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United States2186 Posts
As the current game is winding down and all but over, this seems to be the most appropriate time to discuss the setup of the next game(s). There are several options depending on what people want. Also depending on how many games will be run we might be in need of hosts.
Please post if you are interested in hosting. I have an idea who is but this just makes it easier to coordinate.
Once the overall setup is decided upon, assuming there is a clear majority, then the balance group will polish it and the game(s) should be setup within a week or two.
Posting an explanation along with your vote will help expedite this process a great deal, so please do.
Vote 1:
Poll: 1 Large game (40-60 players) or 2 smaller games (25-40 players)
(Vote): 1 Large Game
(Vote): 2 Smaller Games
Larger games will always have more inactivity; 60 is the upper limit and we are looking at 10 pure inactives and probably another 10-20 very low contributors with that number based on previous games. This is really inevitable because only so many people can really talk at once, and when there are too many talking, some will prefer to just sit in the background for awhile.
At the same time with separate games we run the issue of either polarizing players by having an elitist setup where past active contributors get priority or these players get split up and some may not get to play with who they want to. There's really no easy answer here.
Vote 2:
Poll: If 2 Games, should both games be the same setup or should each have th
(Vote): Same Setup for both games
(Vote): Different Setup for each game
Also should there be an invite list of active past contributers, or should it be a first come first serve signup (assuming two games)? Past proven inactives/trolls will be banned regardless.
Vote 3:
Game Design:
1) A remake of a past setup incorporating some new roles/skill designs. These games stressed analysis and logic over role powers and secret cabals. However, some may find them tiring and want a different approach. See Mafias 5,7,8 for what was the most used model.
2) An entirely different approach would be to have No Role Reveal Upon Death. This makes the game much deeper but also makes it quite a bit harder as there is no guaranteed information. This is my preferred approach
3) A more Complex design with 2 Mafia teams (possibly more if there are good reasons for it). It has issues with the necessity of hiding information and too much of the outcome depending on the mafia hitting each other, but perhaps with additional tweaking we could fix these problems. See Ace's Mafia World for an example of this.
4) Other (Specify)
Poll: Game Design
(Vote): Standard Format
(Vote): No Role Reveal Upon Death
(Vote): 2 Mafia families
(Vote): Other
Vote 4:
Poll: Elected roles or No? If you vote Yes please post which roles you want
(Vote): Elected Roles
(Vote): No Elected Roles
Regardless of which roles there will be at least 2 Offices, possibly more if there are good reasons supplied.
Edit
Vote 5:
Poll: Should the games be an all smurf game (assuming this is okay with TL a
(Vote): All Smurf Game
(Vote): No Smurfs
Feel free to throw out any other ideas on roles, setup, or enhancing the games. If you want to see a new role implemented it should:
a) Have any appropriate level of power
b) Have a specific purpose to enhance the gameplay
Suggestions for tweaking existing mechanisms is of course always encouraged. New and interesting mechanisms like cover and pledge-votechecks will be looked at regardless of format. Basically there should be a balance between new and interesting mechanisms that won't break balance and tried and true methods that won't overwhelm players.
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as a random add, i suggest all players being forced to to smurf so that people are no longer hit/listened to based on name. New names, new playing field, everyone on a more equal playing field and newbs get a decent chance at playing.
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oh you son of a bitch
let me host before we reset everything
it will be a red revolution
of mafia
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then you get to run one of the two games?
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yeah i voted 1 big game but 2 is probably better; I wish you could undo votes. also i wanna host again playing takes too much time and I suck too much, lol.
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
Ver,
I think having role revealed upon death is something that is necessary in an online mafia game. Obviously the same is not true in real life at all, as I've only heard of a seldom few people who play that way in real life.
