EPTEgo Mini Mafia - Page 89
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Tunkeg
Norway1235 Posts
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Artanis[Xp]
Netherlands12970 Posts
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Tunkeg
Norway1235 Posts
On April 11 2013 21:44 Artanis[Xp] wrote: Because in one case it leads to setup speculation potentially killing other people and the other case doesn't. I'm tempted to host a troll mafia game sometime though and invite only the players with the worst reputation and see what happens. Yeah, and that is my point. Better to exclude than to not rng. | ||
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marvellosity
United Kingdom36161 Posts
On April 11 2013 21:36 wherebugsgo wrote: this times 1 million. What happens when two new players come along and you balance their team of 3 players by putting a vet like Ace on that team to balance it, but those two new players turn out to be really good at scum? What happens when you have a game with 6 vets, but only one of them is actually good at scum? Do you condemn that guy to playing on scum? What happens when every host thinks the same way you do? That guy will end up playing nothing but scum. You're taking a way simplistic view when it should be obvious that it's not one I advocate. Can you give me a single example of the Ace + 2 newbs playing amazing scumgames happening? I bet you can't. There are monumentally few players who take to mafia like a fish to water. Since I've been playing, I can think of me, Acro, probably DP too - and that's about it. Tunkeg has never played mafia before and Axle has played mafia once. The funny thing about this game is that Oats *did* play much better than he played as mafia before, so he got caught properly day 3 instead of day 1. Teams shouldn't be handpicked with massive scrutiny and eye to detail, but if you put 3 mafia players with 3 scumgames between them and no previously indicated ability as mafia together, then you get a game like this. That's just how it is. | ||
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marvellosity
United Kingdom36161 Posts
While mafia as a game is more volatile than most, generally speaking experience and learning plays a massive aspect as it does in almost any game. For example I don't understand why Tunkeg would be offended at the suggestion of playing with a vet mafia; Tunkeg has never played mafia before, so reasonably speaking it's silly to expect he'll be as good as someone who's played mafia multiple times. | ||
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Tunkeg
Norway1235 Posts
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Tunkeg
Norway1235 Posts
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
On April 11 2013 21:49 marvellosity wrote: You're taking a way simplistic view when it should be obvious that it's not one I advocate. Can you give me a single example of the Ace + 2 newbs playing amazing scumgames happening? I bet you can't. There are monumentally few players who take to mafia like a fish to water. Since I've been playing, I can think of me, Acro, probably DP too - and that's about it. Tunkeg has never played mafia before and Axle has played mafia once. The funny thing about this game is that Oats *did* play much better than he played as mafia before, so he got caught properly day 3 instead of day 1. Teams shouldn't be handpicked with massive scrutiny and eye to detail, but if you put 3 mafia players with 3 scumgames between them and no previously indicated ability as mafia together, then you get a game like this. That's just how it is. my first scum game. gg bitch e: joking aside, there are lots of problems with hand balance. GM brought up good points and you aren't doing anything to address any of them. Your assertions are baseless until you can come up with a good argument outside of "these guys aren't good at mafia therefore they had no chance to win". (hint: it's not a good argument) There have been plenty of games with average scum teams like this one that turned into mafia wins. If you can predict the outcome of the game reliably with nothing more than the names of the players on each side, then cool, but I don't think anyone on this forum can do that. Most important is the fact that people don't improve unless they change their attitudes about balance. I think it's fine to call out questionable role balance because there have been some setups that are just bad, but blaming a loss on player distribution is basically like saying you gave up when you saw your team. It's both insulting to your fellow teammates and to the community at large. | ||
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sciberbia
United States1359 Posts
Even with this extreme disparity in 'balance' I,think this game was fun as hell and fair in that the team that played better won the game. I can see how it would be cool if you always had a 50 percent chance to win but imo balancing is bad for a number of reasons as we have been discussing that make the game less fun and less fair. So this is imo the lesser of two evils and imo this game was a success. It seems that some people such as yourself and oats enjoy a game less if you know you are an underdog at the start. I am not one of those people. I think you should just take it as a challenge. I think most people are like that. You know.. like how a bad team in sports still tries their damndest to beat their rivals in a big game. | ||
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marvellosity
United Kingdom36161 Posts
... you're an idiot. I already referenced the very few players who take to mafia as an exception, and you're obviously one of them. | ||
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marvellosity
United Kingdom36161 Posts
On April 11 2013 22:10 sciberbia wrote: marv i agree. While as people have said it is very hard to measure skill in mafia, I agree that this town could reasonably have been expected to outplay this scumteam. I just dont think that is a big problem. I think the game was still fun for everyone. I think scum, while underdogs, had a legitamate chance at pulling a nice upset. Even with this extreme disparity in 'balance' I,think this game was fun as hell and fair in that the team that played better won the game. I can see how it would be cool if you always had a 50 percent chance to win but imo balancing is bad for a number of reasons as we have been discussing that make the game less fun and less fair. So this is imo the lesser of two evils and imo this game was a success. It seems that some people such as yourself and oats enjoy a game less if you know you are an underdog at the start. I am not one of those people. I think you should just take it as a challenge. I think most people are like that. You know.. like how a bad team in sports still tries their damndest to beat their rivals in a big game. You're misunderstanding me. Because naturally I consider whatever team I'm on to be the favourite  Games that I win where the game is stacked in my favour are less fun/gratifying than games that are 'balanced'. That's the perspective I have here. | ||
