Mafiascum.net

Haha Will if you're gonna call me out, just fucking call me out instead of circumlocuting.

In post 24, SummerInWonderland wrote:CONGRATS RECK ON PLAYING A GREAT GAME AND WINNING!! wooooo!

Thanks Jess! Congrats on being maybe the most dominant new player ever. (Except Snakes, but Snakes has transcended playerhood into divine status)

GG all. Was a fun first game back.

btw, comments to the contrary, I was not unaware of the potential idol effect, but I also wanted Dan to be forced to use it.

omg zor hey

yo

Sorry about badmouthing you in my confessional; please don't demod me.

So like

what do we need to change so that winners and good players and final jurors and great mods who run great games don't want to quit

Because if everyone keeps good on their promises, we're losing a lot of talent!!!

It's a hard question because the immediate answer is like "lessen the stakes, put more restrictions in place" but that will dampen games and make them less interesting

Okay, finally had a chance to go through and read the entire spec forum. I skimmed the jury threads but I couldn't read much of them. Here's what I will say now that I've seen everything!

I think spectators tend to be a tad too toxic in shitting on people. You guys have to remember, you have more perspective than anyone else, so it's easier for you to see stuff. It's like how you saw a six person alliance the entire merge but it really wasn't the case. It's like how people thought I was just not willing to work with Dan at all, but I was, he just skeeved me out with the way he was pushing stuff that I disagreed with really hard after every single vote. I think that kind of omniscient knowledge can lead to a lot of toxicity. Players get done with this two month long experience that was exhausting and then they show up in the spec forums and it's all just people relentlessly taking hot fiery shits on them for pages on pages. That alone breeds a draining, negative environment.

The main thing is that spectators want to be entertained and hate seeing boring, obvious things happen. I cannot remember the last time a spectator forum was actually happy with a winner? Or at least someone who got credit for winning instead of being dragged through the mud constantly. I hate to break it to you, but you're playing Survivor/watching Survivor. In these games, people yearning for stability is just what you're going to get. Specs want people to make big moves or big pushes, then once that happens, hate the people who made the big push and want someone else to push them out the door. They want a revolving door of entertainment and that's in conflict with how players play the game. Players want to find stability. It's a paradox: people won't make those big moves spectators want because now the next big move is on them and so on and so forth.

I think a lot of this reluctance is due to how EVERYTHING leaks. That's due to the nature of PMing being the main form of communication in these games. I think what Medevac did with the grouping people off was cool; I'd love to see a way to experiment more with communication styles. Rather than have it be a free-for-all, find some kind of system where open PMing all the time isn't the norm. Limit the # of PMs that can be sent per round or something. Limit the time where PMing is activated. Stuff like this. With less time to talk and firm stuff up & more focus on people knowing "oooh somebody is chatting with someone else alone", blindsides can become more common and people will be more hesitant to leak plans. It would allow for the type of gameplay that specs like to see. But yeah, specs were right. Current site meta is to tell everyone everything because it's better to cover all of your bases.

I really did enjoy this game. Things never got personal for me. I did spin public perception to my advantage after a bit. I did try to butter up Juno so she'd be less likely to stab me. These are all part of the game, no? Even publicly going at Dan didn't feel particularly personal, it was just more public theater for the sake of gameplay. It makes me upset that the mods got upset. I agree with the main critique of my play being that I was paranoid as fuck and nearly shot myself in the foot. It's just the person that I am, mental illness is a hell of a thing. I think I did try to leverage that weakness in PMs to get an advantage, but I might not have displayed that well in my confessional.

Also, other than the Damian pile on and the Juno F5 reactions, I don't think the spec forums were TOO toxic? But I have a threshold for bullshit.

In post 33, xRECKONERx wrote:think a lot of this reluctance is due to how EVERYTHING leaks. That's due to the nature of PMing being the main form of communication in these games. I think what Medevac did with the grouping people off was cool; I'd love to see a way to experiment more with communication styles. Rather than have it be a free-for-all, find some kind of system where open PMing all the time isn't the norm. Limit the # of PMs that can be sent per round or something. Limit the time where PMing is activated. Stuff like this. With less time to talk and firm stuff up & more focus on people knowing "oooh somebody is chatting with someone else alone", blindsides can become more common and people will be more hesitant to leak plans. It would allow for the type of gameplay that specs like to see. But yeah, specs were right. Current site meta is to tell everyone everything because it's better to cover all of your bases.

This is actually the basis behind my Aristocratic Ladies of the English Countryside game.

I find spectators to be the weirdest part of the survivor experience, for what it's worth.

I mean, people sign up to spec/follow along in mafia games.

And Survivor is literally a spectator sport aka TV show, so it makes sense to see it carry over to here where spectators can interact with the game itself as it unfolds.

But... thinking on it now, deadthreads/spec threads for Mafia tend to also be more toxic/assholish than the game itself w/ the omniscient god complex

I will say I really appreciated Cephrir always playing devil's advocate when people got too toxic or unfair

Idea that should be shot down immediately: game where the the specs actually can influence the game in some minor capacity like sending cryptic images found on Google Image Search once per round and players know these images are designed to "tell them" something.