One of the key things to think about is how you're going to work out bodyguards with elected officials. If roles are not revealed upon death, nobody has any clue how many bodyguards are alive, especially since the bodyguards do not know who they other bodyguards are (let alone do they even know themselves). How would you plan to deal with killing elected officials when nobody knows how many bodyguards are alive? It seems to me there would need to be some sort of announcement about it, or the mafia would need some way of finding out how many bodyguards are alive. With no roles revealed upon death, the elected officials gain a great deal of power (unless you can find some way to remedy this problem).
Going along these lines, is why when you see elected officials in real life games there are no bodyguards at all. Usually, when the elected official dies, everybody has to vote a new one in. The good news is that this prevents the elected official from being too powerful, and the angels also have someone to protect early on, since angel protections at an early stage in the game are usually random guess. The bad news is that this takes makes games take a long time, especially if the elected is constantly targeted by the mafia/town. I would imagine if used online, we would see games also taking longer in the same way. This is probably why people shy away from using elected officials in real life. While it adds a very interesting aspect to the game, the time used up to play through one game is not worth it, especially considering the people who die first now have to wait a long time before they can play again.
I believe that role reveals are something that make online mafia "work" so to say. Without it, voting patterns are close to useless, and there is more attention toward clue analysis and behavior. This is not good considering that games inevitably will have inactive players. I think no role reveals makes it easier for the mafia to sit back and watch the game (even if there is some kind of vote-check role). Based on the games played here, that would probably mean that the mafia's chances of winning would also be increased.
Role reveals are unncessary in real life because there are no "inactive people". Sure some people are very quiet and don't talk in real life just the same, but it's much much easier to get them to talk and get their opinion compared to online. I've never seen a person in real life, no matter how quiet they are, not defend themself when accused. Obviously if we could have an online game where everyone was active, then role reveals would not be necessary. Or if we had a small number of people (say 10) in a quick game it would also not be necessary. I believed Ace or someone else mentioned in one of the topics about not having role reveals in the small, quick games, which would definitely be fine. But as you stated it is always inevitable to have roughly 10 inactives in a decent sized game. Until you get rid of the inactives, you should not be getting rid of role reveals.
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You can add all the complexity in the world to the rules, but if the majority of the players are afk or terrible it makes for bland games regardless.
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I definitely think that if we kept the weather change system, there should be a weather that would double(or something) the mafia KP, but also enable a powerful role of the town to use its spells. Like a Chaotic Fanatic who could only act in chaos(Could have spells like reveal amount of reds voting in a vote, revive, 100% mafia kill chosen randomly etc) or anything, the name doesn't really matter. But in my opinion it might add to the game having to sacrifice something significant (giving mafia double kp) for something powerful like that. Or maybe it just wouldn't work in practice...
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motbob
United States12546 Posts
On July 20 2009 11:41 L wrote:
You can add all the complexity in the world to the rules, but if the majority of the players are afk or terrible it makes for bland games regardless.
This is why I think an intimate game with about 9 people is the best solution.
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i really don't like the weather, it could be used to role check people and basically the whole town will know. the game begins, one person votes snow, another votes fog. if first person wins, he's townie, if second, first one is mafia and second is townie.
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On July 20 2009 11:27 Foolishness wrote:
One of the key things to think about is how you're going to work out bodyguards with elected officials. If roles are not revealed upon death, nobody has any clue how many bodyguards are alive, especially since the bodyguards do not know who they other bodyguards are (let alone do they even know themselves). How would you plan to deal with killing elected officials when nobody knows how many bodyguards are alive? It seems to me there would need to be some sort of announcement about it, or the mafia would need some way of finding out how many bodyguards are alive. With no roles revealed upon death, the elected officials gain a great deal of power (unless you can find some way to remedy this problem).
Going along these lines, is why when you see elected officials in real life games there are no bodyguards at all. Usually, when the elected official dies, everybody has to vote a new one in. The good news is that this prevents the elected official from being too powerful, and the angels also have someone to protect early on, since angel protections at an early stage in the game are usually random guess. The bad news is that this takes makes games take a long time, especially if the elected is constantly targeted by the mafia/town. I would imagine if used online, we would see games also taking longer in the same way. This is probably why people shy away from using elected officials in real life. While it adds a very interesting aspect to the game, the time used up to play through one game is not worth it, especially considering the people who die first now have to wait a long time before they can play again.
