When I use word "competitive", I am referring to the state of mind when you "must win" or "must not lose".
The comparison with free poker is based on the list of priorities in player's head while playing. While playing competitive game like cash poker, a player's list of priorities is: 1) To win
While playing free poker, a player's list of priorities should be: 1) To play in a certain way so that the game stays fun for everyone 2) To win
When you play Mafia on a forum, player's list of priorities is: 1) See if I can use my psychoanalytical skills to determine who is lying and who is telling the truth. 2) See if I can use game theory analysis to check what are the other players' motives are to say this or that. 3) To win
Of course, If I, as a competitive player, would be included in one of your games. After a while, I would assess if my team is winning or losing. If my team is losing, I would contact the moderator and accuse another player that he showed me a screenshot of his true game role. Moderator will either ignore my accusation or stop the game. If he ignores my accusation than the game is broken because you are effectively allowed to prove your role to anyone at any time. If he accepts my accusation, the moderator will confront the player I am accusing. And than... that player would be angry at me because I am lying. Taking into consideration the fact that I am a new and he is an old member, I would probably be banned from ever playing Mafia on this forum again.
However, if I was allowed one more chance and I got the innocent role in the next game. I would take a screenshot of my role and send it to another player. I would request from him to send me screenshot of his role. This player would probably inform the moderator about this transgression of mine. Because of the double standards, I would again get into trouble.
And you would try to explain to me that this game is not for evil people like me. And I would try to explain to you to start thinking outside of the box.
On April 04 2015 10:07 acajic wrote: When I use word "competitive", I am referring to the state of mind when you "must win" or "must not lose".
The comparison with free poker is based on the list of priorities in player's head while playing. While playing competitive game like cash poker, a player's list of priorities is: 1) To win
While playing free poker, a player's list of priorities should be: 1) To play in a certain way so that the game stays fun for everyone 2) To win
When you play Mafia on a forum, player's list of priorities is: 1) See if I can use my psychoanalytical skills to determine who is lying and who is telling the truth. 2) See if I can use game theory analysis to check what are the other players' motives are to say this or that. 3) To win
Of course, If I, as a competitive player, would be included in one of your games. After a while, I would assess if my team is winning or losing. If my team is losing, I would accuse another player that he showed me his true game role. And than... that player would be angry at me because I am lying. Taking into consideration the fact that I am a new and he is an old member, I would probably be banned from ever playing Mafia on this forum again.
And you would try to explain to me that this game is not for evil people like me. And I would try to explain to you to start thinking outside of the box.
we consistently use fake irl excuses and reasoning to get sympathy or create rage though we are highly competitive for our stats!
On April 04 2015 10:07 acajic wrote: Of course, If I, as a competitive player, would be included in one of your games. After a while, I would assess if my team is winning or losing. If my team is losing, I would contact the moderator and accuse another player that he showed me a screenshot of his true game role. Moderator will either ignore my accusation or stop the game. If he ignores my accusation than the game is broken because you are effectively allowed to prove your role to anyone at any time. If he accepts my accusation, the moderator will confront the player I am accusing. And than... that player would be angry at me because I am lying. Taking into consideration the fact that I am a new and he is an old member, I would probably be banned from ever playing Mafia on this forum again.
However, if I was allowed one more chance and I got the innocent role. I would take a screenshot of my role and send it to another player. I would request from him to send me screenshot of his role. This player would probably inform the moderator about this transgression of mine. Because of the double standards, I would again get into trouble.
And you would try to explain to me that this game is not for evil people like me. And I would try to explain to you to start thinking outside of the box.
Over a seven year period with ~350 games and 1250 different players that have played here....I think the type of situation that you are describing has come up maybe once or twice? Perhaps you can describe it as playing "competitively", but if you're going to bring up the poker analogy, I'd say that's more similar to some guy that tries to play with a deck of marked cards.
If fake screenshots are provided for any claim, why would people even bother to use them to begin with?
On April 04 2015 10:07 acajic wrote: When I use word "competitive", I am referring to the state of mind when you "must win" or "must not lose".
The comparison with free poker is based on the list of priorities in player's head while playing. While playing competitive game like cash poker, a player's list of priorities is: 1) To win
While playing free poker, a player's list of priorities should be: 1) To play in a certain way so that the game stays fun for everyone 2) To win
When you play Mafia on a forum, player's list of priorities is: 1) See if I can use my psychoanalytical skills to determine who is lying and who is telling the truth. 2) See if I can use game theory analysis to check what are the other players' motives are to say this or that. 3) To win
Of course, If I, as a competitive player, would be included in one of your games. After a while, I would assess if my team is winning or losing. If my team is losing, I would accuse another player that he showed me his true game role. And than... that player would be angry at me because I am lying. Taking into consideration the fact that I am a new and he is an old member, I would probably be banned from ever playing Mafia on this forum again.
