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Blazinghand
United States25552 Posts
On February 11 2015 11:19 Eden1892 wrote:
Town keeps losing until it realizes it's talking too much. Then townies stop talking so much so they can lose less. It's a market, and people are realizing the price of posts is too high. Give it time and it will adjust
I'm not even sure how to address this. That's not at all what will happen. Games will just be bad instead.
People don't just have a "market" of mafia posts, nobody's buying or selling anything. This is a different situation, so a lot of the good parts of "market forces" don't apply here. It's much more like the thread is a common good than a free market of strategies. ok here let me explain with this quote
As a thought experiment, let’s consider aquaculture (fish farming) in a lake. Imagine a lake with a thousand identical fish farms owned by a thousand competing companies. Each fish farm earns a profit of $1000/month. For a while, all is well.
But each fish farm produces waste, which fouls the water in the lake. Let’s say each fish farm produces enough pollution to lower productivity in the lake by $1/month.
A thousand fish farms produce enough waste to lower productivity by $1000/month, meaning none of the fish farms are making any money. Capitalism to the rescue: someone invents a complex filtering system that removes waste products. It costs $300/month to operate. All fish farms voluntarily install it, the pollution ends, and the fish farms are now making a profit of $700/month – still a respectable sum.
But one farmer (let’s call him Steve) gets tired of spending the money to operate his filter. Now one fish farm worth of waste is polluting the lake, lowering productivity by $1. Steve earns $999 profit, and everyone else earns $699 profit.
Everyone else sees Steve is much more profitable than they are, because he’s not spending the maintenance costs on his filter. They disconnect their filters too.
covnersat
Once four hundred people disconnect their filters, Steve is earning $600/month – less than he would be if he and everyone else had kept their filters on! And the poor virtuous filter users are only making $300.
there. spamming like THAT. and NOT spamming is like putting in a filter. Individually, spamming helps you not get lynched, but if EVERYONE does it, the thread is a shitshow and town loses. Unless we have a conversation and a real agreement to be better, people are just gonna disconnect their filters and get less fish.
Now, I also get the feeling that as scum, winning because everyone posted 20 pages of filter and nobody read anything and lynches were random, that's not too fun. Or losing simply because you didn't want to post 600 posts in your game... I dunno
on the other hand, maybe we LIKE where things are going in terms of post count, and that's fine too-- if that's what we want. but we should discuss it, you know? Figure out what we want.
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Lol, from a scum perspective...the crazy posting in that game made it easier for us
(less so for me, cause I actually do like to read the game, and just as an FYI...I WOULD HAVE BEEN EQUALLY LOST AND DEPRESSIVE AS TOWN lol...probably more so)
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on a more realistic level
for people who have better (or at least more pressing) things to do than to check a thread constantly, seeing 20+ pages pop up multiple times a day when you check back in makes you not want to play. at all. it becomes too much work, and makes it hard for town to win
now I know I post a lot as town, and I've been trying to cut back on that in recent games (also a very hard adjustment to make when people can't be assed to make a read on active players beyond filter length, and I instantly get scummed for conserving posts)
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On February 11 2015 10:54 Half the Sky wrote:
THANK YOU HAPA.
I was JUST about to post about filter-length. I had received complaints on the length of the game aside from complaints in observer QT.
I was going to discuss it in my post-game but I am so happy you made a second thread.
As a moderator I was told by others to only moderate spam and let town handle if activity is too high or too low.
Pre-game I had made it clear that I did not feel it necessary to impose a post-count restriction for a mini.
For a large normal I would take a 3-4 (60-80 post) page per day cycle (48h) and 20 posts per night cycle, I think this is what Palmar did for Carol, and after Imperial hitting 500 pages, I think a postcount restriction is in order. I feel there are some players that put in reasonable time to the game but cannot keep up the pace when they fall 50 pages behind.
But for a mini, I didn't understand. When I saw the complaints, I read my game very carefully and I honestly did not feel anyone was spamming or doing excessive trolling. Some people were breaking their posts into smaller one liners but some of them were a series of questions to different people.