Personally, I don't see the point of the bodyguard role at all any more. With the most recent setup, killing bodyguards came down to 100% random chance, since there were no behavioral tells/ roleclaiming stupidity to go from. Even in my game and the ones before it, killing bodyguards has basically come down to luck. It seems to me that we can achieve the effect of the BG role without actually having it. Maybe with the elected player getting free night lives, or possibly with them having a random chance of losing their protection each night (which is the same as the current setup really). New elections might also work. Ideas on other ways to make this work would be welcome.
On July 20 2009 13:18 chaoser wrote:
i really don't like the weather, it could be used to role check people and basically the whole town will know. the game begins, one person votes snow, another votes fog. if first person wins, he's townie, if second, first one is mafia and second is townie.
I absolutely agree with this sentiment. Anything which gives confirmed townies early just promotes private circles of blues, which makes the game a lot less fun for everyone else. However, I am in support of giving greens more to do so they are less likely to lose interest. Does anyone have any ideas?
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
On July 20 2009 13:57 Qatol wrote:
Personally, I don't see the point of the bodyguard role at all any more. With the most recent setup, killing bodyguards came down to 100% random chance, since there were no behavioral tells/ roleclaiming stupidity to go from. Even in my game and the ones before it, killing bodyguards has basically come down to luck. It seems to me that we can achieve the effect of the BG role without actually having it. Maybe with the elected player getting free night lives, or possibly with them having a random chance of losing their protection each night (which is the same as the current setup really). New elections might also work. Ideas on other ways to make this work would be welcome.
Perhaps we can consider actually telling the bodyguards that they are indeed bodyguards, which would add behavioral tells and such. I don't see how giving elected players free night lives is going to help, unless you had some specific idea. As I said, I am worried new elections are going to drastically increase the time it takes to play games, as it does in real life.
On July 20 2009 13:57 Qatol wrote:
or possibly with them having a random chance of losing their protection each night (which is the same as the current setup really).
I think labeling bodyguard deaths as random chance is rather pessimistic. Most mafia are trying to snipe blue roles excluding bodyguards. I have yet to hear of a mafia strategy of 'let's try to get all the bodyguards so we can kill the elected! We will try to avoid killing blue roles and snipe townspeople'. Please correct me if I'm wrong though. In this manner I think calling a bodyguard a blue role is a misnomer. Mafia hitting bodyguards is failure on the mafia part for not finding blue roles. Calling the deaths 'random chance' says the bodyguard role is useless (as you said), but by that logic any other deaths are 'random chance' as well.
Random chance of losing protection is a good idea. However the idea of being able to win/lose mafia games on random chance is rather disheartening. Mafia is a game of strategy, not luck.
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There's a suggestion I've been waiting to make.
From the two mafia games I've played and a few that I've skimmed, it seems inactivity is a killer here, and here's the problem: when mafia can hide among inactives, it takes a major chunk out of the game. I'd like to propose we adopt smaller games with a replacement list. If a mod sees a player hasn't posted in 3-4 days, they get a prod via PM. If they don't respond within 48 hours, they get replaced. This way, it's not a random game of "guess the lurker" for half of the game. Obviously things come up, and if someone needs to be away for an extended period of time (1 week or more) they can let the mod know in advance and it's up to the mod, but this way we see a little more activity from everyone in the game.
I know lurking and going with the flow is part of the game, but some of these guys don't post at all and it takes an element out of it (imo).
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On July 20 2009 15:10 vx70GTOJudgexv wrote:
There's a suggestion I've been waiting to make.
