Are there software tools for analysing forum threads?

[Ramcius]

What the point of playing mafia then, if you want program to do all the work for you?

[Ramcius]

What's the point in doing so? You might win more, sure, but you're abandoning spirit of the mafia, you know, the feel that YOU figured stuff, not some algorithm that you just ran. Also, it gets boring fast enough, because you putting less work in it and end result doesn't feel so rewarding

[Ramcius]

abandoning spirit of the mafia

Lol though

I'm not talking about people, who see mafia games as a social gatherings, they don't care enough to even use software

[Ramcius]

The spirit of mafia is not rescanning a thread for what posts votes occurred in.

You think that's only way software can be used in mafia? What do you think about scanning person's whole posting history looking for how many times they said something specific as either alignment?

I mean, what is described at the start of the thread is pretty useless, but there is far more applications for software in mafia

[Ramcius]

I'm becoming more confident every time we interact that talking to you is a waste of time. See you next time I forget.

Ofc baiting me is a waste of time, maybe when you become medium sized troll, I might take your bait, but as a petty troll you can't provide me much entertainment

[Ramcius]

What's the point in doing so? You might win more, sure, but you're abandoning spirit of the mafia, you know, the feel that YOU figured stuff, not some algorithm that you just ran. Also, it gets boring fast enough, because you putting less work in it and end result doesn't feel so rewarding

What is the spirit of maifa?

Usage of your own head to solve game

[Ramcius]

I'll just make myself clear on this - any software that helps you analyse is broken and shouldn't be used, I mean real analyse, you give info and software gives you answer based on some algorithm. Software that helps to keep track of things is fine, but let's be real, that kind of software is borderline useless, even if you find scum with help of it, you can't convince other players, it simply wouldn't be enough of an argument.

[Ramcius]

Equalizer of what?

[Ramcius]

Equalizer of what?

Time.

I used to keep a literal metabinder of things that majorly differed between an individual's town games and mafia games, because I had the free time to read almost every game onsite.

Turns of phrase, post count, post density, post timing... there were a LOT of super-specific tells like that.


But now? I'm a father and I work full time and I don't have the time to do that. Automating part of that process, and then applying human logic to the patterns it detects? That could be incredibly useful.

And it'll march the arms race along further. But, you cannot stuff the genie back in the bottle. The working solution to countries obtaining nuclear weapons was never "That's unfair, you should stop doing that"; just as it was for the shotgun (Famously detested by the Germans during Trench Warfare) or the longbow, or the battering ram, or any other weapon in human history.

You forgetting really important part of the mafia - balance. Improving town with software assistance isn't the answer you're looking for. You'll have to balance games somehow to make up for scum

[Ramcius]

For instance, right now, I'm working on a PowerBI desktop (Free tool from Microsoft) script that ingests a game's worth of posts, and mines them for phrases and words of a given alignment. I tell the model who is town vs scum, and it tells me what words pop out to it.

Elli had something like that, his conclusion was that using that was a mistake

[Ramcius]

What's the point in doing so? You might win more, sure, but you're abandoning spirit of the mafia, you know, the feel that YOU figured stuff, not some algorithm that you just ran. Also, it gets boring fast enough, because you putting less work in it and end result doesn't feel so rewarding

What is the spirit of maifa?

Usage of your own head to solve game

so that means special roles are against the spirit of mafia?

How I'm supposed to know what you consider as special roles?

[Ramcius]

Equalizer of what?

Time.

I used to keep a literal metabinder of things that majorly differed between an individual's town games and mafia games, because I had the free time to read almost every game onsite.

Turns of phrase, post count, post density, post timing... there were a LOT of super-specific tells like that.


But now? I'm a father and I work full time and I don't have the time to do that. Automating part of that process, and then applying human logic to the patterns it detects? That could be incredibly useful.

And it'll march the arms race along further. But, you cannot stuff the genie back in the bottle. The working solution to countries obtaining nuclear weapons was never "That's unfair, you should stop doing that"; just as it was for the shotgun (Famously detested by the Germans during Trench Warfare) or the longbow, or the battering ram, or any other weapon in human history.

You forgetting really important part of the mafia - balance. Improving town with software assistance isn't the answer you're looking for. You'll have to balance games somehow to make up for scum

You seem to be under the entirely mistaken impression that meta only helps town. Scum, armed with the same information, can easily use small differences in play to get miselims and cause other shenanigans.

