Scummies Ideas, Suggestions and Comments Thread

This forum is for discussion related to the game.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #856 (isolation #0) » Fri Apr 29, 2016 4:53 pm

Post by RadiantCowbells »

In post 836, xRECKONERx wrote:#1) Best scum team isn't being removed. It's just that Don Corleone is no longer just an individual award.

#2) The idea behind Don Corleone not being Body of Work is sort of a "fool me once" conundrum. If someone gets away with a flawless scum game once, then by all accounts, they shouldn't get away with it again. If someone is consistently killed as town Night 1 due to their prowess as a town player, that's something that can at least partially be quantified. If someone is consistently lynched Day 1 because they're good at playing scum and nobody can trust them... well, that really shouldn't reflect poorly, should it? Great scum play should include some moonshots and "one-in-a-million" gambits. We feel that, unlike town play, scum play necessitates some very unique manuevering which cannot be judged well over the course of a body of work.

#3) The easiest way to delineate between why scum and town have to be treated separately is this: townplay allows for a sort of consistent algorithm or method to discerning scum play. If you get 100 people together and go, "pick scum out in this game", no matter how many people are wrong, at least one is going to be right (statistically). Town play has a lot of guessing involved, and though it's educated guessing, it's still guessing, in the end. EVERY GAME that is played, someone called scum correctly, at some point. It's a very rare outlier for there to be no scum called correctly. Now, with scum play, there's no "algorithm" or "method" -- because the SECOND a scum technique is used for a win, it becomes more dangerous to pull off again. So we felt that scum should be rewarded for pulling off hail mary, shot-in-the-dark plays -- and those can really only reliably occur once in a while, certainly not more than a couple times per year. People felt hamstringed by the "body of work" qualifier to nominate for scum games.

I will say this: we are working, backstage, on actual criteria/rubric sheets for each award in order to make our exact qualifications feel more...robust. I totally understand that right now, it can feel very one-sided. We don't want that. We want to provide the least subjective criteria possible so people fully understand what goes into each award. I feel like, once those rubricks are made available, the conversations here will mostly center around "How can we improve this rubric?" rather than "Why don't we have an award for XXXXXX?". Because I feel like, in the end, we have most of our bases covered.



If you're great at playing scum and you still somehow manage to get lynched Day 1 that's because you're not perceived as good enough, if you're town, to be worth keeping alive ain the face of that risk and don't deserve any sort of nomination on account of that very scum-play relevant failing.

Who gets consistently lynched D1 because no one can trust them? Who feels hamstringed by not being able to repeat plays as scum?

I don't understand this reasoning. I further will go on the record as saying that if someone feels like they're consistently lynched day 1 as scum because they're scary it's because they're not as a rule showing themselves to be of enough value to town to keep alive in spite of that: which is something scum should be able to do. So yeah, that's failing at being a solid scum player and we shouldn't change the rules to enable people who can't play well under heavy scrutiny?

Like I played on an alt as scum for 2 games and the 'unknown alt' portion was about as hard as surviving a weekend at the holiday inn. This should be considered part of the deal.

I also virtually disagree with every single rubric criteria, for the record.
Last edited by RadiantCowbells on Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #857 (isolation #1) » Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:18 pm

Post by RadiantCowbells »

Nominee's faction achieved their win condition despite facing highly competent opponents


Can agree with this to an extent and find it by far the last objectionable criteria.

Nominee received little to no sustained suspicion throughout the game


Numerous times I've brought suspicion tactically on my slot for various reasons.
Having my partners vote my slot early when I get myself wagoned early is a strat I've used a very high number of times including in NY184.
It's also advantageous to have a select number of people pushing you when you're not gonna get lynched because it reduces the amount of influence town have over the game.

Like: being suspected is not /necessarily/ a bad thing.
Hell, what if someone does a magnificent job of having themselves bussed and leads to a slew of town lynches that wins their partner the game?
Should they be considered less skilled of a player for it?


Nominee's success was impressively independent of the use of power roles


So if you win without using PRs you're somehow less skilled of a scum player than someone who won with heavy PR involvement?
What if it's a no PR game?
What if you were so townread that the PRs kept targeting the wrong people but you had no PRs?

What does this even mean?
Why emphasize conditional night game over universal day game?

The nominee's entire faction survived until late in the game


This is both straight up anti-bussing and just silly.
Why should, for example, a scum player whose partner got vigged be held against them?
If we're talking about this in terms of 'Better scum players keep their partners alive' well sure: sometimes.
But other times it's better to bus because bussing is good and towncred is good and all that.
This is 1) making this about other people's actions and not the nominees and 2) discrediting an entire playstyle.

