Open 463: Black Flag Nightless (Game Over)

[F-16_Fighting_Falcon]

It is kinda funny you can figure out who is making changes to your page. I keep doing it to Eidolon's page.

[Oversoul]

That was N thank you very much

I stalk other things

Also, grok

You're Eidolon too?

[F-16_Fighting_Falcon]

LOL, no. Eidolon and I used to play mafia on a different site. I keep changing her page and updating stuff and writing blurbs about her to surprise her.

[Regfan]

Thanks for the game CFJ, was really enjoyable and challenging even if it grew frustratingly hard to piece it all together at times. I think the balance of nightless and white flag style games generally depend on the quality of the playerlist. Weaker playerlists in this setup allow for scum to spin paranoia and push towards a fairly easy win otherwise they have to push lynches on town that fight hard against it. I do think maybe adding another VT and a 1-shot scum day kill might be an interesting way to cope with the problem of scum not being able to shoot an obvtown player that is taking control.

Was an absolute pleasure to play with Empire not in a hydra as it gave me a way to make sure that my thoughts shared in thread were understandable and reasonable. Also really glad to see that I was right about Absta/Deadpool being town because if they were scum I think Tammy would never have let me down.

At the end another strong town-reads [Deadpool, Cerulean] end process of elimination of plausible pairings made both N and Soul the most optimal lynches so I don't think there was a way we were going to lose this unless there was a massive blow up and people started doubting us or pushing on Deadpool which was unlikely. Oversouls initial wall-of-thoughts and his cases despite them being bad alongside with his follow through on hunting down absta replace out things were really what saved Soul from being instantly lynched after their Post 902 which I still think is the scummiest post in the game given the context of it but scum really did well to delay and hang out as long as they did, they had me re-looking over and over and over again at the interactions to make sure I wasn't missing something and that it had to be at least one of N or Soul. I'd have enjoyed watching them attempt to try and push on a Deadpool/Us team the next day though.

[Regfan]

we did suspect she was town admittedly like 80% sure but i made comments to regfan saying how she'd fit with x and y as scum to make him paranoid

Also posts like the above are the reason that Faraday should be banned.

[Mehdi2277]

Well I planned to push a dead/Thor or CES team. N was going to push the dead/jt team.

Another thing that made the game interesting was the sheer number of hydras. That and the amount of walls this game produced.

[Ser Arthur Dayne]

Another thing that made the game interesting was the sheer number of hydras.

Yea we had 19 players in total (if I counted right) participate in this game when it's a 9p game, which was pretty cool.

[Empire]

At least I'm the beautiful one in our hydra, Regfan.

(Nice av, Arthur.)

[callforjudgement]

cfj, in the dead qt you talked about flavour for if scum won. Can you post that? I liked reading your flavour.

Spoiler: For the day 5 lynch, if the game went that long

It was afternoon. The psychologist hadn't even considered that she might have ended up climbing this high; the air was starting to get noticeably thinner, and they'd passed the snow line some time ago. Progress was slow; climbing rock was one thing, but climbing up through snow and ice quite another, and she hadn't brought equipment for that. It seemed quite plausible that slips and falls up this high might be genuinely accidental, rather than merely "accidental". Things had to end soon, one way or the other; if the sun set, it seemed unlikely any of them would survive the night, especially without anywhere to pitch the tents.

The prisoners were just as aware of the fact, too. They knew they had to make a decision soon, and it happened; there wasn't even an attempt to disguise the act this time. Just a quick agreement, a brawl, a head bashed in, and a body bleeding out in the snow.

(Pretty short, because it necessarily has victory flavour for one faction or the other after it.)

Spoiler: For a scum victory

And then, she knew something was wrong. Even though she hadn't been listening to the conversations behind her, it was clear that the mood had changed; the remaining prisoners had decided to throw in with the ringleaders. Always a risk in a group this small, really. No real hope of controlling them now.

She was still ahead of them, though; further up the mountain. She'd intentionally given herself no way to stop them escaping; if they turned round and started moving back down, there was nothing she could do about it. And this high up the mountain, if the prisoners wanted to survive the trip back down, this was their most obvious option.

And it was as she'd planned. The prisoners had all the food. They had the tents. They had most of the climbing equipment. They chased her for a bit, but stopped before long; they might have been able to catch her, but ensuring they survived was more important. They started working their way down the mountain, back to freedom. This was the first day of the rest of their lives.