And you would try to explain to me that this game is not for evil people like me. And I would try to explain to you to start thinking outside of the box.
we consistently use fake irl excuses and reasoning to get sympathy or create rage though we are highly competitive for our stats!
First, your priorities are wrong. Win is always #1. If it isn't then lolwut?
One mafia player once set up cardboard boxes in their house, stacked them up, and got a newspaper to demonstrate the day, and took a picture of it all to convince the thread he was moving as an explanation of low activity. So to echo HF's sentiments here, people make up shit for no reason all the time and fake excuses to get ahead. People will go to drastic lengths for wins.
To respond generally to this, I have played many years on another forum in which PMs are enabled, outside game communication is enabled, and games in which everyone has a role are the norm. I find that TL which tries to push games toward a "balanced" state and toward a more analytical play style is vastly superior. If your goal is to ensnare the general populace then you would be wise to go role heavy, enable private comms, etc. If you want to foster a competitive atmosphere where people reading other people is a priority, then that is the wrong path to trod.
To break it down more simply for you it comes down to 2 real priorities: private vs public information and mod info vs player info.
Generally speaking this forum, and myself, values public information over private. That all information given by players should be accessible by all other players and that all deceit and lying should be done publicly. Other people and places value it the opposite way, and from experience; the way TL does it is just better imo.
Mod info vs player info is a really contentious topic when you get into it with certain people. It is what distinguishes forum mafia from town of salem essentially. If you are in a place or a game in which mod info is valued over player info that usually means there are more roles. That is to say that many players send requests to the mod and the mod sends them back responses. This information interaction between player and mod has more impact than the player vs player interactions in cases of high role games. To me, this eventually devolves into a game of night action simulation rather than actual mafia. A place or game that values player interactions over mod interactions forces the priority onto players' "reads" of other players. Aka their ability to determine lies, logical missteps, veiled interactions, loopholes, behavioral similarities or differences, and the like. It is a game in which the mod being there has minimal impact and the players dictate the setting primarily. As you can see I prefer 1 vastly more to the other.
Essentially what I am telling you is that if you value private information and tons of roles/mod interaction, then you cannot create a truly competitive mafia environment imo. If you value 1, but not the other then maybe. But TL is the most competitive I have seen, and we like our VT. VT is best T.
Since I've started with the Poker comparison, I might as well continue. I am not saying that playing poker for free is bad. If you have a group of people that genuinely like playing poker just for the sake of the game, that's great. I suspect there are groups playing poker for fun very studiously, debating probabilities after each hand and determining who played better and who just got lucky. They are trying their best to win and to improve their skill.
But such special poker group will have strict rules not to include certain people in the game. For example, the people who are going all-in on practically every other hand. If they lose, they go home and they don't care. If they win, they are happy (and the player who was playing 'for real' is now kicked out of the game). I simply don't see how you can allow all type of players while keeping the game to be free to join.
Playing Mafia on a forum is kind of like playing free poker. As I explained, free poker has a fairly limited player base - so does the forum Mafia attract only a specific profile of people.
(btw, I often considered what it would be like to play Mafia as a wager match. For money or some other prize. Winning team takes all. Etiher mobsters or the innocents.)
I guess you can imagine a response from an average person if you try to make them interested in the forum Mafia game.
But if you tell them there is a prize to be won if they discover who the bad guy is in their own classroom/workplace, then you have wild dogs of the chain. They are not instructed what they should say or do or type and that they should use this strategy or that strategy...
(There is a group of students in my university playing this game from time to time. They played IRC mafia before, but now they only play this. I told them that... until this game causes a fistfight, I will not be satisfied :D)
Basically, I think the game of Mafia has a potential to reach much wider audience than it has currently.
It is also legitimate to say: "I like it that this is an 'exclusive club'. I like it that this game is not so common. I like it that it's not for everyone."
@Holyflare "A quick game of mafia" - This is not a site where you play a game of mafia within an hour. You play the day and night phases in the game as the days and nights go by in real life. That is the recommended setup, anyway.
@rsoultin. Well, I like the feedback I'm receiving now.
I actually disagree that mafia is an exclusive club. If you look at a lot of the games here there are many differen types of personality and style of posting that goes on. You have the super analytical style that I ascribe to, as do some other players here. You have the exceptionally long windned conversational style that HF utilizes effectively as both alignments. You have lurkier players who would probably be more like the all in every few hands that you never know exactly what to make of but we have them. Then we hav eother classifications that don't fit in anything.
