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DoctorHelvetica
United States15034 Posts
On April 12 2011 04:30 RebirthOfLeGenD wrote: uhh, you can't coach your own game because you have perfect information. The idea is not to give any game specific advice. Just general tips. | ||
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RebirthOfLeGenD
USA5860 Posts
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Insanious
Canada1251 Posts
I want to host [T] Fantasy Mafia. Which will be (hopefully) a 40 player themed game. This game will center around a few mechanics that are vastly different then any game posted in TL so far. Mainly the idea of changing role PMs over time. The game will follow the Ban list, will have a few other rules to hopefully keep the game civil. I have not decided if there will be PMs allowed or not... although it seems like there might have to be. As well, I understand that I have to wait for the queue to free up a [T] game, but I would rather post this now to keep me insensitive to keep returning to this thread for when a [T] slot opens up, instead of coming back here when I remember and finding out that 8 other people have posted a [T] game and that I have no chance of getting on the list  .Also, should I just edit this post once the time comes around for a themed slot to open, or should I re-post about this game then? | ||
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Incognito
United States2071 Posts
Also, in response to DH, 25 player games are just awkward. 30 player games with 6 mafia and 3 KP work nicely, and blues can be easily balanced around that. However, 25 player games with 5 mafia make the KP situation awkward, and makes blue balancing that much harder. | ||
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Incognito
United States2071 Posts
As a side note to this suggestion, I really think its time for us to be revising the system determining what games are run. It could be a result of having not enough players, but as I mentioned here I think there are instances where people sign up for games they're not really all too interested in because they want to play in any game even if its not the setup they prefer. This leads to inactivity and other problems. The queue system is too rigid and autocratic, and doesn't allow for player feedback. Rather, it gives hosts a monopoly on setups. Because of the restriction that there can only be 1 themed/1 normal game at a time, the games of hosts who are currently approved for hosting are the only option for players who desperately want to play a game. Players really have no influence on what setup they want, and are basically subject to the decisions of the hosts. I don't think this is a very good or efficient system. We need to allow player preference to determine what types of games are hosted, not host preference. There are way too many hosts eager to try their hand at their own setups. On the other hand, players might not share the same enthusiasm. We need a free market type system to determine what games are hosted. | ||
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RebirthOfLeGenD
USA5860 Posts
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DoctorHelvetica
United States15034 Posts
Poll: Normal Mafia Poll Bill Murray/QuickStriker's Mafia (3) Qatol/Flamewheel's Mafia (2) DoctorHelvetica/LSB's Mafia (1) Incognito/BrownBear's Mafia (0) 6 total votes Your vote: Normal Mafia Poll (Vote): DoctorHelvetica/LSB's Mafia Poll: Themed Mafia Poll DoctorHelvetica's My Little Pony Mafia (3) Qatol's Civil War Mafia (2) Incognito's Item Mafia (1) Flamewheel's Texas Mafia (0) 6 total votes Your vote: Themed Mafia Poll (Vote): DoctorHelvetica's My Little Pony Mafia Whichever is leading in the poll when the previous games close, get opened. The problem is polls can't be edited, so new polls have to be made and results can be lost from them. i.e when new submissions are added, you can't just add the new game into the previously existing poll. I'm sure there is some sort of off-site poll that could be used that can be edited, but that's not as nice as having an on-site poll. What I could also see working is a post like this: Mafia Game Directory Use this thread to submit your game setups. Vote on the setup you would most like to play in at http://www.thisiswhereyouvoteformafiagames.org . Themed and Normal games have separate polls. The game with the leading votes will be hosted after the previous game of its type closes. Current Setups in Directory: Normal - DrH's Mafia Flamewheel's Yakuza Game Coagulation's Mafia Themed - LSB's Insane Mafia III Qatol's World At War Ace's Pick Your Power IV Those directory games would be hyperlinked to go to the post where the setup is proposed/explain so people can read all the setups. The question would be whether or not to have a separate thread to discuss setups (Like a "Setup Workshop" thread) or to just do discussion in thread (the links in the OP will allow people to easily find the setup posts to read) | ||
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Insanious
Canada1251 Posts
The biggest problem is that you cannot change your vote in a poll. But that might not be the worst thing ever... | ||
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DoctorHelvetica
United States15034 Posts