The issue here isn't balance. The issue is how do these tools alter the mafia landscape and what quality of life improvements do they offer. Do people just use the tools to automatically win games? That's bad. It's also unlikely someone develops an AI sophisticated enough to do that. Automating things like vote counts and post history or meta? That's a convenience and I'm all for it.

Further, to Cabd's point, some of these tools already exist. They can benefit a small portion of players (i.e. the devs that made them) or they could be crowdsourced and available to all players if they choose to partake.

You don't need sophisticated AI, you simply need a tool to run all person's games looking for specific word/phrase and how often person said it as either alignment. Good luck fighting this meta with arguments like "meta isn't accurate/sucks" or "you can't use meta from 1 or few games", you can't even alter meta as a scum providing only examples that benefits your agenda - software will provide absolute meta. Like I can do some things and bust my ass covering my own scum meta, but I can't do shit, if townies will be confirmed as a town and I'm dead to PoE.

[Ramcius]

What's the point in doing so? You might win more, sure, but you're abandoning spirit of the mafia, you know, the feel that YOU figured stuff, not some algorithm that you just ran. Also, it gets boring fast enough, because you putting less work in it and end result doesn't feel so rewarding

What is the spirit of maifa?

Usage of your own head to solve game

so that means special roles are against the spirit of mafia?

How I'm supposed to know what you consider as special roles?

You know, power roles. In the game Mafia.

You know, you're still boring petty troll

[Ramcius]

That's bound to happen when you define trolling as answering easy obvious questions you somehow couldn't find the answers to on your own.

No, that happens, when petty troll like you thinks he's so smart and others are morons. I'm pretty sure Gamma knows how to spell PR or power roles, therefore when he says "special roles", he means some specific PRs, I have no way of knowing which PRs he consider special, so I did what any person with working brains would do - I asked him. You know, that's what you do, when you lack of info to answer a question. I hope today's lesson will be helpful to you in the future

[Ramcius]

Ramcius: bad troll
Also ramcius: lemme totally bite this hook though

Nah, I'm just benevolent person, we should help to less fortunate than us, we should educate people, who clearly lack of basic understanding of things

Also, I never said that you're bad, just petty, you know, someone, who can't really put anything creative together, bad troll at least can come up with something new and they are entertaining

[Ramcius]

You don't need sophisticated AI, you simply need a tool to run all person's games looking for specific word/phrase and how often person said it as either alignment. Good luck fighting this meta with arguments like "meta isn't accurate/sucks" or "you can't use meta from 1 or few games", you can't even alter meta as a scum providing only examples that benefits your agenda - software will provide absolute meta. Like I can do some things and bust my ass covering my own scum meta, but I can't do shit, if townies will be confirmed as a town and I'm dead to PoE.

So what? Scum have access to the tool too, and can artificially inflate their usage of certain key phrases to match their own town meta. Further, people in general aren't so consistent that a simple matching up of key phrases would lead to anything remotely resembling a game solve. If you've ever used meta before, you know there's no such thing as "absolute meta", no matter its source. The proposed tools here simply collate data. It's up to the user to analyze that data and present it to 12 other people in a way that they'd find compelling. So I'm a bit confused as to what you're actually arguing about here.

Pedit: I think the point, Jake, is that AI usage for the most part probably isn't kosher for mafia. We're talking about automating data gathering, not automating playing the game.

I know a better way - new secret alt every game. People are already fed up with meta usage, you want to make meta even more obnoxious?

[Ramcius]

That was a joke as I take inflation of key words to counter meta software.

[Ramcius]

That was a joke as I don't have a better argument than "meta sucks and I hate it".

FTFY.

I don't hate meta, I just think that using your own head to read people based on their actions in current game is much more fun and valuable, but I also understand that there are plenty of people, who are incapable of doing so and they need some gimmick to feel good at mafia and meta is just like that. I suggest them to find another hobby instead, it would give them more joy

Also, you killed me with "key words" and misinterpreting absolute meta, after that I realised that you are just a troll, who have little idea of what was discussed here

[Ramcius]

What's the point in doing so? You might win more, sure, but you're abandoning spirit of the mafia, you know, the feel that YOU figured stuff, not some algorithm that you just ran. Also, it gets boring fast enough, because you putting less work in it and end result doesn't feel so rewarding

What is the spirit of maifa?

Usage of your own head to solve game

so that means special roles are against the spirit of mafia?

How I'm supposed to know what you consider as special roles?

