Mini 2206 - Deja Vu: Perpetual MELO IV - END!

[skitter30]

I'm reading him more for being frustrated abt it than the his actual stance if that makes sense

~ skit

[skitter30]

this promotes the unwnd theory!
i will take a look!

~ skitter

[skitter30]

this has not been one of my better games reads-wise >.>

~
so this is where i'm at rn. in my mind the game is kinda divided into tiers:
{bork/mena-ydrasse}
{infinity/notsci}
{sircakez/mom/prism}

the only two people i'm still quasi-confident on are bork and mena. bork i still think is out of his scumrange and i just don't think mena interacts with nm that way, despite ydrasse's hammer. it's possible i'm getting snowed by the people in this group but i don't think i'm willing to vote there today. if i'm wrong on one of them rn i don't think this is something i can positively identify today with the information i have, and these aren't the people i want to spend today's vote on.

i would say *if* there's scum in that group there's max one. i can't like make the game make sense in my mind if both of them are, it just doesn't compute for me.

then the infinity/notsci tier. my heart kinda wants them both to be town but i have a really bad sinking feeling that this just isn't the universe we live in at this point. i townread them both early game but at this point those reasons no longer suffice. in particular i'm kinda getting suspicious of infinity and i feel like she's dropped off a lot in a way that's rather reminiscent of her scum MO. these are the reads i definitely want to re-evaluate but probably wouldn't vote today

and then the last tier i think is the best bet for hitting scum, and i think there's at least one, probably two, in there
i actually like sircakez out of all of them the best: i like his entrance today, he's p persistantly pushed for nm yesterday, and he also has anti-partner associatives with l/g
i still think mom is scummy, and am just not convinced by any of the reasons presented for townreading her
and i utterly hate everything prism has done since/including the hammer

i would want to vote in the last two today

~ skitter

[skitter30]

Bork we should def to that at some point :)

[skitter30]

i'm gonna be honest i'm having a hard time seeing town come in with the pushes she's making >.>

~ skitter

[skitter30]

Tweety and infinity you both nearly gave me a heart attack these past two days.

You were utterly on point <3
And inifinty i felt so bad at daystart for pushing you

This was one of the hardest games i've ever played

[skitter30]

I knew it

I knew it

I'm so fucking devastated

Sorry :(

[skitter30]

VFT was soooooo goood! WTF you two are too good.

Thanks. Like i said i nearly had a heart attack these past two days

[skitter30]

tbf I'm just glad its over
even if we had gotten DC today I don't think VFT would have followed
it just put the dog out of its misery so to speak

I think i would have tbh

[skitter30]

Ffery we need to talk abt the lack of daytalk in this setup

[skitter30]

you would have what?

Been flipped if dc got flipped
I could handwave it if he hadnt flipped

I couldnt once he flipped

[skitter30]

What was the reason you didn't push Iverson by the way?

U were spot on - the votes just werent there

[skitter30]

Ok i'm just leaving work but i have a lot i want to say later

[skitter30]

2. Skitter put on a masterpiece despite the Day 2 mistake

Day2 or day3

[skitter30]

Tweetie u were amazing

Pedit sorry

[skitter30]

. Tweet's posting was absolutely bonkers, this bat is on steroids. Successfully indentified A) Who the scum were individually B) Why they were the scum collectively and what motivated moves & why C) Exactly why everyone else was town

I just want to requote this for emphasis, mt you were insane ^^^^^

Literally everything you said abt day3 was exactly right

If u rep in any earlier or this dragged on much longer i sincerely believe you could have pulled it out

[skitter30]

I've been thinking about this, as well as the 14 day game days. These in some ways are remnants of past site meta, but I think they are also factors in this game's balance.

