Long term health of mafiascum

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Post Post #726 (isolation #0) » Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:47 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 725, Mathdino wrote:
Why have fewer people come to the site/stuck around over the past 5 years? And can we do anything about it?
Well you already know a large issue has to do with newbies and there's whole lots of reasoning there, but going beyond just there (though this overlaps with it)...

...There is a fundamental divide in mafiascum off of two inherent conflicting aspects we are universally told about: "play to have fun" and "play to win". They are meant to work in tandem with one another, but often they conflict with each other, especially because while those rules exist, interpretations of them are subjective, and always will be because cases of clear 'not playing to wincon' are far and few between (thus making an objective definition for "play to win" nigh-impossible), and you can never objectify what constitutes "play to have fun".

A huge amount of site toxicity comes from that conflict, too, in that the fundamental divide does in fact cause people to behave like assholes, and yet call others out for behaving like assholes, resulting in ugly fights which get even worse. People who play for fun can have a definition of playing for fun which grinds the gears of other players. People who play to win see the volley of insults they throw as part of trying to win the game.

This is a VAST oversimplification of the issue, because it has a lot of nuances to it, but you get the idea. More or less...there is no consensus on what the site should be. Only conflicting opinions on what it shouldn't be and highly-personalized individual, unique ideas on what someone thinks the site should be like...

...And when their idea turns out to not match the reality of the site, they tend to leave, or wish they had. You know how basically every veteran mafia player--be it currently-inactive or currently-active--more or less holds the same opinion? "Mafia is a shitty game to play"? Like, that is a universal stance they hold, and
it's not a meme
. It's not a joke that is widely propagated; those veterans, both 'retired' (and yet they still get sucked in inevitably) and active, hold that stance.

That it is not a good game and something they are filled with regrets for playing. The people who DO manage to quit mafiascum for good I can near-guarantee largely hold similar sentiments of, "it's just not the place I want to be". Because the place mafiascum is, conflicts with the ideals of a place mafiascum is thought to be, for all of our playerbase.

I honestly don't think there
is
a solution. Or if there were one, that it'd be an administrative one so controversial that it'd end up driving away 90% of the userbase to get results.

Mafia is, at its core, a social game.
But while humans are social creatures, conflict exists which divides us. These conflicts exist because of different beliefs which cannot be resolved because the beliefs end up as mutually exclusive to one another. Humans ain't united in any way in the meatworld; we're not going to magically unite in any way in the online one.

We can mitigate damage/fallout from human nature, but we can't change it.
The best solution I can really give is to emphasize as much as possible the positive and try to downplay the negative. But I don't have any site-wide way to implement anything of that sort.
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Post Post #728 (isolation #1) » Sat Mar 31, 2018 2:31 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 727, Mathdino wrote:While I think that's fair, I don't think Mafia is dying by any means.
And I don't think it's dieing, not even on mafiascum. Its growth rate might not be as high...but I'd argue that's because mafiascum has a very specific format. In THEORY, we emphasize quality > quantity more than other sites. (Theory!)

Specifically, we are meant to emphasize both dayplay (what I understand is considered the "boring" part of the game in, say, Town of Salem), and taking time to create informed opinions. The length of a single day phase on mafiascum is the length of an entire game on any site using what we'd consider Blitz deadlines.

This is our thing, and it is to my knowledge fairly unique on mafia sites. (Yes I know, there are sites which have those longer games, but they are few and far between.) It caters to a specific crowd. If you are outside that crowd, you're not likely to want to come inside of it. And when you do, you often shit upon it at every turn because it's not the crowd you tend to enjoy.

mafiascum's style has always been one which is different from that of most other places. That different style is one which, because it is so different, only allows for a specific type of players to feel more welcomed. I think that, honestly, what mafiascum shouldn't focus on is trying to grow by bringing so and such amount of new users in per year.

While I think we do need better newbie retention...what I think mafiascum most needs to focus on is long-term retention of
already existing users
. By which, I mean...mafiascum's a site which caters to the crowd of people who, so to speak, quite literally "play the long game". That are around for a while.

In other words--we can't keep everyone because some people just aren't cut out for the type of game mafiascum is made for, that being, longer games which (in theory) focus on dayplay. What we CAN do is keep those that
are
cut out for that type of game longer than we do, not driving them away.

So I have to disagree--I don't think it's that this site specifically has a problem, per se, so much as it is, that this site needs to be measured by a different metric, one emphasizing longevity of users.

How many people who join town of salem and play actively enough for a while still play five years later? (I'm pretty sure the site's that old at least?) I'd wager not many.

