Scummies Ideas, Suggestions and Comments Thread

[xRECKONERx]

Best QTs can be wrapped up into Most Enjoyable Game.

[quadz08]

That's fine, IMO, as long as the description indicates as such

[Zdenek]

I'd like to see moderators (perhaps with the players' (private?) advice) nominate one or two players each game (perhaps more depending on the size) for good play. An award could be given out for players who regularly win this in their games.

The idea is to keep track of players who usually play very well in their games. I see the award as being like named to an all-star team.

[zoraster]

I'm not sure I see that as much different than Don Corleone/Paragon other than changing the way it's nominated.

[Zdenek]

I'm not sure I see that as much different than Don Corleone/Paragon other than changing the way it's nominated.

Well, for one thing, it would reward both good town and scum play, as opposed to being for one in particular. Also there are numerous things that could happen in a game that would prevent one from being nominated for one of those awards, while still being deserving of recognition for good play.

[quadz08]

Myeh. I don't think it serves any purpose.

[Zdenek]

Myeh. I don't think it serves any purpose.

I disagree.

I would aesthetically prefer for there to be awards that are given to people for good play that can somehow be judged objectively. However, aside from win-loss ratios, I am not sure that this makes much sense in mafia because of the variety of circumstances that can arise, and I can easily imagine people playing suboptimally (and perhaps even against their win condition) to win an award, and even with win-loss ratios there are issues, especially when it comes to involving replacements. What this would do is track players whose play is good over several games as judged by the moderators and reward it. My hope is that because this award involves judging players in each of their games by different people, it will be somewhat more objective.

[UberNinja]

I agree with Zdenek.

[AGar]

I'm not sure I see that as much different than Don Corleone/Paragon other than changing the way it's nominated.

Well, for one thing, it would reward both good town and scum play, as opposed to being for one in particular. Also there are numerous things that could happen in a game that would prevent one from being nominated for one of those awards, while still being deserving of recognition for good play.

Not really, because players get nominated for good play in one game by that moderator, where they play as one faction (Town, Mafia or 3rd Party). A player can simply be nominated only for town performances or scum performances and thus it's not rewarding them for good town and scum play. So really, what's the purpose of this?

[Zdenek]

I'm not sure I see that as much different than Don Corleone/Paragon other than changing the way it's nominated.

Well, for one thing, it would reward both good town and scum play, as opposed to being for one in particular. Also there are numerous things that could happen in a game that would prevent one from being nominated for one of those awards, while still being deserving of recognition for good play.

Not really, because players get nominated for good play in one game by that moderator, where they play as one faction (Town, Mafia or 3rd Party). A player can simply be nominated only for town performances or scum performances and thus it's not rewarding them for good town and scum play. So really, what's the purpose of this?

Yes, of course that could happen. I don't quite understand why the objections to this idea are vague; it's pretty clear what the purpose is.

I'll try to give an example. It's a bit too extreme, but whatever, you can easily imagine a more realistic one. Suppose these were someone's games.

1. As town outs the remaining scum or gets it lynched with a gambit.
2. As town calls the scum team early in the game and is nk'ed.
3. As town figures out the remaining scum in lylo, but can't convince the remaining town.
4. Wins as town making the correct call in LYLO, for good reasons between two seemingly equally good lynches.
5. As scum gets to 3 player LYLO, without being under any real suspicion, but is lynched because of power role information/setup spectulation.
6. Wins as scum, convincing a townie to vote for someone he had good reason to not vote for.

Now, depending on what else happened in these games, this player could easily not be nominated for any of the current awards, but still be the best player in each of these games. I'm not suggesting that is replace any of the other awards or that it's on the same tier as them, just that it would be a way to recognize players whose play is consistently good. It also gives a way to recognize best role-claim, best play in a losing cause and other things that individually probably don't deserve a scummy, but might, if it's also as part of consistently strong play.

[AGar]

If they're displaying "consistently strong play" in either the town or the scum side of things, odds are someone will notice and nominate them for the respective BOW award.

