Newbie Setup (Matrix6 implemented)

[Vi]

What am I missing for baseline assumptions? Do we aim for a 50-55% Town EV?

Too high - you're saying Town is as likely to win as not by rolling dice. What you want is an even EV across all setups.

1. Are themeing things precluded entirely? i.e. giving everyone flavorful names but regular roles

Yes, or at least I would argue as much for Newbie games - Mr. Flay's naming scheme is okay IMO for Normals.

2. What is this site even shooting for with the newbie games? Teaching? Fun? Even winning percentage? Or a mix of two or three?

Teaching and keeping potential flakers out of the other queues. "Fun" is highly subjective and a semi-open filled with newbies doesn't qualify for a lot of people.

Revised 2of3:
Town gets 2 of {Cop, Jailkeeper, Vanilla Townie} + 5 VTs.
If Town has 1 PR, then Scum gets 1 of {Rolecop, 1-Shot Strongman}; if Town has both PRs, then Scum also gets both PRs.

Nothing immediately stands out as a deal-breaker, though four power roles in a nine-player game is kind of high given the usual. I'd be willing to see it tested.

[Vi]

@Flay and 50%: It IS possible to have a game that is balanced at something other than 50%.
Plus high-EV setups I can think of offhand rely on role silliness to screw over the scum. (e.g. Pie E7 - best case is you get counterclaimed IIRC)

If we're

THAT

concerned about whether or not assignments are random, have singersigner

[...]

...assign the setups.

I understand how horrible it feels to have someone say YOU WILL RUN THIS AND YOU WILL RUN IT THE WAY I TELL YOU TO RUN IT. And frankly

that's why I stopped running Newbie games

(under VRK). Etc.

[Vi]

Newbie Setup Ideas (any combination of these together in a "pot" which the list mod could choose from):

1 DoctorCop (one or the other, each night)
1 Backup DoctorCop (unknown to himself)
1 Mafia Roleblocker
1 Mafia Goon
5 VTs

OR

1 Doctor
1 Macho Cop
1 Mafia Roleblocker
1 Mafia Goon
5 VTs

OR

1 Tracker
1 1-shot Vigilante
2 Mafia Goons
5 VTs

OR

1 Cop
1 Mafia Godfather
1 Mafia Goon
6 VTs

OR

1 Cop
1 Mafia Rolecop
1 Mafia Goon
1 Commuter
5 VTs


Any of those tickle any of your fancies?

Punishes fakeclaims heavily, as a claim from a certain power role can immediately tie down which setup you're playing. (Then again, the scum will know 3/5 of the time exactly which setup is in play from their own power roles.)

[Vi]

As a newbie, would my opinion be at all valuable here? I just completed first mafia game on this site a few days back, and have only played maybe 3-4 mafia games on other sites, so a newbie in every sense. I quite like the semi-open format - the mafia games I used to play prior to this site were open format and just tended to devolve into role claims and a competition of "who can more credibly pretend to be the cop"; it wasn't very fun. The main thing I dislike about the current format is the pace. I was used to 2/3 day Days - going to 3 week days seemed nuts, it just drags on. The other thing was why are Newbie games done in batches? You can end up waiting almost 2 weeks? That's enough time to lose a lot of people. And a final point is, the more power roles the better. People are smarter than they get given credit for, and they can usually work out the optimal or at least half decent play for their role fairly quickly, plus it gives them incentive to play. Nobody wants to be Vanilla Townie if they can help it.

Anyway. Probably an entirely unwanted opinion, but my £0.02.

Some thoughts for you -
1) Semi-Open is cool! Cooler than Opens, anyway.
2) Pace - Newbie games are, bar none, the slowest games on the site. If you know how to play Mafia, I legitimately suggest you move to a different queue.
3) Power roles aplenty - Actually, there are a fair few people who

want

to be V.Townie. It's also tougher to balance games when they turn into power-role fests; it's not so much a function of people not using their role properly.

[Vi]

I want to throw my setup here again because I strongly support arming our newbies

Is that like arming the homeless?

Compulsive N1 Vig sounds like code for "policy vig the Newbies" which regardless of whether it actually happens will etc.

[Vi]

Vi: it's compulsive because I've noticed many IC's are not funhavers and would probably say something like "blah blah blah withhold your shot it's anti-town unless we all agree on the target, your ability is just an extra lynch we can agree on" instead of the far superior "on night one shoot someone right in their big dumb face"

Oh no, I understand this is a legitimate concern, but still, policy vigging the newbies.

Now, this does call to mind Mr. Flay's "My Name Is Earl" setup which IIRC has the same confirmability but less shooting.

