Replacing out

[Datisi]

ego

i feel like i've seen both "scum pockets townie to be their wrong vote in lylo, townie reps out, pocket gone" and "limbait townie close to yeet, reps out, replacement townspews, misyeet gone" situations happen because people lost interest in the game

there's most likely been "scum being scumread, reps out, great scum player reps in and saves slot" situations too, though i can't remember specific examples off the top of my head for that one

like i said in the other thread, replacements hurt the flow of the game, and there should be a system in that *strongly* encourages finishing games you signed up for, though again i don't know a way to properly implement that in practice

[Datisi]

maybe i'm bringing up a problem that doesn't exist then, but i wanted to illustrate that replacements due to not wanting to play the game don't necessarily only change the outcome in town's favour - like either faction can get damaged from what is basically oog influence, which makes it a bit more important to solve?

[Datisi]

personally i find it much more annoying when i'm scum and a townie replaces out than vice versa, but this is probably bias do to with knowing exactly what is happening when i know everyone's alignment. obviously i agree that both are *a problem* and greatly influence the outcome of games.

i would agree with ircher, though maybe i'm thinking harsher - 14 days of no joining new games? or 7 days at a minimum. that ruling already exists in the newbie queue (though i don't think i've seen it implemented in my 2 years here), and it says that it's "unacceptable to replace out due to boredom or any other similarly selfish reason". it should be applicable in all mafia games imo.

sidenote, the same (or harsher!) should be applied to the people who flake. seriously, it's sad how many times as a mod i've had people lose any interest in playing, and then not even have the decency to *tell me* they would like to replace out, which forces me to wait 2.5-3 days for the prod timers to tick out before i am legally able to replace them.

i know temporallich mentioned players who have legitimate reasons to replace out, but...
- if you suddenly have some sorta emergency in your life or you've suddenly gotten much busier, you're probably not gonna be joining a new mafia game within the week anyway.
- if it happens that you often have "emergencies" or "sudden life changes" that make you have "legitimate" rep-outs often... should you be playing mafia? this is a pretty time-consuming hobby. if you don't have time for it, it might not even be your fault, but sorry?
- if you're bored with the game or don't like your role - replacing out for this is already against the rules in the newbie queue, no reason it shouldn't be elsewhere.
- if the game is truly so toxic that it's unplayable... that's not a "i need to replace out" problem, that's a "what the fuck is the moderator doing" problem.

now, i'll admit the above list is not complete. and, the only two instances that i've (willingly) replaced out for was when the game was truly making me miserable (mixed in with some irl reasons), so i know that "good faith, i literally cannot stay in this game" replacements happen. *but* i also feel like in those instances, i'd have been fine eating a 7-day cooldown ban.

one problem with this that i can think of right now (there are probably more; i'm not well versed in this administrative discussion) is if two players encounter each other, and those two players are truly incompatible to play mafia with each other. those things happen, and blacklists exist for a reason. it seems a bit wrong to give a cooldown ban to the person who was the first to realize the game is just gonna be torture for both of them and stepped out first. so not sure i have a good solution for that one. implementing "official" blacklists and adding a "no cooldown-ban applies if a player reps out of a game that someone they have on their blacklist is" rule seems like both (1) more listmod work than it's realistically worth and (2) easily abuseable.

now, i agree that implementing something like this is (very?) likely to slow down the queues in some capacity. but is that really such a bad thing? what i mean is, should we be aiming for quality or quantity? personally i'd prefer waiting a bit longer for a game to fire if it meant that that game is ++likely to have fewer replacements and be played out "properly". and i reckon in time, such change would result in a site culture shift with people getting used to not replacing out as easily as they maybe do now.

and to touch on what dgb brought up - i can agree that on average, scum motivation currently is... ~ehh. that feels like a discussion that's related to the above issues, though not one and the same. if my proposal were to go live, unmotivated scum could potentially stay in the game and make a few posts here and there until they get yeeted. that would be blatant playing against wincon, but "proving" that someone is playing against wincon in such way feels both (1) pretty difficult and (2) like a slippery slope. so yeah, tackling "sitewide scum motivation" seems like a separate (but also important) issue that i don't actually have practical ideas for atm.

("scum coaches" and "mod pep talks" seem like things either outside the scope of normality (that i generally keep in, won't speak for theme games) and things that i don't think would be terribly... effective? and the rest of "fostering a culture of celebrating good scumplay" sounds good on paper, but again i don't have any ideas how to actually promote on site. other than personally hyping up my scumbuddies when i roll scum, and trying to have "quality" post-game discussions when town, but i've been doing these for a while now, so no "new" ideas i guess.)

[Datisi]

if the game is truly so toxic that it's unplayable... that's not a "i need to replace out" problem, that's a "what the fuck is the moderator doing" problem.

Not necessarily. Moderators cannot be present all the time, and reading the thread to spot toxicity is an even harder task (than the typical tasks). Mods could probably be more proactive in preventing toxicity, but I wouldn't necessarily blame it all on the moderator if the game does become toxic. That said, I think a lot of people have different definitions of toxic games, and for some people, that definition is much less than for others.

oh i agree, i've had my own fair share of games that went to shit and i don't think i realistically could've done anything to fully prevent it. but the moderator should step in *at some point* to bring the game back on track. if the game has turned into a toxic shitfest and the moderator isn't doing anything about it, that's a problem. like, i guess my point is "if the game as a whole is so unbearable, give the mod a bit of time to step in and resolve the situation before impulsively replacing out".

i feel like at least part of the solution to the issue of different definitions of toxicity would be to strictly define what is acceptable and what isn't.

and general sidenote, some sorta guide on how should a game moderator deal with toxicity would be useful. i feel like i've seen countless guides for running a game or designing a setup, but almost none for things like "dealing with toxicity in your games".