In post 36, xRECKONERx wrote:I mean, people sign up to spec/follow along in mafia games.

And Survivor is literally a spectator sport aka TV show, so it makes sense to see it carry over to here where spectators can interact with the game itself as it unfolds.

But... thinking on it now, deadthreads/spec threads for Mafia tend to also be more toxic/assholish than the game itself w/ the omniscient god complex

I will say I really appreciated Cephrir always playing devil's advocate when people got too toxic or unfair

yeah they do, but they generally can't talk to the players in the game. And even though most spectators are pretty careful not to say anything that would give much away, there's always the possibility and even when nothing has been said it's hard not to read into what's been said to you by a spectator.

Anyway, I'm not saying that specs shouldn't be allowed or anything. Just that they're one of the weirder parts of the game as someone who hasn't played many of these.

Congrats Reck!

Congrats everyone else! Was a fun time.

Aeronaut you were robbed!!!!!!

Ya I'm so glad i asked you to play

All the newbies in this game were great. Congrats Hemminy!

In post 36, xRECKONERx wrote:I will say I really appreciated Cephrir always playing devil's advocate when people got too toxic or unfair

Thank you! I'm glad it didn't go unnoticed.

edit: gdi. -ceph

beepeecee id'ing me out of the gate???

I'm S H O O K

In post 32, Chevre wrote:So like

what do we need to change so that winners and good players and final jurors and great mods who run great games don't want to quit

Because if everyone keeps good on their promises, we're losing a lot of talent!!!

It's a hard question because the immediate answer is like "lessen the stakes, put more restrictions in place" but that will dampen games and make them less interesting

What Will said about specs is on-point. Another thing to remember is that, as specs, you don't see 95% of the game. You don't see the PMs people send each other. You don't see the thoughts in people's heads - you only see what manages to make it to the forum in writing.

And when people do daily or near-daily video confessionals? Yeah, how many people actually watched all 4+ hours of Jeff?

Your understanding of the game as a spec is always going to be limited as fuck.

Also, speaking of toxicity:

Threatening to quit if Juno won or saying that all jurors who voted for Juno were doing so out of spite or petty or whatever is disrespectful both to Juno and those of us who voted for her. You're allowed to disagree (most people did!), but don't act like someone is a fundamentally bad person for viewing the world through a different lens.

And I'm sure I'm going to get plenty of pot-kettle responses to this, but w/e. I'm at least aware of when I'm being a dick to people - I just don't care.

In post 45, BROseidon wrote:Threatening to quit if Juno won or saying that all jurors who voted for Juno were doing so out of spite or petty or whatever is disrespectful both to Juno and those of us who voted for her. You're allowed to disagree (most people did!), but don't act like someone is a fundamentally bad person for viewing the world through a different lens.

None of this happened.

The issue that was taken, specifically, was I think with how self-centered juries have become, to the point where people will go out of their way to be contrarian.

The meta on Mafiascum grows and changes. We did the pagong phase, and after that got defeated, we had a series of unexpected/unpredictable games with some strong winners.

However, the meta has settled again, it seems. And the new meta is some version of "I don't care that people made moves or whatever, I'm going to be mad that people took risks." That's the biggest problem with the modern meta. People don't want to take risks. And if they do -- and those risks pay off -- they're still lambasted for "taking risks". It means that it enforces this meta where people are scared to be the ringleader, scared to make moves, etc. And then, of course, specs & mods are disappointed when their games are boring and nobody's doing anything. It's a vicious cycle.

In order to break the old boring majority alliance/pagong meta, it took some games designed specifically with the aim of breaking that meta. At the tail end of that meta people were constantly complaining and eyerolling about it. And after that meta kinda broke, we got games like Conclave, DW, NAH, Arkham, PSV, Eon. Good, solid games with good, solid winners.

It's gonna take some doing but I think the main issue now is a compounding of multiple problems.
- F3s have become more common and that means people are reacting to this. In F2 meta, you could take someone else with you who had also fucked people over and force the jury to choose. Now, juries seem to just default to picking the person who was the least controversial in a F3.
- For some reason, the idea of being an iconic juror who really gives it to the finalists has become some kinda goal, even for finalists who weren't bad, making it just toxic.
- Juries for so long have disincentivized risky or aggressive play, and now that's what the meta has reacted to, resulting in fairly meh characters making it far.

I'm sure there are other things to this as well but I think it's worth noting that when metas get stale, we see a droop, and we have to actively work to fix it.

also i really wanna gloat on ONE THING

Dan wrote:hermione wants to come 5th place, dear god. Why does she not understand this game.

If dick goes home here my last move was a very very big mistake. In the end dick going home here hurts hermione too, she just doesn't know it yet because everyone is smart enough to know to tell her what she wants to hear up and until they want to vote her out.

okay that's it

Those are good points Reck! I hadn't thought about how juries lately have been punishing risky play, although that may be a result of jury members not caring as much and voting for who they like more. Either way, a large part of it is jurors making everything about themselves. I think this could be countered by only allowing each jury member 1-3 questions like we did in RSX.