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Civility Please |
United States22154 Posts
On December 08 2013 03:25 syllogism wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2013 13:06 geript wrote:
I'm going to try and be back for GMarshall's game, but to be honest I'm not sure I ever want to waste time playing mafia here again. On a routine basis 20-25% of the players that sign up get replaced and there are still mod kills for inactivity on top of that. Then there are people like Coagulation who detract from others enjoyment just to get a laugh. On top of that everyone seems more interest in shoving their epeen around than actually trying to make or evaluate arguments. If I could hand select a group of people to play with here I would be ecstatic. But because that's impossible I have to keep on dealing with these type issues and it's exceptionally unfun to try and win in those circumstances. What you did was absolutely unacceptable, selfish and inconsiderate towards the hosts and other players in the game. Indeed, it is worse than what you accused some players in the game of. I realize that this is the wrong place and time for this, but you are already bringing the discussion here and this really should be self-evident. The same applies to other players who decided to randomly modkill themselves, because they couldn't get over themselves and keep their end of the bargain when they chose to join the game.
Not in this thread. Please.
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United States3230 Posts
In my opinion, the definition of "inactivity" set by this forum should be changed.
Towns haven't been doing so well lately (at least in the games I play in). Why? I think (along with the ego problems) the biggest reason is that there are always 2-3 town players who are inactive or very lurky in every and it causes a problem. We never write off these players who only post 2-3 posts a game as town and most of the focus in the game is on them. They stick out and it's not very fun when you go after a player who hasn't been solving the game for 3 days and they flip town.
Mafia is a hard game but it is also a game where you can get town credit just for trying. You don't get called scum for being wrong in your case, you get called scum if your reasoning is very egregious or your case looks fake. So many people lurk and get called scum until they make a case that looks to townies as desperation. It would look a lot better if they were more active so their cases would be taken as contribution to the discussion and not desperation scum play for town credit. It would also help out the town more as scum would be forced to be more active.
My suggestion is that we change the minimum post limit to 5 posts/day and 3 posts/night and go back to 1 post/cycle after D3. This would allow people who are busy with life to still be able to post and at the same time allow towns to have a bit more clear and cohesive atmosphere in trying to hunt scum. Plus it would raise the quality of our games altogether.
It's frustrating to get people to post more who simply do not want to play and it's even more frustrating when they are town. Inactivity is a problem for these games and it is something that needs to be looked at. We can use I Swear 3 as a test run for this kind of policy.
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It doesn't really help. It's not really how many posts people make during phases when it's clearly to be seen some people have no intention to play the game whatever their alignment is.
People do not know if it's day/night phase, they intentionally post only stuff that contributes nothing to the game etc.
It's not really fun to play in games like that. At least it destroys my motivation when you try to play to your win condition and someone does not give a fuck enough to know what phase it is..
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United States3230 Posts
On December 10 2013 01:57 raynpelikoneet wrote:
It doesn't really help. It's not really how many posts people make during phases when it's clearly to be seen some people have no intention to play the game whatever their alignment is.
People do not know if it's day/night phase, they intentionally post only stuff that contributes nothing to the game etc.
It's not really fun to play in games like that. At least it destroys my motivation when you try to play to your win condition and someone does not give a fuck enough to know what phase it is..
Perhaps give hosts more room to modkill/replace for inactivity? A more of a subjective count of activity than an objective one?
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Activity is a symptom of a larger problem. Towns rely on the mods to do something about inactivity when it should be the towns taking care of inactivity. If towns will lynch inactivity the same as it would lynch someone for a scumslip, I bet fewer people would lurk on average.
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United States3230 Posts
On December 10 2013 02:01 VisceraEyes wrote:
Activity is a symptom of a larger problem. Towns rely on the mods to do something about inactivity when it should be the towns taking care of inactivity. If towns will lynch inactivity the same as it would lynch someone for a scumslip, I bet fewer people would lurk on average.
But it is usually townies that lurk. That's why they haven't been lynched very much.
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It would be really hard to lynch for inactivity/people who clearly do not care.
Even people who post semi-decently (i mean like about 10 posts / phase) can be people you can clearly see they are not contributing towards any lynch. What are you going to do when there are like half of the people in game you can clearly see they do not care about who the town lynches? You already know if you lynch into them it's going to be a crapshoot and if there are at least a couple of those guys in the game the crowd will grow because "i can do that too, as i won't get lynched". Some people seem to think so even as town, unfortunately.
The problem is even if you try to incorporate that into play it will always hit town, and as in a game your goal should be to lynch scum it's kind of a lose-lose scenario that you can't solve just by lynching people who don't give a fuck. If it was just aone or two people then yes, but with the current state of the game no way that's going to work. :/
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
It's actually with this sort of issue in mind that I made LXIII with so much KP floating about.
