EPTA Discourse on the Definition of Normal Games - Page 6
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kitaman27
United States9245 Posts
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prplhz
Denmark8045 Posts
Banlisting people over behavioral issues should really be last resort and I think that people should be entitled to a warning first. Anyway, I hope we can get back on track discussing what games should be considered normal? I like the solution where someone just decides "We're going to enforce that normal games can only use a specific subset of roles" and then people agree on those roles and everything else becomes themed. I'd talk about those roles but I have never even hosted a game and I know nothing about balance or setups or roles. | ||
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Tunkeg
Norway1235 Posts
On April 26 2012 04:34 Kurumi wrote: If I call Your case stupid and bad am I being a dick or what? Come on. We're role playing at least a little bit. Just remember what Palmar said. It's like sports. We might get really deep into the match but everything done here is because of emotion and us trying the best. When we're done, we shake hands and thank everyone for a good match. Calling a case stupid or someones play bad is ok, if those who say these things actually do it for a purpose. For instance I am totally fine with scum doing it to discredit someone, or to in fact piss someone off to an extent that their judgement get clouded. I a also think it is perfectly fine if a townplayer do it to actually stop a misslynch from happening. But to do it after ten others have done it, what purpose does that really serve? At best it can force the player to play the game the way you want it, at worst you just make the player shut up and become inactive(and then everyone can complain in post game what an god awful non-contributing town this is). And in between these two scenarios you have alot of stuff that is bad for town (people fighting eachother instead of scumhunting, players getting ignored for beeing labeled bad or beeing dicks etc etc) Some people think that taking a piss at someone is the only way to play the game - meaning if they post little call them bad for town and beat them into talking, if they post, and their post aren't to your liking call them bad or scum and force them to post better. While this kind of behavior might work on some of the players some of the time, it most certantly cause some players to become inactive and less contributing, and will lead to people missreading them. So while having a couple of "hardhitting" players in a game is good, having a majority of these kind of players just toally ruins the townatmosphere. I think a good player need to know when to push and when to pull. On topic: I prefer normal games over themed games by a long shot. And until I master the normal games on a decent level I wills tay away from the themed ones. When some of the normal games have enoguh crazy roles in them, I stay away from those as well. | ||
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Incognito
United States2071 Posts
On April 26 2012 03:55 Mattchew wrote: The other problem is getting veteran (read: good) players to sign up for normal games when they start getting picky and sign ups can fill up quickly. The unique games usually peak these players interest leading many of the normal games to end up being maybe 1 - 5 good players (getting them shot n1 if town) and a bunch of people who would rather yell, sheep and lurk rather then actually play a good solid analytical game. I believe that you see the quality of good players games go extremely downhill when they know they are most likely going to die N1 because all their time and effort is barely worth it. This often leads to chaotic towns with no veteran leadership, so in all honesty I don't know if we should put the onus(is this the correct use of this word) of bad play on the setups but more on the players in games themselves. This problem doesn't have a very high correlation with vets dying night 1. It has more to do with in thread behaviors and the trend of current games. Besides the overarching umbrella of "bad play", I think the primary reasons have to do with a bad atmosphere due to spam, a tendency for people to look at what is right in front of them rather than looking at everything as a whole, and the increasingly prevalent attitude that "this is a game, so I can do anything I want". We know its a game, but I think the explanation that "its a game, its natural to get emotional, but after the game we are all friends" is becoming increasingly a meaningless sentiment. Its becoming the politically correct way to excuse your bad behavior in games. I mean, even in this thread, we have an emotionally charged angrypost. Ya, Foolishness and I are friends, so we're all good there, but it doesn't mean we run around flinging mud at each other just because we know its all good in the end. Being in a "game" doesn't give you the license to ignore common decency. The number of players we have lost because of this atmosphere is astonishingly high. Of course, if you are newer to this forum, it doesn't look like as big of a deal, but that's because you just don't know who these people are. It's ridiculous to add another "category" for games. In fact, its already doesn't even make sense to split the queue into themed and normal games, except for the fact that the hosting supply of normal games is so low because every host wants to host their crazy themed game. The normal game queue is just a crutch to support host supply of normal games, and allow hosts a back door into hosting