The New Newbie Game Setup

[Not Known 15]

I did find this forum only recently, but I have experience in some other mafia-like games although arguably more on the side of what you all would call role madness. I have read the concepts tho. So I might not be correct in what I say, but I might be correct... and I am not going to predict winrates, but differences
Ok, the 12 possible setups are:

1. Mafia Goon, Mafia Roleblocker vs. Town Tracker, Town Cop, 5x Town Vanilla
2. Mafia Goon, Mafia Roleblocker vs. Town Roleblocker, Town Cop, 5x Town Vanilla
3. Mafia Goon, Mafia Roleblocker vs. Town Tracker, Town Jailkeeper, 5x Town Vanilla
4. Mafia Goon, Mafia Roleblocker vs. Town Roleblocker, Town Jailkeeper, 5x Town Vanilla
5. Mafia Goon, Mafia Rolecop vs. Town Doctor, Town Cop, 5x Town Vanilla
6. Mafia Goon, Mafia Rolecop vs. Town Doctor, Town Jailkeeper, 5x Town Vanilla
7. Mafia Goon, Mafia Rolecop vs. Town Rolecop, Town Cop, 5x Town Vanilla
8. Mafia Goon, Mafia Rolecop vs. Town Rolecop, Town Jailkeeper, 5x Town Vanilla
9. Mafia Goon, Mafia Goon vs. Town Doctor, Town Tracker, 5x Town Vanilla
10. Mafia Goon, Mafia Goon vs. Town Doctor, Town Roleblocker, 5x Town Vanilla
11. Mafia Goon, Mafia Goon vs. Town Rolecop, Town Tracker, 5x Town Vanilla
12. Mafia Goon, Mafia Goon vs. Town Rolecop, Town Roleblocker, 5x Town Vanilla

And these 12 setups should be somehow balanced(Not exactly balanced, but no outliers like a 70% town winrate, especially on all setups combined)
Ok.
First the Mafia Roleblocker setups(1-4)
Power roles: Tracker, Cop. The mafia Roleblocker cannot be roleblocked. It is of high importance for the mafia that the power roles die early enough. A tracker is in 2 of the games, so roleblocking is dangerous- if a tracker spots it and the other Power Role reveals itself then the Roleblocker dies. If the Cop gets a guilty result N1 with Tracker alive(or the Tracker with the Cop alive on N1) or if a Mafia dies early by lynch its near Game Over... for the Evils.

Power roles:(T)Roleblocker Cop
Clearly weaker than the previous setup. A roleblocker can target the cop and stop them(terrible) target the night killer(good) target the roleblocker who roleblocks a vanilla(meh) or roleblocks the cop(good). As long as Roleblocker does not stop the kill twice it is not giving the town another possible mislynch and it is worse than a tracker because the tracker always incriminates while the Roleblocker does not.

Power roles:Tracker Jailkeeper
The Jailkeeper can protect good people at the expense of their abilities or stop bad people. It is more flexible than the cop but also arguably not that strong.

Power roles:(T)Roleblocker Jailkeeper
Apart from these cycles that cannot be resolved via NAR we have two people who can roleblock. There is a high chance that one action won't get through... and possibly more as both roles are stronger at the end of the game.
(1-4) internal conclusion: There is some swing when setups differ, but it might not be that decisive. Win rate has to be found out by trial and error

Mafia rolecop setups(5-8):
Power roles: Doctor, Cop
Again, these power roles are quite strong and arguably Mafia has got the rolecop to find them fast before they run havoc. Still the Rolecop results cannot be used for killing before night 2!
The presence of Doctor and Cop makes a claim strategy possible. Large amount of what you call positive feedback.