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
How do you balance games with uneven numbers of vets? How do you balance games in which you have lots of people who are good at X alignment but bad at Y? How do you balance games with a small number of vets and lots of newbies? There have been games in which vets have become free scum lynches simply because of balance reasons. In these types of games vets are unlikely to shoot other vets, even if they aren't necessarily good all the time, because the host is known to balance the setups. If they do shoot the vets, they become a lynch. If they don't, they will sometimes get lynched anyway because the town focuses on them. Think about it; if there are 5 vets in a game and you know the host balances, on day 2 if any of them die you can lynch into the remaining players and increase your chance of lynching scum incredibly. e: my point with this is that in these games where the host balances the game, I find that the balance discussion pulls away from the aim of the game. This is pretty unfortunate given that in these situations, balance discussion is often VERY productive. I myself have used it, but I don't think that it is good for the game because it doesn't actually teach you anything about how to find scum, only how to game the setup. The problem with these supposed "stacked" games lies with attitude and not actual skill differential IMO. Because of the way reputation and expectation works on this forum, people expect certain things based on really stupid assumptions when in reality they are often in control of their own fate. | ||
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AxleGreaser
Australia1154 Posts
On April 11 2013 21:08 marvellosity wrote: Mafia were never going to win this game, there was just too large a difference in abilities/thread impact. This might sound like I'm bashing on the skill of the mafia but it's not how it's meant to come across. None of the people on the mafia-team have a history of large thread impact in a game and that's just a fact. This game was always going to be a town win. If you're happy for a game to be one-sided for the sake of some silly RNG concept, then fine, but you'll get games where mafia basically can't win like this one. Choices (that exist on a continuous spectrum) 1) "fair" "just" games: in which if your team has the best chance of winning if it plays the best (maybe because it has an unbalanced share of the (historically)better players who by definition (historically)usually play 'better' more often.) 2) Challenging games where, you if play better/worse than your usual average that makes your team have a better/worse than average chance of winning. Both have value, it is a choice of what you want out of the game. Basically its scratch VS handicap racing or interesting racing. Usually, in other competitive settings, with widely spread fields unless its handicapped people get bored, and thus arse around, or simply find something else not boring. For me as it stands, I kind of don't need 1), I already independently evaluate my play and game and effort. BTW: So far I am at played 4 won zero... go team me. My personal estimate of how I have done is based more on the effort I put in. If I tried hard and failed anyway then that merely means learning to play was harder than I first thought. While play to win is the rule, it is not why I played any game I was in. So yeah this game was hard and uphill, but it gave us three the space to be great, if we could be. Turned out we were not. (Wasn't really a big surprise to me, although just how and why it went wrong was.) Next time I am in a scum game, and its that up hill my goal will to not get lynched D1. One other problem with 1) is that it may promote this kind of response. When scum team thinks it has a below average set of players... why bother. Just wait until next time when you get a good team. This would be bad place for the game to wind up. A problem with 2) is, once some part of the scum team flips... the other part gets tied into a narrower pool. If you are the scum in that pool, then it seems really unfair, remembering that being in an all 'not good'/'bad'/ scum team from one also feels unfair when its you. Question: (aka I have NFI never having done it.) Can the role distributions make up for it? In semi open or closed setups, there are I expect a range of what is considered near enough to be balanced possibilities, but some are on the town/scum favored end of the spectrum. (I think not all 2of4 setups are equal, ie they are orderable: from most to least town favored.) By not rolling both the players and the setup independently, you could include some counter balance by biasing the probabilities of each setup. This would still mean once mass claim occurs you can maybe guess probably whether the scum team has more or less stronger than average players. (even then town may not know how loaded or bare the scum powers cupboard is.) Another option, is to do true RNG, but who says the PDF has to be flat.... There exist variety of algorithms that can for instance by assigning players to teams one at time, make adjustments such that once one team starts becoming strong or weak, the odds on which teams gets the strong players after that is no longer quite even... By pushing the RNG back that far, analysis of who is scum and who is town cant know for sure there (Must/Must not) be another Vet on the team. | ||
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Artanis[Xp]
Netherlands12970 Posts
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marvellosity
United Kingdom36161 Posts