And the psychologist? Well, she had to climb further and further up to make sure she'd lost them. And by that point, she was mostly lost herself. She wasn't going to be able to continue her life working for the prison any more after this, but the first priority was to try to continue her life at all. She worked her way around the mountain a bit, to ensure she wouldn't run into the prisoners by mistake upon overtaking them, and started working her way back down. The last I heard of her, she was still trying to work her way down, even though the sun had set, aiming for the lights of the cities below.

I don't know if she made it. But if she did, I'm sure she's a long, long way away by now. Still climbing mountains in a panic, forever in fear of being caught by the prisoners she helped to escape, weeping at the deaths of the ones that were only trying to help her.

I actually took two tries to write the end of that one. I tried describing her death, but wasn't really satisfied with the way it turned out.

Also, I don't understand why replacements were in an issue in this game. Anyone care to elaborate?

They threw off the gameplan for scum somewhat; it's hard trying to mislead one bunch of players, and having to deal with the fresh eyes of another.

[Tammy]

Oh, all of your scenes were awesome by the way.

[Vi]

I think there's a bit of a runaway-replacement problem with this setup. Normally, as games go on, the playerlist gets worse and worse over time, as scum NK the best players and town lynch the people who they think are scum (who might be good players or bad players). Playing as nightless was designed to avoid the issue, but there was a bit of a reverse effect happening instead: in general, better players replace out less than worse players, and the players who replace them are often good (we got some pretty good replacements this game, although there were some dubious ones as well). So the playerlist just got better and better and got a little out of control as a result. This isn't a problem in general, but it rather worked against the scum this time because they had to stick it through to the end, whereas the frequently-replaced slots got less scrutiny.

No, cfj, it IS a problem beyond this game. This is the third time in three scum games I've been in that lynchbait Townies getting replaced by, say, Justin Timberlake has thoroughly screwed over the team.

Player list

Voidedmafia
Justin Timberlake (Regfan + Faraday)

Maybe mislynch bait

Sixty (Vi + Tierce)
PiggyGal15
Cerulean (Empire + Tammy)
Cogito Ergo Sum

Definitely mislynch bait

Mislynch bait

N
Soul2277 (Mehdi2277 + Oversoul)
Thor665
Deadpool (Ser Arthur Dayne + F-16_Fighting_Falcon)

Maybe mislynch bait

I mean look at this, to say nothing of Cerulean starting in the game.

Never mind that replacements can and DO by their nature completely change the game state. They haven't been dragged into the ennui and confusion that naturally affects players who have been in the game the whole time, and it can completely break scum's control of the game.

Good game from JT and CES and especially Empire, and yes we (Sixty) got our world rocked, but this is bullshit. It's to the point where long games

help

Town because predatory replacements have more of a chance to blow games wide open.

i don't get the hammer. yes they had 2 players very strongly convinced they were scum but vm was probably the lynch. so eh the quickhammer felt a tactically poor play. at the very least n and soul could have used some more towncred from lynching you normally.

We weren't ever going to get out of the vise that Empire and JT had, and were worried that the tide would turn and we would be lynched Day 1 instead. So we cashed in.

[callforjudgement]

Perhaps it'd be worth taking that to MD, because it sounds like a symptom of a more general problem. (How do you square the difficulty scum have in dealing with replacements, with the difficulty that town generally seem to have winning at all, incidentally? Imbalances in the setups, or something else?)

[Vi]

It's true that this problem is increasing Town win rates, so I'm sure it would be attractive to some people from a purely pragmatic point of view, but I don't think that's how we should be effecting that.

[callforjudgement]

Oh, that's not quite what I meant; my reaction was "well if there's a reasonably clear townsided bias in how the games work out in practice, htf are the setups so scumsided that they keep getting won by scum anyway?".

[Regfan]

Vi, what solution would there be to prevent replacements impacting the game so massively though?

I can't think of one other than attempting to minimize the number of replacements out each game by creating some sort of "X has replaced out of Z many games" list to make people feel bad about replacing out of games while remaining active on the site.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

Vi, what solution would there be to prevent replacements impacting the game so massively though?

Modkills obviously?

[Regfan]

I don't think that's a good solution at all.

[callforjudgement]

If I'd modkilled every slot that had to replace out, scum would have won by default. (Also, that's been tried. It didn't work, IIRC.)