Power roles: Doctor, Jailkeeper
If the jailkeeper has to claim then it can be protected by the Doctor. Although that only happens in a bit less than 50% of the setups its still a major concern for evils, especially with two protection roles running around. But this one has no cop so at least no evil will find itself in an untenable position even with good play.
Power roles: (T)Rolecop, Cop
The rolecop is a limited cop for the enemy rolecop... which means that the mafia power role is more endangered than the goon. The rolecop should probably claim if the other rolecop dies because they arent useful anymore. Which means that if the Mafia rolecop dies early you will have a claim cycle: "Rolecop claims plz". If no one claims Rolecop then there is a doctor and the cop can reveal... Or the... Jailkeeper, even(see above)

Power roles:(T)Rolecop, Jailkeeper
Arguably the weakest combo. Rolecop cannot see much, Jailkeeper gets more powerful the longer the game goes and (M)Rolecop can find out power roles

Internal Balance (5-8) Cop is better than Jailkeeper, especially when there is a Mafia rolecop running around and preventing the Jailkeeper from reaching later nights. Because Rolecop gets at least 1 result, and has definite knowledge of whats evil and whats not they are probably not weaker than the doctor here, except for the possible concerning combos.

No Mafia Power roles setups(9-12)

Power roles:Doctor, Tracker
These roles are not that strong like full cops and jailkeepers, but if the Tracker finds one evil then they might be protected by a hidden doctor... and then it looks grim for the Evils. On the other hand every nolynch could be met with a nokill, dragging out the game endlessly. And there is no (M)Rolecop or (M)Roleblocker to deal with these power roles.

Power roles:Doctor, (T) Roleblocker
A doctor can protect the roleblocker, if it comes down to 1 evil and the rber is alive. I am unsure how strong this combination is in this case, because they have at least 1 synergy: They both stop kills so 2 kill stops(aka 1 more mislynch allowed) are possible. In the unlikely event that the blocker targets the doctor who targets the victim the blocker is bad, but they are still useful more than detrimetal

Power roles:(T)Rolecop, Tracker
The Rolecop is basically a named townie here, except when they try to out the Tracker.
This setup is clearly worse than its doctor counterpart. No synergy possible.

Power roles:(T)Rolecop, (T)Roleblocker
No synergy. The unlikely bad combination is no more, but the power drop is still high. Same problem as above, except that Roleblocker is worse than Tracker except in a few MyLo cases(where you have one more chance as opposed to the tracker)

Internal balance(9-12)
Setup 9 is much better for town than setup 11 and 12. The same can be probably said for setup 10 as well(much better than...) The Rolecop/Doctor dice is clearly imbalanced when you have rolled Goon before. Obvious internal imbalance.

Overall balance(1-12)

Roleblocker and rolecop are mitigators, they decrease the average effect the enemies have. I am unsure how this will play out Like I said its mostly trial and error anyways probably... as the setup knowledge is also a factor.
BUT
This has pairs of roles. The pairs should ideally be close to strength. The Cop/Jailkeeper difference is ok, even if cop is a bit better. You can't balance perfectly.
The Roleblocker/Tracker pair is arguably not equal, but the difference could -

could

- be not that bad.
The Doctor/Rolecop pair is... not so good. If paired against an enemy rolecop the difference isn't high. Ok. But against goon the balance is upset.

In the setups 9-12 we have a glaring imbalance.
Setups 9 and 10 are way, WAY better than setups 11 and 12.
If this setup is to be tested then there will have to be some changes to fix an imbalance there, but I don't know which way.

[Not Known 15]

The problem is the blatant imbalance between some setups that suggests that we probably will get some lopsided setups. Not fun...

[Not Known 15]

The problem is the blatant imbalance between some setups that suggests that we probably will get some lopsided setups. Not fun...

Your comments are appreciated. But realize that this change isn't being made lightly and some very smart people have been working on this for a long time, and they have an understanding of how this might play out.

Well, then go ahead and enlighten us please. I am far from being the only one who said this, and an earlier post of mine had an analysis of possible problems. Even if you think that these very smart people discussed balance ad nauseam: Part of publicizing is getting scrunity from a larger base of players. Yes a group may be comprised of very smart people but it is well known that even smart people miss things sometimes. Even in a group. So please do counter my arguments and the arguments of others; I have no problem with being wrong, and I am new to this site so I have a good chance to be wrong. But I think the newbie game setup is a quite sensible thing:If you get it wrong, then...