So no I don't think your explanation of why its like free poker is adequate in this example. It is just part of the meta game of life how to figure this stuff out.
I think everyones #1 goal on this site is to win period, we have rules to maximize the potential use of the thread as mafia without the pm rules or such will gradually always migrate towards private converstaions where the likelihood of being tricked or lies being spread or general chaos is 10x. It degrades the game and mafia isn't a game for everyone its just something we live with we want more people but in real life we know that not everyone can do or enjoy things others like.
Its just not for me because I don't think its what mafia really is
Hang on am I reading this right that acajic is suggesting that optimal play is to cause intentional modkills to sway the game?
So acajic here's the thing. All games, Poker included, work within a specific ruleset. For example, in Poker you cannot hide a pair of Aces in your lap and then use them as your hand if your hand is bad. That might be "optimal" play in that you will win the most hands, but that is against the rules of the game. Would you cheat in Poker? After all, when you're caught (and everyone gets caught eventually), you'll be kicked out. Would you blame the other poker players for kicking you out?
In mafia, "optimal" play might be to try to get all the other players modkilled. But that is not within the rules of the game.
And you would try to explain to me that this game is not for evil people like me. And I would try to explain to you to start thinking outside of the box.
One thing you may not be aware of is that Mafia is played in many different forms. IRL Mafia has different rules than IRC (chatroom) Mafia, which has different rules than Forum Mafia, which has different rules than Video Chat Mafia.
Even IRL Mafia has different forms. You seem to want to play Long-IRL Mafia, in which players are given roles and the game lasts for weeks. These games are rare because it is difficult to organize, but if you are in college I encourage you to try to set one up, you may enjoy it more than forum mafia.
To use your analogies, playing Forum Mafia is like Chess. IRC Mafia is like Speed Chess, Video Chat Mafia and Quick IRL Mafia (~1 hour) are like Poker, and Long IRL Mafia is like capture-the-flag or Humans vs Zombies.
I hope that my analogy to cheating in poker made sense to you, and that you realize people can be competitive and not cheat. If not, let me know, I'm happy to discuss this further.
tbh the role heavy games with lots of private communication is actually less competitive imo
or, rather, the actual skill of the players does not have as much of an impact on the outcome of the game. it takes no skill to send a pm with a fake role or lie to a mod about others sending such pms to you. if you're inclined to do that anyway then no, this forum is not for you
and those of us who put a high value on the skill that goes into mafia are probably not going to be interested in your version of "competitive" play...which is not a negative thing. it's just, as damdred said, two different ways of looking at the game
I think iGrok touched on an important point here: all games work partly because of the ruleset that is enforced. You offer your game on the basis that it is an interesting/fun game to play because there are no rules. There's an inherent problem with the design.
What is the game of mafia to the people that play on this forum (or any other "competitive" environment, whether it be forum, irc, video, irl, etc.)? A couple of already touched upon it, but something along the lines of logic, behavior, and analysis. And yes, lying is a part of that, in a way the basis for the game. But lying is probably not the primary reason people are playing this game. Ask anyone what makes the game of mafia so great to play and I don't think many people will respond with "a game where you lie to win" (although it's certainly a perk...nobody will deny that). No, it's the intrigue and analytics that make the game interesting.
But to you it seems that the game of mafia is about lies and deceit. So your game of mafia is built around lies and deceit instead of logic, behavior and analytics. It makes sense that your game is constructed with no rules because any of those rules would inhibit the gameplay that you desire. However, these rules are necessary to get the game we want (with the exception of the PM rule I would argue). Those rules that you do away with exist here and at other mafia sites because someone performed the act and it ruined the game for everyone else. To use the poker analogy, it would be like someone marking the cards, or paying off the dealer to rig the deck.
It's fine that you're interested a game about lies and deceit and I'm sure you can find others, but I don't think you're going to find many people here or on other sites that are after what you're after with the game of mafia.
As an aside, I'm not sure that mafia is the best game to get what you want. Not that I can think of anything better, but upfront I imagine that your mafia games are basically a photoshop and a hacking competition. Or whoever has the most money to bribe people with (if that's allowed). I don't think many people would find that fun, nor is losing at all fun because you've been literally cheated out of winning (losing in a fair manner motivates one to play more). Which goes back to the first point about rules existing in games for a reason.
I like all the responses Don't think I am disappointed because of ppl's lack of enthusiasm. This is the reason I opened the topic, I wanted to hear other ppls opinions.
@iGrok @kitaman27 I believe that hiding aces in your lap or marking cards would be a very common thing in Poker in if there was no way to get caught. In general, I hate rules that cannot be enforced. I live in a country with many laws like that and it's a shitfest.
