effective)

in a world where power roles are gated and we don't have the broken-ness of f2f mafia's follow the cop/doc, dayplay is the most important and stuff like meta and emotion-spewing is extremely relevant b/c there is little concrete information to go off of, so you need to get those reactions and emotion reads. there isn't that extra layer of playing to draw the nk, or trying to keep your townreads/pr reads to yourself to protect player x. Everything should be transparent and townblocking (circlejerking) just makes more sense you know?

and importantly with no hard clears and limited soft clears, authority is basically gained by imposing yourself onto others. contrast that to a completely ungated cop, people will look and even wait for the claimed cop and his clears to lead the way. like if you know there is just an ungated cop chilling in every setup, you probably aren't going to try and hyperpost your way to lead town down a path. there is a clear better win condition which is: protect the cop and follow the cop etc. idk, setup spec gaming is probably less "toxic" than people killing each other over bad reads and play (emotionally)

edit: i don't consider these actual problems btw

[Isis]

Yes you have less of the problems inherent to mafia the more you add mechanics that makes the game Assassin in the Palace instead of mafia.

If you apply argument ad absurdum, I'm sure no one gets toxic in a Dethy game ever

[Gamma Emerald]

there were a lot of dethy games on pokeshowdown's chat mafia
they were chill

[Gamma Emerald]

greater idea meanwhile would get pretty intense