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Civility Please |
On December 10 2013 20:00 phagga wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2013 19:48 Mid or Feed wrote: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.
Again fairly sure this is not the case but I'll leave that for my postgame and don't wish to discuss an ongoing game.
Whether or not 50 pages in 24 hours is fine or not, effort can still be made. Personally I would find 50 pages in 24 annoying to catch up with, but doable. I'd skim. I'd understand if there are people who cannot do so however and have seen people at least attempt to take steps to try and contribute if that isn't possible. Reading the last 10 pages for example, or asking for TL;DRs either in thread or scum QTs. If you actually care about the outcome of a game one way or another, you can always find a way to actually play it.
Essentially, I think that trying to equivocate any perceived issues with TL Mafia in its current form to its current 'meta' of spammy threads is a little bit silly, and there are larger problems at hand. Forcing people not to spam to participate is silly because at least those people are actually playing, and not breaking any rules, or even any rules in spirit. It means they actually enjoy the game played here. I feel bad for those people who are turned off because of it, but I see absolutely nothing objectively wrong with the playstyle, nor do I find it a detriment to TL Mafia as a whole.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
I'm able to play a decent amount at work, but even so I often miss 10-20 pages, and that takes me quite a long time to read and process. Of course you can skim, but then you're also not really taking in what you're reading anyway, and then I'm not sure if your contributions are contributions anymore.
I think phagga's (and similar) complaint is legit, and actually it sucks if players like phagga don't sign up for games because of this. To an extent though, people just post much more these days. I spammed in ##, but outside of this I've played in several games in the last few months where I've posted *a lot*, but generally it's been useful content. That's just how I play :/
For me it comes down to what BC posted earlier in the thread; the people who sign up and use whatever time they have not to play the game, but to fuck about. I find that extraordinarily selfish.
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11589 Posts
I'll say it now, I would not read a thread at all if I had to miss playing for ~1 day and came back to 50 pages. It's just not fun, because most of it is shit. And I don't just not play games, either.
Also, just by looking at the sheer amount of posts in an ongoing game, I can tell you I would HATE to be in it.
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Yeah, I'm gonna have to second (or third or fourth) the notion that spam and how much people post is a problem. It's pretty much why I don't sign up. I don't have a lot of time to play to begin with and especially nowadays I definitely won't have time to play because I feel I need to read all posts more than once to have some idea of what's happening. The biggest games I played in were, parallel worlds (18 people), themed game (17 people), and PTP IV (16 people) and those games only had 120 pages, 100 pages, and 180 pages, respectively. I was fine with all of those games. I had extra time to play PTP IV, so that's why I could handle the extra posts. For an extreme example, I pretty much got outed by spam in Mario Mini as scum because the game was ridiculously spammy (not on the level of some recent minis mind you, but back then it was a lot) and I had a lot less time than I thought to play the game. For me to brave this level of posting, it will have to be for a game I really want to play in.
Personally, of all the games that I hosted or cohosted, I would not have been able to handle the activity of any of them except for Doctor Who (that game was extraordinarily concise compared to games now). I have skimmed all the posts in Aperture Mafia 2: Episode 2 and ##, but that doesn't take too much work because I knew all the players roles and alignments and just needed to sorta follow along to give some general thoughts about the game afterwards.
Honestly, this whole issue is troubling me because I'm not sure if my next themed game will work. It's probably going to need 30ish players and require a lot of thought from the players and spam will be especially detrimental to the game for certain reasons I will keep secret for now. Honestly, I'm debating having an approximate post restriction for everyone that is mostly based on content opposed to just # of posts. Like my idea is that everyone has X posts each cycle, but you can exceed this if you pm and I see that you are contributing and not just spamming. I want my games to be accessible to all types of players and not just the ones that have 8 hours a day to play like it seems some players do.
Edit: I somehow forgot (probably intentionally like everyone who played in it) about personality 2 which was 26 people and 230 pages lol. I tried to make time for that game, but that game as a whole didn't turn out too well, and I was completely lost that game lol.
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kitaman27
United States9245 Posts
One idea that I considered for a future game was to use post counts as a resource. Players would be allow to spam the thread, but if they did so it would come at the expense of your voting power or ability.
For example, each player's vote would count for 3 each cycle, but if they exceeded X amount of posts it would count for 2, Y amount of posts it could count for 1, and Z amount of posts they would be roleblocked/have a less effective night action. This would force them to decide if the benefit of seeking additional information via posts in the thread would be worth the trade off of being less influential to decide the lynch.
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Silent nights should be brought back. Gives everyone a break, and time to simmer down from ERMAGERD HE WAS TOWN DAAAAFAAAAQ. also allows people to prepare posts for the day.
only downside for towns is the ability to claim during the night, but thats just cheap anyway imo.
Want to cut down spam? cut out night phase posting which is mostly spam about if x dies then this or if x flips town we know this speculation BS.
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On December 11 2013 01:33 Mr. Cheesecake wrote:
Silent nights should be brought back. Gives everyone a break, and time to simmer down from ERMAGERD HE WAS TOWN DAAAAFAAAAQ. also allows people to prepare posts for the day.
only downside for towns is the ability to claim during the night, but thats just cheap anyway imo.
