Criticism of Geriatric

[Mathdino]

Shorter deadlines for sure are townsided. This is, I think, consensus (I think Mafia Universe has a higher town winrate). I'm extrapolating to say that geriatric rules are also townsided because there's less interaction available for scum to manipulate mislynches and derail scum lynches.

Re: Reading: Depends on how troll the shitposters and spammers are. If they always follow town wincon while doing their thing, then yeah it's easy to read. But if they're trolling on the side or making up wincons for themselves, AND are straight up bad at playing town, this makes reading them impossible. I think Hyperactive games are gonna be a honey trap for those kinds of players. Geriatric games on the other hand won't attract any particular anti-town styles I think.

@Firebringer: It's like you didn't read my post at all.

[Creature]

or maybe what makes a game scumsided is when there are both players which prefer a slower game and players which prefer a faster-paced game.

[Mathdino]

Possible, but I'm not sure the evidence supports that.

[Ellibereth]

MU having a higher townrate than MS (I don't even know if this is true or if people like saying it) does NOT imply at all that shorter deadlines favor town. If said winrate discrepancy is true between the sties, there could be a host of other reasons otherwise. Has there ever been a relatively controlled look at how deadlines actually effect winrate? That would require sufficient amounts of similarish player lists and similarish settups.

If you purely want to argue theoretically, longer deadlines potentially give town more things to look at. In theory a good scumhunting system gets more accurate as there are more posts/words coming from each player and you're more likely to get more if days are longer.

I think they're very very very few players who actually only "troll" or "make up wincons". Whether you're a hyperactive or geriatric player doesn't make a difference if you're "bad at town" (what does that even mean? Like I've argued in other threads people in this site have different metrics for what they consider good or bad) but still trying. The only players I found that are truly impossible to read are players that universally don't post. You could argue those are LESS likely to appear in a hyperactive game than a geriatric game.

[Firebringer]

Shorter deadlines for sure are townsided. This is, I think, consensus (I think Mafia Universe has a higher town winrate). I'm extrapolating to say that geriatric rules are also townsided because there's less interaction available for scum to manipulate mislynches and derail scum lynches.

Re: Reading: Depends on how troll the shitposters and spammers are. If they always follow town wincon while doing their thing, then yeah it's easy to read. But if they're trolling on the side or making up wincons for themselves, AND are straight up bad at playing town, this makes reading them impossible. I think Hyperactive games are gonna be a honey trap for those kinds of players. Geriatric games on the other hand won't attract any particular anti-town styles I think.

@Firebringer: It's like you didn't read my post at all.

@mathdino ur points aren’t true as ellibereth has basically summed up well.
Also ur point on “scum have less time to manipulate the town” doesn’t make sense as scum can manipulate the town in any time scale especially if their posters are the most active and leading conversation.

If there’s a 13 player game.
And the top 3 posters are scum.
The scum will always win.

I haven’t seen a game where scum completely controlled conversation and didn’t win.
And a short/longer deadline has nothing to do with that, that’s just the personalities and style of scum players
You can control the Town with whatever deadline that’s used if you have the right team

[Mathdino]

A controlled study would fundamentally not be controlled, as the players would get to know each other better which I think massively benefits town (speaking from a perfect towngame after a restart). I'll wait for others with more site history knowledge to pop in here on that argument.

You can argue theoretically either way. I think the shorter deadline argument actually makes more sense. Early reads are often better than late reads (there's a MD article for that one) and a longer deadline means scum has more time to break town cohesion and generate paranoia (also a MD article for that). Most scum plans require longer days, I think. Plus, I genuinely believe town players "slip up" more than scum do (because scum is self conscious) so more time gives more time for town to get riled up on a "scumslip" made by town.

Firebringer has claimed in another thread that he plays for personal enjoyment more than for wincon, and this has the side effect of making him impossible to read.
Another player once made up a wincon of hammering as much as possible. As he does this (anti-town) thing as both town and scum, it makes it harder to read and fucks with town.

My bet is you'll get more players that would be worthy of a policy lynch (anti-town behaviour [other than spamming], trolling, only fluffposting) in a Hyperactive game. And that's why I think Hyperactive games will be scumsided. I don't believe it would be scumsided at all if players who already like Geriatric games suddenly used a Hyperactive ruleset.

True lurkers will and should get replaced. Geriatric games aren't any more lenient toward lurkers than normal games. My experience is not that geriatric players lurk or get replaced much at all. A lot of them are wallposter types who provide a ton of substance (sometimes too much) in just one post.

