No you weren't. The first thing a townie has to master is looking townie. Which you did.
By showing us you were townie and how organic your reads were (I doubted that at points, but others were sure on you), we were able to focus on other people that looked scummier on you.

There's a flip side to that as mafia, but even if you aren't the best at finding scum, looking town helps the faction.
There are many ways to scumhunt btw and as long as we can follow what you're doing reasonably well, you generally will be okay as town.

Same thing as I told y0su, being a top town doesn't happen overnight. Patience is required.

Half the Sky

Germany9029 Posts

May 11 2015 17:09 GMT

#2118

Celestial also deserves a nomination where it applies in the mafia awards thread for that insanely long post.
I know you're just off writing your dissertation but holy shit.

Half the Sky

Germany9029 Posts

May 12 2015 12:45 GMT

#2125

A few comments.

On May 12 2015 11:34 Tictock wrote:
It was also a bit odd playing since I often found myself posting when nobody was around. D3 was the first day where I felt like I had an idea who and how I should push on, but the interactions felt so sour. Especially my exchange with SL left me pretty frustrated. Actually that's why I only posted that snippet before, wanted to give myself time to calm down and reflect before posting again.

I think I said this in thread during game and I'll say it again - this is pure luck of the draw with the people who signed up. Most newbie games I'm used to there being a load of Americans and being one of the few Euros, but the last two games had more Euros, NSM9 has probably had the most Euros I've seen in a newbie game tbh. In this game, the first two to die were NA players, so it's inevitable this was going to happen.

Trust me, I've been there. I wake up and realising no one is going to be in thread for several hours - well you need to post something or just get your ideas out. On the flip side, I have to go to bed sooner, and I miss out on a lot of the conversations that do happen with the NA players. But you're playing a game with people from everywhere you have to adjust either way.

You'll get used to both conversational and case-based styles of posting in the mafia games and you have to be pretty decent at both especially if you are not around when others are. Posting something (even if talking to a wall) is better than nothing at all and you can always go back and read through the thread and ask questions and field questions from people from several pages prior. People can't scumread you for any natural delays because of timezone.

+ Show Spoiler +

First off this is more or less about my stuff with SL, trying not to be personal about it, but if I fail sorry.

So I get that he plays this super lazy style, but I don't get why everyone just accepts it. I mean I put together some pretty solid reasons why I thought he was scum this game and put some effort into detailing why I thought that. This is instantly brushed off by everyone who isn't new SIMPLY because that's his Meta. Like really? Metas change you guys, if SL knows that he never does PoE as scum and knows that you all know that, whats to stop him just throwing that into a game as scum and suddenly everyone goes, "ok thats his town meta, mark him green"?

Maybe the biggest reason why that bugs me is because this is a newbie game. A game that HAS to have multiple new players who are learning. I noticed you guys tend to push newbies quite a bit and point out when their reads are weak in an instance. When I was seeing this I thought "of man, these guys are really gunna me on my feet, much less scum." Then I see SL doing the same stuff (giving weak, or unbacked reads, posting very little, etc) and everyone goes, "Oh he plays like that" How am I supposed to take this as a new person here? It's a bit of a double standard to push new players for stuff but excuse vets for the same stuff. A new player has literally NO WAY of understanding anyone's metas and besides reading past games has no way of learning. So either we have to accept what is being said about that person (removing our ability to judge them on our on) or go spend a ton of extra time reading for peoples metas. Why should we have to do all that work to understand a player who is just lazy?

I might not mind this style of play so much, expect that SL was outright giving bad advice to town the whole game. As town... in a NEWBIE game... simply because he's too lazy to do real reading so he comes up with "great mechanical plays." In addition when I was pressuring him D3, he keeps giving me glib one line responses, and eventually stars just calling me names. One post that showed more than 5 seconds of thought or minimal effort would have given me pause, but that's too much effort. That REALLY bugs me. Then he just gets defended and my whole bit of reasoning is thrown out the window, because of one word, Meta.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say meta reads should never happen. I totally get the value, I just see Meta reads as possibly misleading due to changing metas. It's when that's literally the ONLY defense for a person's actions/play that late in a game. That's an issue for me.

I feel like this is telling me I shouldn't bother to try so hard. It might look bad to be lazy, but it will soon get read not as lazy, but as meta. Not only will it let me avoid reading or giving more than minimal effort, but it makes my scum game easier to play since my town game already will luck scummy. Are you guys really ok sending this message?