From the two mafia games I've played and a few that I've skimmed, it seems inactivity is a killer here, and here's the problem: when mafia can hide among inactives, it takes a major chunk out of the game. I'd like to propose we adopt smaller games with a replacement list. If a mod sees a player hasn't posted in 3-4 days, they get a prod via PM. If they don't respond within 48 hours, they get replaced. This way, it's not a random game of "guess the lurker" for half of the game. Obviously things come up, and if someone needs to be away for an extended period of time (1 week or more) they can let the mod know in advance and it's up to the mod, but this way we see a little more activity from everyone in the game.
I know lurking and going with the flow is part of the game, but some of these guys don't post at all and it takes an element out of it (imo).
Alot of the issue with this comes down to alot of people will vote but not actively post, so mafia can hide that way. And most cases, the inactive is town, so a swapped player usually = confirmed townie. Its one of those really hard matters to get, normally we have a banlist of people who go inactive and the like and are kept from playing unless the game needs one of them for capacity
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Yay time to talk about games again. I will be willing to host. I'll save talking about the latest game until it is over. First of all, I am in favor of two smaller games. Although there were complaints that the "vet" game was not playing at as high of a level as would be expected, the activity was actually quite high. (Although there were some disappointments with key veteran players.) Anyway, if you look at all the previous games, you will notice that the town has NEVER won a game with elected positions IF they had some preventative measures against confirming the role of the elected officials. Excepting Qatol's last game, which I dont count since mafia should have won that game anyway. Although it might not directly to relate to how people play the game and may not contribute to the balance of the game, I think psychologically it creates more chaos than actually helping the town. Also considering our streak of bad/discouraged mayors...I'm not sure if this is a good approach. From the town point of view. And I dont think that adding this feature helps make the game a conducive learning environment for newer players.
Ways to solve the bodyguard problem: I propose this mechanism. Every time the elected official is attacked, there is a random chance that a random bodyguard dies. (Probably around 50%). If the elected official is hit by the mafia more than once, then this random chance mechanism is rolled twice. The problem with this is that it might become a little bit over dependent on luck. Bodyguard numbers would probably be needed to compensate for this. The problem with doing new elections after the old mayor dies is that if you have bodyguards you can elect an official that has already been rolechecked/is generally accepted to be town aligned. That is too great of an advantage for the town as they get someone important in office to be semi-bulletproof for some time. So you can't have both bodyguards AND new elections.
I agree with foolishness on the no role reveal on death issue. Vote lists are a key aspect of the game, and mafia are often caught on this issue. No role reveal on death makes it easier for the mafia to hide. If we look at every game since Ace's Mafia World, you will notice that the town has won 4 times. However, you can argue that three of those games should have been mafia wins. (AMW had a mafia member leak the mafia list, Chuiu's all blue game had mafia claiming green, and Qatol's game should have ended with a mafia win had they not botched the vote swing.) And the final town win only happened because all of the vets were on the town side. Right now, the playing level of the town is miserable. It doesn't need to be nerfed by introducing no role reveal. I think that could be tried at a future date, but it would not be wise to introduce that mechanism at the moment.
I would be ok with either the standard game or a dual mafia game. HOWEVER. If we have a dual mafia game, I think the mafia KP must be 1 KP per mafia member. Otherwise the two mafias have the option of joining and screwing the town over. With 1:1 KP, the mafia cannot safely join to get an easy win.
Things I like about the standard game:
The cover mechanism. This is good. It makes Role checks less certain and can keep good players around longer.
Meth dealer (from Caller's game). So mafia can't auto-snipe blues. Although meth dealers + veterans in the same game are overkill. The role concept probably should be discussed/tweaked a little so it is not overpowered.
Traitor. I like. How can you not like?
Things I do not like in the standard game:
Conversions. But I think everyone is persuaded that this is bad.
Resurrections. Its OP. I'll talk later.
Millers. Not really, they dont add anything other than to waste town lynches. Kinda swingy if you ask me.