[Not Known 15]

Spoiler:

@NK15, re:


Some thoughts...

1) I think you are pretty substantially underestimating the power of the town roleblocker here. Yes, the town roleblocker COULD screw with town power, but it’s numerically much likelier to screw with scum, and again this role becomes super OP given a day 1 scum lynch.
For instance, look at the pair with a cop…
Cop/TB/SB (cop / town roleblocker / scum roleblocker)
Or
Cop/T/SC (cop/tracker/scum roleblocker)

Barring crap like no lynch, there are just a handful out outcomes…
Scum roleblocker lynch
Here the tracker probably gets you a bit more value, because both PRs can fire risk free and scum can at best kill one of them (the roleblocker can HARD clear a slot, but if he dies you could always get something shitty like town roleblocker hitting the cop before dying n1)

Scum goon lynch
Here I’d say it’s the other way around. Scum roleblocker can shoot tracker and block cop, or vice-versa, and there’s nothing at all town can do about it (if scum can find the PRs anyway… but a goon should basically always be claiming PR day 1, so yeah that’s kinda likely). OTOH, the town roleblocker can actively block the scum kill, which is an extremely potent ability (and again, here it’s reasonably likely that town power has been outed to at least some extent before the scum lynch anyway).

Vanilla Townie lynch
Debatable. As with the goon lynch, scum can hit both town PRs potentially, and that gets into a nasty situation. OTOH, town roleblocker COULD block the cop and that gets messy too.

Town roleblocker/track lynch
Obvioulsy it doesn’t matter which of them it is here

Town cop lynch
Roleblocker here is WAY stronger. Roleblocker gets a substantially likely guilty most of the time if there’s no death, AND (in the event he gets a guilty and drives a d2 scum lynch) he gets a second shot to fire. Tracker can potentially get a guilty (and the upside here is he can see the roleblocker AND the goon making a kill), but scum have two chances to hit him (roleblock and kill), which isn’t really great odds.

2) Interestingly, in a micro 7/2 setup vs goons jailkeeper has proven substantially stronger than cop (newbie results are pretty clear on this point). partially because it basically becomes a super cop once the first scum dies (if scum have a roleblocker this is BADLY nerfed, but rolecop is funtionally like a goon in terms of usefulness, and as a side benefit, the jailkeeper can potentially block the rolecop's investigation)

3) I tend to agree that the town rolecop is generally worse than the doctor. HOWEVER, one inherent nature of this setup is that scum are pretty likely to be fakeclaiming power roles. As such, the rolecop can potentially hard clear or hard condemn any PR claims, which has a pretty non-trivial value. But in a world where it's two goons and the goons never claim town power, then yeah it's basically just a named townie.

I removed the spoiler quote to my text in the quote above

1)As you can see I still somehow said "probably balanced enough" so there isnt much to worry about internally, we agree in this.
2) Hmm interesting. Probably because the death threat and the double effect hmm...this is still in the range of try out and adjust I guess
3)"one inherent nature of the setup is that scum are pretty likely to be fakeclaiming power roles"
In these setups, the goons know who they are NOT against. They are not against any Cop or Jailkeeper. Their enemies are tracker/rber and rolecop/Doctor
So they can only claim cop or jailkeeper unless they want to CC... but then again this setup has a 50% chance of rolecop. And with tracker or rber alive you do NOT want to die in a CC fight with the rolecop because then your win chances plummet. A 1v1 trade is not really a good thing for the evils. Because then there is only one scum, and that one has to fight long. Don't get me wrong... it is the possibility of the presence that will make scum hestiant to fakeclaim. But it will make scum even more hestiant to fakecounterclaim. Because THAT can swing the game largely in the favor of town.
And one last thing... with rolecop possibly present you will want to get wagons to L-2 now and then stop, waiting for 2 people to declare intent. Why? Because then they cannot sacrifice 1 scum into a power role, especially a roleblocker.