Anything that isn’t vanilla

I can agree that vanilla cop and other roles that operates on same ground are bad, but majority of roles are fine, how simple role like visitor goes against my principle of spirit of mafia in your opinion? Or doc? You still need to use your own head how to properly use them and opposing team have to use their head how to play against them.

[Ramcius]

Ramcius: bad troll
Also ramcius: lemme totally bite this hook though

Nah, I'm just benevolent person, we should help to less fortunate than us, we should educate people, who clearly lack of basic understanding of things

Also, I never said that you're bad, just petty, you know, someone, who can't really put anything creative together, bad troll at least can come up with something new and they are entertaining

This is extraordinarily pompous
Are you part of MENSA?

I'm just confident.

You were in the thread with MENSA puzzle cards, do you really think I'm on same level as them?

[Ramcius]

On topic - anything that goes past current game is unacceptable. I'm ok with software that can gather data in current game and helps person to have easier time with analysing what is going on

If you think I'm overreacting, look up how Mulch got executed in Beneath the mask game, also that example prove existence of absolute meta that Syryana is saying doesn't exist

[Ramcius]

Ramcius: bad troll
Also ramcius: lemme totally bite this hook though

Nah, I'm just benevolent person, we should help to less fortunate than us, we should educate people, who clearly lack of basic understanding of things

Also, I never said that you're bad, just petty, you know, someone, who can't really put anything creative together, bad troll at least can come up with something new and they are entertaining

This is extraordinarily pompous
Are you part of MENSA?

I'm just confident.

You were in the thread with MENSA puzzle cards, do you really think I'm on same level as them?

full disclosure, yes I do think that.

And like, are you saying all cop-like roles are bad? Interesting.

In addition is someone playing ignorant to a key part of someone's else playstyle in a way that guarantees their miselimination okay? Because that's what can happen if you completely ignore other games when determining how to read people in a current one.

I mean roles that can't be countered with any reasonable strategy - let's say you are known good scum player, how can you defend yourself against cop checking you N1 and you being executed D2? I mean, roles that gives ambiguous results or have a way to prevent guilty are fine. For example watcher is fine, it can get guilty, but scum can choose not likely to be watched target, or mod can give them ninja. It might require suboptimal plays from scum team, but it brings more mind game aspects to the game without breaking it too much. I hope you get the idea

Why only way to avoid your own miselimination is to bring playstyle argument of other person? That sounds like very niche example and person in question seems like very bad at mafia too

As for first thing, I see no reason to drop my honest asshole persona, when I'm dealing with bunch of trolls who show no real intention to discuss the issue. Chess engine argument is bs, their applications are different and meta software don't make you better at mafia. "Everything is allowed at war" argument was funny too, warfare is regulated, good luck using chemical or bio (virus) weapon and see how far that'll get you, probably to Hague Tribunal. "Key words" and ruining your own town meta with inflating your scum game with your towntells as a counter to meta software is so detached from reality that it's not even funny. Ythan was being Ythan. You have some grudges against me too, so your approach was a bit more hostile than it would've been without them.

If any of you want to provide an actual argument(s) that can be applied to majority of the games to prove that meta is good/healthy for game of mafia, I might have take that person seriously and try to have an actual discussion, but it was proven in past that meta often is unhealthy and forces people to opt for secret alts or keep same playstyle just so they won't be accused for having different playstyle that was expected based on their previous games.

Lastly, I doubt mafia was invented with meta in mind, it looks like a game where people try to deceive and see through deception, not to dig through old games and find similar patterns to prove someone to be in informed minority instead of trying to find their missteps in the game at hand

[Ramcius]

The way to play around a cop is to play in a way that doesn't get you checked. That generally means putting yourself out there so you make enough of an impression that the cop doesn't feel like your alignment needs to be sorted via its power. And there is a role counter to cop, several in fact, but a lot of them aren't normal.

I understand my wording wasn't great, but what I meant was say player X is being wagoned for reasons you know mean nothing for them. Are you just supposed to stand by and let it happen?

I think the way I approach you is somewhat that I like to bully you, since you tend to react strongly. I know it's not nice but you've never taken it personally and I've never really made it go that far.

For me, I like having meta be used because it incentivizes me to constantly improve. I've never felt like it's unhealthy, if someone is good at metaing me I tend to actually lean into that, but that's probably because I'm consistently SRed as town.

I don't think mafia was invented with meta in mind either, but that doesn't mean it can't be part of it now.