On April 12 2011 07:59 Insanious wrote: ^^^ well you could do Post 1 = Polls, Post 2 - 4 (for example) = the set ups. Then any post after can be questions for the hosts. The biggest problem is that you cannot change your vote in a poll. But that might not be the worst thing ever... I kinda like my second idea better with a non-native poll and the OP just being a directory where new games are edited in. | ||
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Insanious
Canada1251 Posts
On April 12 2011 08:05 DoctorHelvetica wrote: I kinda like my second idea better with a non-native poll and the OP just being a directory where new games are edited in. So then would we have the game directory, set up threads, and then a poll to choose which games go in which order? Or do we just run with a queue, except we can have the set up threads made in advance? Or how would we choose which games get played? | ||
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DoctorHelvetica
United States15034 Posts
On April 12 2011 08:14 Insanious wrote: So then would we have the game directory, set up threads, and then a poll to choose which games go in which order? Or do we just run with a queue, except we can have the set up threads made in advance? Or how would we choose which games get played? It would all be done in that thread. The OP of that thread (1st post) has links to all the setups. People post their setups in that thread and discuss them in that thread. If people just want to skip the discussion and read each set-up, the posts are linked in the OP. It would actually be really simple. You could have a separate set-up workshop thread if you wanted. Something like a "Theorycrafting" thread where people post ideas and discuss them to refine them into setups for the directory/queue/whatchamacallit | ||
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Mr. Wiggles
Canada5894 Posts
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DoctorHelvetica
United States15034 Posts
On April 12 2011 08:16 Mr. Wiggles wrote: Well, one idea, just to test out how polls work and if they're accurate or not, would be to host something like a "Player's Choice Mafia", where people vote on different aspects of the game, and then the host tailors it to popular demand. This could test the polls options, and you could also get a feel for what kind of game the majority of people want. I'm not sure you'd really need a poll test, just find a poll site that is editable and works for our needs. You're talking about a theme game, I'm talking about a way of organizing what gets hosted. | ||
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Incognito
United States2071 Posts
On April 12 2011 07:43 RebirthOfLeGenD wrote: it's a novel idea incog, but what would you propose? I propose what I proposed previously. Have a separate signup subfolder, which contains all the prospective game setups that hosts want to run. People may sign up freely for any game in the folder that they wish to participate in, and are not restricted from signing up for multiple games. Once a game has enough signups to start, the host then creates the game thread in the regular mafia forum, and the game begins there. There would still be the restriction of 1 normal game/1 themed game, but the method of choosing which game is running would be based on player demand, not by a hosting queue. Once a game starts, no other game from that category (themed/normal) may start until after the current game is finished. We can also have prohibitions on people playing in both a normal/themed game at the same time if that is deemed necessary. The problem with polls is that a) people quite frequently change their minds. Polls cannot be undone, so if someone originally wishes to sign up for the game but ends up backing out for other reasons, it will not be reflected in the poll. b) having the poll in the way DH suggests makes game options mutually exclusive, as people can only vote for one setup at a time. Even if this was changed create a separate poll for each game, that would be pretty unwieldy. c) polls don't allow people to see player composition. I know some players who join games based on player composition, so this doesn't provide that information d) if all the polls are centralized in one thread, then one person will have to manage all potential games/polls. People aren't going to want to search through multiple pages of thread in order to find games, so someone would have to copy the polls into the OP. Having a subfolder for games would make things more simple, as nobody will have to centrally administer the list. The more popular/recent games will be bumped to the top, keeping things up to date, and making it easy to view all the recent games. e) it would get chaotic with people asking the host questions about the setup. If everything is in a centrally managed thread, it will be chaotic when posts asking questions about particular games are intermingled in the thread. There's really no reason to go through the headache of having polls. Having a subforum is a simple and elegant solution. I don't want this idea to go through if we don't get a subforum. We don't need our thread cluttered by various games that may/may not get off. Having a separate subforum eliminates the need for a directory. | ||
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DoctorHelvetica
United States15034 Posts
The only problem is that the OP has to keep track of all posts in that thread to add the games to the OP. A subfolder would be just fine actually. The problem I foresee is having a lot of games and none of them really reach signup capacity due to low player base. TL's user base has expanded hugely, I think we should keep continually hosting games for newbies (regular newbie mini mafia/normal mafia) games so that this doesn't become a problem. | ||
