Just a small note, In a way, Trendall's statement actually ticks me off, so I'm probably letting that influence me a little. (Trendall said that it was subjective instead of objective. Now, that's fine; if it appears subjective instead of objective, I didn't do my job right, so it's a valid criticism. However, it can also be read as an accusation: I was abusing my SE status by throwing my opinion into the tags, and my opinion will almost always be influenced by my alignment. Meaning, it can be interpreted as an accusation that I was misleading newbies in a SEssion, which is so against my principles that it pushes a berserk button when people mention the possibility. Teaching should--as often as possible--be separate from playing.)
Anyway, with that out of my system, we can get on to me elaborating, as promised. (Promises are serious; I do NOT like it when a promise is broken.)
Reluctance to Hammer simply is a scumtell, and I think if we asked most veteran players, they'd agree. (I could be wrong about this, but I honestly don't think I am.)
Why
it is, however, is a bit more complicated. Again, I think they key is in the wording. For starters, there's this:
My Controversial SEssion wrote:Why is [Reluctance To Hammer] scummy, Trend? Because, if you're town, this should be your last concern.
This might have been a poor choice of words on my part. Perhaps a better way to word it would be as such: "Reluctance to Hammer might be a thought all players have. However, for a pro-town player in a non-lylo situation, they should not be too concerned. They should be weighing other factors involved in it. The actual thought "To Hammer, or not to Hammer" might be in their head, however, there more often than not should be no pro-town reason to post that.
There is an exception, however. Say, you've gone through every single option you can think of which I'm about to go through. You've tried it all, seen the evidence for both sides, and are still undecided. THEN you can post, asking for other opinions on whether you should hammer.
However, it should be a question. It should be you asking for advice. You either post all or none of your reasoning for the pros and cons: no middle ground, like a single reason not to, such as, "A lurker such as me hammering would look bad". (Just an example, not meant as a paraphrase of
Trendall's wording, just so we're clear. This is meant as a fictional example I thought up of.) If you have only one reason, you're probably not thinking about it enough. Again, many or none, no middle ground.
That's how you should go about asking about the hammer. It shows you have an open mind to possibilities. You're willing to listen. And if you ask for help deciding, you're more likely to have people think you're well-intentioned town who is genuinely having trouble decided." (Continuing on...)
That said,
The SEssion Continued wrote:We all make mistakes. None of us are perfect; we all have our flaws. If you hammered town, so what? We lose a town player, but gain information from their lynch. True, we wouldn't hit mafia, but we are one step closer to that.
This is something which goes into the above. It's something you should consider. Basically, it's alright if you screw up when you hammer. Many,
people have made mistakes by hammering someone who is town. However, it's not a bad thing. If nobody ever hammered, we'd never lynch scum, either. Sure, we'd avoid lynching town, but we wouldn't win, either, now, would we? So, it applies in that way, too: we could lose a town player, but we could hit scum, so there's no shame, no suspicion, in hammering. (Umm...
Most
of the time.) In the Pros section, there's the fact that we gain information from the lynch, no matter what. Sure, we have a con (we didn't hit mafia), but because of the Pro (we have information--we know the lynched was town. We know their opinion was genuine. We know that scum statistically are likely to have played a part in their lynch. [On average, scum tend to like being half-on, half-off. All-on is considered suicidal to more veteran players, because Bandwagon Analysis {looking at previous vote counts} sees that pattern really quickly.] All good stuff to know), we are one step closer to finding who the mafia are.
I mention other Pros later on, too.
This is a Pro I mentioned wrote:That said, though, just because you don't want to look like scum, doesn't mean there aren't any valid reasons to NOT hammer Beefster. In fact, a very pro-town reason was already brought up in-thread by Yenros: for more discussion. More discussion--99% of the time--will be better than less discussion. Considering how far away the deadline is, that is a valid reason to not hammer. Had you [Trendall] said
, I wouldn't have thought twice of it.
A good pro-town player will be weighing all of this in their mind. A newbie might not think about the implications of this, but I can almost guarantee you all veteran players do this, even if they never think about it. It's such a small thing that it's basically subconscious, but yeah, I'd be surprised if someone experienced genuinely never thought of something like this. All of this leads to the next part:
They shouldn't fear the hammer, because hammering is part of the game.
I've explained this above. Without hammers, we never lynch. Without lynches, we never win. Sure. We
be lynching town...but we also could be lynching mafia. Townfolks have no way of knowing which is which.
Now on to the important part.
Scum, however, do [fear hammering]: scum fear the hammer, because of the exact reason you state: they fear that it'll make them look scummy.