Cop has another really nasty effect - it can clear townies too. Adjusting your playstyle completely to counter one type of a role is a bit much, don't you think? Yes, there are roles, but as you know, they aren't normal or even are considered bastard, so they can't be really used in games. Also cop isn't only role,some iterations of gunsmith can have similar result, sure, it can give false positive on vig, but chances are low, so it can be used as a cop for most cases.

How about finding different target for execution? From practice I can tell that saving person from execution doesn't end the problem, you have to prove that person is town without a doubt, otherwise people will be back at same person again and you might be not there to fend them off. Sometimes it's better to let it go through and move from there. Even misexecution can be used to progress the game. Info is info, it's just how people use it or how capable are they of using it to it's full potential

I always thought that I get a bit too hard with you and you have some grudges, but if you say that you like banters and don't take it to heart, I won't feel bad in future, when I say something that can't be consider polite to you

[Ramcius]

Those are some fair responses, actually. On the point of of miseliminations helping to solve, you could probably just argue against the thing you know is irrelevant without bringing in meta, and if it still goes through you can try to figure out who wasn't pushing in good faith.

Tbf, scum aren't spearheading misexecutions that often, it's a good idea to look of people's reasons to join wagon or stay off wagon. But that applies only to wagons that forms naturally, last second "we just need to execute someone to avoid no execution" wagons are bad for analysis

[Ramcius]

It's not about general scum or town habits, people are too different and have too different playstyles. It's about personal habits - which is meta. People tend to use same words/phrases as one alignment, but not other, that's a given. Ofc that doesn't apply to everyone and you still need to find these towntells/scumtells during the game, but if you hit those that's it, it's either hard guilty or IC basically. Another thing is with people, who hate playing scum, they can be easily confirmed as town with meta software, it's pretty much trust tell, but you can't tell person that they shouldn't use certain words/phrases or to use these words/phrases as a scum. Currently towntells/scumtells aren't taken serious, because they are unreliable and no one is going to dig through someone's posting history to confirm it, but you guys really want to make them reliable and for what reason?

[Ramcius]

"Player X said "phrase" 3 times a scum, never as a town, so player X is scum for saying "phrase" here"

That was how Mulch got executed in Beneath the mask game, can you guess what alignment he flipped? We all have habits, we all say things as one alignment and not other, maybe we say something much more often as one alignment than other. It's just a matter of finding our tells by running uncommonly used words/phrases

[Ramcius]

"Player X said "phrase" 3 times a scum, never as a town, so player X is scum for saying "phrase" here"

That was how Mulch got executed in Beneath the mask game, can you guess what alignment he flipped? We all have habits, we all say things as one alignment and not other, maybe we say something much more often as one alignment than other. It's just a matter of finding our tells by running uncommonly used words/phrases

Are you against this entire style or just the automation of it?

I'm against meta altogether tbf, but in current state it isn't that threatening. It's not really feasible without automation, so if anyone is crazy enough to try this manually, they can do it

[Ramcius]

The software can only respond with what it knows. If you haven't painstakingly scanned every, say, Cabd game, the script may not have enough information to come to any meaningful conclusion.

I'm in favor of scripts that put the information in front of you and leave it to you to analyze it. I'm not in favor of scripts that do a lot of that analyzing for you.

What makes you think that you can't simply adjust script to require just minimal effort to scan all games of a person?

[Ramcius]

There's still a not trivial step between crawling up those posts and analysis. Without that it's just a better search function. And nobody thinks that would be bad.

See, Ythan, I don't like being called a nobody. That aside, most people have no real idea what they are talking, I mean, people, who post here, they have no real idea how that even might work or how it might look, so taking their opinion on what effect it might have on mafia is simply dumb.

[Ramcius]

There's still a not trivial step between crawling up those posts and analysis. Without that it's just a better search function. And nobody thinks that would be bad.

See, Ythan, I don't like being called a nobody. That aside, most people have no real idea what they are talking, I mean, people, who post here, they have no real idea how that even might work or how it might look, so taking their opinion on what effect it might have on mafia is simply dumb.

I feel the same way. On a related note how do you think it would work specifically?

For starters, I'm well aware that it wouldn't work on every person, but still, if you can reliably determine few players alignment in a game, it's already massive, imagine clearing people and turning them basically into IC or having free guilty or couple out of the blue and scum team can't prevent that from happening. I don't even want to imagine resurgence of trust tells "I only say X as a town, you can check it for yourself". Let's be real, we all have speaking patterns, we talk a bit different as a different alignment and we don't even notice that, matter is just picking up of these patters