I really should have been pressing for this earlier, but so many people hadn't been posting much. The clue system, even if I totally hate it, can help us sort out which lurkers to actually lynch.
Team Liquid Mafia [gg] - Page 8
Forum Index > TL Mafia |
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
I really should have been pressing for this earlier, but so many people hadn't been posting much. The clue system, even if I totally hate it, can help us sort out which lurkers to actually lynch. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
The fact that it worked out anyway doesn't stop me giving CDR a weird look for taking that interpretation, as it was entirely his own. o-O | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
In light of this, I have... nothing to say until day breaks. Funny, that. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
I'm willing to respond to any questions put to me, but I'm keeping my thoughts to myself. There is a reason, never fear. Other people should talk, especially if they fear death. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
"Live2Win should've publically announced his paramedic protection!" yeah actually no he shouldn't. He did PM me, but I assumed he was just telling me his target for... some reason rather than sending it to the wrong person. Mrf. Don't wanna vote for him in that light. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
| ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
It's possible that Southlight is scum. But it's hardly a certainty. I am also confused as to why Unoriginal is to be lynched, so I'd like to hear someone elaborate on that for me. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
I dunno, though, I don't really believe genuine scum would say something like that *after* the lynch had already been decided. But in tl.net mafia, everything I know is wrong, so yeah! This is pretty weak by itself, still. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
| ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
So there are three possibilites for how the vigilantes died simultaneously. 1: Pure random chance/Scum being good guessers. This isn't impossible, actually. Remember that vigilantes leave clues when they kill, too? Scum obviously know who they killed and who they didn't, so they'd know what to look for. But since clues are nebulous... in theory... argh I don't know about clues anymore. 2: They PM'd someone claiming to be a doc, or some other role, and that person was actually lying. Score! They'd have had to have done it only during the last day, really, or they'd have died earlier. 3: The Elder we gave all the information to is a lying double-crossing bastard and the whole 'there are three sides' thing from way back is actually true. I am inclined to discount this, because even if it's true and we accept it as true, people playing like that basically means town is screwed. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
Live2Win said... I am giving Falcynn the benefit of the doubt. He has come to both Tracil (who I believe to be innocent) and my defense a few times. This leads me to believe Falcynn is safe, because if he was mafia, he would add to the flame and try to get either me or Tracil lynched. Instead he picked out clues that lead to lynching a mafia. This is not actually much of a tell at this point. It would behoove scum, in general, to split their public opinion; therefore I think it is all but certain that some of them have supported me or you in the past. I'll grant, however, that picking out clues that lead to getting mafia lynched is more a town thing than anything. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
10 mafia alive, 23 townies alive. Let's say scum kill three people each night, and town somehow perfectly gets scum each lynch. 7 nights later, 7 scum have died and 21 townies have died. 3 mafia alive, 2 townies alive. Scum win. So yeah, I just don't really care anymore, I guess. Only hero paramedics can save town, which actually requires them to be heroes and save people every night, because scum actually have *5* kills a night and I've assumed they'll only kill three people each night, even for the nights they otherwise wouldn't. And town has to be heroic and pull a lynch out every day. <-> I don't believe Live2Win is scum. He just doesn't act very scummy. For someone who hasn't played mafia before, he's not acting how I usually perceive newbie scum to act; even if this means he was against me somewhat early on, he then seemed to rectify that. I feel a newbie scum would be more likely to press the issue. The compelling reason for him to actually be scum is that he's a claimed paramedic. But as the game drags on it's highly likely all the paramedics will get killed sooner or later (unless scum already know who they are, in which case the game has been compromised) and thus we'll know for sure if he's been lying or not soon enough. The risk of killing a paramedic at this stage- especially given that paramedics are pretty much town's only hope- is foolhardy. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
I'm willing to concede, as should be obvious. I'd also like to bow out of future games. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
| ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
But that just didn't happen in time, and I was too caught up in how I usually play the game to really take advantage of the information already on the table. So yeah, I sucked a lot early game, too. <-> As an aside. All you people? All you dead people, going "HAHA IDIOTS HOW COULD YOU LYNCH THAT GUY" or "OMG SCUM IS SO OBVIOUS"? So. Much. Fucking. Hate. *spits on your graves* | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