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Incognito
United States2071 Posts
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
And how is this system any different from how TL was before the queue anyways? Before, if someone wanted to host, they put up their game, and it started when it filled up. Only difference is that we regulate how many games are being played. I'm not saying abolishing the queue system is bad (the queue system is far from perfect), I just am not seeing how this is going to help the situation overall. Either we have a subfolder with dozens of games wanting to be played, or we still have a queue system, in which case having the subfolder seems kinda silly. As it is now, if people don't sign up to play a game, after a certain time we should just take it off the market and move on to the next game in the queue. Say we do figure out some sort of voting system or popular demand game starts, how do you determine how many games are in the poll to begin with? And when a game starts do we add another game to the poll or just have people vote on the remaining ones? I would like to be ballsy for a second and say we already know what the player demand is: more normal games. There are plenty of people on this forum who prefer the straight up simple role setups, without 3rd parties and without crazy roles. People want to host themed games because they are fun to create in your head, you create all these what-if mafia scenarios and try to make a game to accommodate that. But people strive to play the normal games. Themed games are fun, but they have a "randomness" factor to them in that virtually anything could happen. Probably what this forum needs is to stray away from the themed games and host more normal games, and most definitely more normal mini games. The one thing about big normal games is that it's a big time commitment that lots of people don't have. A normal mini game is still mafia without the big time commitment, and I sure know that I would be much more willing to play in one. | ||
GMarshal
United States22154 Posts
On April 12 2011 12:09 Foolishness wrote: I would like to be ballsy for a second and say we already know what the player demand is: more normal games.. I agree with this, I'm more than happy to regularly host normal minis too, assuming my first run isn't a disaster, theme games can be wicked fun, but more often then not they devolve into figuring out roles/circles of confirmed townies/trying to break the setup. I think many of us would just rather play a nice old fashioned game of mafia, Also please no hatters, I *hate* hatters. | ||
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Incognito
United States2071 Posts
On April 12 2011 12:09 Foolishness wrote: How do we decide what games go on the market? If we make some cap on the number of games, then we're still going to have a queue to get on the market to see if a game is going to get played. If you're planning on getting rid of the queue system, then we could run into a situation where there are 10 normal games on the market because there are 10 hosts who want to host a game now. If we make a cap, then we're probably going to have a queue to put your game on the market. Hosts decide what games go on the market. There is no cap on the number of games that can be on the market, except that hosts cannot put more than 1 game on the market. I'm not expecting millions of normal games to go on the market, but I'd expect a lot of themed games. I know normal games are in demand, but they're not unique in any sort of way so there shouldn't be tons of hosts dying to host them. People who like hosting normal games are people who probably like playing them. And how is this system any different from how TL was before the queue anyways? Before, if someone wanted to host, they put up their game, and it started when it filled up. Only difference is that we regulate how many games are being played. I'm not saying abolishing the queue system is bad (the queue system is far from perfect), I just am not seeing how this is going to help the situation overall. Either we have a subfolder with dozens of games wanting to be played, or we still have a queue system, in which case having the subfolder seems kinda silly. As it is now, if people don't sign up to play a game, after a certain time we should just take it off the market and move on to the next game in the queue. Its all about game selection method. What is being debated here is the method for how we determine which game is hosted. The queue is just a method of determining who hosts. Its a line. First come first served. But you could do it a lot of other ways. One way (which was originally an idea when the queue was started) was that experienced hosts get priority with the point system. Another way it could be done is by lottery. But my goal is to turn it into a player-demand focused system. Long before the queue, Chuiu was the only host. Then, other vets decided to try their hand at hosting. Still, this was not chaos, as the there was still an orderly, albeit informal selection method. At this time, the people deciding game setups and the hosts were generally the same people, so although the selection method was informal, close