The Root of Toxicity in Mafia Games

[Krazy]

I mean the thread is about toxicity and over-valuing "winrate" is a frequent characteristic of toxic players.

[Psyche]

because then ppl have to admit rc is good at mafia

vry fair

[Ankamius]

I mean the thread is about toxicity and over-valuing "winrate" is a frequent characteristic of toxic players.

less winrate and more stats in general

[profii]

Probably too much to get everyone to vote on every player. But maybe people could do accolades to reward positive behavior.

You are right, I figured getting everyone to rate every other player rapidly increases the sample size and reduces the risk of 2 players joining a game to rate themselves and game the system.

You can't let people rate other people in the game, it literally invites more toxicity and ratings for likes/dislikes. But if good/experienced mods rated players in their games, then we might get something out of it

The idea was that if people remove toxicity from their play to invite likes and ward off dislikes... that's the point. I like the idea of the mod doing it though.

i think winrates are fine! why can't we be happy with winrates
yeah people can fluke good winrates, but not over large samples
and if it's small samples, no good evaluative metric is possible
yall make this so complicated

You could do both, someone who is a well liked player, but we know they aren't good at finding scum. Or someone who wins a lot but does it by being an utter cockwomble in every game they play are both things that seem to happen on this site, so if we present both statistics, maybe people will be the change they want to see.

[Psyche]

the dream would be to track smaller scale but still concrete stuff than win/lose so people have clearer feedback on skills they can improve on or are good at and maybe on a larger scale get a better idea of what makes someone good at mafia

with the right codebase, we could track wagon participation and outcomes across many games and measure individual differences in who and how often they start or join wagons, the outcomes of wagons they participate in or lead (do they result in bandwagoning? lynches? scum or town lynches?), and so on
can also track thread activity (posts per day, words per day, etc), amount of mentions by other players, how often they are the focus of wagons themselves, god i could go on forever
we might even be able to track sentiment about the player by other players in the game, though the nature of the game complicates this (say you like playing w a dude but also repeatedly say you want them lynched? is that gonna be read as positive or negative sentiment?)
parallels for scum also exist too (bussing? do they make mislynches happen? are they good at finding and killing PRs at night?)

can even identify stats with traits like "charisma", "accuracy", "engagement", etc to give everything verve/clarity

some people will seem to score favorably on just about everything tracked this way and still have worse W/L, but you'll know their strengths and weaknesses all the same

oh if only i had the time

[Chara]

my take is i like playing games, and i find they're fun because some players win and some players lose. players who don't try to win are less fun, and players who care so much about winning they get nasty are also no fun.

my ideal game is always one where everyone tried, even if it doesn't end in success. even if you vig the cop because you thought they were scum. i can be happy with a loss with a fun game.
if i wanted to (only) shitpost/chat with friends i would be in GD.

[Psyche]

I WILL MAKE THE TIME

[Menalque]

Hypothesis: toxicity increases exponentially when the response to not knowing how to handle someone is defaulting to a SR instead of a TR/sort later mentality

[Ankamius]

That isn't a bad theory

[Ramcius]

Agree, so put more effort in looking towny/become easier to handle and there will be no toxicity in mafia

[RadiantCowbells]

thinking...

[CheekyTeeky]

the dream would be to track smaller scale but still concrete stuff than win/lose so people have clearer feedback on skills they can improve on or are good at and maybe on a larger scale get a better idea of what makes someone good at mafia

This is a great idea.

[rb]

a lot of people seem to get toxic when they feel misunderstood or attacked for no good reason. fairly hard to reach consensus on what exactly is good reason or an attack though in a game like mafia


i've been pretty toxic in the past in mafia and i still feel bad about it to this day because above all it should be an enjoyable experience for the people involved. i don't think i'm toxic anymore and i just have a different idea about what mafia is, i guess. also in a very different life headspace though

[Jingle]

Like don’t get me wrong, I very much wanna make those star making plays, but I wanna see other people make those plays too, and I wanna battle against their plays with my own plays.

If they win, I’ll learn from it, try a different approach next time, and vice versa.