[Lil Uzi Vert]

I think geriatric is scum-sided because scum have an easier time dictating the conversation and pace in those games. Those games are also much more difficult to properly engage in their entirety. Towns need to be able to interact with a ton of content and then some. Towns struggle if there is not enough information and can't work with and talk to each other.

[Ellibereth]

There's an MD article does not imply true. MD articles are generally just the author's opinions. Regardless, can you link them over for me?

Also - when we're talking about whether something is townsided or scumside we also should probably add in what level of player is involved. I believe better players get better reads as games go on and read' getting worse is perhaps a sympton of something in someone's town play that needs to be improved.

I can perhaps concede the following: Shorter deadlines favor weaktowns while longer deadlines favor stronger towns. That's also just a guess though.

r.e. Firebringer. There's a key word you left out of his statement - MOSTLY for personal enjoyment. And that really makes all the difference. As long as he's aware of his alignment and has some sort of microsopic care in the world about winning, I think he's eventually readable.

I have more to say but I'm feeling lazy now.

[Ellibereth]

tldr for the lazy part is i suspect the core of our disagreement is that there's probably a bunch of stuff you think is anti-town that I don't.

[Hinduragi]

Lots of opinions here about what is potentially scumsided vs. townsided. Keyword: opinions.

Play the games out and see what's scumsided and townsided over time. I'm not really sure where this thread derailed from criticisms to speculation.

[Mulch]

Mafiascum sucks cause long deadlines and also a horrible site meta where people scumread wrong things

[Flubbernugget]

I don't think experiments will ever be useful for determining effective mafia communication. There are too many subjective variables. I've always tried to argue about how to play mafia days from more universal truths or standpoints. As and example, a large part of the wallpost I made in the site meta thread is applicable to more team based games than mafia.

Keeping the universality idea in mind, I think of computer databases when I hear the argument that information for the sake of information is good for town. I haven't done a lot of work with database systems, but if you ever take the time to learn them, you will come across one common theme: they're useful because they can instantaneously trough through shit to find and correlate useful information. Humans cannot do this instantaneously, which means the utility of the information dispensed has to be carefully managed and considered.

Note that posting meaningfully does not mean someone can't spam post. It just means that if you're spam posting, you're

probably

not making as many good points as you should be. I've noted that ETL is a very strong rapid poster, but she is always making good points that progress the game, her reads are rock solid, and she is tough to lynch as either alignment. Off the top of my head, Thor might fall in this category too, but I've seen him lured into trudging a game towards apathy.

I have noted on several occasions that spam posting does not bother me, but posting in non-persuasive or inaccurate ways and expecting volume to compensate does. You'll never find me in a game complaining about a spam posters strictly over their post count, though I may point to it as a symptom of poorly thinking through a situation.

Every single time I mention that my issue is not with post volume, but with poor communication, spam posters find another way to lump me into some imaginary team against them and shift the argument strictly back to post volume.

Also, I'm curious as to why Firebringer thinks posting style comes first and the argument follows. I used to be really spammy with quote responses when I caught up in a game, but when it was getting me scum read on the basis of me not doing much in the game, I used a smaller post volume as a tool to format my posts in a way that's better understood.

[Mathdino]

There's an MD article does not imply true. MD articles are generally just the author's opinions. Regardless, can you link them over for me?

Here's a Mastina blurb about why early interactive tells beat late interactive tells. I misspoke, to a degree. What I meant is that the longer the day goes on, and the more content is being constantly generated, the more likely it is that MOST town players ignore the good stuff (early game) and start changing their reads based on lategame.

This is related to my belief that it's not very useful to try to read players' defending against you after you're already scumreading them. Any semi-competent scum will start to learn what you scumread people for, and will change or not change their playstyle after suspicion is cast.

tl;dr: More time with the same game means scum has more time to learn how to manipulate town and be townread by town. As town isn't as concerned with being townread, town will get mislynched more often with longer days.

You're absolutely correct that better towns get better reads as games go on. I would counter with "better scum is less likely to get lynched as games go on" as well. Longer deadlines very strongly benefit teams that are significantly better in player quality.

[Firebringer]

I don’t know where to begin dissecting that but we are completely off topic here

[Flubbernugget]

Your last suggestion was a good one. Do you have another?

(That sounds a lot more sarcastic than it should. It's a 100% serious question.)

[Creature]

Surreptitious was a mild hyperposting game and ended in a town win.

