The Importance of Transparency, Cooperation & Effort as Town

[wgeurts]

Nightkill analysis has shown to be one of the weakest forms of information, this could just as easily be used on someone tunneling town to mislead the town.

eliminating actual threats > creating WIFOM to push a mislynch on a random towny that's being deathtunneled anyway

Yet when town started using it too much the meta shifts to the latter. It also doesn't disregard the fact you can be as much of a threat to scum explaining everything than with just 1.

[Postie]

eliminating actual threats > creating WIFOM to push a mislynch on a random towny that's being deathtunneled anyway

Yet when town started using it too much the meta shifts to the latter.

I've never seen the meta shift towards WIFOM-killing being commonplace, and most of the time there isn't nearly enough to be gained from WIFOM killing to justify it. Like if someone is deathtunneling another towny why would you kill that towny to push a lynch on them yourself using WIFOM instead of just letting the other person do the work for you so you can take out someone else? That's just straight-up terrible play regardless of whether people buy your WIFOM or not and it's very unlikely that anyone would WIFOM kill in such a situation.

It also doesn't disregard the fact you can be as much of a threat to scum explaining everything than with just 1.

Well sure, you

can

, theoretically, but that doesn't mean you will or that it's always the best play. Let's say you have two scumreads and you aren't sure of one of them but are very confident on the other. If you're wrong on the read you aren't sure about and state both reads, scum can kill you and argue that you were killed for the read you were wrong on. If you're right on both, scum are slightly worse off, but the fact you had two different reads means the lack of direction might just allow scum to push a lynch through on a completely different player. If you give one scumread and deathtunnel them all game? People will want that person lynched if you die.

[Lil Uzi Vert]

What I'm trying to say is that it's all subjective. Someone who is blatantly playing anti-town or the way you have been describing could really believe they're working with the town and being transparent.

They're not though, but people putting effort in eventually learn how to play the game in the best manner. They want to improve.

If you somehow have statistics to back this up then I would probably come around.

People who put effort into trying to improve tend to improve. That's just general life. If I put effort into learning an instrument I tend to improve.

Yes but wouldn't it better to improve by learning how to read anti-town play?

If somebody in a football team is awful at kicking the ball, is it best for the team to damage-control or for that guy to invest some effort into improving? The latter. The game doesn't revolve around that player, if you are being a detriment you are responsible for that fact and solely you should be responsible. I've learned how to read anti-town play, anti-town doesn't equal scum. Still the better situation would be them actually learning how to play.

Mafia =/= Professional Sports

There is an objective way to correctly play a sport but there isn't for mafia.

[RadiantCowbells]

When you start dying a lot you'll see things differently.

[mastina]

Apparently I need to desperately type up that article I've been planning explaining to people how to properly use gut and what

not

to do when using gut.
Similarly so for timing transparency. (There are times to NOT be transparent. These times are, however,

limited

.)

I also want to explain the concept of Stamina to people--why it is always important to know your limits, and be honest about them. ("I can't write a case because it would exhaust me too much". This is not an excuse to do nothing, mind you. The second half of that

should

be, "HOWEVER, while I can't give you a full case, this is what I CAN give you: *basics*.") wgeurts seems to be under the impression that players can always devote an unlimited amount of time/effort/resources to something, which is quite simply not true.

If a game is producing 20-50 pages a day (you might think that rate is unreasonable, and yet almost every Large game produces that many now, at least on D1, leading to 100-300 page D1s), I'm not going to read every post of that shit, and I'm not going to write a P-B-P analysis of a 3-page/600-post iso when I think a player who posts a lot is scum. I'm going to pick and choose which battles I can win. (Incidentally, my stamina is not what it used to be. I used to be able to stay in a game for 12 hours straight, no breaks except bodily needs. Now, 3 hours is enough to cause me burnout.)

In those regards, I to various extents strongly disagree with wgeurts.


...

However

, that being said: what he says here is not without merit.
A disturbing trend, for instance, that I have noted is town LYING about their reads. Lying by omission can sometimes be okay (that falls under timing transparency), but outright lying and claiming your reads are something they aren't? Not so much; that's called playing a fucking scumgame. Yet too many players seem to somehow thing this is acceptable behavior.

The point about cooperation is also a valid one. I myself know that my own cooperation skills have admittedly degenerated. I used to do it fairly well with anyone regardless of experience. Now, I tend to only cooperate well with players who I have natural synergy with. And I imagine this is in fact a site-wide problem. He's not entirely off the mark with points here, either. There are wrong ways to use gut which are common; there are wrong ways to be opaque; there are excuses which shouldn't justify certain behaviors.

