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)...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?
...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
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
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.