Replacing out

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Post Post #50 (ISO) » Fri Jul 23, 2021 6:43 pm

Post by Infinity 324 »

I think this is mostly a site culture thing, I think it certainly can change but it's gonna take a while.

The way that helps me appreciate scum the most is through example. The more I see awesome scum performances from others, the more I want to play scum.
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Post Post #51 (ISO) » Fri Jul 23, 2021 6:46 pm

Post by TemporalLich »

In post 48, DrippingGoofball wrote:
In post 46, TemporalLich wrote:Clearly bad faith replacements should be reported to the list mods
How do you prove that someone got a red PM, stewed for a few days with lame posting, then noped out of playing scum?

You can't.

That's why we need to brand playing scum as noble and selfless.
Since you can't, you should assume good faith. It's not clear in that case.

What we should do is brand playing scum as being on a highly cohesive team - that's what scum is and the difference between scum and town is that you know who your friends are as scum. Going as far as to brand it as noble and selfless would give the wrong implications to those who want to play town, and make playing scum sound like a chore instead of fun.

pedit: You'd need to convince the NRG that that is Normal, and either way I'd probably just use a boilerplate if I had to. I prefer having the first post of the scum PT to have a short description of how the PT works and a list of all the players who have access to it.

ppedit: yeah - though for me having access to a PT with daytalk is what makes scum fun
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Post Post #52 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:23 am

Post by Datisi »

personally i find it much more annoying when i'm scum and a townie replaces out than vice versa, but this is probably bias do to with knowing exactly what is happening when i know everyone's alignment. obviously i agree that both are *a problem* and greatly influence the outcome of games.

i would agree with ircher, though maybe i'm thinking harsher - 14 days of no joining new games? or 7 days at a minimum. that ruling already exists in the newbie queue (though i don't think i've seen it implemented in my 2 years here), and it says that it's "unacceptable to replace out due to boredom or any other similarly selfish reason". it should be applicable in all mafia games imo.

sidenote, the same (or harsher!) should be applied to the people who flake. seriously, it's sad how many times as a mod i've had people lose any interest in playing, and then not even have the decency to *tell me* they would like to replace out, which forces me to wait 2.5-3 days for the prod timers to tick out before i am legally able to replace them.

i know temporallich mentioned players who have legitimate reasons to replace out, but...
- if you suddenly have some sorta emergency in your life or you've suddenly gotten much busier, you're probably not gonna be joining a new mafia game within the week anyway.
- if it happens that you often have "emergencies" or "sudden life changes" that make you have "legitimate" rep-outs often... should you be playing mafia? this is a pretty time-consuming hobby. if you don't have time for it, it might not even be your fault, but sorry?
- if you're bored with the game or don't like your role - replacing out for this is already against the rules in the newbie queue, no reason it shouldn't be elsewhere.
- if the game is truly so toxic that it's unplayable... that's not a "i need to replace out" problem, that's a "what the fuck is the moderator doing" problem.

now, i'll admit the above list is not complete. and, the only two instances that i've (willingly) replaced out for was when the game was truly making me miserable (mixed in with some irl reasons), so i know that "good faith, i literally cannot stay in this game" replacements happen. *but* i also feel like in those instances, i'd have been fine eating a 7-day cooldown ban.

one problem with this that i can think of right now (there are probably more; i'm not well versed in this administrative discussion) is if two players encounter each other, and those two players are truly incompatible to play mafia with each other. those things happen, and blacklists exist for a reason. it seems a bit wrong to give a cooldown ban to the person who was the first to realize the game is just gonna be torture for both of them and stepped out first. so not sure i have a good solution for that one. implementing "official" blacklists and adding a "no cooldown-ban applies if a player reps out of a game that someone they have on their blacklist is" rule seems like both (1) more listmod work than it's realistically worth and (2) easily abuseable.

now, i agree that implementing something like this is (very?) likely to slow down the queues in some capacity. but is that really such a bad thing? what i mean is, should we be aiming for quality or quantity? personally i'd prefer waiting a bit longer for a game to fire if it meant that that game is ++likely to have fewer replacements and be played out "properly". and i reckon in time, such change would result in a site culture shift with people getting used to not replacing out as easily as they maybe do now.

and to touch on what dgb brought up - i can agree that on average, scum motivation currently is... ~ehh. that feels like a discussion that's related to the above issues, though not one and the same. if my proposal were to go live, unmotivated scum could potentially stay in the game and make a few posts here and there until they get yeeted. that would be blatant playing against wincon, but "proving" that someone is playing against wincon in such way feels both (1) pretty difficult and (2) like a slippery slope. so yeah, tackling "sitewide scum motivation" seems like a separate (but also important) issue that i don't actually have practical ideas for atm.

