Long term health of mafiascum

[HorseDetective]

I guess this is just strong divergence in meta, then. As I said, most other communities consider a week quite a long time and certainly not anywhere near preventing town discussion at all at all. Having said that, maybe smaller communities are capable of sustaining greater activity? When it's a group of 15ish people or whatever who all know each other very well and are a community for reasons other than just the game, the amount of time they dedicate towards that community (including the game) might be higher, so you might get more posts-per-hour? I'm not sure.

How are the # of players there compared to this site?

Varies by community. Smogon has, I'd guesstimate, around ~100 active mafia players with maybe ~50 strong regulars. XKCD has around ~80 active mafia players and around ~40 strong regulars. The other communities are smaller - ranging between ~30 active to ~10 active.

EDIT: Actually, Smogon is probably bigger than that even. Up to ~70 regulars might not be a bad guess. It hosts both chat and forum mafia, though, so the forum mafia component is probably closer the ~50 mark.

[Anatole Kuragin]

How many active players does MS have?

[zoraster]

100. 250 if you include Faraday alts. (I actually don't know)

[quadz08]

Probably Chamber could find out - I don't know if there's an easy way to compile that information, though. (# of posters with posts in the mafia forums in the last 1-2 weeks would probably give you a decent estimate.)

[chamber]

How many active players does MS have?

The active unique posters number is in the first post (~500 [500 might not be super charitable it's mostly fluctuated between 530 and 600]). I have no idea how many you are left with if you exclude non-mafia forums, but I'd put my 90% confidence interval at like 350-425.

[Fenchurch]

Looking back at the graphs reminded me. If anything the biggest change happened in 2008, when the site stopped growing and started contracting. Does anyone know why that is?

Flay's reiteration of saulres' point about site exposure is the one most worth working on, in my opinion. Is there a way to find out how new players are finding the site, and whether that has changed compared to the past? The registration process asks this as a question doesn't it - although as far as I know it's a human-validiation test - is it a possible source of data/information?

[zoraster]

that's not how i see that graph data. That's more 2011. And I really think the long crash in early 2012 harmed the site immensely. There were probably other long term things going on that make being a forum hard, but the crash was a "turning point."

That said, 2007/2008 does represent the largest growth point in the site's history. I'm not sure what caused that.

[chamber]

There was a growth period in late 2012-mid 2013 as well. What we are experiencing now seems to mostly be its own thing.

[Phoenicks]

mods, particularly in theme games, have lots of lattitude for deadlines. People are definitely allowed to run 1 day deadline games as a theme game if they want

This would be a niche game on site. It would be marketed "one day phases!" This would not attract new players in the least.

Obviously the players coming in will change if the players we have change. We can't change our players by talking about it. Hosts will not, individually, decide to dramatically change tastes by hosting shorter deadlines in a big enough shift to affect the kinds of games we offer. We can only change the site top-down here.

Almost every newbie or discontented player surveyed here has complained about our phase length. Why isn't there interest in offering a separate queue for shorter games? Until you offer something like that, marketing, design, and SEO will only make a marginal difference.

[chamber]

Why isn't there interest in offering a separate queue for shorter games? Until you offer something like that, marketing, design, and SEO will only make a marginal difference.

It's quite hard to tell how it would actually fair. How would you propose it be set up though?

[saulres]

It's quite hard to tell how it would actually fair.

Wasn't that the thought behind the Micro Queue before it was launched? And look how that's taken off.

Maybe it's worth setting up such a queue and seeing what happens.

[chamber]

It's quite hard to tell how it would actually fair.

Wasn't that the thought behind the Micro Queue before it was launched? And look how that's taken off.

Maybe it's worth setting up such a queue and seeing what happens.

I mean, micro sized games already existed on MS, they just didn't have their own queue, there was also out spoken demand from existing members. This is mostly a means to attract new members, we don't really have an established base to kick it off.

I suggest people talk about specifics of implementation though.

[zoraster]

We aren't going to institute queues just to see what happens. I'm loathe to just add more queues as I think our player and mod population barely fills the number we have, so I'd rather see a new queue replace an old one than just keep adding queues.

If you want to run a really short game, I highly encourage you to do so. The Large Theme queue is the perfect place for a very short deadline game as it would allow you to play large mostly balanced games with fewer killing roles.

I understand the point that in order to attract people who like short deadlines it we would need to provide a consistent stream of short deadline games, but there also needs to be demand from our current players.

