Long term health of mafiascum

[Majiffy]

Well I'm around if you need me.

[Master Mew]

I would also anticipate far more strategic replacing out, and replacing out is already something that happens too often.

This is something we can handle.

1.) Who says replacing out has to void the game from your record? If it's going to create problems, then maybe it shouldn't.

2.) Alternatively, track players' replace-out rates as well. If you start to abuse it, good luck getting into games.

That's what epicmafia did.
I remember it not helping.

I can't imagine it didn't help at least a little, but even if it didn't "help" - did it hurt? Because as long as we're still counting replacing out of a losing slot as a loss, I don't really see how tracking statistics would cause more replace-outs.

[BBmolla]

What happens when players disconnect? Do we punish the account, or inflict a waiting penalty, or assume a good faith wifi problem and do nothing?

Automate a replacement system.

If that's too much, ban the user from playing for x amount of time. Every time they repeat add to x. Once they stop doing it over extended periods of time, slowly decrease x.
Punish the people who use it as a strategy, but allow those with an emergency to leave if needed.

Do we enable a private message or whisper system? Do we ban private messages in play and trust users not to cheat? Do we change the chat so that users can't privately message each other? If someone threatens me via PM on site, I can report the PM; how do we enforce our site rules on chat?

Do what we do with forum games. Mods can check PMs of people we suspect are cheating. I'm sure there is some way to check chat records or some shit to confirm someone flinging insults.

How do we make games? Do we have a queue, or do hosts make games to which players join, or can players join in private first and then join a game? Do hosts make setups and then post them, or is there a fixed list, or do players haggle about the setup while they're in sign-ups? ('Host' as in the first player in the room since the computer handles admin.)

I'd think of something where players message bot with "/create game" or whatever and the bot asks you various questions to create the game. "Closed or Open?" "I make it, or you?"
We can make a bunch of different closed game setups that will be randomly chosen for the "Closed" option where the player wants to play. Or just have C9++.

Since forum games are kept on the wiki, do we need ranks for chat games? Do we treat them casually, without records? Is system more like IRC or epicmafia? Surely we don't keep logs of every chat game? How else do we incentivize proper play?

As I've been saying, including stats gives people more incentive to take it seriously, but obviously is not required as can be seen from how this site currently works.
We incentivize proper play the same way we do on forums.

We'll all disagree. Someone (mith et al.) has to decide. All other chat mafia sites scaled poorly and attracted allcaps trolls and griefers. It would take great effort to make something that attracts new, quality users, or else isn't only an IRC for the players we already have.

I had some really solid games in Epicmafia back in the day. Sure, you get the Trolls, but they had their sandbox to play their version in. Even better for us, the Trolls have their own site to play in (epicmafia).
I think a lot of problems can be figured out as we go.

[Bicephalous Bob]

Is Xylbot a good bot? If so, why bother creating a new one?

I didn't know the former, but having one game type superimposed over the other doesn't make sense structurally. Having a separate chat for chat games at mafiascum.net/chatmafia also means you don't have to make the chat for chatting opt-out instead of opt-in.

It'll also help get the site indexed as a chat mafia site on google and give people the option to directly link to it. Since chat mafia is currently found within the forum, people still come here for the forum mafia and perhaps stay for the chat mafia. If you want to attract people who want to play live mafia, you have to present it as a distinct feature.

Given infinite resources, sure. It's about prioritizing things given limited resources though. A lot of these things are already functionally accomplished, so I think they are likely to land a lower priority in my book.

What do you mean by "functionally accomplished"? Creating a fullscreen chat on a separate page doesn't seem that difficult considering you already have the backbone and the rewards are great.

As for getting more newbies in, add a link to the sign-up thread in the description of the Newbie forum. I imagine progressive deadlines would also help.

[zoraster]

i found xylbot to be incredibly non-intuitive.

[chamber]

What do you mean by "functionally accomplished"? Creating a fullscreen chat on a separate page doesn't seem that difficult considering you already have the backbone and the rewards are great.

I think it would be more work than you realize? The rewards aren't great, they are very marginal when you can already expand a chat window to be nearly full screen.

[BBmolla]

Does anyone have the knowledge / experience to make a new mafia basics video?

I mean

What exactly would people be looking for?

[chamber]

As for getting more newbies in, add a link to the sign-up thread in the description of the Newbie forum.

This is also a marginal suggestion given there is already a full guide to signing up for your first game from the homepage. But it's actually no work to accomplish so~.

[BBmolla]

chamber, quick functionality question, when I click the middle mouse button and try to scroll via that (moving mouse up and down), it instead scrolls me on the site instead of in the chat, is this fixable in any way?