themed games, since that queue basically fills up the instant a spot is available. The problem here is that there is this tension between hosts vs. players that isn't being addressed. The queue is set up solely for the favor of the hosts, and the players basically have no choice on what games are offered. When the supply/demand gets imbalanced like it appears to be now, people yell at The Man, but the response is slow. First thing we need to do is to refocus and collectively decide where our priorities lie. In an environment comprised of players and hosts, which do we value more? Currently, I'd say that the whole focus of the queue has been filtering the hosting process to accommodate all potential hosts. Any host that gets on the queue has a mandate to run his game whether or not people are interested in the setup. But it is clear that if a host puts time and effort into a setup and nobody wants to play it, or nobody takes it seriously, the game doesn't end up as well as hoped. This results in lost value for both the hosts and the players. It doesn't make sense to favor the hosts because the players are what make the game. The host and setup are just the framework where play occurs. Which means that yes, a good setup should make the game enjoyable and result in good gameplay, but we need to realize that good gameplay doesn't happen without high player interest. And you can't force players to be interested in a game, so focusing on the host side of things doesn't make sense. Right now, we have an inefficient hosting system. We know that we have a higher demand for normal games, but we dont even know how many players are in this pool. We don't even know what people mean by "normal" when they check the "I want more normal games" box. As this thread shows, the views of normal are wildly different. On top of that, we don't even know what our player base is generally, and the TL Mafia Census thing didn't really help. We are constantly forced to make decisions off of old (inaccurate) data, or guesses. Furthermore, its not simply a matter of "normal" game demand or "themed" game demand. A lot of other factors also play into people's decisions, such as the player composition, the timing of the game, etc. We need a system that allows us to prioritize games based on player interest, not host demand. This means we need to be able to track the size of our active player base (this changes rapidly, as we have a fairly high turnover rate) and get feedback on the demand for individual game setups (categorizing doesn't help because of the large discrepancies in definitions). Such a system would eliminate the need for categorizing games and eliminate the need for a queue (the hosting order would naturally be determined by interest numbers), which would give us more time to do other less useless things. I have some ideas, but they will take time to implement. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18264 Posts
@mattchew: agree 100%, but it's a different discussion how to get. eterans peaked for a game. DrH did a really good job of getting alarge numbers of vets to play. | ||
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Mattchew
United States5684 Posts
On April 26 2012 04:12 Foolishness wrote: I think that encompasses the other problem of we need stricter rules about what behavior is allowed in a game. Unless you mean something else? I think we need more behavior and more post game analysis. I would go so far to say that new players should have to play their 3 newbie games before signing up for any other games | ||
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
Personally I attribute that to newbies not actually learning anything at all by playing with other newbies. I just don't see what they learn about analysis or finding scum when pretty much no one around them knows how either. Isn't the record for newbies in the past 15 games something like 2-13 in the favor of mafia? One of those games was the one where Palmar smurfed and found all the scum n1 iirc. Most of these games were clean wins for mafia too, where townies didn't even have even the remotest of hopes in finding scum. I think forcing newbies to "play their 3 games" is pretty harsh and honestly doesn't make sense to me. I'd actually much rather prefer new players to take an active stance in moving away from the sandbox and actually taking time to play with experienced players, to learn the game as almost everyone did before the newbies became popular. I may be the only person with this opinion but I think if people want to change the quality of play then we need individuals to actually take the lead to improve their own play instead of sheeping vets 24/7 and doubting themselves because they don't know what they're doing (if you feel that way, then read games and ask questions so you do improve!) Making friends is pretty easy and the better players WILL help you if you're genuinely interested and it's clear you want to improve. Edit: also, I'm going to put this bluntly, but as is pretty obvious my opinions are fairly strong. Re:the postgame analysis issue brought up by Mattchew, I think hosts simply either need to stop being lazy or not host if they do not intend to do standard stuff like that. One of the reasons I really like Ace's games is not necessarily because of his setups (though his setups tend to be interesting) but actually because after the game I feel like I can take at least some of his observations postgame and learn from them. I may not agree with everything that is said postgame but definitely I can see the merit in nearly all of it. I think if more hosts actually did postgame analysis (as they're supposed to, IMO) then we might start on the right path to end the complaints about bad play. | ||