I simply feel his statements are not as absolute as he makes them out to be.

[RadiantCowbells]

I think there are a lot of shitty players who see certain people playing rather opaque games and gambiting in certain ways and not understanding the theory behind it and ending up being royal fucking detriments to town.

also there's a slew of people from 2013 onward who confbias out the fucking ass and can't back off of a deathtunnel ever.

[implosion]

wgeurts i agree with a lot of the core points you're making but you are very drastically oversimplifying things.

Mafia remains a game of rational and psychology, everything is evidence and evidence requires interpretation that requires explanation.

This is how you view mafia. Other people view it differently. You're right that some players will refuse to explain anything and those players are, I agree, a detriment to the game. But when you go from there to "everything must always be explained," you take away a lot of peoples' ability to be creative with things, like the way they get reads, or even gambits. A lot of people find the joy of mafia to be about those ways of being creative and getting the win in ways the other side wasn't expecting. Ultimately mafia isn't at its core a game of rational argumentation and psychology; it can be that, but at its ultimate core mafia is a game of an uninformed majority trying to figure out who amongst them is in an uninformed minority, while the minority tries to avoid detection. As long as town players are trying to find scum, you can't say they're not trying to win even if they're doing it in a way you think is bad.

Nahdia is very correct here:

Defining "play to win" as anything other than "not actively trying to avoid winning" is a very, very dangerous road.

plenty of players have reasons for not being transparent; it's fine to try to educate them on why you believe that those reasons are bad, but it's not okay to accuse them all of not playing to their win condition because they aren't taking the path that you believe is most optimal. Town may have tons of reasons for being opaque. Creature's point about trying to hide a read can absolutely be considered optimal play if you believe that the player in question is going to say things that will make them easier to read by way of you not explaining yourself. Maybe you think that giving a read on a particular player without explaining yourself will be useful to gauge their reaction, or others'. Maybe you can't explain yourself because your read is based on a night action result and you think you can get that player lynched without revealing your role. Maybe you don't even actually scumread the player, and are trying to see who's willing to perturb the current state of wagons to join you. Maybe you want to withhold reasoning to see what reasons other players might provide in the absence of your own reasoning, so that potential scum might have to fabricate theirs.

The important thing here is that it doesn't even matter if you think these reasons are wrong; so long as the player using them thinks they're useful, they are playing to their win condition.

I do want to reiterate that I agree players who never explain anything are annoying and are a problem, but I don't think they're as big of a problem as you seem to imply (though i haven't played much mafia lately so i might just be wrong about that).

[Accountant]

I have a policy of always being clear and explaining the reasoning behind everything I do. I never act on gut reads, even though I have them often.

[Psyche]

the problem is that too many people think gutreads are credible rather than shitty
for example postie writes that "the less i'm able to justify a scumread the more likely it is that that person is scum"
which frankly is almost definitely false, a self-defeating mindset, and a prototypical example of what's wrong with the current site meta

[Accountant]

The question "how accurate are my gutreads vs my justified reads?" can be trivially solved. Just a reminder.

[Psyche]

It's not even the most important question. You can't improve at tasks you rely on your "gut" to perform in the way you can thinking things through. The possibility of deliberate practice is put aside.

[wgeurts]

What I'm trying to say is that it's all subjective. Someone who is blatantly playing anti-town or the way you have been describing could really believe they're working with the town and being transparent.

They're not though, but people putting effort in eventually learn how to play the game in the best manner. They want to improve.

If you somehow have statistics to back this up then I would probably come around.

People who put effort into trying to improve tend to improve. That's just general life. If I put effort into learning an instrument I tend to improve.

Yes but wouldn't it better to improve by learning how to read anti-town play?

If somebody in a football team is awful at kicking the ball, is it best for the team to damage-control or for that guy to invest some effort into improving? The latter. The game doesn't revolve around that player, if you are being a detriment you are responsible for that fact and solely you should be responsible. I've learned how to read anti-town play, anti-town doesn't equal scum. Still the better situation would be them actually learning how to play.

Mafia =/= Professional Sports

There is an objective way to correctly play a sport but there isn't for mafia.

I completely disagree.

[wgeurts]

@Postie, and that's exactly why you shouldn't assign much worth to NKA. Secondly, if the town is being transparent and actually cooperating the chances of them being mislead are significantly smaller. It's also a very dangerous line to go down with players just pushing one person and hiding all other reads, people get it wrong, and without discussion the chances of them being wrong are significantly higher.

