Mini 1769: Ice Cream Mafia - Game over!

[massive]

Getting me mislynched as town might be a good step towards proving what I've been saying all along, but you seem to be missing: ACTIVITY ISN'T ALIGNMENT INDICATIVE

This should be a teachable moment. The reason you got no one biting on voting for me (or even remotely nibbling, even really into LYLO when I could have been a good consensus lynch) is because, outside of my post frequency, you had no actual case against me. "He was scum in the last game and posted like this, he must be scum here!" is easily disproved by looking at any of my games, which are linked in my wiki.

You can fixate on me all you want, but it doesn't fix the exploitable holes in your town game, and it doesn't make this:

If you are getting consistently mislynched as town THEN FIX. YOUR. GAME. This is not "Oh well I can't help that I do scummy stuff, you should know I always do when I'm town" because YOUR JOB as town is to make so I don't have to think "is he town and just bad or is he scum?" YOUR JOB is to be the paragon of towniness. So if you are town GET RIGHT.

... any less true. When I typed this, it was very easy to channel my actual emotion because honestly, I hate being scum and I want it to be as hard as possible for town to get mislynched.

I suspect it will come with time. I think you generally have good instincts and look forward to a game where I'm NOT scum to see what working WITH you looks like, rather than AGAINST you.

(Of course, we may end up like me & BBT who are ALWAYS opposite alignment.)

[Ircher]

I am thinking about writing a post labelled "The Case Against Lurkers" to prove a point that lurking meta should not be an excuse for lack of contributions.

You don't seem to get that lurkers get COMPLETELY ignored, I mean, its like IMPOSSIBLE to get a lurker lynched cuz there is NEVER anything to incriminate them with cuz of their absurdly LOW frequency of posts. People should pay more attn to lurkers regardless of their meta, so lurkers do not automatically slide by every game.

[BlueBloodedToffee]

I do get the issue with lurkers, it has been a huge gripe of mine for a long time. You cannot lynch lurkers, especially on this site, everyone gets really prickly around the issue.

The problem with it is that not all the people who post infrequently are lurkers, I think I would be correct in saying that regardless of alignment massive posts when he can. So, he's just a low post count player. Again though, the issue with this is that, IMO, it makes him extremely difficult to get a read on because they're never around for anything that happens and continuously seem like they're in catch up mode.

[Ircher]

And, that sums up my thoughts exactly ^

Aqua did well with the DayTalk aspect.

[Aquanim]

Frankly, I have more sympathy for Ircher than Massive here. There are parts of his game which Ircher could improve with work - Massive just needs to give a shit about the game.

[Aquanim]

Okay, maybe that's not fair... but Massive did basically just tunnel Ircher with a post every couple of days all game. If that's at all mistakeable for his towngame, I would not want to roll town with him.

[Aquanim]

Getting me mislynched as town might be a good step towards proving what I've been saying all along...

Or it would demonstrate to YOU that you need to step up your game.

[Aquanim]

Ugh, sorry, I'm just salty. Not really specifically with Massive, but just with Mafia in general. I always regret having played the game, have never found it a pleasant experience. Now that I've finally rolled scum for the first time in a dozen games, and found out what it's like, I think I've had enough.

[Aquanim]

To make it clear, I think my issue does go deeper than the number of posts.

[Aquanim]

I will try and turn this into an actually applicable point to playing the game instead of me just ranting and flaming. From something I wrote in my wiki a while back:

Do not be afraid to mislynch. Do not feel too bad about misreading inactive and useless townies. You're far better off lynching a useless null than somebody who is maybe slightly more likely to flip scum, but who is active and will become more readable one way or the other with time. And if you encounter a townie who is making the thread toxic and unplayable... show no remorse. Just because they got handed a town PM doesn't mean they're helping you achieve the town wincon.

(That being said, lynching replacement-bait which has no interaction with any other slots is not ideal, though sometimes unavoidable.)

If you screwed up and lynched a useful townie out of paranoia or something, you should feel bad.

