The Root of Toxicity in Mafia Games

[Alisae]

it's probably because alisae is a toxic person let's not pretend

no way

[Psyche]

you started a thread here on mafiascum.net in its mafia discussion subforum to announce and argue that the game is unfun and intrinsically toxic

[Alisae]

i would never

[Alisae]

I am only nice to people

[Alisae]

I'm basically an angel

[Firefly7]

Almost wonder if this is just a product of the inherent lack of information town is given. The lynch is generally a bad tool to get information, and can only be done so many times per game. The only way of getting information on a player is either to remove them, or to have players claim that they have mechanical information on them from another source. As well, the lynch requires a majority of players to do anything, reducing the ability for any individual to carry.

You see the evolutions of mafia meant to be played in small groups and they all have large-impact, public mechanics, usually with semi-ambiguous information on multiple players, several times in a game. Small Mafia setups just don't have that. Players can try to make small setups with multiple scum that have sorts of public information throughout the game, but it will always be little because of the inherent need to kill people to get information.

These same evolutions would also put spotlights on players, giving them elevated power to exercise their reads. These two things combined allows for a lot more information on a lot less players, and a lot more individual importance.

The question I'm proposing is if More public info + More individual ability to carry = more gameplay? and to do that, removing the need to kill people to gain information about them.

[popsofctown]

"It's teamwork + you don't know who your teammates are!" sounds like it should be a mitigating factor, but when I think about it more, I don't think it is? If I have a correct solve in a 10:3 I have to cooperate with the same number of "teammates" as a micro.

I think the issue is that it's a teamgame where subjective assessments of how well other players are playing are adjacent or sometime even directly relevant to strategizing for the game itself.

Like if you think about how toxic League was before and after the ability to use four types of pings.

After four types of pings if you want someone to gank the enemy midlaner you are laning against, you ping "assist me here" or "attack here" or whatever. Adding subjective commentary requires you to further divert yourself from actually playing the game.

Before the four types of pings, if the ping would be contextually ambiguous, you had to change the keyboard to the chatbox either way. And you would say, "kill the player indicated by the ping". And while you were there anyway if you were not-great you would say "because he's hard to deal with, mostly because you fed him a kill 4 minutes ago and now he has an early Rod of Ages".

The parallel in mafia would be to naked vote someone. You won't win the social deduction game well enough with naked voting though. So we are "stuck with old pings". "VOTE: popsofctown because her motivation on the Alisae mislynch day 1 was scum aligned. I'm town and was practically the only one not on that wagon so that kind of suggests you all are gullible tbh." (the second sentence isn't actually necessary to effectuate the popslynch, but it has become an adjacent topic.) You have to socially interact and get, at a minimum, adjacent to these issues. So there's a high likelihood for the game to get toxic.

[OkaPoka]

just say i smell nice and you will be reformed

[Alisae]

"It's teamwork + you don't know who your teammates are!" sounds like it should be a mitigating factor, but when I think about it more, I don't think it is? If I have a correct solve in a 10:3 I have to cooperate with the same number of "teammates" as a micro.

and when you do find out who your teammates are, it turns out that they're wild animals.

[popsofctown]

Almost wonder if this is just a product of the inherent lack of information town is given. The lynch is generally a bad tool to get information, and can only be done so many times per game. The only way of getting information on a player is either to remove them, or to have players claim that they have mechanical information on them from another source. As well, the lynch requires a majority of players to do anything, reducing the ability for any individual to carry.

You see the evolutions of mafia meant to be played in small groups and they all have large-impact, public mechanics, usually with semi-ambiguous information on multiple players, several times in a game. Small Mafia setups just don't have that. Players can try to make small setups with multiple scum that have sorts of public information throughout the game, but it will always be little because of the inherent need to kill people to get information.

These same evolutions would also put spotlights on players, giving them elevated power to exercise their reads. These two things combined allows for a lot more information on a lot less players, and a lot more individual importance.

The question I'm proposing is if More public info + More individual ability to carry = more gameplay? and to do that, removing the need to kill people to gain information about them.

As you hinted the game can tolerate very little mechanics of "add information without killing anybody" without becoming imbalanced against the scum.

There are some setups where players are selected to be nominated for not being not likely to be scum instead of killing them which you might think would be less toxic but I've seen it be toxic anyway.

[Alisae]

Also I'm seeing a lot of comparisons to League in this thread.

This video still holds true about 4 years later

[Alisae]

if you really think about it, League of Legends and Mafia are the same game except Mafia is worse.
They both suffer from the same problems

[Psyche]

there's no informed minority vs uninformed majority dynamic at all

[Alisae]

See
League is better than Mafia in that
if someone is literally running it down mid in League, they can get banned.
If you rand scum with someone and their first post is:
"I am a town roleblocker that is also a modified paranoid gun owner (I can only kill one visitor per night)."
And then that person proceeds to deathtunnel 1 person while refusing to work with your team and also not even trying to hide that he's scum.

You can't get that person banned. He's trying lmfao.

[NotAJumbleOfNumbers]

my response to everything youve said here OP, is: why you here then?

So you clearly haven't experienced mafia on this site yet.

in what sense does that fact relate? you just said the game at its core doesnt work in any context people play it in and that u only enjoy "shitposting" in games. why are u on a mafia site?

personally i love the game in any context so ill probably enjoy it on here

Well Yugioh, my boy, you wouldn't understand.

Can I at least

try

to understand?

[OkaPoka]

See
League is better than Mafia in that
if someone is literally running it down mid in League, they can get banned.
If you rand scum with someone and their first post is:
"I am a town roleblocker that is also a modified paranoid gun owner (I can only kill one visitor per night)."
And then that person proceeds to deathtunnel 1 person while refusing to work with your team and also not even trying to hide that he's scum.

You can't get that person banned. He's trying lmfao.

this sounds very specific i want to read

[Alisae]

See
League is better than Mafia in that
if someone is literally running it down mid in League, they can get banned.
If you rand scum with someone and their first post is:
"I am a town roleblocker that is also a modified paranoid gun owner (I can only kill one visitor per night)."
And then that person proceeds to deathtunnel 1 person while refusing to work with your team and also not even trying to hide that he's scum.

You can't get that person banned. He's trying lmfao.

this sounds very specific i want to read

viewtopic.php?p=11309904&user_select%5B ... #p11309904

[NotAJumbleOfNumbers]

I am only nice to people

That bad decision wouldn't have been made if Alisae and Ank hadn't agreed to end night 6 minutes after it started.

shut up

literally no one cares about what you have to say

[Alisae]

i know what I said

[NotAJumbleOfNumbers]

okay? how does that make this nice tho

[Alisae]

psst
no one tell him

[SleepyKrew]

the toxicity in league and mafia and a whole bunch of other games comes from the players being immature

[RadiantCowbells]

disagree

the toxicity in league comes from immaturity certainly given that toxicity actively hinders your ability to win games

the toxicity in mafia is a result of a game where there are advantages to being toxic.

[Nero Cain]

Also I like this new name for mafia games - social gatherings

no

[Psyche]

a good bit of the toxicity in team games comes from not being singularly responsible for all of your own wins and losses
of course it's not the only factor; there's a lot of toxicity in even 1v1 games
still - probably less, though?