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GreYMisT
United States6736 Posts
On April 26 2012 11:15 wherebugsgo wrote: This is obviously somewhat off topic, but the discussion has gone there, so: To be completely honest, ever since the newbie games became more popular, the quality of play declined hella fast (IMO) Personally I attribute that to newbies not actually learning anything at all by playing with other newbies. I just don't see what they learn about analysis or finding scum when pretty much no one around them knows how either. Isn't the record for newbies in the past 15 games something like 2-13 in the favor of mafia? One of those games was the one where Palmar smurfed and found all the scum n1 iirc. Most of these games were clean wins for mafia too, where townies didn't even have even the remotest of hopes in finding scum. I think forcing newbies to "play their 3 games" is pretty harsh and honestly doesn't make sense to me. I'd actually much rather prefer new players to take an active stance in moving away from the sandbox and actually taking time to play with experienced players, to learn the game as almost everyone did before the newbies became popular. I may be the only person with this opinion but I think if people want to change the quality of play then we need individuals to actually take the lead to improve their own play instead of sheeping vets 24/7 and doubting themselves because they don't know what they're doing (if you feel that way, then read games and ask questions so you do improve!) Making friends is pretty easy and the better players WILL help you if you're genuinely interested and it's clear you want to improve. Edit: also, I'm going to put this bluntly, but as is pretty obvious my opinions are fairly strong. Re:the postgame analysis issue brought up by Mattchew, I think hosts simply either need to stop being lazy or not host if they do not intend to do standard stuff like that. One of the reasons I really like Ace's games is not necessarily because of his setups (though his setups tend to be interesting) but actually because after the game I feel like I can take at least some of his observations postgame and learn from them. I may not agree with everything that is said postgame but definitely I can see the merit in nearly all of it. I think if more hosts actually did postgame analysis (as they're supposed to, IMO) then we might start on the right path to end the complaints about bad play. I think its important to have setups where newbies can learn the game in a fairly standard enviorment. At the time the best way we thought of this was to host newbie games. However, I have noticed what you have bugs, and I am beginning to think that the best option is to have 1/5 of the availible slots in newbie games be open to known players. While this does bring about the possibility of "sheeping the vet", that is in and of itself a thing that newbies should learn not to do. Having 1 or 2 known players in a newbie game would also increase activity in the thread, which in some games is atrocious. Just my two cents as a host. | ||
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Curu
Canada2817 Posts
And it's not like they're going to be scared off or anything. In fact I'd say there's a much higher chance someone stays and learns about Mafia after playing a non-newbie game than one of those 4-cycles-in-13-pages newbie messes. | ||
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iGrok
United States5142 Posts
On April 26 2012 11:31 Curu wrote: I think letting them play non-newbie games is fine. I mean what's the worst that can happen? They can learn from the players playing the game while getting a taste of what it's actually like. And it's not like they're going to be scared off or anything. In fact I'd say there's a much higher chance someone stays and learns about Mafia after playing a non-newbie game than one of those 4-cycles-in-13-pages newbie messes. The worst that can happen is they sign up for LIII and SNMMX and then are completely inactive in both. -______________- | ||
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kitaman27
United States9245 Posts
On April 26 2012 11:15 wherebugsgo wrote: Re:the postgame analysis issue brought up by Mattchew, I think hosts simply either need to stop being lazy or not host if they do not intend to do standard stuff like that. One of the reasons I really like Ace's games is not necessarily because of his setups (though his setups tend to be interesting) but actually because after the game I feel like I can take at least some of his observations postgame and learn from them. I may not agree with everything that is said postgame but definitely I can see the merit in nearly all of it. I think if more hosts actually did postgame analysis (as they're supposed to, IMO) then we might start on the right path to end the complaints about bad play. The one problem with a postgame analysis by a host is that they have complete knowledge of everyone's alignment for the entire game. By having complete information, it provides them with an unnatural viewpoint. Setup discussion is usually fine, but when they say things like "player x was obviously scum and should have been lynched", they may be making connections that an actual player are incapable of making. I'm usually much more interested in the post-game analysis that are provided by players or observers. | ||
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