[Infinity 324]

the problem is that too many people think gutreads are credible rather than shitty
for example postie writes that "the less i'm able to justify a scumread the more likely it is that that person is scum"
which frankly is almost definitely false, a self-defeating mindset, and a prototypical example of what's wrong with the current site meta

The thing is, I'm the same way with townreads. That's just what my experience shows. I'll obviously try my best to explain my reads when that happens, but I'm not always going to be able to and I'm not going to ignore gut reads if they been accurate in the past.

[Accountant]

I ignore gut reads that I can't justify.

[Accountant]

If my gut was really so good at catching scum, it should be smart enough to give me reasons.

[Infinity 324]

I don't think that logic follows. Being articulate =/= being accurate.

[Accountant]

I don't think that logic follows. Being articulate =/= being accurate.

Well, you need both to convince others to lynch.

[Infinity 324]

Convincing others is obviously going to be pretty hard if you can't explain your reasoning, but that doesn't mean you can't vote based on that.

[Accountant]

Convincing others is obviously going to be pretty hard if you can't explain your reasoning, but that doesn't mean you can't vote based on that.

Great way to make yourself look like someone who stubbornly follows bad gut reads and refuses to give real reasons for their vote, thus making it even harder to push the wagon to a lynch.

It's the sort of player that places a one vote vanity wagon on a player, yell at others for not sheeping them, and then complain that nobody listened to them postgame.

[Creature]

If nobody else even touched that "vanity wagon", then town actually sucked, not particularly that player.

[Postie]

the problem is that too many people think gutreads are credible rather than shitty

Not all gutreads are created equal.

There are players who have a history of having excellent gutreads, and there are others whose gutreads are worse than guessing. But discounting the former because of the latter is in my opinion shooting yourself in the foot.
Of course, people will overestimate the accuracy of their gutreads; I'm not saying to simply take people's word on how ~great~ their gutreads are. Instead, you can look at their track record - how have they fared with gutreads in past games?

This also applies on an individual level. Gutreads are ~feelings~, but not all feelings feel the same, and it is absolutely possible to compare different kind of gut feelings and see which, if any, are more accurate than others.

for example postie writes that "the less i'm able to justify a scumread the more likely it is that that person is scum"
which frankly is almost definitely false, a self-defeating mindset, and a prototypical example of what's wrong with the current site meta

You don't know my own play/mind better than me, Psyche. I should have probably explained that statement a little more because it looks dumb and self-defeating on the surface, but it

is

generally how things work out in practice.

Because it's very easy for me to get confbiased and come up with reasoning for why a player absolutely, most definitely,

has

to be scum and I could never be wrong, and then deathtunnel them. And those players usually flip town and I always feel like an idiot afterwards.
But then I have reads where someone looks town, but I have this niggling paranoia about them. And then I engage with them and ISO them and before I know it I'm convinced they're town and that I was just being stupid. And then, slowly, the paranoia returns. And those are the "purple" reads I mentioned in 37; I can't justify them, but they're always scum.

I'm not just charging headfirst at whatever my gut tells me is scum. Not having justification

feels

wrong, especially when I

want

someone to be town, and it makes it harder to get that person lynched. But I suppose that's part of those kinds of reads work for me - they go against all my confbiases.

[Infinity 324]

Convincing others is obviously going to be pretty hard if you can't explain your reasoning, but that doesn't mean you can't vote based on that.

Great way to make yourself look like someone who stubbornly follows bad gut reads and refuses to give real reasons for their vote, thus making it even harder to push the wagon to a lynch.

It's the sort of player that places a one vote vanity wagon on a player, yell at others for not sheeping them, and then complain that nobody listened to them postgame.

You don't have to yell at anyone or complain about anything at post game. But you could just say "I have a strong gut scumread on x but I'm having difficulty explaining it. If a wagon pops up on x, I'll join it."

[Accountant]

If nobody else even touched that "vanity wagon", then town actually sucked, not particularly that player.

Uhhhh no

You don't suck for not hopping on an unexplained vanity wagon

And that player sucks for not doing their job and convincing the rest of the town to lynch scum

Town wants to

lynch

scum, not just find it

[Accountant]

But you could just say "I have a strong gut scumread on x but I'm having difficulty explaining it. If a wagon pops up on x, I'll join it."

That's fine. But remember this. Gut reads do not materialize from thin air. They are an expression of your subconscious mind trying to tell you something is off. Engage with X, find what it was trying to tell you, put it down in words and turn that nebulous gut read into a real, firm

case

. And THEN you can start/join the wagon and it will likely attract other players too.