[Vi]

How do people feel about a format which is one of the following set-ups selected randomly?

Goon / RoleBlocker vs. Cop / Doctor / Villager x5
Goon / RoleCop vs. Cop / Jailkeeper / Villager x5
Goon / RoleBlocker vs. Cop / Named Town / Villager x5
Goon / RoleCop vs. Doctor / Jailkeeper / Villager x5
Goon / RoleCop vs. Doctor/ Named Town / Villager x5
Goon / RoleBlocker vs. Jailkeeper / Named Town / Villager x5
Goon / RoleCop vs. Named Town / Named Town / Villager x5

The 3 most common Mafia roles versus the 4 most common Town roles; with set-ups from 2of4 where Town used to be disadvantaged given Names to balance them without complicating the set-up and set-ups from 2of4 where Mafia was disadvantaged given RoleBlocker.

Are the names different when you have two Named Townies?

To be kind of honest, one of the major theory draws of F11 is that there weren't always two Town power roles in the game, allowing for any degree of fakeclaiming.

[Vi]

To accept a scummy, you should have to play in a newbie game. Community service for the 'better' player, and Will be good for newer players.

Thoughts?

You're taking this Scummies thing a bit too seriously.

[Vi]

I can't get over that avatar Vi

I think I'm going to be deluged in Fire

Emblems

Stones tomorrow, but today it's Christmas Eevee.

[Vi]

and if we say that it is statistically significantly unlikely a format is acceptably balanced when the probability that the win ratio recorded or or a win ratio more extreme than the one recorded occurs is less than 10%, then we have sufficient evidence to conclude that Cop/Doctor is too town-biased, and Doctor/Town is too scum-biased. That's two of the six possible draws.

You're stating this as an example and not as a fact, correct? Saying "statistically significant"

means

something.

Also, 40:60 might be a better window to shoot for.

[Vi]

I'd be willing to buy 9P LyLo (5-4) as such an improbable Town win that it's effectively an autoloss but not 5P LyLo (3-2).

In addition, no, 22.86% is not nothing. In fact, one can argue that it's actually better for Newbies to have the experience of seeing what scum do lategame, because Towns

don't

lynch randomly.

but personally I'd have said that a 12.96% chance for your win percentage to be reduced to 22.86% at the end of your first turn largely independent from your first turn play is simply too much.

Where is this 12.96% coming from and why do I get the sense it involves saying D1 lynches are up to even random chance?

[Vi]

While I'm here, assuming that Town wins ~45% of games onsite (which IIRC is a high estimate), Town already wins more than average in 2of4 (82/152). Even if you remove the bias against Doc/Townie this would probably still be so--

Note: If each of the six setups was present exactly 1/6 of the time, the above data can be corrected to:

48.32% mafia victory
51.68% town victory

Also, the Cop/Doc setup on its own is indeed unbalanced toward Town assuming a 45% mean Town win percent.

[Vi]

May be from my different background, I'm not used to the percentage for win changing in such a severe manner largely independently from my first turn play.

You keep saying "independently". Are you saying that it doesn't matter how well you yourself play D1?

I can see the merit in showing newbies what scum do lategame; but surely that experience can also be established by simply making games swing less for both scum and mafia so that between equally skilled teams late-game resolutions are more common?

"Equally

skilled

teams" is an inherent problem in the Mafia model - I don't think you'll necessarily get that with adding another power role. (Consider that the scum can kill the most skilled Townies while the Town is reluctant to lynch the most skilled Mafiosi. Also consider that process of elimination doesn't take a huge amount of skill

per se

.)

Out of curiosity, what would you refer to as an "equally skilled teams late-game resolution"?

I just thought that if I were to design a format from a purely technical basis, I'd try to reduce swing where possible.

There's certainly merit in that. The problem is that reducing swing tends to involve adding power roles such that the scum get pinned down and the game gets reduced to sussing out claims.

Pie E7 (2x Goon vs. Cop, Doc, 3xV. Townie) is an example of this, and I think I brought it up before. Town's chances from D2 on, except in the case where both power roles are dead by D2 and no scum are obvious (i.e. the Town quicklynched an otherwise uncounterclaimed power role), can be brought down to as low as 50%.

[Vi]

@first paragraph: It seems like you're using the "newbies are bad at Mafia" argument. Would you say that Newbie games

should

be more in favor of Town to compensate? If so, what does the current set of win %s mean?

@second paragraph: For some disturbing reason both of my DS's slots have Pokemon games in them now. I only play them to kill time <.< But etc.
The issue is that if the Town mislynches or if the power role dies,

they did something wrong/made bad choices

. The positive feedback issue is still there, but it's not through no fault of the Town.