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On average you'll hit townies more often than you'll hit scum, at least to start.
But then, on average, the median activity in games will increase. It's not a bandaid you're trying to cover up a problem with, it's medicine to cure the problem. Medicine takes time, and you have to take it until the problem is gone.
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Like in Witchcraft II i felt really bad for thrawn because he was doing everything to solve the game and on D2 he ended up with town where everyone lurked and one dude claimed scum. Nobody was trying to play the game besides me, thrawn, Koshi and WoS. When we killed WoS and Koshi thrawn had nearly solved the game but i had an easy time to fakeclaim a check because what are the inactives gonna do? Call me scum? I would have laughed on them based purely on activity and thrawn had really no other option than to trust me, everyone else looked like they were not trying helping the town.
I have probably never feld so bad for anyone because he played a REALLY good game, tried everything he could and got fucked by bunch of people who didn't give a fuck. That's so sad.
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Blazinghand
United States25562 Posts
On December 10 2013 02:01 VisceraEyes wrote:
Activity is a symptom of a larger problem. Towns rely on the mods to do something about inactivity when it should be the towns taking care of inactivity. If towns will lynch inactivity the same as it would lynch someone for a scumslip, I bet fewer people would lurk on average.
also it would work way better since scumslips don't exist
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On December 10 2013 02:20 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2013 02:01 VisceraEyes wrote:
Activity is a symptom of a larger problem. Towns rely on the mods to do something about inactivity when it should be the towns taking care of inactivity. If towns will lynch inactivity the same as it would lynch someone for a scumslip, I bet fewer people would lurk on average. also it would work way better since scumslips don't exist
Ssshhhhhh
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11589 Posts
The easiest solution to inactivity is to be less angry and hostile towards them. If they are town, it does no good to threaten them with a lynch because that makes it even less likely that they attempt to try. You attempt to cooperate with them, interact with them, and eventually you get a better picture of their intentions for the game, and thus their alignment. Number of posts don't matter as much as the content in the posts.
For me, personally, it's much easier to just not consider them a problem unless:
1) I have strong townreads on all active players (rare)
2) They do something fishy with claims/roles/actions/votes that COMPLETELY CONTRADICTS a previously stated idea (unreliable atm because of stupid towns)
3) Something in a flipped player's filter implicates them (only reliable in IRONCLAD scenarios, such as nomination)
There are many ways to ascertain someone's alignment, and you don't necessarily need a lot of posts to do it.
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On December 10 2013 04:21 yamato77 wrote:
The easiest solution to inactivity is to be less angry and hostile towards them. If they are town, it does no good to threaten them with a lynch because that makes it even less likely that they attempt to try. You attempt to cooperate with them, interact with them, and eventually you get a better picture of their intentions for the game, and thus their alignment. Number of posts don't matter as much as the content in the posts.
For me, personally, it's much easier to just not consider them a problem unless:
1) I have strong townreads on all active players (rare)
2) They do something fishy with claims/roles/actions/votes that COMPLETELY CONTRADICTS a previously stated idea (unreliable atm because of stupid towns)
3) Something in a flipped player's filter implicates them (only reliable in IRONCLAD scenarios, such as nomination)
There are many ways to ascertain someone's alignment, and you don't necessarily need a lot of posts to do it.
Thats great in theory,
but when I'm town and everyone is scared I *COULD* be active scum -- even though Im doing my best to progress town.
Its *FUCKING* annoying to be called scum, and then people with 1-2 posts/cycle that have no objective get to skate by.
Now, I do agree, perhaps I can improve such that I don't get lumped as scum.
But quite often, I will be a strong town read to D1/2, and then suddenly, people go, ohh mocsta is scum D3 because... just because...
I have seen the above apply to others that are active too.
Personally, I dont mind lurkers -- they are a standard part of the game.
But i hate is influential lurkers --> by this I mean, when the majority of the game is lurkers and you don't know where the vote is going.
This is *really* frustrating because for 40hrs out of 48hr everyone is arguing for nothing; as, in the last 8 hrs, all the lurkers vote fro whoever the fuck they want.
Thats when I say to myself: fuck my life, i want to quit mafia.
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11589 Posts
Well, if that happens, that's a different story. If people aren't interacting at all and just dropping a vote, they either should be lynched or not allowed to play until they become more committed to the game.
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It happens pretty much every large game these days.
Theres a core of between 5-8 people who are experienced/active --> active does not equate to spammer.
Then theres a hardcore group of 8-12 lurkers who barely post/interact.
And then theres replacements which is happening shit loads too.
I can understand why people don't want to play big games, I am quite put off them.
But i can also understand why people dont want to play minis.