So as moderators where do we draw the line if someone is going off the deep end?
EDIT: Should such play be moderated in any way - that is what I am trying to drive at.
I received a few opinions last night, but I would like to hear more from people so I can understand better where to go next game I run.
I don't think that extra moderation/intervention in games is the way to solve the problem. Or atleast, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing such a thing as a host. It's such a slippery slope to tell someone that they are "posting too much."
That being said, perhaps a solution is to host more post-count restriction games like Ver has done in the past. Those games (Sicilian Mafia // You Only Shoot Once Mafia) seemed to have universally positive reception.
On February 11 2015 11:05 IAmRobik wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 11:02 Artanis[Xp] wrote:On February 11 2015 11:02 IAmRobik wrote:
Different playstyles call for different levels of activity. I will _NEVER_ get townread in a game with a post restriction Then you should get better at using your posts wisely. it's not about using posts wisely. it's about interacting with people on a real time basis. it is also something that I find essential for gathering reads. I am more comfortable reading someone i have a conversation with, rather than read someone who posts sparingly in big blocks of texts
I think this is a very flawed way of looking at the game.
Conversations are a great way to find bad mafia players, and are an even better way to get manipulated by good ones. I say this as a person who used to scum-hunt primarily through conversational tells.
Some extra reading:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/mafia/448443-you-only-shoot-once-mafia?page=117#2323
On February 11 2015 11:19 Eden1892 wrote:
Town keeps losing until it realizes it's talking too much. Then townies stop talking so much so they can lose less. It's a market, and people are realizing the price of posts is too high. Give it time and it will adjust
This isn't a free-market issue.
The activity levels have been increasing on this forum for the past three years - what makes you think it will suddenly reverse course if we leave it alone?
There are some larger issues preventing this problem from solving itself, which I touched on in the OP. It's really tempting for players to want to "look townie" and "contribute" by posting more. It's the easy way to get instant gratification. And it creates a vicious cycle of increasingly psychotic activity levels.
The real improvements you will make in this game are by spending extra time thinking about the game. And that's solitary, lonely, and difficult work. It is a fantastic feeling when that work succeeds, but it's so much easier to spam and pretend you are solving the game.
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I think people have touched on a lot of the issues regarding the activity-levels of games on this site. It makes games completely inaccessible to all but the most devoted (crazy) players and rapidly burns people out.
But even if none of the "higher minded" objectives of improving the quality of games appeal to you, just do it for yourself! Like it or not, there is a tradeoff between posting and thinking about the game. And if people spent even half of the time they used writing posts to just think about the game, they would improve so much at both their town and mafia play.
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played in both of those Ver games and can confirm they were 2 of the better games ive played in on this site
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kitaman27
United States9245 Posts
The biggest reason that I play as infrequently as I have the last year or so is due to the insane amount of time required to play a game. In terms of personal enjoyment, comparing the games several years ago to today it's not even close. The games of mafia that I had a blast playing were ones where nearly every player spent only a couple hours per cycle. Catching up on the thread after waking up in the morning was something to look forward to, rather than a chore. When you read the thread, you read every post because it was manageable to do so.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not preaching about how we should return to the good 'ol days and that my preferred type of game is how everyone should play. The skill level is much higher than it used to be. The strategy of posting such a high amount of content that no one can question that you are town is extremely effective. The mafia players who can emulate this high content strategy rise above all others. In these 300+ page threads there is so much useless information that it has become a viable strategy to stop reading the thread completely and only read the filters of the players being discussed for a lynch. It has become a different game than it used to be.
In the thirty games I've played as town, I average five pages of filter or roughly 100 posts. The largest filter I've ever had in a single game as town is 12. I would not consider myself a lurker and believe that I believe I provide my fair share of content in those 100 or so posts. In fact, about half of those posts are probably useless one liners so I believe you can say what you need to say in an extremely limited amount of posts. They don't need to be giant twenty paragraph analysis posts either.
I know people are looking for different experiences when it comes to playing a game of mafia. Some want the highest level game possible, others only care about winning, while another group enjoys the interactions with players themselves. It's probably impossible to please everyone.
