Replacing out

[DragonEater70]

Townies should make it a tradition to thank the scum for a good game whether they won or lost.

Sorry for quoting a few years old post, but SO MUCH THIS.

It's very discouraging to play scum and win and then see townies being like "meh, sorry I played bad" or something, instead of you know, congratulating you.

[DragonEater70]

While these ideas sound good on paper, I have two issues with them:
1. I am not even sure if these are real issues. I think a lot more replacements happen for mental health reasons or being busy irl than just because it's hard to catch up or something.
I mean if you look at TL's Garndest Idea uPick that just ended, which was a replacement hell with 12 replacements (and 4 different slots that got replaced at least twice), I really can't say there was hyperposting or too much fluff. It was just a bunch of players who signed up / repped into the game and then collectively decided it wasn't for them for whatever reason (I admit I am somewhat guilty of that too, having decided to rep out because I just wasn't having fun (and whether or not that's justified is a separate discussion, I think)).
So I don't know if incentivizing engagement or cutting back on post numbers is going to affect replacement rates in any significant way.
2. I'm really struggling to see how high risk high reward play can be incentivized through setup design, except by making setups very unbalanced in such a way that you would *need* to take gambits in order to win (as scum), but then this would *dis*-incentivize proactive town play.

Despite both issues, I do agree there's a fundamental problem with the fact that a lot of players don't like playing scum / don't really give their best as scum and it hurts games. I do think the best way to fix it is by changing site culture to have townies be more sportsmanlike toward scum and making scumplay be considered "cool", giving scum tips in the scum thread (like how there

are

were tips for town in the main thread in Newbies), and maybe even doing what someone suggested ITT and having an outside user be a coach for scum.

[DragonEater70]

I disagree with the notion that naptimes would be "incredibly town sided".

Yes, in certain game states where the game is incredibly scum dominated, naptimes can be town sided. But in town-dominated game states, they might cause town to lose momentum, let scum have time to reread, and allow them to plan their moves.

Additionally players might forget crucial things and/or lose interest during naptimes.

So overall I think naptimes will tend to balance out game states which favor a certain alignment, rather than giving a certain alignment an advantage.

Of course this is theoretical because I've not played with them yet.

Actually I think nap times would be very good in reducing replaceouts for both alignments.

[DragonEater70]

As a mod, and also as a player, I prefer to have a player replace out rather than take a long V/LA (in fact I don't really allow long V/LAs in my games as a mod). However I think I saw somewhere people mentioning they'd rather have a dead slot than a replacement (which to me is weird).

So how do you all feel about this? Is a dead slot better or worse than a replacement?

[DragonEater70]

some people do not rand scum enough and it shows in the thread

While I understand that a replacement disadvantages scum, a no-replacement in this situation actually gives scum an unfair advantage because it's practically like getting a free kill (in terms of what percentage of the active voices in the thread are scum).

[DragonEater70]

There might be fewer replacements if phases were shorter. 5 calendar days maybe.

I am now trying to run a game with 4 day deadlines in the Open Queue. Would appreciate if you help playtest this.