relationships between the hosts allowed hosting to take place in a (somewhat) orderly and efficient manner (all the hosts were involved in determining the setup for the next game). The hosting atmosphere was controlled, and hosts determined among themselves what the rules of the next game were and who would run it. However, with the new influx of games that came after XII, the number of hosts increased dramatically, and the selection mechanism for hosting was disregarded. This was somewhat of a headache, but since we still followed the 1 game at a time principle, it wasn't too big of a problem. Then, there was a big schism in the forum, as some people wanted more normal games to be hosted even though all the new hosts wanted to host themed games. Because of this disconnect (as well as the fact that the list of people wanting to host themed games grew ever longer), we created the hosting queue. This accomplished 2 things: a) it institutionalized the selection method for future games and b) fixed the balance of normal/theme games. The hosting queue addressed growing chaos in the forum, and answered the question "how should we determine who gets to host next?" with the answer: "first come, first served". This answer stemmed from the fact that we should democratize the mafia forum and allow all hosts to host games. However, the past year has shown that not all hosts are equal (a lot of drama in games such as BM's Harry Potter mafia). Furthermore, some games never fill, or fill very slowly (The Prism, Orgah Mafia). Due to the 1 game at a time rule, these issues create problems for the forum, and results in inactivity, apathy, or unnecessary drama. What we want is for games to run smoothly. We would like to avoid apathy, drama, or the case where people join a game because there are no other alternatives. We are still keeping the 1 themed/1 normal game rule. All we are doing is restructuring the game selection method. The assertion that the "only difference is that we regulate how many games are being played" is incorrect. We have always regulated how many games are played. The difference is that that we've changed the selection method from an informal consensus to a first come, first served, system where we give the host a near-monopoly on power. Yes, you could say that with the current queue system, unpopular games are taken off the queue after a while. But that actually hasn't happened yet. However, in the lapse that occurs where no games are running, people decide to sign up for the game anyway because they'd rather play a mediocre game rather than play no game at all. These lapses are inefficient and don't help the mafia forum run smoothly. Say we do figure out some sort of voting system or popular demand game starts, how do you determine how many games are in the poll to begin with? And when a game starts do we add another game to the poll or just have people vote on the remaining ones? This is why I propose not having polls or a centralized thread. No need for separate queue thread either. The subfolder will be the "potential games directory". There will be no administrative hassle with adding or removing polls. I would like to be ballsy for a second and say we already know what the player demand is: more normal games. There are plenty of people on this forum who prefer the straight up simple role setups, without 3rd parties and without crazy roles. People want to host themed games because they are fun to create in your head, you create all these what-if mafia scenarios and try to make a game to accommodate that. But people strive to play the normal games. Themed games are fun, but they have a "randomness" factor to them in that virtually anything could happen. Probably what this forum needs is to stray away from the themed games and host more normal games, and most definitely more normal mini games. The one thing about big normal games is that it's a big time commitment that lots of people don't have. A normal mini game is still mafia without the big time commitment, and I sure know that I would be much more willing to play in one. Yes, the player demand is for more normal games. In reality, we don't need a queue for normal games because nobody is really dying to host them. The method of determining who hosts a normal game is simple, as nobody is fighting viciously to host the next normal game. The chaos is occuring on the themed side, not the normal side. The issue here is not whether people want to play normal or themed games. We know that people want normal games. We are hosting normal games, so that isn't the issue. The issue is with the themed games. There is a lot of variety in themed games. Some are more appealing than others. Wanting to play a themed game is very vague. What kind of themed game is the player interested in? Unlike normal games, which are roughly standardized, themed games are all over the place. You can't say that a demand for themed games means that ANY themed game is acceptable. The free market system addresses this problem by acting as a screen that separates themed games based on player demand. | ||
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iGrok
United States5142 Posts
Voting for themed games is probably a good idea. My one concern would be that any games with hidden roles are probabl less likely to be picked imo. But yeah, I'll write up another normal game setup for when sleeper is done. | ||
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