Scummers You Miss (Ahh, the memories)

[Porochaz]

30 days:

Start	End	Duration	Days
9/23/07 10:23	12/31/15 14:06	261031391	3021.2
3/6/16 20:20	5/1/17 11:50	36340209	420.6

Thats about right. Obviously the difference is my first actual post against my join date.

(Thanks to Kison, for the data)

[xRECKONERx]

the meta shifted, CAPS LOCK happened

im still borderline sorry about that

[shaft.ed]

I was part of generation wall o text
that was just as bad

[rb]

haven't played a game with Not_Mafia for about 8 days

i miss him

[Cheery Dog]

If we look at people who've posted at least once per week without interruption, Cheery Dog has the all time greatest nonstop streak going all the way back to Jul 1, 2012. VRK comes in second place with a streak between Jan 1 2008 - Oct 10 2011.

To look at it fairly, though, we'd have to ignore the big gap from the 2012 crash.

I'm going to have to take a break for a week now, I feel bad having something like that on my shoulders.

[Cheery Dog]

I assume the longest I have gone without posting is the gap between joining the newbie queue and making my first post in my first newbie game though.
Might be tough to beat.

[Cheery Dog]

I actually just looked harder, I avoided having my weekly streak end with the May 2014 trouble by just under 3 hours.

[Vi]

the meta shifted, CAPS LOCK happened

im still borderline sorry about that

don't be sorry about how you won a game of social manipulation by being good at social manipulation

I was part of generation wall o text
that was just as bad

Not as bad, but I'm glad

mandatory

walls of text ended.

[xRECKONERx]

Meh, SDC heralded a huge meta shift that turned the game down the path it is on now where I can't stand playing.

[Not_Mafia]

What's SDC?

[Annadog40]

Sudden Death Calamity?

[Not_Mafia]

Something something Crash I'm guessing

[xRECKONERx]

Screaming Death Clan

[Not_Mafia]

So you brought about he meta you hate?

[xRECKONERx]

Basically.

I think SDC was the first real time on the site that there was a shift away from purely methodical/analytical gameplay and a shift towards the aggressive spamming and all caps rage. Which then gave way to the current meta which is basically spamming shitposts with maybe one word of content per page.

It's not that nobody had played in that way before, it's that at the time (2010-2011ish), for those two years, all of the SDC were like... pretty ubiquitous on the site. It was a good bet at least one of us would be in any given game. And then the culture started spreading and more and more people started playing in that way. And it wasn't just memes, like, the playstyle actually worked. I think the best example is Psychic Mafia, where spam rage posting resulted in a perfect game: mafia lynched D1, mafia vigged N1, mafia lynched D2. And it was a grand total of 17 pages and I think like 12 hours of time spent total with the game open.

I think that's what made the meta stick... people were using that gameplay style and it was

actually working

. Then I won Paragon that year and by 2012 the SDC style of gameplay was fucking everywhere. And then people got lazier and lazier and it just became memes.

I still have such high respect for those old school players from the 2005-2009ish era who can still post thoughtful, long posts with great content.

[Untrod Tripod]

those old school players from the 2005-2009ish era who can still post thoughtful, long posts with great content.

and then there's me

[kuribo]

Basically.

I think SDC was the first real time on the site that there was a shift away from purely methodical/analytical gameplay and a shift towards the aggressive spamming and all caps rage. Which then gave way to the current meta which is basically spamming shitposts with maybe one word of content per page.

It's not that nobody had played in that way before, it's that at the time (2010-2011ish), for those two years, all of the SDC were like... pretty ubiquitous on the site. It was a good bet at least one of us would be in any given game. And then the culture started spreading and more and more people started playing in that way. And it wasn't just memes, like, the playstyle actually worked. I think the best example is Psychic Mafia, where spam rage posting resulted in a perfect game: mafia lynched D1, mafia vigged N1, mafia lynched D2. And it was a grand total of 17 pages and I think like 12 hours of time spent total with the game open.

I think that's what made the meta stick... people were using that gameplay style and it was

actually working

. Then I won Paragon that year and by 2012 the SDC style of gameplay was fucking everywhere. And then people got lazier and lazier and it just became memes.

I still have such high respect for those old school players from the 2005-2009ish era who can still post thoughtful, long posts with great content.