There are (almost) always going to be some players in the game which are inherently difficult to read due to inactivity, lack of regard for their wincon, etc. If the playerlist has like six or so (which I've seen in the past), town is pretty much screwed unless you get lucky - since you can't afford to lynch all of them.

This game actually had less than most - of the players post-replacement I would put Titus, Guy and Massive approximately in this category. BBT had shades of it too. I'm not sure how to classify Kain. Boonskiies sometimes is but in this game, not.

The particularly important point is that

these players will not become much easier to read as the game continues

. Lynching a player like Keyser day 1 is inherently a bad plan because given a few days he will either get shot or his alignment will become obvious. Probably the same for me in the other direction this game - my play in later days was quite catchable in ways my d1 play was not.

On the other hand, lynching players who will never be particularly readable is preferable. I believe I would have lynched Masquerade/GuyFawkes d1 as town this game without hesitation. Similarly Titus' play deserved to die, even if it didn't flip scum. Town was unfortunate in that they went for the two that didn't have red PMs, but I think they were both lynches that had to happen sooner or later.

tl;dr: Activity is not alignment-indicative, but

nevertheless activity should influence who you choose to lynch

. Your current read on a slot is NOT the only think which should influence your choice of lynch.

[OceanWind]

I think the idea that some players aren't readable just isn't true. KeinTepes could be an example of such a player - he was seemingly impossible to read but some players correctly scumread him even on D1. Inactives should be replaced, not lynched. Lynching empty slots just sets the town back. If someone is coasting, you can always use the fact that they are coasting to get a read on them. When people don't post, more likely they have real life obligations and they misjudged the amount of time they could spare for mafia as happened with me.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that you shouldn't be afraid to mislynch. Are you sure you are not just offering it as justification for mislynching people in the past and then feeling angry at yourself for not getting it right, and then shifting the blame so that you are not at fault? Titus for instance wasn't inactive in the least and most certainly didn't "deserve" to die. You speak with some bizarre pride at mislynching other players when you are town. But the reality is that if you are mislynching players a lot, you just aren't very good at reading people. Re-analyzing the way you develop reads and improving from your mistakes is a better way to become a good player rather than hunting for justifications to quell your frustration at being wrong. If you pushed hard for a lynch, it can be frustrating to see them flip town - I've led my fair share of mislynches - but improving yourself is not about deflecting blame but understanding where you went wrong.

[Aquanim]

Oh, okay. You want to do this? Let's dance then.

I think the idea that some players aren't readable just isn't true.

Perhaps not, but then that's not actually what I said, is it? Some players are more readable than others. Some players play in a way which will make them more readable with time than others do. Do you disagree with either of those?

KeinTepes could be an example of such a player - he was seemingly impossible to read but some players correctly scumread him even on D1.

I didn't put KainTepes in my list, now did I?

Inactives should be replaced, not lynched. Lynching empty slots just sets the town back. If someone is coasting, you can always use the fact that they are coasting to get a read on them. When people don't post, more likely they have real life obligations and they misjudged the amount of time they could spare for mafia as happened with me.

In an ideal world everyone who is "inactive" would be replaced, yes. The world is not ideal.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that you shouldn't be afraid to mislynch. Are you sure you are not just offering it as justification for mislynching people in the past and then feeling angry at yourself for not getting it right, and then shifting the blame so that you are not at fault?

Yes, I'm quite sure. If you're going to make an allegation like that about my character you might want to provide some evidence.

Titus for instance wasn't inactive in the least and most certainly didn't "deserve" to die.

Did you actually read the game?

You speak with some bizarre pride at mislynching other players when you are town. But the reality is that if you are mislynching players a lot, you just aren't very good at reading people.

I don't mislynch "a lot", but there's not a player on the site or anywhere that doesn't mislynch sometimes.

Re-analyzing the way you develop reads and improving from your mistakes is a better way to become a good player rather than hunting for justifications to quell your frustration at being wrong. If you pushed hard for a lynch, it can be frustrating to see them flip town - I've led my fair share of mislynches - but improving yourself is not about deflecting blame but understanding where you went wrong.