If I am playing TL Mafia game with a friend of mine, who lives down the block. We go somewhere together and I log into Mafia on my phone and show him my true game role if I am innocent. How can he prove to anyone that I broke the rules? And I didn't make an extra effort to cheat. Maybe I just left my laptop on the table while going to the restroom and he accidentally saw the game sensitive information.
This is why it was established earlier that the forum players (who are individuals on distant places around the globe) are maybe not the target audience for this game.
This is also why I deliberately used the analogy where a poker player accidentally saw the opponent's hand. Something that cannot be proven, yet it breaks the gameplay.
@Foolishness No, my games are not Photoshop. My game is made so that any player can fake anything without the need for Photoshop. Any game combination can be faked with just a couple of mouse clicks. This is exactly why nobody will ever do it. Because everyone is aware that they are accomplishing nothing by taking screenshots. As I said, the game has been played many times so far. There was a couple of screenshots in the beginning but after that it stopped. Purely because - in my game - you cannot prove anything with a screenshot.
This actually makes players never to think about bending the rules because they cannot be bent. After that point they are purely focused on the game. But this time, for the right reasons imo.
Forum Mafia says: "don't cheat... because it's not fun" my game says: "you can't cheat so don't bother"
I am not pushing this story because I am very specific type of person and I go to extremes. I actually made a much more simpler version of the game while I was in college couple of years ago. And I played it with my friends, fellow students. Each morning I would get to the class, and people would be talking about who got killed that morning. It was a general topic.
On our third game, screenshots started to be sent over emails and that was the end of it. So, it was not my criminal mind that came up with all this. I just adapted the game so that it can be played in a classroom. If I could go back to college with this game now, We'd have much more fun with this version than we did with my original one.
This is also a reason why I always say that forum Mafia attracts a specific profile of players. Because it took only three games for my friends to raise the competitiveness of the game to the level that none of the current online versions can support. And somehow, after thousands of games on this forum, this problem never arose...
About role heavy games... I don't like playing Mafia games where everyone gets a role. One of the obvious reasons is that public role claim immediately kills the game. At the start of a game, there should be more basic innocent roles than mafia roles. How much more? That's variable.
So, basically, no. I don't like too much mod interaction. I agree it kills the game.
But I don't like what you're saying about all information given by players should be accessible by all other players. Doesn't that cut an entire branch of gameplay?
I mean, one of the most funny things that can happen in Mafia is that you say something to someone in person. And then say something contradictory to someone else also in person. And then maybe they exchange this contradictory information between themselves and you say that one of them is lying - that you never said that to him/her.
One of the most powerful aspect of the game imo is the situation when you are left alone with someone and you talk about other players while they are not there.
And they talk about you while you are not there.
That's how conspiracies are forged.
Of course, it goes without saying... there should be a medium readily available where you can exchange public information whenever you want.
I always remember this movie when thinking about this stuff
I don't understand why you make it so a willingness to cheat has to be hand in hand with competitiveness. The two are not mutually exclusive at all. We have rules that are hard to inforce but they do get enforced, mostly ots done by mod kills in games.
We have plenty of people who know each other from other sites, some know each other irl. But I am certain that all of these people are faithful to the spirit of the game of undisclosed information. For example geript a player had to replace out of a game afterwards he pmd Marv and made a comment that gave away his alignment.
Both self reported and neither was punished but Marv was taken out and replaced. Another incident another newer player pmd me their alignment and was mod killed by the host.
It stinks when things like this happen, but keeping the information to yourself is what makes mafia so fun. We all want to win 100% of the time, we don't that's just life.
As I said a couple of posts back. All of what I'm saying comes out of personal experience of playing Mafia. When we played in college, I started getting reports that some players are sending screenshots over email.
Some of these people never played Mafia and I wanted to see how the game will evolve all by itself. It never occurred to me to say: "Don't do it. It's against the rules."
To me it would be a horrendous artificial routing of the evolution of the game that was up to that point free to evolve into something I could not even predict. And among players who were never instructed how to play.
Tbh I didn't see the difference between saying to a Mafia player "Don't do it. It's against the rules." and saying the same thing to a drug dealer on the street.
And to ban them if they break the rules. The funny thing is... that's how the world works irl :D You say to criminals: "Don't do it. It's bad." And then you punish them if you prove that they did it. (The words in italic all have room for human error in judgement)
To an engineer, that's called "bad design".
I still haven't figured out how to fix the rules regarding the real life, but for Mafia... it's pretty much done.