Stuff I don't know about:
Double lynches. Whether this job should be delegated to the town as a whole or to the mayor as a special power is an interesting subject. Delegating the job to the mayor makes the mayor's job more important and causes the town to think twice about lynching the mayor. However, as mayoral elections are early on in the game and It is difficult to determine the alignment of electoral candidates early on in the game, delegating the job to a mafia mayor can spell disaster. Especially if the game is small and the game is designed to force the use of double lynches in order to secure a town win.
One thing I've noticed: The power of DTs has been either incorrectly used, or severely nerfed to the point where they are pretty much useless. The fact that the Godfather role is not as randomly distributed as publically advertised and the fact that we get more and more paranoid about keeping things ambiguous drastically reduces the power of this role.
Possible role ideas:
Information roles --
Friendly neighbor--Can watch any person. Is informed the next day if the person being watched was visited by any player with a night role (other than themself) (i.e., he is notified if a vigi tries to hit him, a medic tries to save him, a DT checks him, or a mafia tries to attack him).
Freindly neighbor (another version)--Can watch any person. Is informed the next day if the person being watched has left to use a night role but does not reveal who they went to visit.
I might post more later. Its getting late here 
Oh one more role idea, although it might be overpowered. Discussion would be appreciated. This could either be used as a town role, or perhaps it can be used for one of the elected official positions.
Executioner: You may, X times per game, immediately end the elections for the lynch. The person with the most votes at the time you use this ability will be immediately lynched.
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United States2186 Posts
*Added in a smurf vote. Personally I think it's a great idea.
*For role reveal upon death: Of course it heavily favors the mafia and thus the game would be adjusted to help the town (heavily reducing mafia numbers, lowered KP, blue roles that reveal dead roles). Balance is not the problem. In short the question is, would this format provide a more interesting type of game, or should we go with a tweaked version of the tried and true setup? A key issue here is: are people skilled enough overall? Probably not. Can we work around that? Maybe. I think it's the best option for adding 'spice' to the game setup but if people aren't tired of the typical setup we had been using then who cares.
*As for activity, there will be a banlist. No games should be played without one at this point. Modkilling for missing votes is basically a requirement too. How harsh the banlist is made is up for discussion but really I think everyone is so sick of inactives that it won't be hard to agree on something. The best game activity wise (by a gigantic margin) was Qatol/LTT's game which was invite only. We can do that again possibly; otherwise we could potentially separate the games by activity level, such as having a high activity game and a moderate activity game (i,e one game is expected to have voting/posting every single day unless previous notice is given or something such). PM'ing past active contributors is also a good step.
Basically the issue with inactives is how elitist do we want to make it. Because it is quite possible, as Qatol's game proved, to have a game of extreme activity (30 people and 3 game days with 2100 posts is obscene). So it would not be very hard to do that again by just limiting it to people who have really proven themselves quite active in previous games. But is this worth doing?
*The mini/trial/speed games are fine but there's no reason why they can't coexist while larger games are going on. Both games provide an experience the other lacks, just need someone to start the ball rolling for that.
*BG roles must know who they are but yes they probably are overdue for a makeover if we keep elected roles (tough question). Let's try to avoid overly complicating this aspect though.
*Elected Roles have their issues. It is true that the new elected roles system might favor the mafia too much (the old one favored town too much though). Playing a new game without elected roles might be the best idea. The only issue is how do we stimulate day 1 action.
 Ts are weak. DTs HAVE to be somewhat weak. With cover in I think we might be able to adjust DTs to make them stronger overall (day 1 checks enabled, no limit as to number of checks). In addition with pledge-votechecks they have a semi-weak option here as well.
*Weather: right now it's too gimmicky (there was a clear optimal weather pick for each day of the current game) and as was said gives opportunities to prove innocence. If we can find workaround ways for this maybe it can be viable. Still something to consider though. On the other hand stuff like cover and pledge-vote checks are brilliant and definitely should be included in some form.