Being the best player in a game is not only a very subjective call, but it's also not of equal merit across games. Being the best player in a mini normal and being the best player in a large theme with lots of draw are two very different calibers of players. One is gonna be like Glork, and the other is gonna be like... me if I'm lucky. HUUUGE difference.

Of those 6 scenarios, I can honestly say that most people who have been on MS for a year or more and played more than five games have at least achieved two of those "feats", if you will. As a matter of fact... some of them aren't even worth being "rewarded" for. #3 is literally just not being as good of a town player, you failed at half of your job.

Best role-claim and a suitable option are being discussed (or has already been fully discussed and decided on, I'm not 100% on remembering this.). Other than that, this really serves no purpose.

Not to mention the nightmare of logistics this would induce. At any given time, there are likely dozens of games running on-site, not even counting Newbies. Right now, for example, 39 non-newbies are running. 39 players will be "nominated". Who now handles this? What do we even do with these, for that matter?

[Thestatusquo]

I think it might be a great idea to make the scummies mean something more than a mockery of a popularity contest. Does anyone have any ideas for how this could be accomplished?

(note, this is serious. I am not trying to start a fight, I just think that the scummies have become a little bit of a joke.)

[Amrun]

I actually think a move towards objectivity and away from popularity contest would be a great thing for the scummies, but not sure how to accomplish this. So, in short, I agree with TSQ.

[Lost Butterfly]

You can't objectively decide what's deserving of a scummy, I don't think.

[Lost Butterfly]

(note, this is serious. I am not trying to start a fight, I just think that the scummies have become a little bit of a joke.)

'Become'? Do you think it was different in the past? If so, how?

What part do you think is a popularity contest? The actual nomination stage, or the judging process? I mean I guess I can see your point for the nomination stage - there are a lot of entries that are undeserving but they generally seem to get weeded out at the judging stage (unless there's a category full of them)

[zoraster]

Yeah. Unless we go chamber's route of statistics and badges and stuff and a leaderboard, it's going to be difficult to do with any level of objectivity.

I mean, look at what I had to do to get some level of objectivity in my team mafia games (I'm actually kind of proud of that system this year). A long time ago I tried to put together sort of a modified ELO system that was interesting, but probably a bad idea to do universally and far too much work to get anything approaching a decent sample size.

I just think the game itself is pretty subjective. What's good or bad play is often in the eye of the beholder. And that's ESPECIALLY true if you're doing an overall award.

[quadz08]

^^^

I think that's one of the crucial things about mafia; it's not baseball, where you can go all SABERMETRICS and figure out a player's effectiveness based purely on stats and it's pretty much going to be correct. Certain playstyles are effective in certain games with certain other players with certain roles and mechanics and etc. There are simply too many variables, and the game is based too heavily around human interaction to put together any sort of truly meaningful statistics. Hell, even win/loss ratios are unreliable; you could've gotten vigged N1 for being a VI in every town game you play, and still have a 7/2 town record just because the rest of the town was good.

I think judging pretty much has to be subjective; I honestly don't feel that there are any truly meaningful individual statistics in mafia.

[zoraster]

The other thing is that we're not epicmafia or some other site where people can get through 20, 50, 100, etc. games in a month. If we were, we might be able to do some interesting things with statistics and have a good enough sample size to make some sort of thing about it. But the average person probably doesn't play more than 20 games in a year on MS. Let's say you're trying to find the best scum player in the game for the previous year. At 20 games a year, he'll average 4.6 games as scum (at the 3:10 ratio) in that year. Those 4 or 5 games are a ton of evidence to consider when you're doing it subjectively. But no matter how many elements you can figure to pull out of each game for scum, 4 or 5 games is not really enough to make an objective claim.

[AGar]

Solution: Everyone needs to be in 6 games at the same time, at all times.

