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1.) For anything except large games (40+ players) all voting is done in the game thread. In an effort to improve the general ability of everyone this is a must. The ability to see the votes right in front of your face will probably go a long way in making everyone better.
I'll be using the voting format of games I modded on another site: ##vote: player name. Also I'll allow people to unvote as it makes things more explicit. No abstaining because...
1. I think this might be more counterproductive than anything because it fills the game thread with a lot more unnecessary posts. I'll bring this up again but having too many posts hurts the town considerably since good posts are ignored and people aren't forced to react to information. See day 1 of this current game lol, that was ridiculous.
The game thread is always going to have fluff posts. That's just part of playing online. However beyond that I think this is sorely needed. Looking through past games the town in general has no clue whats going on when it comes to votes. This along with majority lynch puts everything right in front of your eyes. This is also great for the Mafia as it allows them to exploit holes in town bandwagons. Having a separate voting thread just kills the game when a major part of the discussion revolves around voting and motives. For large games it's understandable since tracking votes isn't something everyone wants to do.
2.) Majority to lynch. This will probably be the biggest change for small and medium games. If you reach majority votes before the deadline you are lynched. This is to promote activity and help analysis skills. If the deadline is reached and there isn't a majority then it is a no lynch. Imo this change is probably the most important one to improve game flow.
2. Not really sure how this would play out or why it's better. Can you elaborate a bit?
The current mechanic is that whoever has the most votes at the end of the day is going to die. This is pretty bad at the moment for the reason of lurkers and non-active players. In fact players just abstain. With majority lynch you HAVE to vote. If there are 20 players in the game and 11 are needed to vote for one person to die you'll see activity and discussion jump. You can't just decide to abstain because you'll be hounded. When votes are stalled you'll be hounded. Checking bandwagons will be more important with majority lynch. It's also great because you can't even have an excuse not to pay attention to the votes. If we keep letting people have the ability to make excuses for not playing then the game overall suffers.
5.) Elected positions are done for now. If we do have them they no longer should be immune to Role Checks. In fact role checks are going to be rare and instead I'll be using Alignment checks only for a bit. We have to teach people how to read others as well as the game itself. Pardoner if anything is the role I'd use and it's going to be hidden and unelected.
5. Ambivalent. The town screws itself often by lynching innocent elected roles since players gravitate towards them in bad ways, but how do we keep day 1 discussion? We don't want a repeat of the smurf game day 1, we don't want to put day 1 rolechecks back in and have ace vs folca or me vs qatol/you again. Elected roles are very very good at stimulating activity. Nothing wrong with leaving them aside if there's a replacement. Any ideas?
Well the town screwing itself is mostly a result of players literally not knowing how to read. But that's another topic for another time. Day 1 discussion is based heavily on other player's actions. Whether it's an election, a lynch, shoddy voting - it will happen. We can't allow games to be bad because players don't know what to do. They'll just have to learn. Most Mafia games aren't played with clues so I don't see why we should keep killing our games for the sake of extra discussion. Elected roles once in a while may be fine, but we've had them so many times and it hasn't really improved game quality for long time.
7.) The last thing I'll encourage is the use of some behaviors from Mafiascum. Like I said I think the way some of them play is the way the game should be played. So one of the behaviors I'm going to ask we start using in our games is Finger of Suspicion. This tactic, commonly labeled Fos is when you basically tell a player you think he/she is possibly scum but won't vote for them yet. This is to also promote discussion in our games.
7. Oh no oh no. I've read a fair number of mafiascum games and the primary problem that plagues them is that the town runs themselves in circles with useless info and way too much spam, and FOS is one of the primary reasons why (also lack of pm'ing aggravates this). WIFOM overemphasis is also another problem that just hurts the town more than helps (considering how often it is misused). Most of the games there are just painful to read because of these two factors.
Well I somewhat agree. There are a large number of games to go through and really, there are large variations in skill level on that site. You'll always find games with bad players so it's hard to really get an accurate description on how well some mechanics are used. That said yes, they do sometimes run around talking about the wrong things but how is that any different from here? It's better to talk about the wrong thing, realize it and hop on the right path than to not be talking at all or even worse not even playing the game. Fos's are actually great at causing discussion. If someone says they think you're suspicious you will respond. I also think lack of Private Messaging = very good. You're forced to play with what's presented to you which overall will make you sharper. There is a reason I have a crazy success rate of catching Mafia and a lot of it has to do with just purely reading the thread. Likewise if you follow the good players in some of those games and read their deductions and even lies when they are Mafia it's a lot of information based on what can be seen in public. This goes a long way into getting better as you have to play crisp or you're an easy target no matter which side you play for.
Overactivity is great. Look at the Day 1 of the past few games and you'll see 50-80 pages of mayhem. Sure some of it is fluff but it keeps people interested. If I joke around in the thread, of Chezinu posts some nonsense if others find it entertaining you can't really fault them. In fact you should use it as a tool to go ahead and get us lynched. L has tried that against me like 3 games in a row now.
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L has successfully tried that against me like 3 games in a row now.