I thini the days could have been shorter

I understand your point abt the elegance of the setup, but to put it bluntly scumgames are just a lot more fun with daytalk, and coordinating a 3way qh without it is, uh, nontrivial

And i could have spent a lot less time tearing my hair out wondering what on earth everyone else was doing >.>

[skitter30]

Might just put in the Isis rule about being able to place a game-ending hammer on a teammate's behalf

This, or votes being placed in like elo (final elo here?) being unretractable

There were two town votes on u >.>

[skitter30]

what killed me with Tweet was paranoia they were scum induced by scum
gdi

So much gaslighting >.>

[skitter30]

*flops ears*

[skitter30]

No redactions for the scum pt, but i dont want to release the hydra pt

[skitter30]

Also <3 dead pt

[skitter30]

I have no idea why people were townreading me so much still at start of day3 after the two misflips >.>

[skitter30]

^

[skitter30]

I think she wins even without the quickhammer by simply telling Kismet she is confident in me and essentially only doing basic maintenance from there.

you are probably right.

fwiw i called this out as a misstep basically as soon as i did this
in my defense tho while bork was probably a lock the other townies who had been voting prism were already backing off and even if i could have gotten bork i'm not sure i could have gotten the other town votes necessary at that point, and i was wary at that point of depending on a qh to end things fast because that had just kinda failed

[skitter30]

idk it felt risky but like the easiest way to control the slide and i wasn't sure i could get you

like in my mind:
-> iverson maybe yes maybe no, but i had a sinking feeling that if i didn't get you it would be dc, which would have been p bad with my existing associatives
(and iirc infinity was one of the votes on you and then switched to pushing dc, which was obviously not super helpful from my pov)
-> vs forcing a mom bus and controlling the narrative and having an easy infinity vote today (if tweetie hadn't repped in etc etc etc)

it felt like going for a maybe day3 vs a p sure thing day4

don't think i could have predicted/played around tweetie's repping in

[skitter30]

yeah like i said, it felt like a maybe vs a sure thing (barring tweetie)
and like idk i was counting votes the whole game and i just wasn't sure they were there for you, even with bork

(aside it was fucking terrifying coming back on tuesday and literally not having a clue what cakez and notsci were thinking about tweetie. i kinda just came in and hoped for the best. things are so much easier if you know what everyone is thinking)

[skitter30]

Again very subjective and focusing on such a tiny error, if it's even an error at all, would be to miss the point of how well you played and controlled the game as a whole. It's interesting but I don't want to lose sight of the bigger picture.

and thanks

pedit you too peta :)

[skitter30]

also thanks ffery for modding :)

[skitter30]

this was a really great pl too
definitely not an easy win from the scum side

~
and with that i think i'm hiatusing for a bit

[skitter30]

TWEEEETIE YOU ARE THE BEEEEEEEEEEEST <3

this game was so lovely and beautiful every1 played so well!

hope to see you around again soon skitter enjoy hiatus :3

:)

It's possible the setup was scumsided in 2013 and isn't anymore

i think it's roughly balanced, maybe even townsided these days
(my opinion may be biased tho, i imagine i would feel different with daytalk)

[skitter30]

i spent so much of day1 trying to like ~telepathically communicate~ with u lot to get you guys to vote nacho

[skitter30]

eh i meant scum in general, not dc hydra in particular

[skitter30]

strongly agree with the latter point

[skitter30]

I think town is stronger right now for meta reasons evolving from the demonstrated strength of hyperposting, and how innately difficult it is to fake as scum, rather than for mechanical reasons. I think dialing back will help scum out but the source of dismay doesn't tend to be mechanical. I get that there is an argument that mechanically stacking the deck has led to the demotivation. I don't really agree.

i think this pov has a lot of merit

[skitter30]

I think town is stronger right now for meta reasons evolving from the demonstrated strength of hyperposting, and how innately difficult it is to fake as scum, rather than for mechanical reasons. I think dialing back will help scum out but the source of dismay doesn't tend to be mechanical. I get that there is an argument that mechanically stacking the deck has led to the demotivation. I don't really agree.

i think this pov has a lot of merit

Like as town i will happily sit and bicker for hours but i definitely run out of steam as scum and cant keep it going as long. Its exhausting

[skitter30]

I think for me at least a lot of my stress did indeed used to come from not enjoying the alignment, but i now do kinda get a kick out of fooling people or like running the game behind the scenes. It's *fun* to hang out and shoot the shit with people while lowkey manipulating them for my own dastardly ends

For me at least, tho, doing that does require more mental energy than townposting, and on a given night i can only dedicate so much mental energy to it before i start to flag

I also feel a very intense pressure that scum teammates almost expect me to carry and that if i dont i'm like responsible for the loss. This isn't something i worry abt in towngames, i almost care more abt getting the solve right than winning.

