The Newbie Queue Setup

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Post Post #50 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 5:47 am

Post by Cook »

In post 49, PenguinPower wrote:
In post 45, RadiantCowbells wrote:Also, like, a lot of how we get users is through exporting stuff to small offsite mafia games and then people taking interest and eventually coming over. NewD3 is fairly commonly played on small mafia sites, as was Matrix6 before it.
Regardless of what Penguin says about balance if we end up with a newbie game that is generally agreed to be poorly balanced that will hinder it being taken up on other sites which will reduce the inflow of traffic which, etc.
I did include balance as a focus, but achieving perfect balance is secondary to a setup that people want to play. If we can get both, great!

Also, I'm not sure where you're getting your referral information, but it doesn't jive with the the user reported reasons from newbie accounts over the previous 18 months.
What were the prevalant sources?
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Post Post #51 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 5:56 am

Post by PenguinPower »

Sorry - should have inculded that.

In terms of volume: Found via the wiki > Google/Search engine Search > Current user referral = Discord (including specific reference to mafia.gg's discord in here) > Other listed forums (mafiauniverse, pokemon showdown, epic mafia) > gibberish reasoning
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Post Post #52 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 5:59 am

Post by Cook »

and what sources have the most user retention? do we have that data?
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Post Post #53 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 6:01 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

I would consider the wiki to fall under the category of exports, so.
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Post Post #54 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 6:21 am

Post by PenguinPower »

In post 52, Cook wrote:and what sources have the most user retention? do we have that data?
I don't have that data.
In post 53, RadiantCowbells wrote:I would consider the wiki to fall under the category of exports, so.
I haven't gotten that granular, and tbh most don't say much besides "the wiki," but anecdotally further description is mostly IRL players searching for role descriptions or online players searching for setups to use. I haven't seen the Newbie setup as a reason.
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Post Post #55 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 6:37 am

Post by Gypyx »

besides, if experienced player go play mafia here (so from other sites) i don't think it's very important what is our designated newbie setup? as like, they might not even care about going in the new guys queue
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Post Post #56 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 6:41 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

online players searching for setups to use
Okay so again: small mafia site needs setups to use. They find the MS wiki and take one of our setups and it gets played elsewhere. New players get introduced to mafia which expands the potential audience, and the name Mafiascum is now recognized so if they turn around and google Mafia they're more likely to click Mafiascum than other options.
I'm not saying that it's only because it's the Newbie setup, far from it, I've seen even weird shit that isn't played here anymore like Jk9++ on random sites, but it's not inaccurate to say that as the newbie setup it is seen as 'endorsed' in some way and someone who is just quickly looking for something to run might see it as a default option.
Each player can only write one thing as the reason they came to MS even though there's a multitude of factors and it's never going to say in these blurbs that "I saw a bunch of sites when I googled Mafia but I clicked MafiaScum because I remembered the name from the game that I played on OSU." There's also situations where MS users mod games themselves offsite and then people end up coming here being self-described simply as "I came because Schadd_ is a cool it" but I think that it should go without saying that MS setups being bread and butter on other sites is going to increase MS's name recognition, relevance in the broader social deduction community, and drive traffic here.
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Post Post #57 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 7:19 am

Post by PenguinPower »

I don't disagree that our setups are good for attraction. We're talking specifcially about the Newbie setup here, not any of our multitude of others. I am fine allowing an introductory setup to not be perfectly balanced if doing so impacts the overall fun and desire to play; and, I don't think if we end up doing so that it will negatively affect site attraction.

I look forward to any postive input you can bring to the setup discussion, especially given your design input for the current one.
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Post Post #58 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 7:20 am

Post by Cook »

and as a general survey:

what do you consider "fun" in a setup?
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Post Post #59 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 7:21 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

I've said my piece on that; I don't think that any token or buy in design will end in a good newbie setup and I think the next step forward is either a new setup that cuts whichever are subjectively the "worst" setups in ND3 or the "leap" forward of jumping to automatically designed setups.
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Post Post #60 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 7:26 am

Post by Cook »

In post 59, RadiantCowbells wrote:I've said my piece on that; I don't think that any token or buy in design will end in a good newbie setup and I think the next step forward is either a new setup that cuts whichever are subjectively the "worst" setups in ND3 or the "leap" forward of jumping to automatically designed setups.
are you aware this is essentially defining an algorithm that the mod runs to generate the setup?
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Post Post #61 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 7:30 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

I think negative feedback is as important as positive feedback PP; I'm not invested in creating a new setup but if someone came up with one that I liked I would not be shy about saying that I liked it. Similarly if there's something that I think really doesn't work I think that it's worth stepping in to explain what the flaws are.

I'm not bashing you when I say that I don't like your loose take on balance, I just think that you underrate how much the knowledge that a setup is perceived as imbalanced impacts the ways games play out. If you remember the original daytalk situation where towns were getting slaughtered I think that what really happened is that scum got a small boost and a bunch of 'streaky' wins and then after it got discussed it emboldened scum and demoralized towns and the perception of it being scumsided created a reality of it being scumsided. Stuff like that creates a shadow that hangs over games and if you remember in the original D3 there was at least one scum topic where scum complained at the start of the game that they didn't think the game was balanced and gave up before the game started.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
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Post Post #62 (ISO) » Thu Sep 30, 2021 7:38 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

That said I don't think this is really something that needs to be either public or here; if you'd be interested in talking about it further we should take it to DMs.

But I would actually agree with you that actual balance isn't that important. The perception of balance on the other hand is.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
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Post Post #63 (ISO) » Thu Dec 09, 2021 6:24 am

Post by fferyllt »

It's been three weeks since the last Newbie game launched. I know it's that time of year when the site is slow, but this seems unusual.

Maybe we need to rethink the idea of newbie ratios? Maybe it's more important to launch newbie games on the regular than to maintain that ratio.

To me, this issue seems more important than a new setup concept.
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Post Post #64 (ISO) » Mon Dec 13, 2021 3:31 pm

Post by T3 »

are there any balanced 7 player setups that have 'newbie' roles out there?
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Post Post #65 (ISO) » Mon Dec 13, 2021 6:41 pm

Post by RH9 »

In post 64, T3 wrote:are there any balanced 7 player setups that have 'newbie' roles out there?
I don't that there is a balanced one so you can be the creator of the first.
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Post Post #66 (ISO) » Sat Dec 25, 2021 4:30 pm

Post by fferyllt »

Sometimes I think just expanding the newbie game possibilities to include all the unique setups of 2of4, Matrix, 2D3 and NewD3 (except for the NewD3 masons variant) would be a good enough group of setups to overcome the limitations of any one of the Newbie setup groups.

I'd leave out the masons setup because I feel like that setup REALLY doesn't work in situations where both masons are newbies, which is statistically the most likely distribution.. The strength of that setup variant is two players who can trust each other privately gamesolving. To gamesolve kiiiinda takes some experience.
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Post Post #67 (ISO) » Sun Jan 02, 2022 7:09 am

Post by T3 »

that makes sense.

my old homesite alternated between Backup6 and Cop9 for their newbie setup.
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