This seemed self-explanatory to me. However, now that I look at it, I was right and wrong. It tells the message fine. However, it gives no proof. I state flat-out that scum fear hammering, because it'll make them look scummy. It's my fault that I didn't give you any evidence of this off the top of my head. I have dug up many links for this in the past, however, I'd have to track them down, and that--again--takes time. (This post has--as of now--taken me 40 minutes, and I'm not even close to done.) So, I'm afraid I still can't give examples of how this is true. But, the logic behind this isn't that hard to follow. Scum fear hammering, because of all the cons involved. For instance, it cuts discussion. Pro-town players oftentimes won't like that, because discussion is pro-town. The scum tend to know a few Pros to hammering, but mainly, their given reasonings are mostly BS for their true reasoning of wanting a mislynch to get closer to their victory. They post their willingness to hammer, but often times, give little to no reasoning why, instead preferring a reason or two to not. This is huge, because it shows that...what's the word...Fencesitting? Yeah, I think that's it! Fencesitting. Sitting in the middle of both sides. They can go to either side at will. If they can go to either side at will, they can take the side most advantageous to them in the end. They have a specific way of wording things. Words hold power. Sentence structure, synonyms, etc. People can be incredibly diplomatic with their wording, and this is what scum try to do. I elaborate on this in my post above.
Basically, scum...think that hammering will make them look worse. They think, however, that it's a good idea to express interest in hammering. "I mean, what's wrong with expressing interest? As long as they don't give the finishing blow to a townsperson, they're fine! After all, Refusing to hammer is a town tell. So, Reluctance to Hammer would look similar to Refusal, only when you get approval from the town, you can go ahead and hammer, without a complete reversal!"
...Yeah, basically that. I think this better explains the concept. I wish I had more proof. I know
think that way as scum. I've seen scum on multiple occasions show reluctance to hammer, but I don't have any links. It's a common scum thought process. I've seen it a lot more from scum than from town. Which is why it's what people consider to be a scumtell. (I could be wrong. But I don't think I am.)
As I mentioned, I truly do believe "Most players who are even semi-experienced realize that hammering is far from a scumtell in most cases.", as I said in that post. Again, this goes to "Yes! Hammer/No! Don't!/Hmm...Maybe?". I guess that's a larger part of my argument on the matter than I thought. One of the things you mention is my tells. That would be referring to this part:
Reluctance to hammer, however,
[a scumtell]. You're afraid to look bad. Townfolk know they are town, and tend to be a
little
more on the carefree side. Remember my tells?
This was one of the most valid for a reason--I've found it's around 60/40 for work/not work. Unless you're constantly cautious, there is no pro-town reason to fear the hammer of a player who
might
be town--they might also be scum; you don't know, if you're town!
If you're scum, however, you do. You
know they are town, and that you're hammering town, and that you'll look bad. Therefore, what you did was a bad scumtell, Trendall.
In hindsight, saying it was a bad scumtell probably read as an accusation against Trendall; it was not intended as one. However, I'd like to point out that no scumtell is universal. Town people do scumtells all the time. It's a scum tell because it's more
likely
for it to be done by scum; it is not
for it to be done by scum. And as mentioned, some players ARE naturally cautious, and there's nothing wrong with that. If Trendall is as he says (I need to look at his past games), it could just be part of his meta.
The rest still applies, though. Scum who hammer are afraid to look bad. That's probably at the core of my argument, so you'll hear it a lot. (I wish I could be more clear and concise, but sadly, I was not gifted so.)
My link to the tell was a bit misleading, however. Town being a little more carefree was a bad way to say it. Basically, it's as I said. It's true as I mentioned that townspeople tend to be a little more on the "reckless" side, but a better way to say it is that they
to be more on the reckless side. With that into account, I'd say the statistic would actually be more like 70/30. By appearing to be slightly more reckless, I'm of course--in this case--referring to Hammering. The Caution is Reluctance. Refusal is
on the reckless side of things, if we want to go by my tell.
Again, I think it was misleading for me to have that link. Caution and Recklessness are
similar
, but not identical, to what I was talking about. So while the links between them are strong, the cluttered nature of the above is proof about how they are slightly different. Reluctance will not always appear to be Caution, and Caution will not always appear to be Reluctance. However, if it DOES appear that the Reluctance is Caution (especially for a poorly justified reason, like, "It'll make me look scummy to hammer!"), it looks FAR worse.
Get what I'm saying NOW? (I hope so. I just hit the 70 minute mark. >_<)
Quick checklist...
-Addressed the lynching town concern. (Bad wording on my part.)
-Reinforced it was your stated reason, Trendall, which made it so scummy. (Your stated reason in your response was that you'd prefer more discussion until close to deadline. That's valid. Not hammering because you were lurking and it'd look scummy?
...Less so.)
-Addressed the Caution/Reckless Tell as best as I could. (It was a bit misleading, but if the two are linked, it'd be APPEARS to be Cautious and APPEARS to be Reckless, instead of being Reckless or Cautious. I'm well aware that many players are naturally cautious, and an equal number are naturally reckless. However, their moves in a particular game can be telling, because something APPEARING to be Cautious when it's actually a well-thought out decision is bad, because it shows that you've thought it out but still are in the middle. APPEARING to be Reckless is--similarly--when well-thought out is fine, but probably more null than town.
Or something like that. It's a hard point to clarify.)
Was there any I missed?