How many people who join mafiascum and play actively enough for a while still play five years later? Well, depends on where you put the "five years later" exactly, but I'd be willing to wager...quite a higher percentage.

That's not to say mafiascum is without issues; it has a bundleload of those. But I think that those issues are best measured from a different standpoint.

Another way of thinking about it--basically, most mafia/werewolf players have the average age of being in their teens. Some below the teens (because let's face it, players play the game when under the age of 13 especially on other sites regardless of whether that's legal or not), some above the teens in lower 20s, but that's what most of the userbase for any mafia site will be, players in their teen years.

When those players grow up, how many of them are still playing mafia where they played? THAT is what I'm more or less getting at. When suddenly those teenagers are now adults with the responsibilities of adulting, often having matured...how many of them still are capable of playing in the environment that they were playing before?

I'd be willing to wager that on a metric along those lines, mafiascum kicks other sites to the curb.
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Post Post #769 (isolation #2) » Fri Apr 06, 2018 3:47 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 767, tn5421 wrote:I would support a modest size increase for our avatars. Absolutely no bigger than 150x150, preferably to 128x128.
At the very least I'd increase the height (100) to match the width (120), because there are plenty of avatars which fit as perfectly squared off, or fit slightly better when taller, but which run afoul of this and thus are forced to be either not used or decreased in size.
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Post Post #814 (isolation #3) » Thu Apr 12, 2018 5:53 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 811, GreyICE wrote:- List of games in need of replacements (optional, might not be our best foot forward)
For this, I assume you mean in some place other than the devoted thread for that purpose? That being, a place which the hope would be for higher visibility and either automation (mod inputs replacement needed-->shows up on list; mod inputs replacement no longer necessary-->removed from list) or a rapidly-updated easily-accessed post of some kind?

Something like that would indeed be awesome.
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Post Post #834 (isolation #4) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:55 am

Post by mastina »

In post 825, BBmolla wrote:Like, epicmafia has a competitive system and we don't.
And what, pray tell, did the competitive system do to the quality of site culture on EpicMafia including games?

EpicMafia was, back in the day, considered respectable.
Now the idea of EpicMafia and respectable in the same sentence is a laugh riot.
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Post Post #863 (isolation #5) » Fri May 04, 2018 11:15 am

Post by mastina »

In post 862, Kison wrote:I posted an outline of what I think we should work towards in .
For the record, I agree with everything in 754, I just didn't really have anything to say on the matter, but I think it should be emphasized that, yes, that is a good direction for things to be headed in.

It's just a matter of, "Okay, this is a good thing, but how do we get there?", more or less. We're trying in various different ways, it's largely "how do we get there sooner", essentially.
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Post Post #895 (isolation #6) » Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:11 am

Post by mastina »

In post 893, ManateeDude wrote:As a person who started on other sites, a huge reason why ms is dying is because of the standard two week long days. I started as a ToS player, and I moved to the Forum Mafia Section there, the phases range from 120/48 to 72/24. Nobody wants to come to here with these phase lengths, I suggest that some games have shortened dayphases, because ms won't adapt otherwise.
With respect, deadlines of that length are the entire draw to mafiascum.

Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but not much of one.

I would not play in a game with a day deadline shorter than four days, at absolute minimum--and even then, I'd be miserable and underperform.
I don't play in games with deadlines shorter than a week, and a week is still a dangerously short amount of time if I just so happen to have a week where I'm incredibly busy/have a V/LA.

Ten days to fourteen days is the amount I typically USE. So my preferred DEADLINE is 14-21 days, as to not always encounter a deadline rush. (If I have a 21-day deadline, I'm never using all 21, but I will probably fully utilize 14. If I have a 14-day deadline, I'd certainly try to get things wrapped up by the tenth day.)

I stopped playing mafia elsewhere because mafia that uses those shorter deadlines--which I used to be able to handle just fine--I simply can't handle anymore.

I know I am far from unique in that aspect.
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Post Post #907 (isolation #7) » Sun Jun 24, 2018 6:32 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 901, chitownmvp01 wrote:Really? I'm from TOS as well and I play on MU ocassionally where the day phases are less than half the time. I get bored if the phases are too long. I know many people, myself included that say that they will never play here unless the day phases aren't 2 weeks. So I'm not sure why you think the deadlines draw people here. Also, V/LA can be abused by not being on at EOD.
Longer deadlines draw people here because there is a demand for that kind of game (in particular, from individuals older than the typical mafia player, as the general mafia player demographic is teenagers and longer deadlines appeal to adults who have full lives).

mafiascum is one of the only sites in existence catering to that crowd. Maybe, MAYBE if you searched around you could find another location with similar day deadlines to here, but they are few and far between. (And the few which
do
exist, universally you'll find had their mafia games founded by a current or former mafiascum player.)