But ONE thing looks really like you totally underestimate the point. If Roleblocker blocks someone that one is either scum or... scum decided not to attack. If it is only the latter but not the former you will not only mislynch a townie but also die at night unless you find the right target. Tracker does at least not have that problem(although they can die easier)

EDIT: Yeah and Post164 from Radiant Cowbells sounds like good reasoning that this setup might be even a horrible idea. And I don't see any flaws in that reasoning...

[Not Known 15]

^By another mislynch I mean another chance to mislynch without losing

But... 2 players do not just add a mislynch. They also add 2 mislynch candidates. Adding 2 players adds another chance to catch scum on 9players. PRs may live longer but also get more wrong targets. You know what 7vanilla vs 2 goon is?
Horribly imbalanced... vs town.

[Not Known 15]

Various notes from my unofficial position as stats guy:

• The general point of "statistically-significant" is 30. It will take several months to build up that many games. But also note that winrates may be skewed to start with simply because SEs/ICs don't know the setup as well yet.
  
• Because there are 12 subsetups, it will take quite a while before we'll have any significant per-subsetup stats (perhaps years). Even per-role/per-subsetup-group stats will take a long time to gather.
  
• Daytalk was strong in Matrix6 because the setup was originally designed without it. Since 3d3 was designed with daytalk in the first place, it should at least be reasonably more balanced.
  
• There is evidence that games with higher numbers of replacements are more likely to result in scum wins. I think the roles in this setup, plus adding daytalk, will result in fewer "lost interest" replacements.
  
• My stats spreadsheet, once it exists, will be using the subsetup representation in this post of mine because it's easy to implement mechanically and is simplistic visually. But if the official newbie queue post uses a different chart than the 3x3 matrix currently in the first post of this topic, then I guess I'll have to figure out how to match it.

As far as I know, the mafia win rate has been on the higher side of the scale in total if we are talking about Matrix6.
Matrix6 has also no daytalk and the Scum do not exactly know the setup, and fakeclaims are extremely unreliable.
Some of the possible setups in 3x3 feature a definitely less powerful town. Fakeclaims can stand for some time-but they will inevitably crumble.
AND there is daytalk.
All the evidence points towards some winrates to be lower. And no ppl will continue to replace out in newbie games.
So the evidence strongly suggests that the general setup might(

might, not will

) be too far on the evil side to be balanced, and that some setups have a

very high

possiblilty of town win rates lower than the lowest setup win ratio determined in the current setup, and those were according to something I read already at about 40%...

So I have to ask you question number 1: How is adding daytalk and more believable scumclaims and some weaker(for town) setups a good idea for balancing something that is already leaning on the side of evils?

Daytalk could help with scum retention possibly. But then again some newbies won't stay anyways...
Then there is the issue with the roleblock cycles and such. Complicated stuff. Then there is the high number of possible setups. Complicated.

Question 2: Are you sure that there will be a major dent in replacements?

And for win rates taking a long time to calculate...

Question 3: Are you comfortable with running a setup multiple players, including very experienced players, have stated concerns about being worse than the current setup, a setup that has 12 possibilities, making it difficult to see win rate flaws, or to identify poorly performing sub-setups... in the

player retention sensitive environment

of Newbie games?
Newbie games are supposed to be fun, easy to understand yet they are also supposed to help people with getting correct gameplay, especially gameplay without power roles, but also how to deal with power roles.
They should not be
-complicated(we already have something like this in Matrix 6 and now you make it worse)
-full of positive feedback(and no, the current setup isn't good on that account already, and the proposed one is worse)
-one-sided(I said enough about this, I hope)

[Not Known 15]

1. I'm unqualified to comment on the setup balance.
   
2. During the Matrix6 daytalk experiment, replace rate for scum newbies dropped from 50.0% to 34.1%. But replace rates for all other playertypes went up (less starkly). Since this would be a whole new setup, I would expect SEs/ICs to be more inclined to stick around to try it out for a bit. Furthermore, the newbie queue is currently experiencing the highest replace rates in the Matrix6 era (though partly just because August and September are the worst months for replacements, with people losing time since summer's ending and all that). So yes, I do believe changing to this setup would reduce replacements, at least for a bit.
   