Just sayin'.
:3
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Getting killed at night doesn't count.
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I just had an idea if you want to use elected roles: Just have one bodyguard and elected roles aren't immune to role/alignment checks unless their original role allows it.
I personally still won't be in favor of elected roles anyway.
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On February 24 2010 04:58 Ace wrote:
I just had an idea if you want to use elected roles: Just have one bodyguard and elected roles aren't immune to role/alignment checks unless their original role allows it.
I personally still won't be in favor of elected roles anyway.
That solution still doesn't remove the "useless bodyguard" problem. Unless someone knows who the BGs are, it is random chance whether you will find them or not. Maybe announce who the bodyguards are after the election? Might be a source of some interesting mind games between the mafia and the medics.
Also, I don't like the idea of elected positions that can be rolechecked. The problem is they spit out confirmed innocents too easily. Pairing that with a bodyguard who is basically only going to be found by dumb luck doesn't seem like a good idea.
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Well these are going to be small-medium sized games. I just wanted one bodyguard for the fact that killing one is much better than Mafia having to kill 4. I was just trying to give an alternative to outright getting rid of them which is my goal anyway ^_^.
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Posting here to highlight the 2 guides that I wrote after mafia VII and mini mafia 2 because they have been buried/forgotten and that was way too much work for me, especially with people complaining that nobody is improving.
Mafia VII
This was written from the perspective of godfather in one of the more effective mafia teams we have had on TL, outlining our strategies/ thought process. There are some pretty important lessons in there if you read through it though, like the importance of close teamwork/ communication to the mafia.
Mini Mafia 2
This was my attempt to give people an example of behavioral analysis. Note that there are definitely different styles to this (Ver focuses a lot more on how people have posted in previous games, for example) but a lot of the basics are still the same.
If anyone else writes something like this, I encourage them to post those guides here as well, because I think this thread should have a collection of those kinds of guides to give people a nice quick reference which is easy to find.
EDIT: Yes, this is shameless advertising for my guides. Don't like it? Write something better.
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FREEAGLELAND26782 Posts
I feel like we need to update this thread sometime...
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United States2186 Posts
On August 09 2010 03:23 flamewheel wrote:
I feel like we need to update this thread sometime...
I'm writing a town guide as a counterpart to Ace's mafia one. Is that good enough?
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On August 11 2010 04:50 Ver wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2010 03:23 flamewheel wrote:
I feel like we need to update this thread sometime... I'm writing a town guide as a counterpart to Ace's mafia one. Is that good enough?
Yes plox. <3<3
Seriously, I think TL town is just really undereducated as far as towns go. Or maybe it's just me.
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You only say that because you got to see them from your scum view in WaW mafia ^_^
but yea you're right 
ETA: But in general it is way better than it used to be. Before if you drew town here you were almost guaranteed a loss without some luck.
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United States2186 Posts
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Are you counting all of those games equally?
Mafia 2 was very town favored looking back, depending on if we are counting the ability to get invincible DTs as a better tool than 20 scum.
Mafia 3 was also heavily town favored with Day Detectives also. Not to mention that one came down to everything going right for the town.
Iirc 15 was the one where the town had to struggle for victory because we really did have bad townies and it did take some effort to get that win.
Those are the only 3 I can comment on because I remember being in those games the most. In every one regardless of which side I was on I never felt the town had enough skill that they could win off of ability alone. Even in this year's games there are maybe 3 players if I drew scum I'd actually try to play seriously for because drawing town is a curse.
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United States2186 Posts
Well yeah lots of games had plenty of luck/imbalanced. I'll try to go through very briefly (using thread names to differentiate):
*Mafia 1 had too many mafia and nobody had played before.
*Mafia 2 had some good plays from both sides I thought. Your BG plan, LTT's infiltration, Plexa/Camlito/MTF's clue analysis. Not sure who it favored? Mafia screwed up badly with hits though.
*Mafia 3 yeah favored town, town did play decently well but a lot of it was based on blue roles. *Resurrection was an interesting game; you, Caller, Mynock, and Qatol all did quite well as town and I had a great game as mafia.
*Wrath of Khan was ridiculously mafia favored though showtime did a great job playing the double agent.
*Mafia 4 was very town favored but LTT and Qatol had some genius ideas that ended it first night. *Mafia 5 we had the most stacked town team possible and figured out a ton of innocents + mafia even on day 1.
*Mafia VII the majority of the mafia team played extremely well.
*Mafia 8 a lot of us played terribly while some people stepped up like Dreamflower and 0zc3c for town, BC, Caller, and MBH for mafia, and did really well. Mafia was very favored and should have won but they got unlucky with Vivi missing a key vote by a minute and then Showtime ragequit.
*Pyrr's mafia game the entire town played poorly except when foolishness busts out days 3/4 with most of the mafia figured out but the town doesn't listen to him. Favored town setup.
*Plexa's game several of the mafia had a good or excellent game (pyrr, chezinu, motbob, rol?) while foolishness was the town's saving grace. Was very imbalanced in favor of town.