[chamber]

What browser? It does scroll within the chat for me.

[BBmolla]

Chrome.

[BBmolla]

If I actually scroll the mousewheel it works, but I browse through pages by clicking the mousewheel and moving up and down, which it freaks out about.

[BBmolla]

I always thought it was weird people weren't playing audio mafia on the radio show though.

We did mafia a couple of times, at least twice. It just doesn't work that well. Everyone talking makes it hard to know what's happening, and even if people talk one at a time, you end up with voices not being distinct enough.

Gotcha.

[Muffin]

Xylbot is mediocre at best, from a UI/UX perspective. Plus as I recall the owner won't give out the source.

[BBmolla]

A lot of the suggestions have been technical in nature. The problem there is the amount of man power we have. I can take 1 thing and run with it, I don't have the time or drive to do 10 things. This effort is going to take the whole community to be successful. If there is something you can think of that you can do, share it.

This is completely understandable by the way.

[chamber]

Let's get a graphics designer and list mod together with majiffy to get a multimedia introduction tool built.

I can do the implementation if I need to once it's on paper.

[saulres]

imo implementation should be "post the video on youtube with text pointing to ms.net that search engines will pick up", then just post a link to that somewhere here. No ms.net implementation necessary

[chamber]

I'm assuming it will be html5 not a video. But if they decide a video is better less work for me.

[BBmolla]

Seperate note, I think the new newbie setup is probably the most confusing we've had yet.

Is there any reason we don't just do F11 minus the last setup? It's not the most balanced but it's simple and introduces the users to the site without having to worry about roles. (Because let's be honest, most people who have mafia experience know what those roles are so it won't be any sort of shock)

Or even have the newbies /in for 1E2 (hexidecimal for 111100010) OR the new setup, just say like "1E2 is suggested for absolute beginners, where Matrix6 is suggested for players who have a bit more mafia experience elsewhere but want to learn how to play here"

"What's wrong with the current setup?"

• Bulletproof should claim Doctor in many situations, and it's weird having a newbie setup which has situations in which it is optimal to fake claim as town.
  
• 1-shot Bulletproof is honestly not that common of a role and it's strange to include in a setup which introduces players to the site (When I played 2of4, I expected that Cop, Doc, JK were very common on site.)
  
• Doctor + Tracker vs. 2 Goons is scary as all hell as scum. Especially when compared to 1-shot BP + Tracker vs. 2 Goons. The optimal strategy when a Tracker claims is always to kill him, and mafia will basically be boned or fine depending on whether the other PR is BP or Doc.

I can take this argument elsewhere though. It'd also probably be ideal to ask the newbies themselves what they'd prefer probably, cause obviously I'm speaking from someone of experience. The above reasons are why I dislike the new setup though.

[BBmolla]

I can do badly animated flash videos to help with the "multimedia introduction tool", but if the goal is to not look tacky I don't know how much that'd help us.

Examples:
Meet the Villager
Meet the Mafia
Meet the Doctor
Meet the Cop

(I also fixed the exporting issue that plagued a lot of these)

[BBmolla]

Imo, keeping stats is dangerous due to the vagaries of game balance.

Players already feel cheated if they lost because they believe other team is too strong, it will be worse if losing becomes a mark on their permanent record.

I would also anticipate far more strategic replacing out, and replacing out is already something that happens too often.

Normal games could become ranked games.

Unless you can point out to me some incredibly and angrily unbalanced normals.

[BBmolla]

Making Normal ranked and automated would mean we'd have to redo the modding process for new mods.

Which I'm entirely okay with.

[quadz08]

That could conceivably increase player interest in normal games, though it would open a whole other can of worms on the new mods subject.

[Howl]

I personally love doing surveys. js.

[BBmolla]

In regards to chat mafia, here is what Epicmafia looks like:

Spoiler: Pics

Also of note: EM has a fucking soundtrack now by the way ahahaha. Third picture is a visual mode that I guess is being worked on, during the day you can walk around and text bubbles appear above people's heads.

It just sucks because look at the setup. It's night start. It's the most common on site setup.

Out of this I think the most important thing is having the playerlist with dead roles shown in graveyard. It's a really nice "here is the current situation" that I feel is honestly pretty essential. Rest is fluffy.

Votecount to the right is nice too.

Edit: I don't think we should steal obviously, but looking at what EM does right and avoiding what they do wrong is probably the best way to go about this, no?

Also the fact I won that game should show how little thought goes into the games played on that site. Literally was just "I claim cop" "I cc" and then lynch between us to win or lose the game.