The nominee's entire faction demonstrated an impressive level of teamwork and no replacements had to be made


I mean teamwork? to an extent.
why is it your fault if your partners got replaced?
if teamwork includes 'ok we're going to bus you here' and the bussee reacting super well to it: fantastic. if not: we're going to have a problem here.
but still, shouldn't this be about, y'know the individual?
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #858 (isolation #2) » Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:28 pm

Post by RadiantCowbells »

Here's 5 criteria I came up with on a dime that I think would be far better, though not at all inclusive either.

1) Difficulty. Was it an objectively difficult game for the player to win, based on opponent skill, setup, and similar criterion?
2) Partners. Were the players interactions with their partners appropriately measures such that they were not considered likely scum partners?
3) Self. Did the player appropriately manage other players reads on them?
4) Control. Did the player appropriately directly or indirectly manage the night actions and day lynches of the town aligned players?
5) Actions. Did the player make appropriate night kills and other night actions?
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #859 (isolation #3) » Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:45 pm

Post by RadiantCowbells »

I remain convinced that scum play should have a body of work award simply because of the nature of the game.

Scum play is an ever changing beast. It's one thing to win one game as scum because of a spectacular, 'out there' play that you made.

But winning that game means that people are ready for what you did there.
Then you win another and people have seen another play.
and again.
and again.

And I think there should be some form of recognition of the difficulty of continually evolving your scum meta to stay ahead of continually evolving and adapting reads on you.

I think it's far easier to play spectacularly in one game than it is to continually dupe the same people over and over again to the point that they're still positive that you're town or can't stop you from winning after they've been fooled several times in a row. That, to me, is what being a master of scum play is. Not having one amazing game where you made specific decisions that happen to fit the given criteria. I prefer the old individual body of work + group solo game.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #865 (isolation #4) » Sat Apr 30, 2016 6:41 pm

Post by RadiantCowbells »

In post 864, Davsto wrote:I disagree with the Don Corleone being a body of work

Because it is considerably harder to be consistently good as scum

And you may say "that's the point" but I mean "there will literally only be around four nominees to choose from each year and there's a decent chance it'll be the same ones each year".


Why is that a problem?
If the same four people are consistently the shoe-ins for the award then... maybe they're the ones who deserve to keep getting the award?
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #867 (isolation #5) » Sat Apr 30, 2016 7:35 pm

Post by RadiantCowbells »

In post 866, Davsto wrote:But that seems incredibly restrictive and elitist. If someone has an incredibly good scumgame, even an uncharacteristically good one, they should be awarded for it, not told "well you did great but you haven't done that well in other scum games so the award is going to go to the same person it did last year."


...which is why we should have both!

right?
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #869 (isolation #6) » Sat Apr 30, 2016 9:30 pm

Post by RadiantCowbells »

In post 868, hiplop wrote:the big issue is it naturally favours people who play a ton of games. Different than town where youre statistically likely to roll town, you aren't likely to flip scum. Can play a ton of games and be town in every one

if you play one standout game, and htats it, are you less deserving than someone who wins multiple "okay" wins?


No.

But you ARE less deserving than someone who plays a bunch of standout games and a bunch of strong scum performances.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #870 (isolation #7) » Sat Apr 30, 2016 9:37 pm

Post by RadiantCowbells »

As far as I can tell the only nom for Cunning Manipulator last year who didn't have a bunch of scum games was Postie.

I don't know the behind the scenes of why Postie was rejected for Micro 558, so I can't speak to that- but this doesn't really seem to be a thing?
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #872 (isolation #8) » Sun May 01, 2016 8:59 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

Even if it is, don't necessarily think it's a problem.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #888 (isolation #9) » Thu Jun 23, 2016 6:44 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

Then why leave the town one intact, especially when town play is probably harder to judge as well?
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #890 (isolation #10) » Thu Jun 23, 2016 6:51 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

What I meant was I think that judging town play over a year is a billion times harder than judging town play.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #892 (isolation #11) » Thu Jun 23, 2016 7:17 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

Did you exclusively judge scumhunting as in pushing on scum then? because that's what that sounds like.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
User avatar
User avatar
RadiantCowbells
He/him
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal
Posts: 70855
Joined: February 24, 2013
Pronoun: He/him
Contact:

Post Post #894 (isolation #12) » Thu Jun 23, 2016 7:41 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

I do too!

But it feels like there's so much more in town play. How effectively they pushed their reads, how well they adapted with wrong reads, how well they persuaded people, how oft townread, etc.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
Post Reply

Return to “Mafia Discussion”