Now, remind me to bring you back for the next argument about the legitimacy of replacements >__>

If people are fine with the swing involved in x/Villager, then the only remaining problems are Doctor/Villager and Cop/Doctor. If you made all Cops present in the newbie format Macho Cops (which really only effects Cop/Jailkeeper and Cop/Doctor) and simply removed Doctor/Villager, that could also be a solution.

Removing Doc/Townie means that the Doctor is guaranteed the existence of another Town power role in the game. I don't know what that translates to from a strategic point of view (I can't think of anything interesting).

EDIT: Alternatively, why not increase the game to 11 players and experimenting with some formats based on that?

I think the major reason people like 9P is because it doesn't lead to cheesy setups like 7P but is still short for the newbies' "test run" experience. But, etc.

[Vi]

Starts at 902
Starts at 1077

[Vi]

I'm curious, why is it 1 IC and 2 SE per game and not more/less?

More, and it ensures that almost half of the Newbie game isn't comprised of Newbies.

When I started, there were no such things as SEs and there were two ICs in the game. I think they canned that because they couldn't get enough ICs.

[Vi]

it's definitely difficult stepping out of rtr, but there's no real way to fix this. at the end of the day people don't always act the same in newbies as in other games, or at the very least you're getting/dealing with people who are good at acting with newbies.

Play with the people who were in your Newbie game. That's what I did.

Also, be someone that those people would want to play with again, but that goes without saying

[Vi]

Is it unusual that it takes a while to break into the GD/Banter of a website? Seems pretty common IME, heck I stayed away from GD here for ages because I thought it was pretty toxic.

It's a function of how closely-knit the culture is, how well it suffers fools, and what subjects get discussed.
It's as I tell people in the Newbie Introductions thread--
1) If you already know how to play Mafia and don't mind the timing on this site, don't play a Newbie game

(I was later forced to add "unless DDD is ICing")

2) Stay out of GD.

[Vi]

Having someone who can vouch for you is not a bad thing at all if you're worried about not fitting in. If you think you can hold your own already, though, the three-week deadlines and being surrounded by, well,

newbies

in a sandbox may be more likely to turn you off.

FWIW, I know exactly one person whose first game was a L.Theme.

[Vi]

I envision multiple games where some newbie claims scum as Town or whichever, gets run up at lightning speed, and makes a stupid kill to end the game in two pages. Thanks for playing!

back of the queue

I also disagree that Vengefuls are anything like the other games on this site.

[Vi]

What would people think about raising the requirement to be an SE to three games completed to force newbies out into the site for at least one game after their two games as a newbie?

I would like to quote this to make sure it isn't missed. I think this would be a great addition to the Newbie Queue and prevent people from essentially becoming "professional newbies" by playing two newbie games and then just being an SE for a long time. It would also raise the quality of play in Newbie Games. Almost everyone who commented on this idea when it discussed liked the idea, IIRC.

I'm not sure how your idea does anything to solve the problem you're perceiving; it just makes them a "newbie" (who can play another newbie game) for one game longer.

[Vi]

...Hm. Could someone with more time than me take a look at how many career Newbie players there are relative to the whole set of SEs/ICs?

[Vi]

Off-topic: I ICd once and I think I chased my players away.

I'm noticing "you only need experience and a little bit of patience to be an IC" is clashing with "you need to break down everyone's play and your own and explain it all for the benefit of the class". The latter is certainly not a BAD thing, but most people would never do that outside a Newbie game - it's an example of the kind of instructional weight that gets placed on the role. I do agree that an IC should be willing to stick around for postgame and answer questions, but it's easy to want them to turn them into Pro Analysts.

Somewhat farther off-topic:

4. town jailkeeper, mafia roleblocker, town 1-shot bulletproof

[Vi]

Somewhat farther off-topic:

4. town jailkeeper, mafia roleblocker, town 1-shot bulletproof

That'd be a fun game, soon as JK claims he is worthless (RB acts before JK) and BP is the only thing that can be slightly worthwhile from that point on.

I'm looking at it from the other direction: That's a lot of ways to miss a kill.

[Vi]

All you really need to do is answer questions for players when they have them or if they're not sure what to do, but aside from that the best thing you can do as an IC is teach by example by simply playing the game. You will teach newbies far more than you think by just playing. There's so much for them to learn just in breaking down your play after it's over and you explaining your play as necessary when it's over.

many people don't do it for silly "not good enough" reasons when they would do just fine playing as they normally do, and doing a more extensive past-mortem.

Then after the game, show the newer players where they went right, where they went wrong, and what they can improve on.