Balance and fun games (why town should be favoured)

[mykonian]

Hoopla's latest stats collection thread got me thinking. Throughout the years, we have favoured scum, and her statistics show the same or even more scum bias throughout the years. And that's for mini normals. Themes are worse, large themes used to have an immense bias towards scum. Slight improvements made by the NRG are measured in single percents (average) and mostly deal with removing the excesses. The mean might actually not have shifted that much for mini normals, the most controlled kind of setup we have. This is while we try to approach "perfect" balance, give each side the same chance to win. Here I'll try to argue why it would be favourable that if we should err, we should do it with a town bias.

Balance, as I've talked about with some of you, is hardly a science. It could be better, but that's really too much effort for too little gain. Setups are played once or twice for closed games, theoretical winrates have been shown to be different from winrates in practice for more measured setups. So for balance, in the end, it comes down to 2 parts experience, 1 part looking at similar games, and some wishful thinking and/or guidelines. I have some, other people have other views.

Now historically, MS prided itself on running games where discussion and scumhunting determined the outcome. Other ("bad") mafia sites like EM depended on claiming strategies and procedural play, but we knew "better". You can see this beautifully in the progression of newbie setups, with Pie E7 basically being run the same on EM (but the meta was different, iirc), through c9, f11 and the current matrix setups which feature weaker pr's and avoid claiming strategies. This is a lovely thought, but one has to realise, the baseline, powerless setup, is heavily scumsided. Your blank canvas is incredibly rough on town, you don't even win 25% of the games in a 3:10, you do similar in a 2:5. 2:7 looks comparatively reasonable, with town getting 30% of the mountainous games. That's still 20% you have to somehow make up for with PR's and claims.

So it was a wonderful idea to go towards weaker powerroles, but frankly they aren't up to the task. As every game, with the same ideals, was scumsided, at this point we don't know better. We might balance with 2 parts experience, but for 8 years at least now, that experience of "normal balanced games" has been games that scum won more than 55% of the time. Depending on your queue that number probably went to 60%, or well above that in the large themed queue. What mods, players, reviewers expect, is an imperfect game. If scum had a tough time because town got some pr's, even town will agree that the game "was not balanced" despite evidence that there can't be that many townsided games being put out.

Now, since experience and looking at other games won't work out to get more balanced games, how about wishful thinking and guidelines? It's my belief that part of percieved balance is that either side, even in more advanced stages of the game, has the opportunity to make a difference and win as such. I think people feel the same, because one of our common failings in setupmaking imo, is that we give scum tools to thwart every power we give town. BP scum in vig games, ninja's when there are watchers, strongman shots etc. Now given the stats from earlier, we want town to have the advantage in power, it gets to be unfair. Scum already get the advantage in the basic setup. As long as claiming strategies that guarantee a perfect game are avoided, since we wouldn't want to lose our MS identity, giving real power to town is good.

Having pointed out the problems why it has been hard to get to the ideal of a 50/50 balanced game on average, that's an idea I want to challenge. Mafia, by nature, is an asymmetric game. One side hunts, the other side avoids. But that's a bit too optimistic, isn't it? Town hardly gets to chase down scum, make them move. Instead, town casts a net, tries to catch out the oddities, while scum tries to slip through and go unnoticed. I'd like to frame this as town being the defensive party, which waits to catch out when scum moves out of line, while scum always has to make a move and hope it doesn't get spotted.

You can disagree with me, a town player totally can get to set the pace of the game, a town pr can take initiative with a claim, or the odd fakeclaim. Initiative being the sign of the aggressor though, imo should be with scum, who has much more freedom in fakeclaims, who has choices in which wagon to follow instead of doing this naturally, etc. And scum get to organise movements between themselves. It's not an absolute, but for sake of argument lets see scum as the aggressive party.

First, taking the argument to the absurd, say we considered two states the modding meta could be in. One where scum would win 99% of the time, one where town would win 99%. In the first case, scum could perfectly copy the way they act as town, or attempt to. Once every 100 games stars would allign and town would lynch scum in order. Next game would be exactly as before. Scum has no incentive to change anything and being the defender, town can change the tells it uses towards the next game, but that's the meta of mafia, scum would move at the same pace. Changing the defense, the net as it were, is a slow process. Now take the other meta, where town would win 99%. Every game, if scum do not make a move, they know they are done for. So every game, you get the wildest fakeclaims, crazy busses, to hopefully once in a 100 games perfectly fool the entire town. The difference here is that scum can change it's strategy during the day. Fakeclaims, bandwagonning, bussing, are judgements and choices you can make day by day. The result would be that scum would lose most games, but every game would be different as scum get to try where the defense is weak at a much more rapid pace than town could do in the scumsided meta.