3. The newbie queue does not have a "test environment", so if people want a change there's nowhere else to do it. And if it does go awful, Matrix6 is certainly not broken enough that we can never go back.

I am not saying that there should be no change... there is a reason after all.
A replace rate of 34,1% from 50% is still significant... but we need to make sure that daytalk is not overpowered. There was a reason after all, why matrix6 daytalk was dropped, no?
Unfortunately, the less players you have... the more difficult it gets to adjust the win rates, naturally. One small change can be big...

[Not Known 15]

I think the only really problematic ones are 1 A;Town Cop and Town Neopolitan and 3B,Town Neopolitan and Town Doctor.
1 A suffers from the serious problem of two hard clearing investigative roles. I'd say if it's Day 2 and both are alive you have a potentially massive problem already(as scum). You will more likely than not have at least one genuine guilty or two clears; especially if town assigns people to be checked at night to Neapolitan and Cop(to prevent overchecking)

Town Neapolitan and Town Doctor: You have one unprovable Doc and two Mafia. The odds of hitting Doc aren't low. Doc is only viable if he protects twice, or if Neapolitan reveals itself on scum. This can go seriously wrong.

Solution: Remove the Neapolitan. Add the Universal Backup instead.

The UB is weaker in the cop games but still a potential second investigator... but not at the same time. The UB+Doc combo makes 2 survivals more likely, adding a mislynch; making it stronger while eliminating the horrible false guilty.(and just to clarify, Docs should try to be in the group of not really that sus but also not high chance town; which is exactly the same group an invest should check, normally)

[Not Known 15]

I looked at the last proposed newbie setup and these are my proposed changes:

	A	B	C
Mafia	Mafia Roleblocker	Mafia Night 1 Rolecop	Mafia Goon
Row 1	Town Cop and Town Universal Backup	Town Cop and Town Tracker	Town Cop and Vanilla Townie
Row 2	Town Jailkeeper and Town Doctor	Town Jailkeeper and Town Tracker	Town Jailkeeper and Vanilla Townie
Row 3	Town Cop and Town Doctor	Town Universal Backup and Town Doctor	Town Tracker and Town Universal Backup

You can possibly change the Night 1 Rolecop into a 1-shot Rolecop instead without changing much.

[Not Known 15]

Where are the updates? What happened? Newbie games all have BP claims now.

[Not Known 15]

What do you think about Doc/Jailkeeper/Roleblocker?

[Not Known 15]

1) Newbies need a

simpler

set up. More focus on learning the ropes than the complexities of semi-open setups.

Counterpoint: SEs and ICs need a setup that's sufficiently interesting or they'll grow tired of it and stop joining the newbie queue.

Ok, this is just my opinion and I'm sure some people may disagree with me. But PR mechanics is only like 10% of what makes mafia an interesting game.

As an SE, I don't think I've ever joined a newbie game because of the set up in terms of PR composition was interesting before. I actually liked that the set up was somewhat simple and at least I know what I'm getting into in terms of balance, and it is mostly a place for me to learn how to day-mafia on a forum based mafia game.

ICs should be mostly about teaching people how to day-mafia. PR mechanics is something everyone can figure out using logic. Day mafia is a pretty hard thing to master, and the bread and butter of the game. This is what newbies should be focused on.

Is this actually a problem we are trying to solve? It sounds like the current proposed solution is designed for the recurrent SE/ICs and not the actual newbies IMHO.

This is true. The core premise of Mafiascum, scumhunting on the day, still exists with these setups. If there are less than 3 SE's possible, then use only two. IC's come to teach anyways.