Depending on how well ppl know each other, the entire game can be solved within 24hrs (e.g. look what happened in the first Hydra game)
Maybe 20 player gamse like the new titantic is the solution in the middle. Allowing enough leeway to push lynches on bottom-feed; and not enough ppl to scare lurkers from reading/contributing.
Lastly I think lurkers cop unfair slack for not reading.
It seems a lot of people  O* read the thread, they just don't know how to inject their thoughts into the thread.
Town needs to do a better job of identifying this type of lurker, and nurturing them in-game --> to at least establish their townieness and remove them from process of elimination.
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11589 Posts
Well, I think big games are just too big to reliably be able to read everyone in the game anyway.
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Re: Lurkers, I'd just like to quote this post from Adams analysis in LXIII:
The size of threads these days is becoming ridiculous. This topic has been beaten to death. I am not going to single you out. Stop posting every thought that you parse through your brains. Yes everyone will view you as townie for it, but it will reach a tipping point where people ignore your posts, even knowing you are town. You've effectively lost your power when this happens - Scum are going to ignore you when you are right, town are going to ignore you all the time.
The knock-on effect is that you are making your filter unreadable. Someone who is not quite sure on you is now less willing to do the work and open your filter. Someone who wants to use something you said to strengthen one of their cases is less likely to do so when they have to fish through 35 pages of garbage to find what they're looking for. Newer players and low volume posters are going to be less likely to start contributing because they feel drowned out or completely ignored.
For the first 3 cycles of this game we had about 8-10 players posting HUGE volume, and 20 or so players posting close to nothing because they were being drowned out. If you're throwing a fit in the obs chat about 'those fucking lurkers ruined the game MERRR!!!", stop and ask yourself if you were part of the problem. This game we had a player softclaim vigi to make another player, which he had a town read on, stop posting so damn much. That's some serious shit right there.
I write 90% of my posts in mafia in a word document first. I trim for excess words, make it as concise and as direct as I can. Then I ask myself "Does this post have a point, will that point be conveyed, will it advance my goals?" If the answer isn't an immediate yes, its a god damn no and delete the fucking post!~
I just want to make this clear to everyone: This is the very reasons why I don't play games anymore. I have never been a lurker, but if I would play nowadays, I would be one, because I would be unable to follow the game and post anything meaningful because of all the spam.
My impression is that some of the lurkers are people who actually want to play the game, but get drowned out the same way I would. Heck, in almost every game people who flip town complain that they cannot follow the game because of the size.
So all the people with high volume filters should really start asking themselves if each of those posts were really necessary. Did really each and every post have an impact on the game? Did they achieve something?
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On December 10 2013 19:35 phagga wrote:Re: Lurkers, I'd just like to quote this post from Adams analysis in LXIII: Show nested quote +The size of threads these days is becoming ridiculous. This topic has been beaten to death. I am not going to single you out. Stop posting every thought that you parse through your brains. Yes everyone will view you as townie for it, but it will reach a tipping point where people ignore your posts, even knowing you are town. You've effectively lost your power when this happens - Scum are going to ignore you when you are right, town are going to ignore you all the time.
The knock-on effect is that you are making your filter unreadable. Someone who is not quite sure on you is now less willing to do the work and open your filter. Someone who wants to use something you said to strengthen one of their cases is less likely to do so when they have to fish through 35 pages of garbage to find what they're looking for. Newer players and low volume posters are going to be less likely to start contributing because they feel drowned out or completely ignored.
For the first 3 cycles of this game we had about 8-10 players posting HUGE volume, and 20 or so players posting close to nothing because they were being drowned out. If you're throwing a fit in the obs chat about 'those fucking lurkers ruined the game MERRR!!!", stop and ask yourself if you were part of the problem. This game we had a player softclaim vigi to make another player, which he had a town read on, stop posting so damn much. That's some serious shit right there.
I write 90% of my posts in mafia in a word document first. I trim for excess words, make it as concise and as direct as I can. Then I ask myself "Does this post have a point, will that point be conveyed, will it advance my goals?" If the answer isn't an immediate yes, its a god damn no and delete the fucking post!~
I just want to make this clear to everyone: This is the very reasons why I don't play games anymore. I have never been a lurker, but if I would play nowadays, I would be one, because I would be unable to follow the game and post anything meaningful because of all the spam. My impression is that some of the lurkers are people who actually want to play the game, but get drowned out the same way I would. Heck, in almost every game people who flip town complain that they cannot follow the game because of the size. So all the people with high volume filters should really start asking themselves if each of those posts were really necessary. Did really each and every post have an impact on the game? Did they achieve something?
I don't necessarily agree with this.