Sites where you have games last for minutes (maximum a few hours) are common enough.
Sites where you have games last for days (maximum a couple of weeks) are the default used across the internet.

You can find those in any location. Thus, mafiascum would have nothing unique to offer if our default game type was that. (Newbie games? Other sites have them. Open games? Other sites have them. Theme games? That's the default type of game on other sites. Normal games? That's the closest we have to something unique, but other sites have plenty of more "vanilla" games so it's far from unique.)

But sites where you have the longer deadline are a rarity.

Sites draw people in when there is something unique they have to offer. Sites draw people in when there is something they can offer another site cannot. Other sites offer games which last minutes/hours and/or days/weeks. But we're fairly unique in offering games which last weeks/months.

In short, we offer a service unavailable elsewhere--and people who want that service thus come to us.
If we didn't have that service, we wouldn't have any service unavailable elsewhere--and thus, people have no incentive to choose us over any number of alternatives.

Also, challenge yourself. Try keeping mafia in your mind for the next five years of your life. You can quit it and restart it as many times as you'd like. Five years from now, see whether you prefer the faster games or the slower games. If you actually keep playing mafia that long, I'm willing to bet you that you'll understand
exactly
what we're talking about.
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Post Post #908 (isolation #8) » Sun Jun 24, 2018 6:39 pm

Post by mastina »

That having been said
, while mafiascum will always have games of longer deadlines, we do have shorter-length games.
2-3 times a year, we have marathon games lasting minutes/hours. In some mafiascum-related communities, you can also find chat-based mafia games. (A classical example was xylbot.)
Moderators occasionally run Blitz games with games lasting days/weeks.

These games are available on mafiascum. They're just not the default, and never will be.
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Post Post #957 (isolation #9) » Wed Jun 27, 2018 6:23 am

Post by mastina »

In post 953, Kison wrote:I'd say it's worrying but not depressing. The first step towards fixing anything is being aware of the problem rather than being complacent & denying it.
Oh I think everyone can agree there's a problem and nobody denies there is one.

It's just that if you ask a hundred different people what the problem
actually is
, you'll get literally 100 different answers (okay, maybe not--some of them will share one answer: "not a damn clue"); nobody has any level of agreeance with one another on what the problem actually is, with everyone thinking it is something different if they put thought into it at all.
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Post Post #976 (isolation #10) » Wed Jun 27, 2018 8:07 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 969, chamber wrote:Is that a serious question? We lose like 100 users month to month because of turn over (some of whom come back later). How many banned users are there? Less than 10?
We also lose a fair number of users not because they're banned, but because they leave as a consequence from the
fallout
of a different user's ban.
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Post Post #987 (isolation #11) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 7:54 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 977, T-Bone wrote:Because the users who are banned are the type of people we want in our community? Like, I'm okay if people who hold white supremacist views feel unwelcome here. I'm okay if people who hold some very hateful views of LGBT+ feel unwelcome here. I'm okay if that locks out potential newbies as a result. That's fine, they can go somewhere else.
So am I. However, there are individuals who leave the site not as a direct result of those people being banned, but rather, the community response to those people being banned.

Some people who hold close ties to the banned users are disgusted by the hate and leave; some people who were disgusted by the user are appalled at the people who defend said user and leave as a result. Usually, it's one or the other, but for some controversial bans it can actually cause both to happen, where both sides leave the site because of the other, if that makes sense.
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Post Post #988 (isolation #12) » Thu Jun 28, 2018 7:58 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 980, BlackStar wrote:
In post 976, mastina wrote:
In post 969, chamber wrote:Is that a serious question? We lose like 100 users month to month because of turn over (some of whom come back later). How many banned users are there? Less than 10?
We also lose a fair number of users not because they're banned, but because they leave as a consequence from the
fallout
of a different user's ban.
Does that really happen often?
It doesn't happen with every ban, but it happens BIG TIME on the bans it
does
happen for.

Think Nobody Special's ban, for instance. That's more or less the kind of incident I am referring to. There was significant fallout from that ban.

Generally (though not always), the more widely known and prominent the user banned combined with how severe the ban is, the more likely there is to be fallout from the ban that causes users to leave the site.
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