[fferyllt]

we don't really have an established base to kick it off.

I'm not sure this is true. There's a decent sized minority of players who come from a shorter-game background.

I think there would be some factors that might not be obvious from the start though. For instance, sites I've seen that run shorter games usually have a majority-or-plurality end-of-day thing, so that somebody gets lynched at deadline if majority doesn't happen earlier. no-lynch is never a default - players vote for it explicitly. And some ignore majority and lynch whoever has the most votes when nightfall occurs, no matter how many players (or none) who were pushed to a majority of votes prior to that.

That affects player strategies in all sorts of ways.

Anyway, there are probably ways to find out whether there's enough player/mod interest to consider a trial run of a short-game queue.

I'd be willing to work on this and play/mod games like this if you determine there is enough interest for a trial.

[chamber]

like this if

you

determine there is enough interest for a trial.

I don't know if this is just awkward phrasing or not but I have no authority to create an extra queue. (or do much of anything). That would fall on the collective will of mith and the current List Mods. That's why I suggest we talk about possible specific implementations that could be brought up to them. How do we introduce this game type without diluting the other queues too much?

[fferyllt]

It was a collective you.

I don't know how you introduce it as a semi-regular offering without setting up a new queue.

It could be added as an additional stream to an existing queue, similar to how micro normals are handled in the micro queue, but it would be extra work on somebody, as opposed to an extra somebody to handle new work.

[fferyllt]

Zor, I'd like to talk to you about attempting a game or two in the large theme queue, but I won't have time to put much thought into it until after the New Year.

[zoraster]

Sure, I'm always happy to chat, though I'm not the best true reviewer for games at the moment. But any general listmod stuff i'm almost always up to talk about.

[HorseDetective]

mods, particularly in theme games, have lots of lattitude for deadlines. People are definitely allowed to run 1 day deadline games as a theme game if they want

This would be a niche game on site. It would be marketed "one day phases!" This would not attract new players in the least.

Obviously the players coming in will change if the players we have change. We can't change our players by talking about it. Hosts will not, individually, decide to dramatically change tastes by hosting shorter deadlines in a big enough shift to affect the kinds of games we offer. We can only change the site top-down here.

Almost every newbie or discontented player surveyed here has complained about our phase length. Why isn't there interest in offering a separate queue for shorter games? Until you offer something like that, marketing, design, and SEO will only make a marginal difference.

I like this post and am not surprised by the commonalities in complaints mentioned. The thing I want to stress is that this can't be marketed as "hey look, we're doing some strange 1-day thing, isn't this unusual?". If you wanted to seriously trial it, it couldn't be marketed as "one day phases". It needs to be marketed as a purely ordinary game, which just happens to have (for example) 7:1 days and 2:1 nights. That's not "really short"; that's going to be long for most people transitioned from other communities. I don't think you'd need a separate queue, either. I don't immediately see what would be wrong with just running a few Newbie Games straight away with this format; the best way might to be to offer sign-ups for two Newbie Games at the same time, one with 7:1 and one with the traditional 14:1, and let newbies choose which one they preferred - I don't think this is significantly more work but from what I remember and I quick observation shows me, this site often has multiple newbie games starting almost concurrently anyway. Also, which one new players would prefer to participate in itself might be a useful test.

[Flubbernugget]

Why don't we just require mods to state how long they intend a day to be and whether or not they use plurality lynches? It drops the hint that we are looking to diversify the length of games, while making the decision as to how long a day should last a little more "democratic."

[chamber]

mods, particularly in theme games, have lots of lattitude for deadlines. People are definitely allowed to run 1 day deadline games as a theme game if they want

This would be a niche game on site. It would be marketed "one day phases!" This would not attract new players in the least.

Obviously the players coming in will change if the players we have change. We can't change our players by talking about it. Hosts will not, individually, decide to dramatically change tastes by hosting shorter deadlines in a big enough shift to affect the kinds of games we offer. We can only change the site top-down here.

Almost every newbie or discontented player surveyed here has complained about our phase length. Why isn't there interest in offering a separate queue for shorter games? Until you offer something like that, marketing, design, and SEO will only make a marginal difference.