There is a huge difference between lurking and attempting to contribute. You don't have to be a spammy high-volume poster to contribute even in games with ridiculously huge filters, you may just have to contribute in a slightly different way, ie. try to join a conversation currently taking place, make a couple big posts on a few topics here and there.
I do agree that there is probably too much spam in many games, but I don't see how this necessarily precludes other people from posting. If they can't follow the thread, then they haven't been reading the game and that's their problem imo. As far as 'lurking,' I can name and differentiate every player in my current game who is actually lurking vs those who are actually attempting to contribute though not posting very much. There is a very clear difference between the two, and there are people who may complain about those not putting in 20 pages of filter per day, but those aren't the complaints that matter. There are many ways to contribute, and finding a happy medium between 20 pages/day and 1 post/48h shouldn't be particularly difficult.
Despite all this I still believe that lurking ruins some games and it has nothing to do with the spam factor; it has to do with a subset of people who join a game, partway in decide they don't feel like playing anymore, and fuck off which is unacceptable. If the REASON they fuck off is because of the spam that might be a different story, but I have not heard such a complaint yet.
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On December 10 2013 19:48 Mid or Feed wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2013 19:35 phagga wrote:Re: Lurkers, I'd just like to quote this post from Adams analysis in LXIII: The size of threads these days is becoming ridiculous. This topic has been beaten to death. I am not going to single you out. Stop posting every thought that you parse through your brains. Yes everyone will view you as townie for it, but it will reach a tipping point where people ignore your posts, even knowing you are town. You've effectively lost your power when this happens - Scum are going to ignore you when you are right, town are going to ignore you all the time.
The knock-on effect is that you are making your filter unreadable. Someone who is not quite sure on you is now less willing to do the work and open your filter. Someone who wants to use something you said to strengthen one of their cases is less likely to do so when they have to fish through 35 pages of garbage to find what they're looking for. Newer players and low volume posters are going to be less likely to start contributing because they feel drowned out or completely ignored.
For the first 3 cycles of this game we had about 8-10 players posting HUGE volume, and 20 or so players posting close to nothing because they were being drowned out. If you're throwing a fit in the obs chat about 'those fucking lurkers ruined the game MERRR!!!", stop and ask yourself if you were part of the problem. This game we had a player softclaim vigi to make another player, which he had a town read on, stop posting so damn much. That's some serious shit right there.
I write 90% of my posts in mafia in a word document first. I trim for excess words, make it as concise and as direct as I can. Then I ask myself "Does this post have a point, will that point be conveyed, will it advance my goals?" If the answer isn't an immediate yes, its a god damn no and delete the fucking post!~
I just want to make this clear to everyone: This is the very reasons why I don't play games anymore. I have never been a lurker, but if I would play nowadays, I would be one, because I would be unable to follow the game and post anything meaningful because of all the spam. My impression is that some of the lurkers are people who actually want to play the game, but get drowned out the same way I would. Heck, in almost every game people who flip town complain that they cannot follow the game because of the size. So all the people with high volume filters should really start asking themselves if each of those posts were really necessary. Did really each and every post have an impact on the game? Did they achieve something? I don't necessarily agree with this. There is a huge difference between lurking and attempting to contribute. You don't have to be a spammy high-volume poster to contribute even in games with ridiculously huge filters, you may just have to contribute in a slightly different way, ie. try to join a conversation currently taking place, make a couple big posts on a few topics here and there. I do agree that there is probably too much spam in many games, but I don't see how this necessarily precludes other people from posting. If they can't follow the thread, then they haven't been reading the game and that's their problem imo. As far as 'lurking,' I can name and differentiate every player in my current game who is actually lurking vs those who are actually attempting to contribute though not posting very much. There is a very clear difference between the two, and there are people who may complain about those not putting in 20 pages of filter per day, but those aren't the complaints that matter. There are many ways to contribute, and finding a happy medium between 20 pages/day and 1 post/48h shouldn't be particularly difficult. Despite all this I still believe that lurking ruins some games and it has nothing to do with the spam factor; it has to do with a subset of people who join a game, partway in decide they don't feel like playing anymore, and fuck off which is unacceptable. If the REASON they fuck off is because of the spam that might be a different story, but I have not heard such a complaint yet.
To the bolded: If people spam 50 pages in 24 hours I will not be able to read this. If you think that 50 pages in 24 hours is fine, then you will exclude me from games here, because I will not be able to follow the thread. How can I make a meaningful statement about the game when I've missed half the posts that happened?
Of course there are other lurkers, people who are actually not contributing, who are not even trying, and they are a problem. But I think that the spam is creating more lurkers, because some people will just be turned off be the amount of (mostly useless) posts brought into the thread.
And I'm pretty sure that people have stopped caring midway about a game because of the volume, and voiced this in the thread.
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EPT