Clearly these examples are absurd, but they show the extremes. Bias the game against the offensive side, and they get to employ creativity at a game by game basis, while if you bias against the defensive side, the aggressive party can lean back and show little creativity, as the defense can't change it's strategies at the same pace. Now I don't think I'm crazy here. This was exactly the case in 2011 and from Hoopla we know that there weren't any landslide changes in winrates since.

I think this situation is undesirable. Should we get to a state where town wins 55% of the cases, scum have more incentive to make up the difference in the 55% games they are about to lose with more proactive play, meaning more real scumhunting is possible (because in a way scum are forced to behave differently from town), scum have to find new avenues to avoid getting caught while getting an edge. And while that is happening, town will have to change what scumtells they are looking for, meaning a meta that changes quicker, with more unique games.

I think we want a developing game and unique experiences with scum trying to outsmart town more than we want a perfectly fair game, and as such we should attempt to bias the games towards town.

[mykonian]

Many thanks to MTD for proofreading this!

[mykonian]

some of it we have talked about.

Your third point just shows your age. Every old scummer has complained about that, heh.
Your second I hope to do something about here, in a way. Swing doens't really appear in the post, but the idea of what the game should be like could change over time.

The first is the most relevant point. You are obviously right that the moment town stops hunting the game is in a poor state. And given that I've seen examples of setups where town performed worse than random consistently, it is a real danger. Now they didn't straight up stop playing the game, but they could. It doesn't even help if scum would become more different from town if town gets fooled too often, lynching randomly would be enticing. Hmm

[mykonian]

tl;dr whole thread but as soon as games become town-sided people get bored and complacent, games become inherently less fun.

We play a challenging game because we enjoy a challenge. If it is no longer a challenge, why would we play it?

I feel you are missing the point here. If you aren't going to hit 50/50 every time, some part of the game isn't going to be challenged. Now this is consistently scum. I'm arguing games as a whole, for town and scum, accross the site, would be better if it was scum who was put to the test.

tbh i think a lot of the reason town might perform worse than expected in setups where EV can actually be calculated easily is because people, in general, are fucking stupid... and i don't think that's something that should be balanced for; i think people should just get better at the game...

Eh, then they have been stupid forever. The winrates have hardly moved through the years. Apparently we have a good feeling for how good town and scum are, and then year after year we set the average winrate at 55-60% for scum. How does it make the games worse if the "stupid" scum win a little less and the "stupid" town a little more? And they aren't even stupid, they are as smart as they always were. MS tends to be fine when it comes to intelligence anyway.

making setups town-sided to account for bad players being bad isn't a good thing

But giving the "bad scum" a free pass is fine?

[mykonian]

if town are consistently losing to bad scum when they're expected to win roughly 50% of games, then town must be that much worse

Hey, we are getting somewhere. Now we don't expect them to win 50% of the times. We know our expectancy, and that's when everybody gets randomized over the roles, so every side is just as stupid. Scum win 55-60%. What's the issue with making that 45%? Town and scum won't change, but scum would have to work harder for their wins. I think that's going to make games more exciting for scum and town.

[mykonian]

well you've explained that you don't want people to get a free pass. But this isn't a test you make easier and suddenly you've got more stupid people passing. You are treating mafia like they don't change, and all they do is decide which towns are worthy.

The game of mafia is one with two sides. You aren't going to get to 50% winrates, someone's going to have it easier. If you give the deficit to the side with greater opportunity for initiative (which in my opinion is scum), they could use that initiative to try something new, or at least slightly different, every single game.

Town does not have this freedom of movement, really how much game impacting initiative can you show? You make a case, because you should. You vote the scummiest player, because you should. As a VT, only the tempo of the game is something you have a hand on the dial for, and you share that dial with many (who are suspicious of you too).

I'm not saying that it'd be more fun if towns just won. I'm saying it'd be more fun if scum got challenged.