There are people who will argue that their high post count style is how they play and that restricting them is unfair. I can understand that and I wouldn't want to tell someone that they can't play the way they want to play. However, it is possible to adapt. You can condense your posts, you can stop asking questions where the answer doesn't matter, and you can make the thread readable for others. At the same time, someone who can only player two hours a day is always going to be limited to that amount. They aren't able to adapt their style to a 40 page filter that is interacting in the thread at every single moment. There isn't a level playing field here.
I know a lot of players simply stop playing after becoming frustrated with the amount of time required to play a game. I think we need to find the right balance here. You can still have a high level game that ends in 100 pages. Perhaps some games should cater more to casual players, while others to more competitive players. I'm not sure if there is a great solution, but on a personal level I'd love to see the game experience improve.
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I think that a balance has to be found between extra spammy and to little activity as both lead to town losses.
Now let me talk about this a bit before I go on, people point to imperial mafia as what we are heading to and i'm not really sure that I agree with this assessment. Imperial is a total aberration in the grand scheme of things, you had an almost perfect storm. It was a somewhat down time for a lot of people in the game, it was a really large game with scums KP dwindling as the game went on and town did not have a KP of their own to help themselves gain information as well.
The cop was marginally ineffective because of framer+millers, and the scum team played really well even outside of the spam. The main reason that town lost wasn't because they were so entombed in spam per se, it was because they were not organized and they were stuck in their own reads and fighting amongst themselves for the great amount of time.
That being said the game wasn't a healthy game at all, and the page length was further increased by replacements coming in so late into the game when mod kills should of happened instead. That increased the size as well.
That aside, it wasn't condusive for town even though they had mafia on the block the final day and the day before if town would of worked together instead of going crazy.
Anyway back to the topic at hand, if you take the other game its insane for a mini, I had 9 pages of filter I believe at the time I was mod killed which equal'd to about 10% of the game posts maybe a tad bit less. Which I admit I try to shoot for somewhere between 6-10% of posts per day just so I can stay up and have a good handle on whats going on. But people are a lot postier than I, and it does sometimes make the game really difficult to read.
For example Edens post I basically skimmed going forward at one point or another and just stopped paying attention to what Eden said and did my own thing as it was just to much to handle at one point. I do the same thing at times with Robik at times and Sl I do it with as well. Why? A lot of it reads like drivel at points to me and I have a really hard time caring with people jumping back and forth so much.
But a post restriction isn't the answer either, its really up to the players themselves to realize that the behavior that they are doing makes it extremely difficult for the rest of the thread to take what they are saying and apply it or weight it constructively.
But you know if you get like HF, Marv, JAT and robik in the same game you are going to have 90 pages of filter between them at least. And people shouldn't have to change the playstyle they like but they just need to be mindful I suppose.
In all of my ramblings and thought vomit I think the conclusion would be, people just have to regulate themselves its not that town wins or loses on big or small post counts, its that town wins or loses based on the content of the posts that they pay attention to...
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I don't think people got the point of what I'm saying - I'm not saying "do nothing," I'm saying "people seem like they're figuring out that activity levels are too high, so let's see what happens over the next few games as people (presumably) change their style in response to this realization."
I gotta admit that I'm not sure what the alternative is. With regard to the game itself, I was the only egregious offender I'm aware of (certainly the only one publicly called out), and I've already written in the obs qt about this. More broadly I'm not sure of other specific examples, except maybe Imperial, which i know i already addressed at the time (although I think I was the only one who commented on it...), nor do I understand what the alternative is.
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Besides imperial I think I average a 4-8 page filter on day one and I generally get 2-4 pages until I die at that point depending.
Giving me a grand total of 12-18 page filter in general. Lately I have been posting considerable more having like 9, 9. 7 on day ones which is out of the ordinary to me but I've had more to say critically and pushing what and who I want to lynch. And fighting wagons so theres that to take into consideration meh.