1) Ok. I actually predicted how the opening of the game was likely to play out. Huge numbers of inactive townies + what townies who WERE active basically voting on a whim or on cults of personality meant badness for town- that's why I tried, early on, to encourage behaviour that does more to produce content. It is *necessary* for townies to take stands. In fact, if you want my thoughts, you only have to go back to the early days of the game, look through my posts and note what I say about strategy. Town in general was far too sensationalist about small things AND FAR TOO UNWILLING TO LYNCH IN THE EARLY GAME. LYNCHING IS GOOD FOR TOWN. Being scared of the lynch, attacking people pushing lynching, and attacking people for acidentally lynching town are, alone, very stupid things to do. 2) Town had a very small margin of error throughout the game. The large number of mafia kills was bad enough, but it was practically guaranteed that mafia would get to coast through the first few days without problems. We were lucky that Shallow[bay] decided it was ok to do a really stupid thing and guarantee his future lynch (or in this case, vigkill). But one of the reasons I gave up after around Fakesteve's death was that it was going to be incredibly hard for town to catch up. 3) Speaking of Fakesteve, that right there is a textbook example of what not to do as town. Don't be antagonistic to everyone and try to think through how you're going to use your powers. Town SHOULD have some kind of order, and it was disheartening that he got elected without doing anything or discussing anything but 'elect me' and such. 4) To be honest, I still hate clues. No matter how you spin them they don't seem to be good for the game. I think either side would feel hard-done by them if the other won; the mafia can't really counteract clues (unlike a detective, whom they can kill), whereas town have tremendous trouble sorting through the text to avoid red herrings; I believed they would be virtually useless at the start of the game, and that any kills gained by hunting for clues were really no better than just picking at random and scoring like that. 5) Most valuable town players were almost certainly the vigilantes- I was seriously impressed with the accuracy they displayed. CDRDude and Live2Win played quite well too- I was disappointed that Live2Win eventually got lynched. 6) Shallow[Bay] would actually have been an excellent scum if he hadn't done such a stupid ploy early on- I will never know what he was thinking, most likely. Empyrean was very good as well. Of course, since only 4 scum got lynched, it can be said the rest of them did well, as well- but I account this just as much to town's bad play as anything. Nonetheless, good job to team scum. 7) My own play was.. eh. I should've taken the setup into account more than I did, and been more flexible in general. I'm not actually a pro detective when it comes to mafia, but I'm better than a sensationalist. Or so I think. Pardoner is a lame role and should never be used, since any lynch has an outside chance of getting scum at the least- and, of course, we don't get any information from a pardoning (and, of course, the thing *I* would do to a pardoner is lynch him the next day if he pardoned someone on the assumption that he's scum and pardoned them to save them.) 8) PMs... PMs are risky and I dislike them. I couldn't trust any of them, because any PM could be from scum, any correspondance you enter into could be with scum... not so true with regard to *elders*, of course. Fact is, though, PMs are generally too risky to send out, and I was saddened that they continued. My summation of the game is that it's classic newbie mafia, with most of the usual mistakes- but these mistakes were inflated by the following. -Large player count, which makes lurking an even more powerful scum tactic (as many townies are likely to lurk as well.) -Large number of scum kills, which as I said before, make it difficult for town to recover from mislynches (and mislynches ALWAYS HAPPEN.) -Clues, which encouraged discussion to go to as many bad places as they did good. Clues are totally arbitrary and I will always loathe them. -Unclear deadlines for each day. I feel that regular deadlines must be posted and updated- a series of warnings could be pro (such as mods regularly stating how long is left until the deadline closes- especially in a game of this size.) I'm used to around 48-72 hour days, with lynch immediately occuring if one player obtains more than half the town voting for him. -Lurking, again. Inactive townies are not something 'town should deal with', NOT WHEN THE GAME IS BALANCED ASSUMING TOWNIES ARE ACTIVE. They are people not playing the game and effective provide deadweight for scum to hide in. Any game of mafia should come with the tacit assumption that everyone involved IS GOING TO PLAY, and steps of some kind should be taken to ensure this. Replacements, modkills, whatever. -I appreciate that some of my complaints are based more on the setup than the play involved. Take them with a grain of salt if you must. (I am, however, eager to debate what makes a good mafia setup vs. what doesn't.) <-> I haven't started an alternate mafia game yet- sorry, stuff in RL really has caught up with me. I keep meaning to get to it and don't, but I won't make any promises. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