[mykonian]

because every game i've seen scum thinking they're against an overpowered town has led to scum lurking, scum giving up, scum expressing negative feelings towards a mod, the setup, the game in general...

Well, you are talking about it in an environment where they are used to having it easy. But otoh, you hear no towns complain that they only win 40-45%. We are used to that.

But the fact that we are used to it doesn't make it right. We can change what we expect from games.

if scum somehow acted like you think they would, you'd just get a bunch of incompetent town players playing against better scum players and still pulling off wins.

I don't see how the same people if they rolled scum suddenly became smart. The same townies you insist on calling stupid, are scum every 3-4 games.

at least if you strive for a balanced game, the winner is decided based on who the more skilled team is, and if the more skilled team is scum in most circumstances, then they deserve the fucking win

And currently about 5% of the scum didn't deserve their victory. They got it handed to them. Nobody is complaining at all about that.

And it's not even a real issue, since lets be fair, balance is not an exact science. The issue is that the right way for scum to play is to coast, because town has little real way to turn up the heat on scum, playstyle wise. The new tells they find, they avoid the next game they are scum themselves.

And you seem to disagree with me, but scum can bus, scum get to choose which wagon to follow, scum have a plethora of possible scumclaims. Scum are allowed to strategically lurk. There's a myriad of curveballs scum can throw at town. How many curveballs do town have? You can call towns stupid as often as you want, without organisation, and with the need of honesty from them, their maneuvering space is smaller. The only way to improve is to magically catch more scum than you did yesterday. Or last year. Or last 5 years.

They haven't

. Next game they are scum and they avoid the same tells that makes them magically amazing scumhunters. It's not a curveball, it's a general rise of the level of play. Your solution, for towns to magically get better (ignoring that the same players play scum as well), hasn't appeared as long as MS exists. The meta shifts, but towns end up with the same deficit comparatively to scum. The overall level likely has risen and dropped at points, but the games we put these towns in were slanted to scum. Only the reason fakegod has named so far is a reason why that could be the right choice.

I think what you want, is for the weaker side to have tools to change how the game turns out. Scum have more of those by design, so maybe we should put them in a tough spot and see what they come up with.

[mykonian]

If you give town more PRs scum isn't going to burst into action and play super dynamically like an anime character transcending into a higher form because they can no longer win with their old one. They're just going to roll their eyes and go "hoooo boy, another batch of overpowered townies. Let's lurk and hope we can pull through somehow"

ok, it's convenient that we have an extreme example of a powerrole heavy game that a couple of us know in EM. Compare claiming strategies there and here. Common wisdom here is that you should claim VT. Lay low, wait for town to trip over their own feet. On EM, you see counterclaims, fakeclaims before the original role can claim, etc.

Now EM is very role focussed, so that's really their only freedom, but it's scum that approach the game differently depending on game (when and how they fakeclaim), while town plays procedurally.

Here on MS however, we have votecounts, with wagons. Our lynches aren't determined just by guilties or a confirmed person calling it. So here scum can distance, scum can bus, they can lead wagons or hammer aggressively (while now they tend to just go with the flow and end up more often halfway the wagon than not, letting town do the lifting).

If we see that EM high risk high reward plays happen if the setup is tough on scum, why wouldn't MS-high risk plays like leading a wagon on town or pulling off that crazy bus not work?

[mykonian]

I feel like you answered your own question at the end.

Also I don't think we disagree as such? Not about what you say at least. I couldn't care less if you make games more townsided by making town stronger or by making scum weaker. Personally I've fiddled around quite a bit with ways of making scum weaker, also discussed it at length, mostly with buttons. If one finds a sensible way of making scum weaker (like white flag, godfather with a heart problem, etc), balance becomes much easier to do, because otherwise the blank canvas is so harshly scumsided. Sadly there aren't that many "normal" approaches to achieving this.

Either way, as long as you end up with on average more townsided setups going out, I believe games could become more fun.

[mykonian]

I'd rather see better town play than additional PRs.

Muffin also has this wonderful idea that somehow towns will get smarter, but those same people will stay the same as scum.

If for years on end, scum and town have advanced at a similar rate (because the winrates don't shift that much, but that doesn't mean the game didn't change throughout). You, accountant, muffin, somehow want that to change, and town to improve beyond what scum learns in the same time. I don't see how you plan to achieve this. It might be my rose tinted glasses, but some of the crew that were around when I got here were quite compatetive. They really tried to improve. I don't think it's even a lack of will nowadays, there's some people who like fun games, some who want to get good at this. I think assuming that you can straighten up winrates just by somehow teaching town to play better is as close to ignoring the issue as you can get.