*Hosts: So far we have Caller, Pyrr, and Incognito as prospective hosts. You guys can figure out amongst yourselves how you want to divvy up the hosting.
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two things quickly:
1.)There is no such thing as blue sniping.
2.) There is no bodyguard problem
ETA:
Role reveal upon death is crucial for big games. For small games you can get away without it because the game is faster paced, and with good players someone always roleclaims/false roleclaims at some critical time so all the info is figured out anyway. Large games that just doesn't happen. Even with people secretly revealing their roles there isn't enough incentive to publicly roleclaim. It also hurts the town because remember - the towns main disadvantage is lack of information which they get more of slowly as the game progresses. If the game has too many players there is just no way hiding info upon death is going to be fair to the town unless you add in some other mechanic to find it out.
Cover is good, but somewhat bad. Really is one of those things that worked so well in the current game due to no other misinformation roles running around. If you do insane/sane cop or millers it's going to kind of a mess.
^_^
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2 mafia teams sounds pretty fun 
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
On July 20 2009 13:18 chaoser wrote:
i really don't like the weather, it could be used to role check people and basically the whole town will know. the game begins, one person votes snow, another votes fog. if first person wins, he's townie, if second, first one is mafia and second is townie.
One thing that might help this problem is making the townspeople forced to vote for the weather (i.e. you don't vote for weather you get banned).
Another possibility is to make a new role called the weatherman or something who decides the various weather for the days. This would keep the interesting aspect of having weather without the gimmicks mentioned above. The only problem is that this takes away something for the green roles to do; as said before most people are probably in favor of giving townspeople something else to do besides vote.
On July 20 2009 19:40 Ace wrote:
Cover is good, but somewhat bad. Really is one of those things that worked so well in the current game due to no other misinformation roles running around. If you do insane/sane cop or millers it's going to kind of a mess.
I absolutely agree with this. Cover is a good idea in the absence of millers, but figuring out what happens when cover is used on a miller/traitor etc is problematic.
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On July 21 2009 04:22 Foolishness wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2009 19:40 Ace wrote:
Cover is good, but somewhat bad. Really is one of those things that worked so well in the current game due to no other misinformation roles running around. If you do insane/sane cop or millers it's going to kind of a mess. I absolutely agree with this. Cover is a good idea in the absence of millers, but figuring out what happens when cover is used on a miller/traitor etc is problematic.
I prefer the cover mechanic to insane DTs or millers. Cover allows the mafia to set people up for role checks rather than leaving it to the DTs to be in doubt by themselves. Cover is also interesting because of all the mind games mafia can play with it. Millers don't really create mind games, and if the miller is not someone who is likely to be rolechecked, it is pretty much wasted. Cover also increases the chance for a bad Role check rather than having the 1/30 chance of hitting the GF or whatever. Or 1/10 of hitting a miller. Although this does weaken the powers of DTs tremendously, I like the role. Perhaps it can be tweaked by adjusting DT numbers or buffing DT abilities to infinite RCs at 1 per night.
Also, what do you guys think about clues in games? I think they often hinder more than they actually help, although they do give the town something to do. Although if you want to keep clues as a part of the game, I propose a new mafia role to help give a twist to clues and hopefully stop townies from going overboard on far fetched clues.
Framer: You have the ability, once per night, to set up a red herring for any player of your choice. During the day post, there will be a clue pointing to that player.
Perhaps the mafia don't need/shouldnt be given the easy option to point to a free clue against a townie, but what I'm aiming at is the fact that people shouldn't concentrate too much on clues. Hopefully, the mere presence of this role will discourage bad/overly hostile clue analysis. People may think that bad analysis is just part of the game, and it very well may be the case. I'm just throwing out this role as a possibility for some reform.
Also, another possible role so you can play mind games...
Propagandist: You have the ability to speak anonymously to the town. Every night, you may leave a message in the day post for everyone to read. (Messages would probably have to be subject to a word limit/other restrictions).
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EPT
