Town Meta Perspective 2020

[MURDERCAT]

I'm not sure I understand that table, most players are town right? Wouldn't you expect it to be around 75-80%?

[unwnd]

is 80% meaning townies made 80% of the post?

I'm not sure I understand that table, most players are town right? Wouldn't you expect it to be around 75-80%?

I calculated Posts made by town over Posts overall made in the game over 100. 80% of posts in Epilogue for example were made by town. Leaving the other measly 20% by scum.

[unwnd]

So what can the scum do? I pose this question to myself. The thing is, I don't want to win against debuffed scum who are merely unable to keep up. I'm not sure where it became a boon to just be really active. Lurking precedent has become too strong in high-count posting games, and even with something like Death Curse, Noraa (who was scum) still eventually got limmed.

I don't think the answer is as simple as 'just post more'. It's that the weight of individual posting has lost it's effect. Scum need to get better at manipulating townies to fight one another or even twist their words, and it's something I don't really see much anymore. I think that isn't entirely scum's fault however, because people are townreading each other not exactly on what they're posting, but how often and how willing they are to engage with other townies.

[OkaPoka]

This is my thread and this topic still ails me, so here come the statistics. Going to use sample size of the large theme games as that seems to have the most posting.

Game	% Town Activity	% Town	% Town Activity - % Town	Outcome
Epilogue!	80%	76.5%	+3.5%	Town Win
Xenoblade 2	87%	77%	+10%	Town Win
Death Curse	75%	75%	+0%	Town Win

It actually took me too long to format that nonsense, point is the percentile difference of scum activity out of 100 is absolutely staggering

i dont think the table is too telling?

[unwnd]

Number of townies not calculated, it's their posts see two posts above you

[Ircher]

I think a sample size of 3 games is rather small to be making conclusions from.

[OkaPoka]

im confused, when its 80% town activity, are you saying given any random post, there is an 80% chance town made that post?

[unwnd]

I think a sample size of 3 games is rather small to be making conclusions from.

I don't disagree but god was formatting/effort too much for me

This must be how scum feel in these games

[Infinity 324]

Number of townies not calculated, it's their posts see two posts above you

Oka has a point though, it makes sense that 75% of posts are made by town if the game is 75% town. (Also death's curse was 1/3 scum I think?)

[Cabd]

Death's curse was exactly 1/4th... 15 town, 5 scum.

[Cabd]

What would be interesting is comparing these three data points, to the three longest scumwins in a large theme in 2020.

[OkaPoka]

Number of townies not calculated, it's their posts see two posts above you

Oka has a point though, it makes sense that 75% of posts are made by town if the game is 75% town. (Also death's curse was 1/3 scum I think?)

praise murdercat but im not sure if i interpreted the 80% correctly which is why im asking

[Infinity 324]

Death's curse was exactly 1/4th... 15 town, 5 scum.

Right. Still, the post count was distributed evenly between town and scum (though, with noraa taking up almost all of the posting by scum, you could still have an argument here)

[Hoopla]

the reason hyperposting looks so town, is because few people are capable of playing scum to that same level of intensity. the problem is too much of the player pool willing to obvtown, and do things they aren't able to replicate as scum (ie; some versions of hyperposting, emotionality, overly transparent thought processes). this in turn creates a strong town correlation with certain behaviours and makes it easier to townhunt and PoE the game within the lurkers/mid-level posters.

the onus is on the individual to take pride in their scumgame and play it as close to their towngame. you're only half a mafia player if you're not willing to burn your town meta (or at the very least curtail behaviours as town you can't replicate as scum). i find it hard to respect players who only have a town game but phone it in when scum.

[Hoopla]

from an enjoyment perspective i find hyperposting selfish and unfun. a handful of players bloating the thread will put the bottom third of posters into permanent catch-up mode, and those that have fallen behind are essentially locked out from having dialogues in the moment until they've caught up. seems like such gamestates are more likely to lead to replacements too, which only further exacerbates the discrepancy in posting frequencies.

i can see why it's an advantage to the individual who hyperposts, though. control of the narrative and being the aggressor (rather than constantly reacting/defending yourself) is a much more proactive position that generally prevents you getting eliminated.

but it's just not fun.

and as a seasonal player, a fun game with a good balance of voices is more important to me now, as opposed to the cutthroat/squeeze every drop of EV from every interaction type games.