Want to cut down spam? cut out night phase posting which is mostly spam about if x dies then this or if x flips town we know this speculation BS.
i could support this.
I liked in game of thrones when after a lynch you could only pm your housemates. It was like having a break which was nice.
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If you had someone to PM to. 
Well it was quite funny to PM with Risen where each one of us was bullshitting each other to the fullest. ^^
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Hmmmm. The thing I don't like about silent nights is that it doesn't give people a chance to post updated reads based on what happens with the lynch. I know that I play much better after seeing flips and having solid evidence. I personally think my day 1 is garbage and something I need to work on because of that reason. If I didn't get a chance to update my reads based on a lynch flip before being nk, I wouldn't like that. Maybe that's only because I haven't played with silent nights before, though.
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kitaman27
United States9245 Posts
1 post nights would also be an option
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On December 11 2013 01:50 kitaman27 wrote:
1 post nights would also be an option
I disagree with this, mainly because mafia would use it to direct their roleblocks. Someone waiting until the last minute to post their 1 post? Must be claiming blue. It would probably lead to everyone posting right before the deadline to avoid this, I'd like the Silent Night mechanic to be implemented because I feel night posts are, in generally, just bad. It keeps the games posts constantly relevant (I.E., someone is going to always be lynched in the cycle this person in posting) and gives people a break, reduces spam. People say silent nights are mafia-favored, but often times people softclaim their vig-shots, cop checks, doc saves,etc and end up helping the mafia. Night-time posts are just big wifom bombs that neither town nor mafia wants to deal with imo.
If we would like to keep the "Claiming during resolution phase" tactic, players could submit to the host a Will that would be posted with the Day post, regardless of who dies/gets roleblocked. That way the player outs themselves, even if they don't die and decide against claiming.
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Blazinghand
United States25563 Posts
I like silent nights, and they'd work even better in conjunction with IML and a policy to lynch spammers
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On December 11 2013 02:14 Blazinghand wrote:
I like silent nights, and they'd work even better in conjunction with IML and a policy to lynch spammers
If policy lynches actually worked, then lurking wouldn't be a problem.
I REALLY miss IML though.
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Blazinghand
United States25563 Posts
Fear not! Extractor Trick Mini Mafia will be IML
policy lynches are hard to use on lurkers cause you can't pressure someone with a policy lynch unless they are in fact aware there is a lynch taking place. spammers usually know what's going on
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Hmmmmm. I will have to think about silent nights for my game. That might work. If I do go with silent nights, I'll probably include the will portion if someone dies at night because I like being able to still post thoughts "before" the nk.
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Blazinghand
United States25563 Posts
I would not include any such "last will" rule in my silent night games, though I see why they'd be attractive. Since I usually only run silent night in IML games it's not like town doesn't already have a systematic advantage. I feel comfortable taking away the last will in that situation. I also think the whole idea of posting last-second reads before the flip is kind of janky anyways. I strongly prefer the last hour of the night to either be "you can change your actions but can't post" or "you can post but can't change your actions"-- either way gets rid of the insanity of trying to post as close as possible to the day post.
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Well I always do the the latter for nights: non-silent 1 hour action resolution period. Do you think wills have any place in normal majority or plurality games, though? I've never used them, or have played in a game with them, or even read a game with them, so I have no idea how they work in practice.
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Blazinghand
United States25563 Posts
I personally don't like wills as a matter of style. I think a VT in a normal game should be able to play the game to the fullest just by posting in the thread, unless he gets masoned or something. havine to be like pming hosts and updating your will seems kinda lame. That being said, if you're running Silent Nights without using IML to give town extra time to write posts during the day, then you may want to do it. I personally would like last wills better in a game with mechanics based around "when I die, X happens" and lots of kp to make cool things happen.
In any case if you really want to make nights more quiet but want to leave in last wills, probably the easist solution is the night is silent for 23 hours and in the last hour, people can't change their night actions any more, but CAN talk.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
I hate silent nights, for the large reason that it leaves me unable to comment on a flip and what it means before my fairly likely upcoming death.
If people seriously wanted to try it, then
In any case if you really want to make nights more quiet but want to leave in last wills, probably the easist solution is the night is silent for 23 hours and in the last hour, people can't change their night actions any more, but CAN talk.
this looks like a reasonable sort of compromise.
I just get itchy when I can't post :p
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On December 11 2013 01:33 Mr. Cheesecake wrote:
Silent nights should be brought back. Gives everyone a break, and time to simmer down from ERMAGERD HE WAS TOWN DAAAAFAAAAQ. also allows people to prepare posts for the day.
only downside for towns is the ability to claim during the night, but thats just cheap anyway imo.
Want to cut down spam? cut out night phase posting which is mostly spam about if x dies then this or if x flips town we know this speculation BS.
That is pleasant, I have game setup I am working on where there would be 12 hours of OMG he was town.
(straight after the lynch)
Then 12 hours of silence. (12+12) not (23+1)
As that second 12 hours is the 12 before normal deadline that silence is on the spammy part of the thread. That IMO has the least in it.
(Its flavor related dont ask, but I thought it might have some upsides I hadnt thought of this aspect.)
(I was hoping that some chill time might take some edgyness off some players. The other hot topic.)
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