*Red Army mafia was screwy and probably favored town a bunch? Chezinu Lucas and I all had a good game there.
Yeah XV was a mix of great and bad. You as the DT pardoner were lynched day 2 despite making the correct play of pardoning motbob day 1 (though mafia did help push this skillfully). Then Dreamflower should have singlehandedly won the game by bombing 2! mafia night 2 but both medics blocked her hit on L haha. The rest of the game was a result of very poor mafia coordination more than anything.
That's a simplified synopsis of course but at least in my view the old games were generally decided by a few key performances. The two games where one side had the most people play well were Mafia VII for the mafia and Mafia 5 for the town.
But yes I can echo you about now. Even if I had the time to play like I used to I wouldn't even want to anymore. We need more big impact players who can regularly deliver key performances and towns that don't try to hinder those players from doing their jobs.
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I completely blanked out VII from my mind because that might be the worst performance by a town in any game of mafia I've ever seen. A good mafia team vs a terrible town and well we all know the result.
I also forgot about XV. The Shikyo-Amberlight-Rol-Vivi death squad aka auto lose. But that's just another long long list of people who don't know how to read. That was definitely a lucky town win.
And yes we do need more players that can I guess we have to say "command attention" and steer the game. It's one of the reasons I really only try to play in theme games so that it has enough players or replace into games so it can continue. Some of the other people on this forum should have the chance to make a name for themselves but it hasn't been happening at a rate fast enough. Looking back at your results where the town did win it came down to a few key players. While I won't say that one person can win the game for the town the very fact that we only remember a few outstanding performances is where the problem lies. Not enough impact of good talent on the town leaves it up to a few people who usually are hindered by the very town they are trying to save resulting in lots of arguing.
I guess once I actually finish writing this scum guide (lol) and you finish your town guide that will be the next step into raising the overall skill level.
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Early on in TL mafia history mafia had the upper hand. Up to TL Mafia XII, with the exception of TL Mafia V, the games that town won were close, had an imbalanced setup, or were won because the mafia let the game slip at the last minute. Town wins were more attributed to mafia epicfails rather than town epic wins.
The problem in the earlier games besides a lack of skill was a lot of volatility with big name players. Back then, the game is basically decided by day 3 when the key town players were dead and everyone was ignoring their analysis/they didn't have a chance to do analysis. Because quite frankly, without certain analysts, town is easily duped and led around in circles by the mafia. Recently, however, big name players have been surviving longer into the game due to a couple things (Godfather to counter DT rolecheck auto-win, Medic lists, and smaller games with less KP means mafia can't afford to carpet bomb their way through key players and have a less pronounced advantage with massive KP). With a few exceptions of course, I think this has led to a stronger performance from town.
With that said, we've also had an influx of capable, promising, mid-tier players who have also helped bridge the massive gap between the top tier and the lower tier players. I think now towns have a little bit bigger base of players to rely on compared to the earlier games (although some of these players have not been consistently playing games).
Another weird thing is correlating skill with name recognition/influence. Skill without name recognition or influence is sadly something that has led to the defeat of many towns before when the game could have been a lot closer. Some games include good players with strong analysis that gets ignored.
Name recognition/influence that overstates skill has also been instrumental in leading townies off the right track. I guess this could be attributed to a laziness/impulse toward following the most vocal players. Players who have presence and are aggressive, but are oftentimes wrong often still command a following. They're just so hard to ignore, even if you're a townie who doesn't read the thread very much or doesn't put a lot of effort into the game. In a sense this destroys a certain ability of high skill/lower influence players to have a positive impact on the game. And even if one of these less influential players attempts to have their voice heard, it often ends into a town v. town accusatory fest which ultimately ends with a mafia win.
While yes, it is a legitimate mafia skill to be able to be influential in a town, I think most of this has to do with egos. Post game commentary devolves into a brag-fest, while people with legitimate achievements are quite frankly ignored. Ultimately the best solution is to have townies think for themselves, not be sheepish, and learn how to do good analysis themselves. However, I feel that towns pick up the most from the most vocal players in the game. While learning from vocal people is not necessarily a bad thing, it leads to a perpetuation of the same methods that fail them in the first place. Knowing what worked and what didn't work can be a good framework for improving town play. Unfortunately, I just don't think the town is currently exposed to all the styles/information that is out there. I think we've already discussed 3rd party game reports to help players learn, but that seems to have been a flop from past experience. Other methods may be necessary.
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Ahh it seems like I should have read past the green/red Christmas colored post, as Ver/Ace already discussed the points I addressed after that. Oh well.
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Ultimately the best solution is to have townies think for themselves, not be sheepish, and learn how to do good analysis themselves. Good luck there.
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FREEAGLELAND26782 Posts
Hmmm I'll read this stuff tomorrow. Looks promising.
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I hope Ver doesn't mind but his information was very helpful, and I think it would be good for players to read even after it disappears below the date filter. Some great discussion afterwards as well.
For new players, this is using a specific game but it is mainly for examples and has great advice regarding all mafia games.
How to Improve: Mafia XXX Analysis - By Ver
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EPT