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Blazinghand
United States25552 Posts
It's worth noting that although this is the first dedicated thread, this isn't the first time we've had this discussion. In the past eighteen months we've had like three or four restricted posting games experimentally in response to post game discussions of spam games. Twitterverse was one.
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On February 11 2015 11:59 Eden1892 wrote:
I don't think people got the point of what I'm saying - I'm not saying "do nothing," I'm saying "people seem like they're figuring out that activity levels are too high, so let's see what happens over the next few games as people (presumably) change their style in response to this realization."
I gotta admit that I'm not sure what the alternative is. With regard to the game itself, I was the only egregious offender I'm aware of (certainly the only one publicly called out), and I've already written in the obs qt about this. More broadly I'm not sure of other specific examples, except maybe Imperial, which i know i already addressed at the time (although I think I was the only one who commented on it...), nor do I understand what the alternative is.
Its only moderation, Geript is trying to keep his postings to X amount per day. I just like doing my average or finding 5-10% of the thread as my page number.
People have to keep themselves in check so that they don't pollute the game or there own experience.
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The other problem is if no one posts much of anything, there's nothing to read xP
Damdred and I can definitely speak to that. Part of why I started out so active on this site is it was needed where I started...however it's clearly not needed here the majority of the time. I think it's just a matter of reading the atmosphere of the thread and determining what it needs. Sometimes that's more posts. Sometimes that's throwing water on whoever is kicking up an unnecessary fuss, or talking down someone raging everywhere. Sometimes it's just plain direction, because the posting is fine but not going anywhere.
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On February 11 2015 12:08 rsoultin wrote:
The other problem is if no one posts much of anything, there's nothing to read xP
Damdred and I can definitely speak to that. Part of why I started out so active on this site is it was needed where I started...however it's clearly not needed here the majority of the time. I think it's just a matter of reading the atmosphere of the thread and determining what it needs. Sometimes that's more posts. Sometimes that's throwing water on whoever is kicking up an unnecessary fuss, or talking down someone raging everywhere. Sometimes it's just plain direction, because the posting is fine but not going anywhere.
I actually like this post Rsoultin is a town hero!
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On February 11 2015 11:10 Eden1892 wrote:I for one have no idea who OP is talking about 
Go play a game on Smashboards.
Anyone here would get policy lynched for spam. Srs.
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On February 11 2015 11:19 Eden1892 wrote:
Town keeps losing until it realizes it's talking too much. Then townies stop talking so much so they can lose less. It's a market, and people are realizing the price of posts is too high. Give it time and it will adjust
Aaaaaaaand wisdom. I have done exactly this; remember when my reputation was spam? (And true! I used to OWN whole pages in thread)
Someone just said me being in a game was grounds for how low activity would be.
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On February 11 2015 11:40 Hapahauli wrote:
I think people have touched on a lot of the issues regarding the activity-levels of games on this site. It makes games completely inaccessible to all but the most devoted (crazy) players and rapidly burns people out.
But even if none of the "higher minded" objectives of improving the quality of games appeal to you, just do it for yourself! Like it or not, there is a tradeoff between posting and thinking about the game. And if people spent even half of the time they used writing posts to just think about the game, they would improve so much at both their town and mafia play.
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this is only an issue in games that include hf/marv. In other games, it barely goes over 200 pages which is a decent length for a game. I think you are worrying about nothing.
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On February 11 2015 12:10 Damdred wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2015 12:08 rsoultin wrote:
The other problem is if no one posts much of anything, there's nothing to read xP
Damdred and I can definitely speak to that. Part of why I started out so active on this site is it was needed where I started...however it's clearly not needed here the majority of the time. I think it's just a matter of reading the atmosphere of the thread and determining what it needs. Sometimes that's more posts. Sometimes that's throwing water on whoever is kicking up an unnecessary fuss, or talking down someone raging everywhere. Sometimes it's just plain direction, because the posting is fine but not going anywhere. I actually like this post Rsoultin is a town hero!
methinks I detect sarcasm ;o; why you no love me no more, damdy?
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Actually it was really truthful, you made a good point.
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EPT