Winrates as you say, do have two parts to it. The players, and the setup. But the players we randomise, over the course of years that evens out, it's not like town always gets the stupid ones. There's skill involved in scumhunting, as there is in avoiding getting caught. Some people are good at town, some are good at scum. Take a 100 games, and these even out. Which leaves the setup. We have consistently, year after year, produced setups that are, if you throw the dice that determine allignments enough, give scum the win. You know this as how it's always been, but can you explain why it's the correct way to do it?

[mykonian]

Here's a thought experiment for the OP: given a 7:2 setup, is "town win if they identify a townie D1, lose otherwise" or "town win if they identify a Mafia member D1, lose otherwise" a better setup? (I mean, they're both terrible setups, but…) In the former setup (78% town EV), I don't see scum really being able to do anything dramatic or grandstandy; their best choice is to keep their heads down, try to act as they have no information, and hope to be selected at random (and town may well just randomize). In the latter setup (22% town EV), there's a lot more incentive for town to scumhunt and scum to pretend to be scumhunt, and in fact it's not unheard of for scum to actually be lynched on D1 of a Micro as a consequence of scumhunting.

I fear I don't understand how you get to first conclusion. I think the disagreement we'd end up with in the base is that I believe the best play for scum is townier than town, while you believe that town will lynch someone who'll be different from town, and the best thing scum can do is to approach their town play.

On top of that, say you have a 50/50 play that confirms you as town or scum (like a claim/counterclaim scenario in an open). In a normal 9p, or the second setup, they'd be insane to go for it. There's no need to force that hard if you know you are going to win in 78% of the case, or even slightly less. Might as well try to get your advantages in smaller increments. However, in the first game, 50/50 is a huge improvement over the odds where you do nothing. So idk if they'd keep their head down, given the odds while doing that are pretty poor, while making a play might be comparatively not that bad. If you are going to win anyway, many of the risks will look worse in comparison to just doing nothing?

[mykonian]

you say it's a magical concept that hasn't ever worked before? ok... has it ever even been tried? what site-wide initiatives have there been to improve town play overall?

MS had a reputation for being elitist, and the statements you are making build on a couple of years of people saying that we are the best scumhunters around. MS was pretty proud of playing the best mafia. You are hardly the first to say that the current generation is doing mafia all wrong, lol.

Yes I dare say people have tried to improve, both their and the general level of play. MD isn't as alive as it used to be as far as I can tell, but regardless most work in there, for the public, has been about town play. Similar story in the wiki. We've had some nice contributors around the years, some are still around.

And I wouldn't want to imply their efforts are wasted. I'm sure it advances the general level of play. It's just, evidentaly, the next game, as scum, the players use the same lessons and play accordingly. They advance the meta, don't have the biggest effect on the overall winrates.

[mykonian]

What evidence is there to say town play worse than scum in general?

None, they are always connected.

[mykonian]

ah, my bad. Didn't parse it that way.

[mykonian]

tl;dr whole thread but as soon as games become town-sided people get bored and complacent, games become inherently less fun.

We play a challenging game because we enjoy a challenge. If it is no longer a challenge, why would we play it?

I feel you are missing the point here. If you aren't going to hit 50/50 every time, some part of the game isn't going to be challenged. Now this is consistently scum. I'm arguing games as a whole, for town and scum, accross the site, would be better if it was scum who was put to the test.

Why would you want to only challenge the minority of the playerlist? See my original post you quoted here for why you're wrong.

Yes we are rather tracking back.

Because the minority challenged happens to have a larger degree of freedom. This means scum is more able to rise to the challenge by changing up their playstyle, compared to town who have to grind out the tough games and generally "improve".

Now there are some people who think scum would lurk rather than take risks if their predicted winrate goes down, but imagine I got that part right, that means that over the course of the year, as town, you'll be facing many scum who try many ways of getting past you, in stead of people always playing the same. I believe that's fun. So from a modding point of view, without compromising the game, I'd want that scenario and incentivize the team that has the potential to make every game different, to do so.

How you arrive at more townsided setups, that's the next step. There's more than one way to get there. But possibly that's not a topic for this thread.