On April 26 2012 13:35 kitaman27 wrote: The one problem with a postgame analysis by a host is that they have complete knowledge of everyone's alignment for the entire game. By having complete information, it provides them with an unnatural viewpoint. Setup discussion is usually fine, but when they say things like "player x was obviously scum and should have been lynched", they may be making connections that an actual player are incapable of making. I'm usually much more interested in the post-game analysis that are provided by players or observers. yeah, I agree, but I think that you can point out certain things even with complete knowledge. Despite Ace having complete knowledge of his games I don't think his advice in the postgames have been bad. Same for Incog+Ver when they do it. | ||
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johnnywup
United States3858 Posts
Personally I think there shouldn't be a pre-defined limit to modkills, it's up to the mods discretion on how much posting in a game is acceptable. I like the idea of having 1/5th of the slots in newbie games reserved for people who know what they're doing. It teaches posters how to play as town or how to play as scum. It's very likely whatever team the majority of the experienced players are on will win almost every time, but it'll teach the newbs how to play better at least. | ||
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Dirkzor
Denmark1944 Posts
About newbie games with 1/5 (or whatever) amount of players who have tried it before; Who would be allowed to be the "vet" in the games? Me? Bluelightz? Palmar? Ace? Is 1/5 correct? Why not 10 "vets" and 5 newbies? Would remove the "follow the vet" and "Kill vet N1" thingies. It just opens up for a whole new series of question that I don't think we can find collective answers to. In my opinion you should remove the newbie games and just run more normal minis (which we have way to few of anyway) with open signup for everyone. | ||
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
On April 26 2012 16:48 Dirkzor wrote: Since this thread is now so far off-topic I might aswell continue. About newbie games with 1/5 (or whatever) amount of players who have tried it before; Who would be allowed to be the "vet" in the games? Me? Bluelightz? Palmar? Ace? Is 1/5 correct? Why not 10 "vets" and 5 newbies? Would remove the "follow the vet" and "Kill vet N1" thingies. It just opens up for a whole new series of question that I don't think we can find collective answers to. In my opinion you should remove the newbie games and just run more normal minis (which we have way to few of anyway) with open signup for everyone. instead of something that drastic, simply making more normal minis (or slightly fewer newbies and more normal minis) works too. Basically even the normal minis are being filled up with newer players, so we might as well be hosting more of them. | ||
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gonzaw
Uruguay4911 Posts
There's a batch of "newbies" that are pretty good (or not as bad as you guys state). For instance sloosh/MidnightGladius/Probulous/DoYouHas/EchelonTee/Cephiro/maybe me (if I forgot someone else then sorry, those are just from the top of my mind  ).If there was a game where only those played, I don't think it would be a "bad" game or have "bad quality" as some of you are expressing. And most, if not all of them started playing in Newbie Games. Is there any specific examples of newbies having "bad quality play" because they play Newbie Games? And would "discarding" Newbie Games really improve this? How do you know it will make a difference at all, or it if it doesn't actually worsen their play a little bit by either: sheeping the vets and doing nothing, or not caring about the game because of the usual flamefests that happen in games with "experienced" players, and other similar actions? I'd like to hear a well thought out argument of what's wrong in the first place, and then a well thought argument about why changing the system will actually make it better before trying to do anything. I agree about having some sort of Post-Game analysis by the hosts every game: There are perks about having all the information about the game: -They can fully analyse how scum played, and the host is basically the only player that witnessed scums play knowing who they were since the beginning. Other observers just tried to find scum on their own and "extrapolate" how scum are playing in said game, and then make a "backwards" analysis once all scum are known. But the host experiences the game as it goes, and he experiences scum's play as it goes too, and it gives him more insight about it so he can make better analysis'. -I don't see how him knowing who is scum and who is town (and night actions, etc) can make him less worthy of making analysis about town play or about specific town players. Sure, observers and like may vouch for that player or not in specific issues, like about how much "townie" that townie looked, etc. But the host knows other things too. For instance he knows who is scum, and therefore knows if that townie's reads are right or wrong, and as the game goes on he can make an analysis of said townie depending on his actions, etc and how they relate to the actual setup and the actual scum. To be honest though, there should be Post-Game analysis both by the hosts, and by observers and town/scum players so it takes a broader approach and people can take advice from each point of view (I suck at making analysis, or I'm just lazy to post them so don't ask me to do them >_> ) | ||
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Jitsu
United States929 Posts
