Acme Mini Mafia, Inc - Page 16

Acrofales

Spain18100 Posts

November 20 2012 14:29 GMT

#2346

On November 20 2012 23:09 DarthPunk wrote:
That whole mason thing was terrible. It caused a mislynch. It allowed scum to be on a safe wagon. Little information was shared.

Like imagine if there as a competent scum team after that start.

Well, that seems more the problem of Muso's claim, and town's unfamiliarity with his gambit in general than my counterclaim. Would you have killed muso at night if his claim had gone uncontested? Do you think we would have gotten a scumlynch D1, or a more informative wagon, if I had not counterclaimed? There was some suspicion on Drazak, but I feel scum could easily have pushed the D1 lynch to Release or Kush (although of course nobody knows what D1 would've looked like if I hadn't counterclaimed).

In other words: if nobody had contested the mason claim, would his gambit have had the desired effect? From your qt it is clear you didn't shoot Mattchew because you thought he was blue, but rather because you were afraid of a veteran player like him.

Which reminds me: risk, why did you shoot Zealos. It seems a strange choice for an SK to off. Were you worried about protection on the more vocal players? Or were you trying not to weaken town too much?

Acrofales

Spain18100 Posts

November 20 2012 15:01 GMT

#2349

But what is an outside-of-thread source? Where in that whole thing was I using an outside-of-thread source? Nowhere, unless you count knowing your primes as outside-of-thread knowledge, but then where does it end? As I said, I could do that last little bit exactly the same hiding letters at 1 modulo X (for instance, modulo 3):

nryoexodtubftvvsghifldruefrkisnaloucwnbltyeedjkgzdehfsguir

I think the essence of your argument still boils down to the amount of effort it takes to code: hiding a message in plain text is far harder than hiding a message in random gibberish (and it has nothing to do with outside sources, which are hard to define in any case). In plain text steganography, skill is rewarded. Hiding a good breadcrumb gives a sense of satisfaction, and hunting them can be fun. Encrypting text does not reward skill (or at least, the skill level is far lower) and most of the time attempting to decrypt them is an exercise in futility.

I also think there is a second objection which is felt, but nobody has voiced: it is not fun to know there is a message hidden that you cannot read. Being told post-hoc that there was a message hidden there all the time while you just didn't know it, is very different to knowing there's a message, but only being given the key to reading it post-hoc. The former is kinda fun to find out, the latter is just "meh". Both serve similar purposes: a time capsule to be opened at a later date, however it is simply more FUN to have that time capsule be so well hidden that it is a surprise when it is opened.

The two are quite related (and yes, trust a starcraft forum to link high skill level with fun

): allowing encryption lowers the skill level required to play at the highest level and thus "cheapens" the game, or "goes against the spirit" of the game. Would that be at the core of why you don't like encryption?

Do you like automatically rallied SCVs in HotS? Or do you feel it is just yet another step to dumbing the game down too much?

Acrofales

Spain18100 Posts

November 20 2012 15:09 GMT

#2350

On November 20 2012 23:42 HiroPro wrote:

Show nested quote +

No the fact that it is so obvious is a huge downside. If encryption was used, what would happen is that everyone would be required to post an encrypted message at the beginning of day 1 with role and at the end of night 1 with an action. vts would just post gibberish for their actions. With this type of system mafia is very restricted in what they can fake-claim.

In regards to private communication: it simply boils down to phrasing questions or thoughts that give away what the key is, but not stuff that everyone would know.

But as I said, that seems more a problem of mass claiming than of encryption per se. Plenty of (particularly themed) games can, and have, been broken with mass claims. Mass action claims are not much different. This is just an added variant on the theme.

As for hiding the key in some way, that only really works with players who know each other VERY well and share inside jokes that cannot be picked up from a filter. I can only really think of doing that with 2 or 3 players on the forum. Anyway, this would really go against the "spirit" of the no PM rule and is thus already forbidden. I could also speak in Dutch to Clarity, or Portuguese to Sandroba and with enough silly spelling variations google translate would be screwed. Yet, that goes so much against the spirit of the no-PM rule that we would almost certainly get modkilled, with good reason.

Acrofales

Spain18100 Posts

November 24 2012 02:42 GMT

#2356

Thanks for the writeup, Bugs

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