On April 11 2013 22:20 wherebugsgo wrote: How do you balance 9 player games? How do you balance games with uneven numbers of vets? How do you balance games in which you have lots of people who are good at X alignment but bad at Y? How do you balance games with a small number of vets and lots of newbies? There have been games in which vets have become free scum lynches simply because of balance reasons. In these types of games vets are unlikely to shoot other vets, even if they aren't necessarily good all the time, because the host is known to balance the setups. If they do shoot the vets, they become a lynch. If they don't, they will sometimes get lynched anyway because the town focuses on them. Think about it; if there are 5 vets in a game and you know the host balances, on day 2 if any of them die you can lynch into the remaining players and increase your chance of lynching scum incredibly. e: my point with this is that in these games where the host balances the game, I find that the balance discussion pulls away from the aim of the game. This is pretty unfortunate given that in these situations, balance discussion is often VERY productive. I myself have used it, but I don't think that it is good for the game because it doesn't actually teach you anything about how to find scum, only how to game the setup. The problem with these supposed "stacked" games lies with attitude and not actual skill differential IMO. Because of the way reputation and expectation works on this forum, people expect certain things based on really stupid assumptions when in reality they are often in control of their own fate. you're being too picky again. This game if I look at the playerlist, a valuable addition to mafia would have been any of Palmar, Ace, marv, DarthPunk, sciberbia, rayn, all players who have various abilities as scum. That's half the players. And this isn't even a "vet" issue per se, because taking this game still, Palmar/marv/Ace (traditional 'vets') could all have been town and the game would have been much better balanced, and you still wouldn't be able to lynch on balance. | ||
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
On April 11 2013 22:27 marvellosity wrote: you're being too picky again. This game if I look at the playerlist, a valuable addition to mafia would have been any of Palmar, Ace, marv, DarthPunk, sciberbia, rayn, all players who have various abilities as scum. That's half the players. And this isn't even a "vet" issue per se, because taking this game still, Palmar/marv/Ace (traditional 'vets') could all have been town and the game would have been much better balanced, and you still wouldn't be able to lynch on balance. I don't see how any of those non Palmar/marv/Ace players being scum in place of Tunkeg/Oats/Axle would have changed anything. How can you even differentiate their skills levels? Is DP better than Tunkeg as mafia? On what basis? Or Oats? Or Axle? Yeah, maybe some of these players have more games played but there are plenty of players with lots of games played who still suck as one alignment or the other. | ||
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marvellosity
United Kingdom36161 Posts
dunno what you're trying to say tbh. | ||
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
You're incapable of seeing an alternate situation because you're basing your conclusion on the results of the game. | ||
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marvellosity
United Kingdom36161 Posts
On April 11 2013 22:37 wherebugsgo wrote: you don't know what I'm trying to say probably because you've come to a results-based conclusion. You're incapable of seeing an alternate situation because you're basing your conclusion on the results of the game. Surprising that, isn't it. My belief is that a team I view as pretty one-sided would destroy the other team, the result supports my beliefs... yeah. Seems pretty reasonable to me. This game IS the alternate situation, and this game shows how the alternate situation pans out. | ||
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AxleGreaser
Australia1154 Posts
On April 11 2013 22:10 wherebugsgo wrote: my first scum game. gg bitch e: joking aside, there are lots of problems with hand balance. GM brought up good points and you aren't doing anything to address any of them. Your assertions are baseless until you can come up with a good argument outside of "these guys aren't good at mafia therefore they had no chance to win". (hint: it's not a good argument) There have been plenty of games with average scum teams like this one that turned into mafia wins. If you can predict the outcome of the game reliably with nothing more than the names of the players on each side, then cool, but I don't think anyone on this forum can do that. Most important is the fact that people don't improve unless they change their attitudes about balance. I think it's fine to call out questionable role balance because there have been some setups that are just bad, but blaming a loss on player distribution is basically like saying you gave up when you saw your team. It's both insulting to your fellow teammates and to the community at large. > If you can predict the outcome of the game reliably with nothing more than the names of the players on each side, > then cool, but I don't think anyone on this forum can do that. While no one can do that very accurately With what degree of accuracy can it be done? At some degree of accuracy better than randomly guessing which team will win, it is likely to be possible. I don't have any problem with the game I just played... but i am pretty sure if we could somehow replay it 100 times there is almost zero chance scum would have won half of them. That such a team could be the scum is I believe quite wise, does it have to be exactly equally as likely as some other more likely to win combinations? To be clear I think I had some real benefits, by playing in scum team with a less than average chance of winning, bu also one where we could not just sit back (sheep) and let the scum expert make the calls. While there were real benefits, is it wise that it happen as often as it would by chance. One good question is WHY did Oats play better? There is an entire spectrum between, every scum team gets this fraction of the vets, and true Flat RNG I think I have said all I usefully can as, (IMO), I don't comparatively know jack about mafia, never hosted a mafia game (have hosted other social interaction games, where feeling like fate wasn't determined pregame, was highly correlated with player enjoyment, note that cuts both ways, why work hard to be a good player if the host is still going to handicap you into losing 50%, ...etc etc ) and I couldn't balance a setup with out rather lot of research (and maybe not at all). However, FYI: I have 'some' back ground in things such as 'better than randomly guessing', often more formally described as ROC, (Receiver_operating_characteristic), if after discussing it someone wants technical help... I have skills in translating intent into algorithm. | ||
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