("scum coaches" and "mod pep talks" seem like things either outside the scope of normality (that i generally keep in, won't speak for theme games) and things that i don't think would be terribly... effective? and the rest of "fostering a culture of celebrating good scumplay" sounds good on paper, but again i don't have any ideas how to actually promote on site. other than personally hyping up my scumbuddies when i roll scum, and trying to have "quality" post-game discussions when town, but i've been doing these for a while now, so no "new" ideas i guess.)
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Post Post #53 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 6:00 am

Post by Cabd »

In post 43, DrippingGoofball wrote:In my experience, replacements are strongly AI.

If you want to hone your scum game, hit up the replacement thread and chances are you're going to end up with a scum slot.

I believe that the situation has gotten much worse over the history of the site. I would say that about 60-70% of my personal replacements were scum slots recently.
Sadly can echo this.

It's a pandemic and as newer players come in, they see that sandbagging as scum to get to the next town game is okay, it just snowballs down the hill...
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Post Post #54 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 6:07 am

Post by Ircher »

In post 45, TemporalLich wrote:Report players to the listmods if they replace out to spew alignment.
This isn't practical. The vast majority of these cases are going to go unpunished because while they might spew a slot scum (or town), there's a reasonable level of doubt as to the underlying motives. The number of bans issued for tactical replacement is very low; furthermore, even the best of faith replace outs can still be rather alignment indicative.
In post 46, TemporalLich wrote:Players should be at liberty to replace out of games they legitimately can't bear to play or are unable to play
I don't necessarily disagree, but in a lot of cases, this is influenced by their current position in the game. Players who are currently suspected have a much higher chance of replacing out as well as finding the game unbearable.
In post 52, Datisi wrote:if the game is truly so toxic that it's unplayable... that's not a "i need to replace out" problem, that's a "what the fuck is the moderator doing" problem.
Not necessarily. Moderators cannot be present all the time, and reading the thread to spot toxicity is an even harder task (than the typical tasks). Mods could probably be more proactive in preventing toxicity, but I wouldn't necessarily blame it all on the moderator if the game does become toxic. That said, I think a lot of people have different definitions of toxic games, and for some people, that definition is much less than for others.
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Post Post #55 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 6:17 am

Post by TemporalLich »

In post 54, Ircher wrote:This isn't practical. The vast majority of these cases are going to go unpunished because while they might spew a slot scum (or town), there's a reasonable level of doubt as to the underlying motives. The number of bans issued for tactical replacement is very low; furthermore, even the best of faith replace outs can still be rather alignment indicative.
Yeah, policy should still be to assume good faith. In clear cut cases you should report. In murky cases it's better to just accept the replacement without resistance.
In post 54, Ircher wrote:I don't necessarily disagree, but in a lot of cases, this is influenced by their current position in the game. Players who are currently suspected have a much higher chance of replacing out as well as finding the game unbearable.
Yeah being suspected (regardless of alignment, so this isn't AI, but might be argued as scummy but this is considered angleshooting) might influence replace outs, this is what a cooldown is intended to prevent. If a game is actually unbearable a cooldown is just a small hurdle. There should always be an option to replace out without fear of eating a long term ban or other punishment (or a modkill, which is an administrative action but more drastic than a force replacement) in case things go bad.
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Post Post #56 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 6:30 am

Post by Datisi »

In post 54, Ircher wrote:
In post 52, Datisi wrote:if the game is truly so toxic that it's unplayable... that's not a "i need to replace out" problem, that's a "what the fuck is the moderator doing" problem.
Not necessarily. Moderators cannot be present all the time, and reading the thread to spot toxicity is an even harder task (than the typical tasks). Mods could probably be more proactive in preventing toxicity, but I wouldn't necessarily blame it all on the moderator if the game does become toxic. That said, I think a lot of people have different definitions of toxic games, and for some people, that definition is much less than for others.
oh i agree, i've had my own fair share of games that went to shit and i don't think i realistically could've done anything to fully prevent it. but the moderator should step in *at some point* to bring the game back on track. if the game has turned into a toxic shitfest and the moderator isn't doing anything about it, that's a problem. like, i guess my point is "if the game as a whole is so unbearable, give the mod a bit of time to step in and resolve the situation before impulsively replacing out".

i feel like at least part of the solution to the issue of different definitions of toxicity would be to strictly define what is acceptable and what isn't.

and general sidenote, some sorta guide on how should a game moderator deal with toxicity would be useful. i feel like i've seen countless guides for running a game or designing a setup, but almost none for things like "dealing with toxicity in your games".
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Post Post #57 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 1:42 pm

Post by DrippingGoofball »

In post 51, TemporalLich wrote:Since you can't, you should assume good faith.
Right.

