[Meta] Newbie Experience (Formerly IC replace rate thread)

[LicketyQuickety]

I would totally IC more than SE, but I am not suited for such things...

[LicketyQuickety]

You make being an IC sound really complicated. An IC is really just more experienced than the other players in a newbie game on this site. Your main job is to teach people how to play on this site. For the most part all that requires is for you to play the game and then give post game tips after it's over. Occasionally you might find the odd player or two who have no idea what they're doing and you might need to prod/guide them into what to do. But really it's not that complicated. The experience is going to teach the players way more than the IC ever actually will. People tend to overvalue the role of the IC in general in the learning process.

What you're describing as an IC is what most people consider the SE to be.

Agree. At least that is the way I view it.

[LicketyQuickety]

wait are you saying newbies generally kill ICs

Pretty common for IC's to die by D2, unfortunately. I believe it would be best if there was a "backup" system, where once the IC dies, an SE takes over for that position.

[LicketyQuickety]

SEs are already kinda considered backup ICs

Kinda? But def not formally.

[LicketyQuickety]

I however favour a model that has the IC outside the game who is able to answer basic questions on theory.

This is not a bad idea.

[LicketyQuickety]

Here's the thing with a "10th player" IC: they are always going to be inherently biased in some way.

• If they're as uninformed as a spectator, they're more likely to be game-solving and thus pro-town.
  
• If they know who PRs are, they're probably going to be subconsciously biased towards advice for those roles.
  
• If they know who the scum are, they're more likely to accidentally have advice for their exact situation that players can link.
  
• If they're as informed as the mod, might as well have the mod do the job, and it's generally considered that's not good.

If there's a desire to decouple IC advice from in-game players, I would say do it like this instead:

• Have a publicly-viewable document full of IC advice. Being an IC means you have the rights to edit this document.
  
• The mod, or a dedicated IC "hydra" account, reads the game and pastes/quotes/links to the IC document, in the game thread or the scum PT, at appropriate times.
  
• You could assign ICs to watch games, or have them free-float around at will.

Obviously this won't be as in-tune to the game as a player IC, and there's always going to be arguments over what to put in the repository.

Or, if the problem is just "ICs die too early", allow them to submit future posts to the mod, such as "post this if I die tonight" or "post this if I'm not alive at LyLo". The mod would make the post (as long as they approve that it is only IC advice and no reads or such) but very clearly attribute it to the IC. This obviously has its own problems (e.g. perception of being a treestump).

That is a good idea.

[LicketyQuickety]

The IC participant would be a non-player and blind to who is Scum/PR/et al

Agree

The Non-player-IC can always give advice in the scum PT to keep it private

Disagree

[LicketyQuickety]

The IC participant would be a non-player and blind to who is Scum/PR/et al

Agree

The Non-player-IC can always give advice in the scum PT to keep it private

Disagree

I'm going to make some assumptions over disagree so excuse me if I'm going in a random direction
my assumption is you think having an IC help in private would be an advantage - my expectation would be that the IC would be more along the lines of

'your role of scum is to eliminate the PRs quickly as they are your biggest threats unless you think another player is going to drive a lynch your way- usually this might be done by someone who seems scummy as they trick you into thinking they are mislynchable'

i would expect the IC to say 'oh yeah guys, Lickety is right on to you and he's a pretty good player, get rid of him ASAP'

I view playing as Scum highly subjective. That's more the kind of thing that I am talking about... I mean, yes, IC might be able to give some general pointers but even saying "NK PRs" can be a subjective thing.