[Flubbernugget]

I am reading through it now (up to pg 13 atm) and would like to compare and contrast it to fireworks mafia when I am done reading it.

The first thing I think worth noting is that chesskid is one of the players I would consider better at effectively communicating amidst spam, and phrases arguments well enough that people will react to them with them having to be rammed down someone's throat.

[mastina]

I think it’s idiotic to expect most players to give up their individuality and personal goals for the team.

And you wonder why towns who take this attitude lose.

Mafia is a TEAM game.

You are part of a TEAM.

You are meant to work for, and as part of, that TEAM.

Part of being a TEAM, is being more than just the individual.
Part of being a TEAM, then, is to do exactly this: not be just an individual, giving up some degree of individuality and personal goals, for the sake of the TEAM.

There are limits to conformity, of course. There's a difference between reaching a consensus (the goal) and falling in line (too far). But arguing against the idea of suppressing some levels of individuality/personality for fear of the latter is a mistake, because the former is what allows towns to function effectively and its absence directly correlates to town loss after town loss, with towns not even being able to agree on WHY they lost.

This is also why mafia tend to win more often: it's easier for the informed minority (ESPECIALLY given daytalk!) to work as a TEAM, and make calculated decisions as a TEAM. Most town wins are a result of poor scum cohesion, where instead of working as a TEAM, they work as individuals, thus sacrificing the inherent advantage being the informed minority grants them. (That being, you know who your TEAM is, thus know who to work with.)

Yes, ideally, a TEAM makes use of all players' strengths while minimizing their weaknesses--but the thing is, that minimizing of weaknesses is, in of itself...suppressing part of their natural individuality, because as a natural individual, they have that weakness. Without it suppressed, the TEAM is not as effective as it would be if it were minimized.

[mastina]

(On that note, players should have the ability to recognize they HAVE weaknesses and are not perfection personified, so. Bragging about how superior your style is, is generally a sign that you haven't thought critically about the flaws inherent in it.)

[mastina]

Here's a Mastina blurb about why early interactive tells beat late interactive tells.

As the author of that article, I should point out that the very next section says much the opposite of what you suggest. Earlygame interactions have their use, but also produce many false positives; lategame interactions are more useful, but scum have an easier time to blend in. A good scumhunter relies on BOTH, because both have their time and place for being used, depending on the circumstances.

I actually think Ellibereth's got the right idea:

Shorter deadlines favor weaktowns while longer deadlines favor stronger towns.

Weaker town players tend to get led astray by the scum more easily as the scum have an increased ease at producing extra volume of content to control the flow of the game. Stronger town players tend to get more accurate as they have extra information available to help them sift through what's a false positive/negative and what's more likely to be a legitimate point.

If there’s a 13 player game.
And the top 3 posters are scum.
The scum will always win.

This also literally writes the reasons for why Geriatric is a good thing and why hyperposting is not the gospel for how to play the game.

It is easier for scum to be in the top posters than it is for town. Or if not easier, then just as easy as town. (It is not in any way easier to be an active poster as town. In my personal experience, it's actually harder; I've noticed that my iso tends to be longer in scumastina games than in equivalent town-mastina games. It's not a conscious thing, either. I don't deliberately control my volume as either alignment. I just post more frequently as scum than I do as town.)

And furthermore.

If the top three posters are town, does that mean the town wins?

I'd wager no, not even close to always. Sometimes? Why, definitely! Sometimes having the top three posters be town will mean town wins. But not always. Not even most of the time.

[Mathdino]

I would just like to point out to everyone that now we have a completed Geriatric Game (KUDOS TO AERONAUT FOR SUBBING ME IN).

And it was SIGNIFICANTLY easier for town to read everyone with less content and more substance per post.

Like, significantly. Like no question. The usual culprits of spamposting and fluffposting also had better reads and more substance which made them easier to read (imo).

Plus it was balanced out by having a neighbourhood with no post restrictions, which was a fantastic idea (not a geriatric neighbourhood but less content to read because fewer people).

Well modded, Aeronaut, and go town.

[Ellibereth]

There are probably people better at reading each type of poster. I think in the end it's really just taste.

[Aeronaut]

There are probably people better at reading each type of poster. I think in the end it's really just taste.

You'd be right! But here we have this thread blasting people whose taste is better served by playing a slower, more methodical game.

[Aeronaut]

Also, I would actually say that as the mod of the first Geriatric game, it was decently even. Went to a 3p Lylo, but obviously this is one game, so more data is needed on this.

[Mulch]

Setup?