But statistically, bad faith replacements are a plague.
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Post Post #58 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 1:44 pm

Post by DrippingGoofball »

In post 28, Ythan wrote:I was actually considering the other direction, requiring multiple reps in to equal one rep out.
Interesting - how would you deal with alts?
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Post Post #59 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 1:47 pm

Post by Cabd »

I was brainstorming something similar many moons ago:
In post 0, Cabd wrote:Your karma score is calculated by a simple formula:

SQRT{(replace ins)+(2*Replace ins newbie games)} - {Replace outs + (2* (Replace outs newbie games))}
High scores good, negative scores bad. Could probably add a time delay dropoff to the penalty function if you cared to.
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Post Post #60 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 2:29 pm

Post by DkKoba »

In post 5, Datisi wrote:ego

i feel like i've seen both "scum pockets townie to be their wrong vote in lylo, townie reps out, pocket gone" and "limbait townie close to yeet, reps out, replacement townspews, misyeet gone" situations happen because people lost interest in the game

there's most likely been "scum being scumread, reps out, great scum player reps in and saves slot" situations too,
though i can't remember specific examples off the top of my head for that one


like i said in the other thread, replacements hurt the flow of the game, and there should be a system in that *strongly* encourages finishing games you signed up for, though again i don't know a way to properly implement that in practice
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Post Post #61 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 2:30 pm

Post by DkKoba »

In post 53, Cabd wrote:
In post 43, DrippingGoofball wrote:In my experience, replacements are strongly AI.

If you want to hone your scum game, hit up the replacement thread and chances are you're going to end up with a scum slot.

I believe that the situation has gotten much worse over the history of the site. I would say that about 60-70% of my personal replacements were scum slots recently.
Sadly can echo this.

It's a pandemic and as newer players come in, they see that sandbagging as scum to get to the next town game is okay, it just snowballs down the hill...
Funny because I have had the opposite experience in my completed games where I was a replacement.
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Post Post #62 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 2:36 pm

Post by chamber »

IIRC someones run the math on this, and it was statistically significantly more likely to be scum, but still below 50%. But I can't speak to whether it's recently gotten worse or not.
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Post Post #63 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 2:39 pm

Post by Nancy Drew 39 »

In post 6, Ythan wrote:
In post 5, Datisi wrote:there's most likely been "scum being scumread, reps out, great scum player reps in and saves slot" situations too, though i can't remember specific examples off the top of my head for that one
I speculate that not doomed scum is unlikely to rep out.
From what I’ve observed players of either alignment can lose interest when they get run up but really no good way to policethat.

Public replacing out is against the rules like Saudade did in Nancy v Titus.

Spoiler:
I was shamed (and now probably unfairly anonymously bl’d) for doing that in a game but I feared getting a temp ban in that, had I not. \_0_/

I am trying extremely hard not to be toxic in games, so that’s a huge influencer, if I’m not confident I can control it.

I’m a helluva a lot better now at avoiding doing that in general, so being punished for that is hurtfully ironic.


I find flaking to be the most destabilizing to games in general - especially when the mod lets the game drag on for days without a prod or necessary replacement.
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Post Post #64 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 2:43 pm

Post by Nancy Drew 39 »

In post 14, OkaPoka wrote:what if i told you the act of replacing out is AI because its statistically correlated with being scum?
My replacement rate albeit low is definitely not AI. That really depends, town replaces out a lot too.
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Post Post #65 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 2:58 pm

Post by Nancy Drew 39 »

I think if we punish anyone who isn’t a continual repeat offender or for a sudden rl emergency, people will just be afraid to sign up for anything and that would ultimately kill the site.

My personal experience is that other people’s replacements have either actually helped or at least not hurt me - irrespective of alignment.

I hear this argument mostly from disgruntled scum but I think a competent scum player should always have a backup plan.