I like this post and am not surprised by the commonalities in complaints mentioned. The thing I want to stress is that this can't be marketed as "hey look, we're doing some strange 1-day thing, isn't this unusual?". If you wanted to seriously trial it, it couldn't be marketed as "one day phases". It needs to be marketed as a purely ordinary game, which just happens to have (for example) 7:1 days and 2:1 nights. That's not "really short"; that's going to be long for most people transitioned from other communities. I don't think you'd need a separate queue, either. I don't immediately see what would be wrong with just running a few Newbie Games straight away with this format; the best way might to be to offer sign-ups for two Newbie Games at the same time, one with 7:1 and one with the traditional 14:1, and let newbies choose which one they preferred - I don't think this is significantly more work but from what I remember and I quick observation shows me, this site often has multiple newbie games starting almost concurrently anyway. Also, which one new players would prefer to participate in itself might be a useful test.

We aren't looking to replace the normal speed that we play at, if anything we are looking to supplement it. The normal speed of play on MS is the newbie game speed, so the newbie games should stay that speed, offering a space for faster paced games (as in 3:1 and 1:1) is something to consider, but it would be marketed as such. Perhaps over time if that section of things grew sufficiently, newbie games could follow suit.

[HorseDetective]

We aren't looking to replace the normal speed that we play at, if anything we are looking to supplement it. The normal speed of play on MS is the newbie game speed, so the newbie games should stay that speed, offering a space for faster paced games (as in 3:1 and 1:1) is something to consider, but it would be marketed as such. Perhaps over time if that section of things grew sufficiently, newbie games could follow suit.

I feel strongly like that's getting things the wrong way round. Newbies will play newbie games first because they are newbies. Like, I probably wouldn't touch a Micro Game that had 7:1 days until I'd completed a Newbie game, because I'd feel like Newbie games are where I should go first and just part of easing my way into the community. At the point Newbie games are 14:1 are at least double if not more the length of any other game I've encountered, I probably never do a Newbie and never end up exploring other parts of the site [I mean, that's what actually did happen to me, from experience - I've never really dared venture into the Micro Queues]. I also think that the end goal is not "replacing the normal speed"; it's recognizing that mafiascum's normal speed is a hell of a lot slower than the normal speed of every other community; that this is intimidating to newer players; and that an intermediate 'bridge' would be useful - and heavy emphasis on the word bridge there. My immediate intuition is that if you cut the length of newbie games, people wouldn't then want to cut the length of

all

other games; it's that newbies would participate in say, 7:1 days, which are longer than what they normally come from, realize a) that longer days are actually kind of cool and b) they can totally play at the level and want more, and then move on to longer days like the current site standard of 14:1. The aim is to provide them (us) with some sort of way to get over the speed gap between where we come from and this place here - move from our standard to yours via way of a middle ground.

EDIT: obviously though, it'd be worth collecting more data. I did like the idea someone mentioned earlier about polling newbies/dissatisfied players - I may have lapsed from a few games, but if it was a relatively short SurveyMonkey thing or some such, I'd definitely have filled out a poll regardless. I think you could raise a nice bit of data without being intimidating that way. Then you can ignore my personal anecdotes when it turns out the real demand is for year-long days.

[fferyllt]

Sure, I'm always happy to chat, though I'm not the best true reviewer for games at the moment. But any general listmod stuff i'm almost always up to talk about.

I'd need to start with some thoughts and discussion about how short-deadline games would fit into a queue that's designed for slower-paced games.

[zoraster]

It's always been slower, and we've always dealt with new players complaining -- many of whom go on to appreciate the slower pace. I think you have to understand that while newbie games are important for getting players to stick around, they're even more important to introducing new players to the way Mafiascum plays mafia (there is some question as to whether the semi-open nature does this, but little question that 2 weeks is more indicative of the experience than 1 week).

I also question whether really short newbie games really achieves what you think. One of the benefits of the longer games is that players who do newbie games are checking the site for longer. In that time, new players are more likely to venture outside of the newbie game, whereas providing a close and quick end goal may limit the newbie experience to just that game. The goal is integration, not just attraction.

As just an aside that has nothing to do with the quality of your ideas: could i interest you in a couple of paragraph breaks, Horse?

[zoraster]

Sure, I'm always happy to chat, though I'm not the best true reviewer for games at the moment. But any general listmod stuff i'm almost always up to talk about.

I'd need to start with some thoughts and discussion about how short-deadline games would fit into a queue that's designed for slower-paced games.

Sure, but I don't really see any hang ups. The biggest is if you think quick games are supposed to be more shoddily made (or to be more generous: swiftly assembled) and all the requirements are a bit onerous.

The other thing to consider is that mods of very quick games have to be VERY on point. Updating a vote count once a day probably is insufficient.