The biggest problem with site meta and raging is that there was a time when it worked because it caught people off guard. You move people out of their comfort zone and strike their weakest point. I've said it before with regards to my method--- there comes a point where everyone's already seen it before and it doesn't really move them out of that comfort zone. Like, honestly, at this point? No one gives a shit if I scream at them. No one gives a shit if you yell, because they've seen it so many times. It's just "Oh, that's just Reck, he does that." "Oh, that's just kuribo, all I have to do is weather the storm." Hell, I'd probably stop screaming in games if people didn't bitch about how I'm being "too nice and must be scum," nevermind the fact that I can be just as toxic as scum. As for raging, it's like any other style or strategy in any game or sport- There's always a counter, it's just a matter of someone figuring it out and then that counter becoming widely known. And not only that, but rageposting is EASY. Getting pissed off and spewing into the thread is easy to do (though taxing emotionally) but it's hard to do WELL, and hard to do in an effective way. It's like Fate once told someone years ago, "The style isn't just yelling." If you're not yelling for a reason, then what are you even doing?

And I too hate the spamming/shitpost/memes style that's become site meta, but I also think part of that comes from the age-old "town players are more easy going and casual" trope that's been around forever. It's that fallacy taken to its natural extreme--- everyone wants to be more easygoing and casual, shitposting is seen as town, so everyone shitposts. Nobody wants to explain their reads because "making cases is scummy" and "lol u tryhard" it's like what the fuck, man?

[rb]

tbh i think the internet's just eroded the cognitive faculties of most people who grew up with it, so we're all just literally fucking morons with biochemical cocktails geared for maximum instant-gratification, something that long cases that might get ignored don't provide

not even being sarcastic

[shaft.ed]

so we obviously need to bring vollkan back

[Vi]

To be perfectly honest I'm 100% on board with shitposting and would be totally okay with a game where everyone was trying to out-troll each other, but I hate how when reading games I can't ever shake the sense that rather than "this person actually has a method to what they're doing" it's more like "this person is a moron and/or doesn't actually care about playing Mafia".

Basically, given the option, you should be Faraday.

[zakk]

rb is basically correct. the intelligence of internet communication has eroded with the proliferation of memes. the intelligence of the communicators themselves may not have changed for the worse, but internet culture has surely taken a profound toll on the way we interact as a site community.

reck is also right in that when something different comes on the scene, and appears to work, it will spawn copycats galore until everyone is tired of it and it becomes the norm, and then it's up to the true innovators to buck the meta and succeed by applying a method to their madness in proper quality and quantity given a dynamic social situation, such that despite the droll mundanity of the previously ubiquitous cultural meta, they can stand out and shine above.

one example of how a mod of this current meta has consistently proven themselves on another level is varsoon. he fills a void that mods like Percy and Tarhalindur left. As for players, it gets a bit murkier than that, and I don't know if there are any who are truly on another level right now.

[Ser Arthur Dayne]

one example of how a mod of this current meta has consistently proven themselves on another level is varsoon. he fills a void that mods like Percy and Tarhalindur left. As for players, it gets a bit murkier than that, and I don't know if there are any who are truly on another level right now.

Nacho, Tammy, Regfan, mhsmith, Cerberus, MoI, mastina, Hiraki, RedCoyote off the top of my head are current players that play in a heavy analysis, pro-town, low shitpost style.

It's just that it's becoming harder to find these players because a huge amount of troll and shit posters are making games unplayable for that style. Take a look at this example in which a few people spammed and trolled a game that forced MoI to replace out.

[Nexus]

Meh. It's a style.

[Nexus]

- SpyreX
- petapan
- Guy_Named_Riggs
- Skullduggery
- Magua
- The Fonz
- Tierce
- izakthegoomba
- AurorusVox
- JDodge
- MeMe
- danakillsu
- RichardGHP
- Bacde
- diginova
- Plum
- Seacore
- Slaxx
- Seraphim

These are all good people.

[Ser Arthur Dayne]

I mean yeah it was fun when you had different playstyles, one being the spammers of Faraday/Fate/etc, but those players were able to control themselves and use that style in a pro-town move that pressures people, not just random brainless spamming and trolling. And it was a variety of playstyles in a game that allowed town to work together by different people bringing in different things to the table while all having the goal of catching scum more than just having random fun and enjoyment by trolling.

Pedit: Yeah agree but I meant current players that still do the "older" style. It was a lot of different styles that just bounced off each other.