When I was scum in Coalition, the town replacement obviously did hurt us but we played around it and still won and I’m not at all salty about that because I like to constantly challenge myself whatever alignment I roll and you just need to be flexible.

I even won when my scumbuddy replaced out. So it really hasn’t really ever caused me to lose as scum but otoh, has helped as town.

What I see as destabilizing to games is either blatantly obvious tactical replace out or flaking. Flaking has actually seriously harmed my games as either alignment and if MU has harsh punishments for that, I can’t understand why MS doesn’t.
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Post Post #66 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:44 pm

Post by Ythan »

In post 58, DrippingGoofball wrote:
In post 28, Ythan wrote:I was actually considering the other direction, requiring multiple reps in to equal one rep out.
Interesting - how would you deal with alts?
Don't the mods know who most alts are alts of? Idk actually but I think more or less. If that's what you mean.
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Post Post #67 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 4:23 pm

Post by OkaPoka »

In post 63, Nancy Drew 39 wrote:
In post 6, Ythan wrote:
In post 5, Datisi wrote:there's most likely been "scum being scumread, reps out, great scum player reps in and saves slot" situations too, though i can't remember specific examples off the top of my head for that one
I speculate that not doomed scum is unlikely to rep out.
From what I’ve observed players of either alignment can lose interest when they get run up but really no good way to policethat.

Public replacing out is against the rules like Saudade did in Nancy v Titus.

Spoiler:
I was shamed (and now probably unfairly anonymously bl’d) for doing that in a game but I feared getting a temp ban in that, had I not. \_0_/

I am trying extremely hard not to be toxic in games, so that’s a huge influencer, if I’m not confident I can control it.

I’m a helluva a lot better now at avoiding doing that in general, so being punished for that is hurtfully ironic.


I find flaking to be the most destabilizing to games in general - especially when the mod lets the game drag on for days without a prod or necessary replacement.
anecdotally i find it so cheaty, but i still can't help myself when it happens in the scenario where person in question gets run up, reps out, and then me/collective town gives the replacement time to 'townspew' themselves.

i do wonder whats the correct thing to do? lim players who replace out to preserve integrity of the game or play to win by getting all info possible? i think most people do the latter choice and its happened enough where ive thought about whether im crossing any lines
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Post Post #68 (ISO) » Sat Jul 24, 2021 5:02 pm

Post by Isis »

In post 54, Ircher wrote:.
In post 52, Datisi wrote:if the game is truly so toxic that it's unplayable... that's not a "i need to replace out" problem, that's a "what the fuck is the moderator doing" problem.
Not necessarily. Moderators cannot be present all the time, and reading the thread to spot toxicity is an even harder task (than the typical tasks). Mods could probably be more proactive in preventing toxicity, but I wouldn't necessarily blame it all on the moderator if the game does become toxic. That said, I think a lot of people have different definitions of toxic games, and for some people, that definition is much less than for others.
This is not an accurate reflection of site expectations for moderators. If you moderate a game on mafiascum.net, you are expected to read the game, including the unbolded text, as closely as though you were spectating/playing in it. We have issued warnings to moderators who do not do so.
If you are reading a game, it is natural to come across most or all of its toxicity.

Now, if a game moderator sees one player call another player a "vorpal butterknife swordfish", and feels that is harsh but part of the heat of mafia and issues no warning, and mafiascum staff review the same post and has a consensus opinion that it's out of line for sitewide standards, we won't be upset that a game moderator in good faith balanced the principles of player comfort and noninterventionism differently than we would have. But if the game moderator didn't issue a warning because they are not following their own game and no determination was made at all, that's below our standards for the site.

There are other infractions that are more clearcut and that game moderators need to act on without need for discretion, such as if a player is using the game to discuss another ongoing game in a way not allowed by that other ongoing game.
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Post Post #69 (ISO) » Sun Jul 25, 2021 6:57 am

Post by Dunnstral »

In post 68, Isis wrote:Now, if a game moderator sees one player call another player a "vorpal butterknife swordfish", and feels that is harsh but part of the heat of mafia and issues no warning, and mafiascum staff review the same post and has a consensus opinion that it's out of line for sitewide standards, we won't be upset that a game moderator in good faith balanced the principles of player comfort and noninterventionism differently than we would have. But if the game moderator didn't issue a warning because they are not following their own game and no determination was made at all, that's below our standards for the site.
How do you make the distinction?
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Post Post #70 (ISO) » Sun Jul 25, 2021 8:02 am