I see mafia the same way I see EDH in magic. It's not about winning or losing. It's not even really about being good. It's about having a game both factions can be proud of at the end. If I build a ridiculous combo deck and win all of my games, I still won't have as much fun as that one time that someone radiated a chaos warp and we had to shuffle 100 card decks 89 times, despite the fact that it was a completely ridiculous game with a bunch of garbage-y cards.

Similarly, my favorite times in mafia are things like outed scum trolling the thread after successfully faking a guilty or exceptional gambits paying off. Solving the puzzle is fun. Winning the game is fun. But it's worthless if you don't enjoy the people you're with because having fun with those people is the reason to play mafia instead of whatever video game is your choice.

[Klick]

+1

[Nancy Drew 39]

Whenever people lack complete empathy and think the world revolves around them. That’s the difference between ego and insanity.

[Firebringer]

Hypothesis: toxicity increases exponentially when the response to not knowing how to handle someone is defaulting to a SR instead of a TR/sort later mentality

I feel like I get more toxic when people put me in null because they don't want to handle me then give me arbitrarily bad town or scum reads.

I feel as though I enjoy scumreads most of the time unless I expect the person I am playing with to think my actions should be null at best though. So :shrug:

[profii]

Hypothesis: toxicity increases exponentially when the response to not knowing how to handle someone is defaulting to a SR instead of a TR/sort later mentality

I did this in the game you modded

I never played with skitter or pops before and I didnt find they play style to radiate town anywhere near as much as everyone else in the thread so I was hella confused and it really drove me to scum read skitter in particular which probably came across toxically (or at least I felt it did) (hurrah for making up words!)

In the end it turned out that penguin fake claim was just causing friction amongst the town and because I wanted to deal with that weird roles by lynching a PR earlier than anyone else - that was probably one of the root causes of that episode

So sorry pops and skitter:D

[popsofctown]

Hypothesis: toxicity increases exponentially when the response to not knowing how to handle someone is defaulting to a SR instead of a TR/sort later mentality

I did this in the game you modded

I never played with skitter or pops before and I didnt find they play style to radiate town anywhere near as much as everyone else in the thread so I was hella confused and it really drove me to scum read skitter in particular which probably came across toxically (or at least I felt it did) (hurrah for making up words!)

In the end it turned out that penguin fake claim was just causing friction amongst the town and because I wanted to deal with that weird roles by lynching a PR earlier than anyone else - that was probably one of the root causes of that episode

So sorry pops and skitter:D

Hypothesis, there are toxic players, and self-aware players concerned they are being toxic, and no overlap between these two groups.

[profii]

[Enter]

Hypothesis: toxicity increases exponentially when the response to not knowing how to handle someone is defaulting to a SR instead of a TR/sort later mentality

I did this in the game you modded

I never played with skitter or pops before and I didnt find they play style to radiate town anywhere near as much as everyone else in the thread so I was hella confused and it really drove me to scum read skitter in particular which probably came across toxically (or at least I felt it did) (hurrah for making up words!)

In the end it turned out that penguin fake claim was just causing friction amongst the town and because I wanted to deal with that weird roles by lynching a PR earlier than anyone else - that was probably one of the root causes of that episode

So sorry pops and skitter:D

Hypothesis, there are toxic players, and self-aware players concerned they are being toxic, and no overlap between these two groups.

p sure i am both toxic and self-aware of this

[Krazy]

I think toxicity is also directly tied to saying literally anything other than "gg" when a game is over

[Alisae]

is from the game itself.
Its not fun.
It pisses people off.
It doesn't work as a competative game or a fun party game.

In a competative video game, you have a clear chance to just whoop some ass if you are a good player.
Do you really have that option in Mafia?

In a fun party game, your friends can get into it and, have fun.
But in Mafia, what happens is you get into fights and get mad at each other and start yellin.
The only time you get to really connect with your friends is when you're shitposting memes and literally not playing mafia.

And then you get to late game where honestly, no one really cares at all they just want the game to be over because the game has just gone on for way too long.

[Ramcius]

I think toxicity is also directly tied to saying literally anything other than "gg" when a game is over

[chkflip]

I think toxicity is also directly tied to saying literally anything other than "gg" when a game is over

Preach.