[Ythan]

Did I never ego this

[Ythan]

Wow what a read this is an extremely enlightening thread.

[unwnd]

I agree with both of your points Hoopla. For the first one, I don't understand that mentality either. I actually think good scum can make good town because if you develop the mindset of knowing what (you) would do as scum, then anticipating behavior from potential scum gets easier. I don't understand why people don't train this and I agree 100% that phoning it in also leads to a boring game. A lot of these wins feel less gratifying but more in the moment. Yes we won and we beat the scum but did we really learn much? Learn much about the nuances of play or with each other? Another aspect of current townplay is that it leads to these formed townblocks, but I think townblocks should be renamed to what they actually are

Circlejerks

[unwnd]

For hyperposting, I find myself not really having fun when I'm in that mode. It just feels like I'm putting a lot of extra in for less personal results. The constant need to interact can really just drain you, especially in my context where I'm a bit more introverted. While I might not literally be in the same room as these people, the environment in hyerposting games feels like I should almost always doing something, never giving myself time to reflect. It gets so bad that I'll often syntax and misspell words. I really really don't appreciate it but I'm stubborn and willing to change, even at the behest of my own preference. It's almost this fear really. I fear that If I don't say it now, I'll miss it and nobody will care to read it. Town games shouldn't just turn into competing who can say the most words, it's what each individual says and what we can take from it. Good paragons in my eyes are not necessarily always 4/4 leading the charge sheep me. As an extra point, I think people really get obsessive about Paragon. Like, playing how a Paragon would. You get a lot of people trying to force the gamestate instead of letting it occur naturally. Good (paragon) behavior to me is being capable of fundamentally rallying a town, recognizing town behavior, and letting town exceed as a whole just by being there on the playerlist

That's the type of player I've always tried to be and still remain to.

As an allegory: I really advocate players to play support in their head instead of thinking the town needs 10 fucking DPS roles. Even a tank, someone who is just really really town even if they're not doing anything game-changing is great. Everyone just wants to DPS

[Awoo]

As an allegory: I really advocate players to play support in their head instead of thinking the town needs 10 fricking DPS roles. Even a tank, someone who is just really really town even if they're not doing anything game-changing is great. Everyone just wants to DPS

This is a really good allegory. In my own experience, sometimes I had to know when to sit back and let the big town voices get nightkilled and pretend to be a dead parrot before I stepped up as town and carried on the torch to victory, since if I tried to push too hard early on, town would become erratic and uncoordinated.

[MathBlade]

I feel like the change has to come from scum no?

Scum has to stop trying to middle of pack lurk. The site meta will favor town until scum finds a winning strategy that breaks the ability of towns to throw "rock" and win 66 instead of 33 percent of the time outright. Towns would be silly not to keep playing it out.

Agreed. I hate this strategy. I almost never lurk and the amount of games I am now in after a long hiatus corresponds to that.

[MathBlade]

Well, the Vi battery was a thing

idk what this is

you know the more I think on it the more I don't see how that relates to this situation.

I feel like playing scum is miserable in this meta

idk, I feel like this makes scum playing easier if you’re able to hyperpost as scum because you almost don’t have to worry about looking good or having convincing though processes as people will just TR the effort half the time

Agreed. It becomes manipulate the high poster because if a slow poster gets it they’ll be drowned

[Horsewoman]

I don't know this website's meta. But from my experience the bigger posters were often town morons who used all the power and influence from their big hyperposting to literally lose town the game by driving the narrative against themselves. I feel like people need to have more humility.

[Ythan]

teehee

[Horsewoman]

My objective as town is usually to have fun while having other people read me as town. I'm really terrible at reading other people. I calculated my success rate over a year from day 1 before roles got involved once and it was literally worse than rolling a dice (I encourage you to do the same over a decent sample size if you want to actually get an idea of whether you are good or bad). But if people read me as town and I don't eat a vote and hopefully do eat a nightkill, I am playing to my win condition by narrowing the pool for everyone else. There are lots of different ways to play to a win condition.

I mean, I do get mislynched a lot but I never said i was

good

at achieving my objectives.