Post by OkaPoka »

categorizing some solutions that came up in thread + my own:

Punitive Measures

-Some restriction on either a) excessive replacing out through a karma system or b) any replacing out with a temp ban
-Numbers can very, use a combination of the two, probably should not create a scenario in which its impossible to get 'unbanned' because of shortages
-Pros: Should theoretically discourage any more trivial replacements where there is a tangible consequence the replace-ee has to weight
-Cons: Might slow down the queues, requires extra moderator work (perhaps would lead to a new position where somebody has to monitor temp bans and/or a karma system to enforce)

Site Culture

-Right now, replacing out is not seen as a big deal. Not only that, there is an attitude where you should replace out if you aren't having fun and well, we also live in a meta where people just generally don't enjoy playing scum as much so they might pick up a scum pm and rep out or get burned out of the game and sub out to the point where there is a noticeable harming of game integrity. Many people have taken note of how sub-outs are scum indicative generally and there are stats to back this up, and while replacements will always happen, we should try and make them NAI
In post 43, DrippingGoofball wrote:What can we do to fix it?

Allow one or more scum coaches who aren't playing the game to motivate scum players in the PT
Foster a culture of good sportsmanship where being scum means "giving the town a good game."
Do you prefer playing town? Remember that you owe your pleasure playing town to the scum team trying to win.
Townies should make it a tradition to thank the scum for a good game whether they won or lost.
Scum isn't "evil" they are the game's unsung heroes. Let's remove the "unsung" part.
Pros: Nobody gets punished, no extra resources needed on an administration side, makes games more interesting for everyone, directed specifically at preserving game integrity rather than just reducing the rate at which slots rep out.
Cons: How do you even go about changing site culture? Additionally scum coaches might be an infraction on game integrity.

Deadlines

Right now, deadlines are quite long while the daily effort requirements remain quite high. I believe the standard is 10/2 at this point, whereas other sites with perhaps similar activity expectations and effort burdens have something like 72/24 deadlines. It may be unreasonable to have commit ~13 players to a high intensity game that might draw their attention from a week to a few months, people can get busy unexpectedly and with long (and variable) game lengths, perhaps replacements are just a necessary byproduct.

Solutions include just shortening down deadlines to 7/2 and eventually perhaps 5/2 or 96/36 perhaps. Or reducing deadlines as game progress so whether you make it to day 6 or day 3, the time frame is similar rather than the difference of many weeks. Or designing setups around certain game lengths (advertise that this game will last 1 month etc so people can plan better).

Pros: Tackles the V/LA issue of replacements in a way because less game time means less chances for someone to have something come up. Additionally people might have a better idea of how much time they need to commit, rather than guessing the commitment is going to be a certain time and then needing to replace out later when they miss.

Cons: MS.net's selling point is long deadlines and moving to short is a contradiction of that and might annoy its base. Advertising game lengths can leak info about closed setups. It takes game moderator effort to develop a system for variable deadline lengths.


idk anything i missed
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Post Post #71 (ISO) » Sun Jul 25, 2021 8:35 am

Post by TemporalLich »

Karma systems could be based on
games played until completion
and
replace outs
- that way a player who doesn't like replacing into games can gain good karma by not replacing out.

Games played until completion
is how many games you have played until the game finishes, whether you replaced in or /inned. Dying (unless it is modkill) will count as completing a game when the game finishes.

Replace outs
is how many games you have replaced out of or been force replaced out. Modkill counts as a replace out for karma purposes.

A Karma system like this can still encourage Jester-like play when suspected and not wanting to play the game however. Poor karma can lead to scrutiny of replace outs and longer cooldown periods when replacing out.

For a more complex karma system, replace ins can give a bonus, and flaking replace outs and modkills give a penalty.
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Post Post #72 (ISO) » Sun Jul 25, 2021 2:05 pm

Post by Dunnstral »

I don't think I can endorse any kind of non-automated karma system, it's simply too much work to track
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Post Post #73 (ISO) » Sun Aug 01, 2021 8:08 am

Post by Nero Cain »

I think when you sign up to play a game you are making a commitment. Obviously, life happens (and life job/school are more important) but I feel you should try your best to honor your commitment.
Of all tyrannies,a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

edited c.s. lewis quote b/c limit
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Post Post #74 (ISO) » Sun Aug 01, 2021 2:35 pm

Post by Nancy Drew 39 »

Why do we keep seeing these kinds of threads, yet not a one on flaking, which imo drags more games down than anything.
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