What makes you think I don't do that?

[Aquanim]

tl;dr: make an effort to understand what I actually said

[Aquanim]

I will attempt to clarify myself.

In an ideal world, as town I would lead only scum lynches. However, I am not perfect, and sometimes mislynch townies instead. My strategy, which has a pretty good success rate in terms of winning towngames, involves any mislynches that do happen being of less readable and valuable townies (the two typically go hand in hand).

If I were ever responsible for mislynching a player like Keyser, Thor or Slandaar I would feel really bad about my play, and would be sure I had worked out where I had gone wrong. I nearly mislynched Thor in my first newbie, and you'd better believe I deduced how it had happened, and went to some effort to not make the same kind of mistake twice. (No, I'm not telling. I wouldn't want anybody to know how to get a town-read from me.)

The fact of the matter is that some other players (like GuyFawkes, Titus and Massive in this game) I would feel less bad about mislynching. I will not let myself be discouraged from threatening such a player with a lynch by the fear that they might flip town. I will never be as certain about their alignment as I would be about a Keyser, but

the possibility I am wrong about such players will never go away, and therefore should not necessarily prevent me from making that lynch

.

[Aquanim]

EBWOP: The issue of evaluating my reads post-game and making improvements is

entirely

unrelated to the above, except insofar as such evaluation might move a player into my "will be able to read later, shouldn't lynch on a weak case now" bucket in future.

To put it another way; the day 1 lynch is the lynch for which you have the least information. It is preferable to lynch a player where more information won't help you read them much on day 1, and save deciding on players where more information is helpful for a day on which you have that information. You'll lynch townies day 1 sometimes, but

you were going to lynch townies day 1 sometimes anyway

.

And since you've already brought it up once... my strike-rate on scum day 1 with this idea is quite reasonable, so no, I'm not just post-hoc rationalising my screwups. Thanks for asking.

[Aquanim]

As a final, mostly unrelated note, I would say that many (if not most) of the games of forum mafia I've seen that ended in scum wins resulted from an overdose of either lurking, or hubris and ego in town. For what that's worth.

[KainTepes]

I AM KAIN TEPES.

[Aquanim]

/thread

[OceanWind]

I don't disagree that some players are more readable than others. I don't disagree that the level of regret one feels after pushing a mislynch can be proportional to how useful and active the lynched player was.

Massive, and Masquerade/GuyFawkes posted little content. Titus posted quite a bit. It may be harder to read them than average but part of the reason to play mafia is to push the boundaries of accurate you can be. I wouldn't just call them all unreadable players and accept that they should have all been lynched and that town was simply unlucky for lynching the town ones. I'm not sure why you are including Titus with the inactives though - I skimmed along with the game at times but she seemed to have a fairly high post count which is typical of Titus in any game. I've mislynched her before but I was wrong then and I've focused more on where I went wrong as opposed to "don't be afraid to mislynch Titus."

[Aquanim]

I agree that by postcount and in general Titus did more than Massive/Guy; my argument does apply less to Titus than to those two slots. My problem with Titus' play is what was actually said in those posts - Titus' d1 was all either begging off from doing much or the wildly anti-town Mason stunt, and a lot of play after that point was calling Ircher a "scumfuck", or similar. Putting aside my personal distaste for such invective, I don't think it was productive for town (I don't think it resulted in Titus or anybody else having a more accurate read on Ircher or anybody else), and there's nothing about it I think scum-Titus is incapable of.

I would like to think that if I were town in this game I would not have lynched Titus over Massive (or Kain), though we will never know. I've played with town-Titus before and (eventually) correctly townread her... though I admit I wasn't heartbroken when she got vig-shot.

A lesson to be learned from this game: Calling somebody a "scumfuck" (or your slur of choice) repeatedly does

not

make them scum, it does

not

convince other people, and it does

not

get you townread. Furthermore, it tends to aggravate both your target and other players who prefer a more respectful atmosphere, and they are less likely to give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to considering their reads on you.

[N]