Ok, maybe I got on the wrong track here... Saying "Don't do it." could be compared to the game of chess. In the 15th century a specific situation was discovered in the game in which the gameplay would drastically worsen. It involved a move when you surpass the opponents with your pawn under specific circumstances. The rule makers of chess could have also said: "Don't do that move. It's against the rules." But they didn't. Instead they invented a rule called "En passant" according to which you can swing this opponents move to your own advantage.
So, my question is... Why didn't the rulemakers of chess simply say: "In certain situations, you must not surpass opponents pawn with your own." It would be a simple rule and everyone would obey it. So why didn't they do it like this?
@iGrok @kitaman27 I believe that hiding aces in your lap or marking cards would be a very common thing in Poker in if there was no way to get caught.
This doesn't matter, because there are ways to get caught. Your ideal scenario where you can do anything with no consequences is impossible. Even if no one could prove it, if you had 2 aces every hand, no one would play with you, so you would still lose in the end.
In general, I hate rules that cannot be enforced. I live in a country with many laws like that and it's a shitfest.
The rules of forum mafia can, and have been enforced quite easily. All it takes is people with decent morals who report issues when they arise.
Tbh I didn't see the difference between saying to a Mafia player "Don't do it. It's against the rules." and saying the same thing to a drug dealer on the street.
And to ban them if they break the rules. The funny thing is... that's how the world works irl :D You say to criminals: "Don't do it. It's bad." And then you punish them if you prove that they did it. (The words in italic all have room for human error in judgement)
To an engineer, that's called "bad design".
First, as an engineer, that isn't called "bad design". But beyond that, I'm trying to figure this out. Are you saying that in real life, we shouldn't punish criminals because they are just trying to win?
Regarding poker, how can you get caught if you accidentally saw someone's hand?
Regarding criminals... I am saying that US builds more prisons than schools every year. Officially, they are not called prisons but "correctional facitilities". Yet almost nobody comes out "corrected".
I'm pretty sure I would call that bad design. And someone else would probably ascribe that to the "vile human nature".
But not to digress...
I think everyone gets hooked on insignificant parts of my posts... I would like to focus more on my comparison with chess in the last post where the rulemaker had the choice in which direction the evolution of the game will go. A) Don't-do-it rule B) En passant rule
What my game represents is an "En passant" rule to the game of online Mafia.
Also, not to repeat myself... but it took a group of students three games to start trying to "beat the game" so I imagine it wouldn't be different if any online Mafia was presented to any group of students. Yet, according to the reports, it happens here once in a thousand games.
I think it's fair to say that we are talking about two drastically different games and different profile of people playing it. So, don't perceive me as someone telling you that your version of the game is not good. What authority would I even have to say such a thing...
if the point of your game is to take the benefit out of faking roles perhaps that is where this discussion should have begun instead it started with what seemed to be a celebration of faking roles within the game mechanics of your game
ftr i can see that if everything can be faked and nothing can be believed, people would be less inclined to actually try it...so basically you designed your system for people who lack integrity. that's fine. i'd argue truly competitive players generally will not be happy with a win that comes of intentional (or unintentional) cheating (because yes knowing more information than you are supposed to know in the game of mafia defeats the purpose of the game as it was originally intended)
perhaps the pushback you're getting is the players here take pride in being good at the game and you're suggesting they're not competitive? lol because they're unwilling to resort to the tactics you say are an evolution of the game?
i'm not one of the best players on this site which is why i keep referring to "them" instead of "us"
Ok, we'll let the prison tangent go. It seems like we're having some trouble communicating since english isn't your primary language, your word choice isn't perfect.
To use your example in chess, what if a large number of players did not like the en-passant rule? Would you force them to use it? Would you say those players are not competitive enough? Or would you say that it is a different style of chess?
To go back to poker, in Texas Hold 'Em, I decide that I want to draw 5 cards instead of 2. Can I just do this? After all, it helps me win. Or should I go make a new game called 5 Card Draw? And then, should I say that the Texas Hold 'Em players are not competitive because they choose to only draw 2 cards?
rsoultin was 100% correct. You come into our forum and tell us we aren't competitive because we play a using certain rules (you've backtracked now, but you've already insulted our community). That is not a good way to introduce yourself to a new community. I feel sorry for you that you experienced bad mafia players in your past, that you feel that breaking rules is acceptable play. I would suggest that you join a newbie game, but I'm afraid that you would simply cheat to win.
The people who play regularly on this forum (and most forums) are not your target audience. I suggest you look elsewhere.
EPT
we are highly competitive for our stats!
Well, I like the feedback I'm receiving now.
instead it started with what seemed to be a celebration of faking roles within the game mechanics of your game