[quadz08]

GOOD IDEA

HAHA NOPE

[Thestatusquo]

^^^

I think that's one of the crucial things about mafia; it's not baseball, where you can go all SABERMETRICS and figure out a player's effectiveness based purely on stats and it's pretty much going to be correct. Certain playstyles are effective in certain games with certain other players with certain roles and mechanics and etc. There are simply too many variables, and the game is based too heavily around human interaction to put together any sort of truly meaningful statistics. Hell, even win/loss ratios are unreliable; you could've gotten vigged N1 for being a VI in every town game you play, and still have a 7/2 town record just because the rest of the town was good.

I think judging pretty much has to be subjective; I honestly don't feel that there are any truly meaningful individual statistics in mafia.

I almost completely disagree. I 100% think that there are almost surely possible metrics that could be used to objectively rate mafia skill. Just because we haven't created them yet does not mean they are impossible or even that difficult.

To continue your analogy, sabermetric analysis of baseball is a relatively new development. Old metrics, like wins for a pitcher, RBIs, etc, are useless statistics, just like game wins are useless statistics in mafia. There is almost surely, however, metrics that can be used, and developed.

Furthermore, there are statistics in baseball that are capable of powerfully synthesizing different things to get overall pictures. Stats like wOBA generally paint a portrait of offense, and is useful even when comparing players with completely different playstyles (i.e. Power hitters who strike out a lot vs. Fast guys with high OB%) Hell, in baseball we've even invented metrics which allow us to compare players across eras and accounting for park factors. (WAR).

Basically, your statement doesn't make any sense at all.

Although, I would say all of this is besides the point. Less popularity contest != we need to create objective statistical measures. It is a strawman you are attacking, sir. There just needs to not be a system where basically winning a scummy means you happen to be friends/in a game with one of the 10 people who care about the scummies.

[Thestatusquo]

I would prefer a system where ballots are given to players who either play or mod a lot of games. Perhaps ex scummy winners could be given ballots as well, as well as any site mods. Basically create an academy of the scummies. You get a wide diverse group of people who have votes, which nullifies the popularity contest aspect of a) the nomination process (which is really the worst part of the whole thing) and b) the small sample and biases of the tiny group of scummies judges.

The main disadvantage of this system, as I see it, would be that with a large amount of people, less of them would read every game. But I think that this is answered back soundly by aggregation. By giving a large number of ballots, you get more eyes reading more games which means you're more likely to reach the correct outcome. And also, this is answered back by the fact that we are giving ballots to a group which has seen the most games and has the most experience with good mafia.

Shrug. I just hate the current system. I think it gives the wrong people awards a large % of the time, and rewards flashy attention getting play and mafiascum politics rather than actual playskill.

[Zdenek]

Just since I am interested, TSQ, what do you think of my method or more generally having people "nominated" from each game?
It would mostly solve the popularity contest, since people would be recongnized for their play in each game, the people doing the judging at that level would have read the game and hopefully since playars are just being judged on a game by game basis, their notoriety shouldn't play too much of a role in the judging.

[Thestatusquo]

I think that would be good in that it would get rid of the nomination process that we currently have now, but I think there are some issues. For one, who is doing the nomination? The players in the game? the mod of the game? Etc. For another, I don't think it solves the issues in terms of team performances. It doesn't work with best team scum and town performance. It also doesn't work with body of work awards such as paragon.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I think it puts an unreasonable burden on whomever you have judging the ceremony. Are you really asking judges to read every game that is played in a given year? That's just not possible for people who have lives outside of reading mafia games.

[Zdenek]

I think that would be good in that it would get rid of the nomination process that we currently have now, but I think there are some issues. For one, who is doing the nomination? The players in the game? the mod of the game? Etc. For another, I don't think it solves the issues in terms of team performances. It doesn't work with best team scum and town performance. It also doesn't work with body of work awards such as paragon.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I think it puts an unreasonable burden on whomever you have judging the ceremony. Are you really asking judges to read every game that is played in a given year? That's just not possible for people who have lives outside of reading mafia games.

Well, when I conceived of it, it was as an additional award, which would essentially be awarded to anyone who broke a certain threshold in both a minimum number of nominations and percentage of games nominated. I guess it wouldn't work as a way to deal with the current awards.