So thats my rant, here is my question.

Given that SL's town play is at best lazy, and possibly hugely detrimental to town (if we had followed his play on D2...) why isn't he just a policy lynch every game? You possibly catch an easy scum, at worst get rid of an unreliable town.

Regarding sicklucker, his town meta and scum meta are pretty close and he can cause confusion for town. He HAS been mislynched as a result (reference: JOAT) and in theory he should be getting hit with DT checks (assuming any DT plays optimally) as a potential active mafia.

For players like sicklucker, and others whose metas are too close together or who play extremely well as scum, one thing you'll learn is that you will have to evaluate these people differently from others. Again, this takes time.

Also on sicklucker's personality - again, no one means anything personal here. Sometimes it's easy to forget that. People will criticise your arguments and someone might get extremely angry at someone's gameplay especially if they threw the game for town. If mafia know someone loses focus, they will try to get in that person's head. (Of note, personal attacks/excessive swearing/bad behaviour will get warnings/bans from moderators.) But after post-game everyone lets it go.

Half the Sky

Germany9029 Posts

May 12 2015 13:38 GMT

#2126

On May 12 2015 21:31 disformation wrote:
So. Since this was my first Mafia game on TL.net: any additional advice from the vets?

Before the game I was like "please don't give me a power role."
So initially I was I was pretty unhappy with being the doc. Glad it worked out kinda well for town.

Things I noted from this game:
- Entry post terribad (terrible and bad): try to appear more casual next game.
- Overdone the emoticon thing at the start of the game, which made me seem unnatural.
- I should try to be more confident in my reads and stop waffling all over the place.
- Probably should also push more aggressively as town.
- Should maybe also put out own reads more often and be less lurky. Sometimes after making a post or reading an interesting discussion I was just lurking around waiting for reactions or answers instead of trying to advance my reads.

Other than that, I am kinda pleased with this being my first game.

Not sure if I will join newbie student mafia X, since I am falling a bit behind my schedule for my master thesis. But I will try to get that sorted out the next few weeks, so I hope I'll be able to join XI.

Emoticons are hit or miss. A lot of people interpret them differently.

My entrances are generally rubbish as either alignment. You can always bounce back from a bad entrance by just sticking adamantly to town agenda, giving and pushing your reads.

There are situations where it's okay to waffle but don't do it all the time and make sure you make it clear to the thread WHY you're waffling. If you are seeing both town and scum behaviour in someone, even if you cannot decide, spell it out and maybe someone more knowledgeable can see it. Or maybe you help someone see things they didn't.

Confidence is the key issue and pushing is the main one a lot of veterans will gripe about with other veterans and it's also what makes the NSM games difficult for us in trying to separate the newbie play from scum play.

You didn't do badly at all for your first game, you had to counterclaim prplhz (from your perspective) though on my end given his play and the timing of his claim (6h prior to EoD is too premature...1-2h is more acceptable) even if he had claimed DT, I would not have believed it and I would have proceeded to push his lynch based on gameplay. But things like that you figure out only through experience. Your medic save on Superbia was fine N1 since he was most obvious town. Celestial would have also been acceptable.

You are also always free to shadow veteran players in veteran games or ask for an Observer QT for games in progress that you want to follow so you can try and practice reading people without having to worry on the time commitment for posting.

Half the Sky

Germany9029 Posts

May 12 2015 17:11 GMT

#2129

On May 13 2015 02:04 Tictock wrote:

Show nested quote +

I'm not sure I understand why that is such a distinct difference, especially factoring in time zones.

Time zones have nothing to do with it. EoD is the same distinct point for everyone, not the same time for everyone.

EoD for me this game was midnight. If you're US East, it's 7pm.

Either way, 6h prior to that regardless of the actual time, the argument is that 6 hours is more than enough time for someone to demonstrate/case a different lynch or act town and change people's minds.

If you can act town without having to claim you are also likely to escape being a blue role nightkill and you won't hurt town through the loss of your ability. Claiming too early in this respect is suboptimal for town.

One hour, however, is not enough time to "bleed town" as you'll hear others say. In veteran games by then (assuming the vote isn't extremely close), most people's minds are made up. When a blue role claims, they have to be ready to explain all their actions/saves/checks immediately, end of.