-Since the games are smaller, it would be easier for the mods to pick out players who aren't participating. -We could also compare how setups play out in general, and thus everything I say will be VINDICATED AHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAhahem. In time, Watson. In time, they will come to heed my wisdom. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
If many games are going to be run (and mafia is awesome in general, so I hope they are), then it's best to keep tabs on who signs up and doesn't, well, *play* for future reference. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
I will (and have) conceded that power roles were not utilized effectively and town was not directing it's investigations terribly well, self included (except vigilantes, who were heroes). A game of this size, however, is almost certain to create problems based on inactivity one way or the other. And, frankly, if the game is balanced with that in mind, then it turns the other way, which is that town is the imbalanced side if everyone plays. Neither of these are good options. <-> I agree with the time things. Three days seems quite reasonable to me, and regular updates are awesomeness. <-> I did actually like some things about this game, at least in retrospect. The election at the start of the game is an interesting and novel mechanic to me, which I may steal for other games. I feel it will become doubly interesting once a 'metagame' has been established (that is, people have a feel for how other people play the game, as well as previous games to base the election on). The mods are to be praised for introducing this game, because mafia is quite frankly awesomesauce. | ||
Tracil
Australia505 Posts
On March 13 2008 08:59 Dapperdan wrote: No. You simply don't know what you're talking about as well as we do. (this is at all the complainers of inactivity, not just Tracil) The main point of townie balance is the mafia hit balance vs # of townies. As in, cannon fodder townies work perfectly in sync with the balance. The town will always have many more voters than the mafia during the day unless the inactivity includes almost all the players -- all the inactive townies aren't needed to get the town to lynch who they want, the active ones just need to not suck. Also, in all legitimate games of mafia chuiu or I have ever been a part of, a mafia has not been elected pardoner or mayor, so the town has that additional advantage also. Your inactive townie vs inactive mafia argument only almost works because all it takes is one good mafia to run all the teams hits, however, if 90% of mafia were inactive and 90% of townies, the townies would still have the same proportion in voting advantage. A vote turnout on any day of 50% or more is strong activity and more than fair for the townies. Trust me. If a player signs up for 2 games and is inactive and both then he would warrant a ban of at least 1 game, and that would be fine. After we have a couple more games and get a better sense of active and inactive players the rule can be changed to 1 inactive game = 1/2 game ban. ... Firstly, I do know what I'm talking about, and spewing lines like that out in my direction (and I really cannot take it in any other way) is lame. I understand we play games of mafia differently and I'm fine with that, but I can't tolerate stuff like this, and resent the implication. Don't go down this track. Secondly, the arguments that town has more voters vs. mafia having more voters doesn't work. The game is not actually a VOTING RACE where town can easily use their voting power to get an edge over the mafia. *All the mafia want* is to *not* lynch fellow mafia, which means it is *very easy* for them to masquerade as townies, jump or start bandwagons (and keep in mind that since it's very easy for townies to be WRONG it is generally fallacious to lynch people for being wrong in isolation). *IF TOWN LURKS, MAFIA CAN LURK AND NOT NK LURKERS.* This is a ridiculously good scum strategy if they can get away with it, and expecting town to simply psychicly know which lurkers are scum are not just doesn't work. They don't need to worry about lynching particular people because they can just NK all the 'good' townies anyway using their insane amount of kills (I'm used to one scum kill per night. *ONE!* And this STILL has resulted in scum victories more often than not, in games with a comparable scum/town ratio.) Again, scum get far less burned than town if they are inactive in roughly equal proportion because of their control over what actually *happens* in the game. Paramedics *can* save the day but the mafia can easily just whittle down talkative townie numbers (and since active, smart paramedics are likely to be talkative, they'll probably get taken out as well.) Concentrating on voting advantage is not the issue, here- and this ignores the point that if the game is *balanced* assuming that half the town doesn't play, then it *breaks* if all the town *does* play in the other direction, which is just as bad. Games should assume everyone plays and take steps to ensure that they do. <-> Saying that 'in the games I have played scum have never been elected' doesn't actually mean it isn't a strong tactic for the mafia to try and get elected. It's not even *hard* to present one or two scum as candidates, and the odds of being detected as a result are low. It's not an 'additional advantage for town' unless a townie gets elected, and while the odds are in town's favour, it's hardly a sure thing. (I think Elders could've been used here, as well, and concede again that the game would've gone very differently had we pegged onto their power earlier.) | ||
| ||