I'm not the strongest town player in the game. It's pretty much widely known that my reads are sub-par. I'm not surprised that my meta isn't "Let's see who Jitsu accuses of being scum, and then confirm that person as town." That being said, I also don't feel like there is much in the way of improvement when I have nothing to bounce ideas off of. I've recently changed the way I scum-hunted, hoping to be able to better my play, with only mildly ok returns. (The one time that stands out is when I subbed into Game of Thrones and got two scum when I came in, yet was killed shortly thereafter.) I think post-game analysis can help with this a lot, not only for me, but for other people that are looking to better themselves as town players. I usually ask for people to critique my play afterwards, but only receive criticism in the way of "don't tunnel so hard," if I can even push it out of someone in the first place. I'm not sure if Newbie games are a help. I mean, unless there are large amount of people want to coach, or have a few good known vets come in as smurfs, I don't see how it can help. It'd be like watching a group of kids in Pop Warner football running around not knowing what to do because they don't have a coach. | ||
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Mattchew
United States5684 Posts
standard normal games is something i agree with | ||
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Ace
United States16096 Posts
On April 26 2012 15:21 wherebugsgo wrote: yeah, I agree, but I think that you can point out certain things even with complete knowledge. Despite Ace having complete knowledge of his games I don't think his advice in the postgames have been bad. Same for Incog+Ver when they do it. Indeed but thats why I encourage other people to discuss stuff. I can only try and give "this should have happened since player A knew this piece of information" so many times. I'm also going to guess that's one of the reasons Observer QTs are popular. | ||
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marvellosity
United Kingdom36161 Posts
On April 26 2012 11:15 wherebugsgo wrote: This is obviously somewhat off topic, but the discussion has gone there, so: To be completely honest, ever since the newbie games became more popular, the quality of play declined hella fast (IMO) Personally I attribute that to newbies not actually learning anything at all by playing with other newbies. I just don't see what they learn about analysis or finding scum when pretty much no one around them knows how either. Isn't the record for newbies in the past 15 games something like 2-13 in the favor of mafia? One of those games was the one where Palmar smurfed and found all the scum n1 iirc. Most of these games were clean wins for mafia too, where townies didn't even have even the remotest of hopes in finding scum. I think forcing newbies to "play their 3 games" is pretty harsh and honestly doesn't make sense to me. I'd actually much rather prefer new players to take an active stance in moving away from the sandbox and actually taking time to play with experienced players, to learn the game as almost everyone did before the newbies became popular. I may be the only person with this opinion but I think if people want to change the quality of play then we need individuals to actually take the lead to improve their own play instead of sheeping vets 24/7 and doubting themselves because they don't know what they're doing (if you feel that way, then read games and ask questions so you do improve!) Making friends is pretty easy and the better players WILL help you if you're genuinely interested and it's clear you want to improve. Edit: also, I'm going to put this bluntly, but as is pretty obvious my opinions are fairly strong. Re:the postgame analysis issue brought up by Mattchew, I think hosts simply either need to stop being lazy or not host if they do not intend to do standard stuff like that. One of the reasons I really like Ace's games is not necessarily because of his setups (though his setups tend to be interesting) but actually because after the game I feel like I can take at least some of his observations postgame and learn from them. I may not agree with everything that is said postgame but definitely I can see the merit in nearly all of it. I think if more hosts actually did postgame analysis (as they're supposed to, IMO) then we might start on the right path to end the complaints about bad play. To the bold: ah, I feel so good right now To the bit in red: is that actually policy? I played Newbie VI and then replaced into Mafia LI as my 2nd game. Generally, I would not have signed up for a regular game without playing a newbie game first - too intimidating for me - I only found this forum by accident towards the end of March with no concept of what Mafia even was. Obviously the quality in Newbie games is generally low, but if I take up chess/Starcraft/tennis whatever, I don't want to be playing competitively against GM standard players. When I started out in Starcraft, I started in the basement of bronze playing other basement bronze players, and found learning from outside sources off my own back. As far as I know, there's still no postgame analysis for my Newbie VI game, which by now is a tad disappointing. I also agree that veteran players are also quite willing to help noobs if they ask. VE most of all, but to some extent as well wbg/sandroba have all helped me out willingly and spent time they didn't have to talking to me. Sorry, I know this is a little bit tangential, but it's just my opinion as a pretty recent comer to this forum so it may be generally relevant. | ||
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