The Importance of Transparency, Cooperation & Effort as Town

[RadiantCowbells]

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

[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.

[RadiantCowbells]

Many people simply don't do the above as they can't be assed to do so. This is horrific! The amount of times I've seen someone state they don't read walls, won't go through ISO's, or won't look at someone else's posts is insane. And nobody says something about it! When you sign up for a game you have signed up knowing you should be investing time and effort, not doing so is technically playing against your win-condition and should as such not be tolerated at all. You should always be reading every posts, not just reading actually, but analysing! Multiple times preferably! If you are too lazy to do this replace out, you're a hindrance to the game.

this is one of the most true things I have ever read in my entire time on this site.

mafia is not meant to be a game that is tolerant of people half-assing the game because "it's fun for them"; mafia is a game that by definition requires substantial time/effort in order to play. if you half-ass games, unless you're in a player list saturated with people who do this and won't give a shit, you are hindering the game for those people who do devote the effort into playing the game properly and are attempting to get enjoyment out of the game by, IDK, actually playing the game. this is not to say that everyone ever needs to put an absurd amount of effort into games, or make flawless pushes with flawless cases, or avoid gut reads or anything; all you even need to do is read and think and be open to considering possibilities and legitimately put the best effort you think you can give into finding scum - that is the most important thing here (intent as Nahdia said) and while I don't really agree with "everything needs to be explained ever", the amount of people who blatantly just don't even try to put effort into games when they clearly could be is ridiculous.

a player who actually wants to find scum, just based on the fact they are actually playing the game and wanting to find scum, is 100% more of an asset than a player who doesn't give a shit even when they're not capable of putting a high amount of effort into the game or putting all of their reads into words

just because you put in more effort doesn't make you more useful

[RadiantCowbells]

also just because your gutreads are shitty doesn't mean all of them are

[RadiantCowbells]

I don't at all agree with the consensus of this thread. I will check out of it and leave you all to it.

[RadiantCowbells]

I mean you don't see the people who read via gut and stuff close to it (I wouldn't call my optimal gameplay 'gut' but it's similar) beating down on the people who post cases and walls.

[RadiantCowbells]

Cases matter because the 'current site meta' (meant in a loose sense) requires you to post reasons to lynch people. In a universe where it didn't I would never post them.

[RadiantCowbells]

Cases matter because the 'current site meta' (meant in a loose sense) requires you to post reasons to lynch people. In a universe where it didn't I would never post them.

Rationally speaking if you want to lynch someone it's best to explain why. Else this game would simply be a bunch of random votes. Without explanation there wouldn't be scum-hunting and town reads to form off content, only VCA.

There's more to the game than analyzing reads and VCA and I think that those are in many ways the least useful part of the game because skilled players fool them easily.

[RadiantCowbells]

Cases should be made by people who find that cases help them communicate their thoughts in a clear and adequate manner.

[RadiantCowbells]

If you treat the game like a debate the person who makes the best arguments wins regardless of their alignment. That person is not necessarily town.

[RadiantCowbells]

My way, no one wins the game for being better at arguing or rhetoric.

[RadiantCowbells]

Sure, in a loose sense. But more importantly to me the game is about winning. It's a competitive game.
To me it seems like all the 'let's throw cases at each other until the superior argument wins' falls flat in reality when you deal with real games. Maybe if you play with 13 people who play like that it can work.
Most games though there's going to be someone who is busy with IRL, people who aren't good debaters, people who are simply

illogical.

Regardless of where you play games.

What I end up hearing from most of the 'argument strength is best!' crowd is that you just have to lynch these people. These are the same kinds of people with mottos like 'everyone I lynch are scum, just not all mafia.'

Like, no. Unless someone is bang out of line you can't lynch someone and then blame them for it. Take responsibility for your votes.
There ARE ways to read shitposting. There's ways to read everything. If you lock yourself into only reading and working with cases then you are pigeonholing yourself into a small part of the game.
I would argue that it's, straight up, blind and shortsighted play. This thread is yelling for everyone else to change instead of changing yourself to play the game as is.
I think that's amusing and I think that if I tried to argue that everyone who doesn't try to create a narrative behind people's thought progression or widespread meta analysis and comparing the kinds of posts people make as different alignments in broad categories needs to stop playing the game the way that they do and start playing my way I'd get irritated responses because why am I telling everyone how to play the game; but when the vocal 'CASE CASE ARGUE THIS IS NOT MS THIS IS EPICMAFIA NOW BITCHES' crowd inevitably brings up how terrible it is that people aren't wallposting or only posting cases

I am not saying that it's okay to never explain your reads. Being unable to communicate with town and therefore unable to project your reads onto other votes is bad.
But the 'case' as a construct is not the only way to play the game and I don't feel like it's the best one either.

There are unacceptable ways to play the game and there are bad ways to play the game but not fitting into the archetype of throwing walls around and not being able to 100% put everything that you're playing the game around into words are perfectly fine.

[RadiantCowbells]

If someone AFKs in a league of legends game at silver it's their fault for afking but it's also my fault for not being able to 4v5 a bunch of fucking silvers.

Blaming other people is always a dead end but improving yourself is something that you can always do.

[RadiantCowbells]

You're also heavily implying that everyone ought to move towards playing the game your style with cases and walls and shit as if it's the ideal. I disagree.

[RadiantCowbells]

I am also not justifying blatant coasting nor failing to contribute anything. I

am

pointing out that burying your head in the sand and telling everyone how to play the game is a bad way to approach it.

[RadiantCowbells]

It sets a dangerous mindset when you start saying 'we would have won if XYZ did A differently' instead of 'I should have done XYZ differently'

[RadiantCowbells]

And if your read isn't something that can be put into words?

[RadiantCowbells]

Me and you, yes. Me and wgeurts?

[RadiantCowbells]

Like I agree that there is a wrong way to play the game. In fact there are many, many wrong ways to play the game. What I disagree with is that there is any one way to play the game besides trying to maximize your winrate; with the caveats that certain behaviour is verboten even if it maximizes your winrate in the short term for various reasons.

[RadiantCowbells]

As literally just one example in a career of reads that I couldn't put into words here's a game on my Severa alt
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=66342

I had no coherent way to put my read on either Postie or Blue into words but I got them lynched and both flipped scum.
If I were to follow your advice and not use the reads that I can't put into words I would perform significantly worse as a player and have a significantly worse winrate. Why should I sabotage myself because you don't like how I play?

[RadiantCowbells]

Subconsciously seeing something: yes.
Did you know that as you get better at something your brain activity first increases then when you truly master it you decrease it?
Your conscious brain is required to participate in the activity less and less and it becomes more and more automatic. That's when you know that you're truly good at something.
If my subconscious doesn't see something in the game I can force activity from myself and force myself to try to see cases and make connections but that's never going to be as good.

[RadiantCowbells]

Psyche you're implying that the process of playing games and being right/wrong doesn't tune your subconscious into being better at it. I disagree.
And I haven't like statistically analyzed my reads but I am pretty certain that my 'gut reads' are far more useful than random chance.