The pattern may happen in reverse as well, incidentally. If weak scum flake out, strong scum may replace into their slot, and be unlikely to be suspected for a while. (Replacements seem to get an easier time of things for a while, generally.)

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I know, cfj. Vi was a member of BaM.

I don't think that's a good solution at all.

Yeah but it's a fun thing to plead for.

[Vi]

Vi, what solution would there be to prevent replacements impacting the game so massively though?

I can't think of one other than attempting to minimize the number of replacements out each game by creating some sort of "X has replaced out of Z many games" list to make people feel bad about replacing out of games while remaining active on the site.

Replacements happen. Some are legitimate, some aren't. We can discuss the Katsukis of the world and talk about how site culture is moving toward an attitude of "if you aren't having fun, just replace out", and ideally replace it with a mentality of mods generally not allowing people who replace out to play in their games.

The other half comes in predatory replacements, people who see a chance to dominate a game they're not in and replace in so they can play the hero. I fully understand why people do this; I question how many of those people have been on the receiving end of that happening to them.

Solving the first problem mitigates the second, and conveniently the first problem is the easier one to fix.

[Vi]

Oh, that's not quite what I meant; my reaction was "well if there's a reasonably clear townsided bias in how the games work out in practice, htf are the setups so scumsided that they keep getting won by scum anyway?".

It doesn't happen in every game.

[F-16_Fighting_Falcon]

Vi, what solution would there be to prevent replacements impacting the game so massively though?

I can't think of one other than attempting to minimize the number of replacements out each game by creating some sort of "X has replaced out of Z many games" list to make people feel bad about replacing out of games while remaining active on the site.

Replacements happen. Some are legitimate, some aren't. We can discuss the Katsukis of the world and talk about how site culture is moving toward an attitude of "if you aren't having fun, just replace out", and ideally replace it with a mentality of mods generally not allowing people who replace out to play in their games.

The other half comes in predatory replacements, people who see a chance to dominate a game they're not in and replace in so they can play the hero. I fully understand why people do this; I question how many of those people have been on the receiving end of that happening to them.

Solving the first problem mitigates the second, and conveniently the first problem is the easier one to fix.

That seems like you are saying JT replaced in for less than stellar reasons but I really think their replacing in was beneficial for the game as a whole. In effect, they were doing cfj a favor by filling in when a player left. I for instance had an overall positive learning experience because of them. I doubt they replaced in for malicious purposes i.e. to dominate the game and "play the hero." But that is just one way of putting it. It could have been that they just saw an interesting game that they could get into and have fun and they are natural town leaders. Their replacing in also had a halo effect: Arthur and I wanted to sign up for a different game but chose this one instead because Arthur wanted to play with Faraday and I too was interested.

[Tierce]

Vi never said their purpose was 'malicious'. A replacement that is doing anything less than playing to win is a poor replacement.

The point is that replacements can strongly alter the gamestate. Town doesn't usually play for the long game, but scum have to. Therefore, replacing a weak scum player with a stronger one will help scum (less odds of being lynched and better odds of being a capable planner), but replacing lynchbait Town with a strong Town player can be utterly devastating for scum long term plans.

[Vi]

I think I may have put the cart before the horse.

Question for Faregfan: why replace into this game?

[Thor665]

I can't think of one other than attempting to minimize the number of replacements out each game by creating some sort of "X has replaced out of Z many games" list to make people feel bad about replacing out of games while remaining active on the site.

Replacements happen. Some are legitimate, some aren't. We can discuss the Katsukis of the world and talk about how site culture is moving toward an attitude of "if you aren't having fun, just replace out", and ideally replace it with a mentality of mods generally not allowing people who replace out to play in their games.[/quote]
I actually endorse the 'replace out if no fun' concept - if they stay they are a detriment to their team. It's no different from replacing out because you don't have time to play, which is also a detriment to your team.

I'd agree that I would like to see more attention given to serial flakers. We have some site policing of this habit, but it would be awesome if something akin to the karma system went back into play.

The other half comes in predatory replacements, people who see a chance to dominate a game they're not in and replace in so they can play the hero. I fully understand why people do this; I question how many of those people have been on the receiving end of that happening to them.

I've never even considered this as a thing - do you really think it is?
I replace in a lot, but I do it more to avoid Day 1 derp and also to be a 'good guy' to mods I like.