For me at least, some things that help lower the stress are:
- trying to not care as much abt winning and losing as a be all end all, and recognizing that if you try and had fun *its ok to lose*

- in a similar vein (and like what unwnd said) being willing to try different tactics out and experiment even if you dont get the outcome you were wishing for

- not feeling like you need to respond to everything (this one took me a very long time to recognize). Like coming back to 12 pages of mt being right was a bit scary, and responding to all of it was daunting, so i just decided not to

-related, its sometimes just easier to ignore inconvenient posts and just kinda riff on what's going on in realtime. While hyperposting is hard to combat as scum one advantage that does come out of it is that people sometimes literally forget things that happened like 10 pages ago. If you just address it it resurfaces, but if you ignore it its possible people will have forgotten abt it entirely

- this is more of a skill but one that i think is very useful to develop if you can: knowing where the votes are (and who's liable to vote where) - you can kinda start predicting how things will play out, and outcomes start becoming less pf a surprise, so ypu can kinda prepare yourseld mentally for likely outcomes, and how you might respond to them. Like if its 5way elo and town-A wont vote town-B but might vote town-C and B will vote C then you as scum know to win you need to make C your flip of choice and that's the trajectory u need to have.

- i'm a big fan of planning in general; if i have a rough sense for how the game is gonna go its easier to start setting up the trajectories that you need. Mom was going to flip at some point as i knew she wasnt gonna be endgame scum, so i started laying down those seeds very early. And things are just less of a surprise so you have a bit more time to like ~mentally acclimate~ to certain ideas

- recognizing that even if someone caught you *it functionally doesnt matter if they dont have the votes* this removes so much stress lol

Idk these are just some thoughts that come to mind, i hope this helps a bit.

[skitter30]

I was scum with pooky in a recent game and we had an argument about how much effort to put into playing scum. Pooky said that I should try to chill and have fun because I'd be less nervous and I'd be less likely to burn out. I felt that I could enjoy the game while high efforting and trying to be more chill wouldn't necessarily help with the burnout problem. I guess I'm looking for advice on how to burn out less, is rationing your effort useful or is it just maintaining the right mindset?

I think for me its both. As scum there's only so much time i can put in on one day, but having the right mindset helps too.

[skitter30]

I think people should learn to scrap more if they're not trying to produce the same effects. Literally at this point just try something and if it doesn't work out oh well. I feel scum aren't like, getting experience over time. I'm scum and I'm gonna probably not have fun boo hoo then they take nothing out of it until they get town.

Also this ^
Its ok to try something and see how it turns out

A couple of the most valuable insights i have for playing scum happened when i was backed in a corner and was like welp i gotta try - it might work it might not but if i do nothing i know i'm gonna lose

[skitter30]

Subject: Newbie 1951 (Day 4)

oh i'm p sure it didn't, and i could tell, which is why i didn't bother answering it because i don't think any of it changed his opinion either way, which made your argument irrelevant if you couldn't communicate it to the person who was deciding

it was still v insightful

This was a relevation at the time.

Pops wrote up a whole thing in elo explaining why i was scum but emps, the townie who ultimately held hanmer, didnt really care abt it, which made me realize i didnt actually have to go all in and defend myself because that's not what the tipping point was

Iirc i gave a perfunctory response but like nothing more because it didnt actually matter, and getting bogged down would have been detrimental - i prior to that would have felt like i needed to respond point by point.

But i was in a pickle and it made me realize i actually didnt have to, so i didnt.

I lost anyways for other reasons but like learning that i think waa a big boost to my scumgame even tho kinda ignoring it felt chancy in the moment

[skitter30]

Also a lot of people put pressure on themselves to look like they're playing their towngame, when i think that's probably the wrong thing to emphasize: you should look townie and try to keep yourself out of the flippool. That doesnt mean u need to replicate ur towngame

Like i can point to several diatinctions between this game and my typical towngame but the fact that i wasnt playing to my typical towngame didnt matter because you guys, in this circumstance, thought i was being townie anyways

[skitter30]

Reading this postgame makes me realize how little I think about mafia compared to other players...

Probably a good thing tbh

^

[skitter30]

thanks!