The council will begin working on some solutions to keep us as a community together and whole, but we very much ask for your input and suggestions as we prepare for the future. Thank you.
This is the end of the road for me, everybody. It has been an honor playing with all of you. Thank you all for the memories and for allowing me a chance to grow as a person through our games together. Plan accordingly for this shutdown as you will, and best of luck in your future endeavors, my friends.
If you would like to keep in touch, I am Iso#5336 on Discord. I will be leaving the MTGS Mafia Discord once the site is shut down.
With regards to maintaining the community, I believe migration to a different Mafia site altogether is the most tenable option. I may pop in here and there to make a cameo in the rare, occasional game when I catch the itch, but aside from that, I'm putting Mafia behind me. I hope you all find what you're looking for.
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
I'm surprised they're not at least trying to sell the site to someone else. There's still some value to this sucker, I'd expect.
Silver lining: doesn't much matter if we double-post outside of game threads now. Care to comment on why admin didn't care to continue the mafia sub? Where are all their best moderators going to come from, now, anyways?
So, I guess we need a new home, maybe. MU is certainly one option, although we'd be a pretty small subset of the whole. Likely to get swallowed up, and hard to maintain ourselves as distinct.
Here's one other option that may not be on the radar as much, but might let us keep the community as a whole together and distinct, preserve our autonomy and structure. Good Gamery (goodgamery.com). We've had plenty of mixers with them over the years, and out of any of the communities we've played with, they are, by far, the most similar to us. Not by accident, either. The tie-ins between our userbases go all the way back to 2005, and you could make a strong argument that MTGS's style of play originated with those guys. When I was first learning how to play and design games back in 2003, when the same crew was on Misetings.com, that's who I first learned to play with. A lot of the creative stuff they put together was one of my major influences. Then I came over here when mafia first started on MTGS, with just a dozen or so of us initially, and that same style was the germ of MTGS's playstyle and design DNA. Out of anywhere else that I'd continue to be inclined to play, that would allow us the most continuity.
We also already share a fair number of members who have played on both sites. Similar culture, both being magic sites. It's owned by an active participant in the forum, who's not likely to be running off anytime soon. I'd say that's as close to home as we're going to get. It'll also help both sites to consolidate forces. They have have suffered from attrition same as a lot of other mafia subs, but still have quite a few old-hands who also enjoy the multi-day playstyle, thorough analysis, PBPA work and creative specialty designs that are our signature playstyle. Some of the best players I know, anywhere, still frequent that site. Smart, and easy-going.
That'd be my suggestion.
EDIT: Also, I'm told Grakthis is no longer there. Which for me is a minus, but a huge plus for everyone else.
While MafiaUniverse has quite a lot of forum software and a modbot and all that, I would like to formally invite you all to come play as much as you like at my still operational but more or less inactive home site for mafia.
Forums.totalwar.org / Gameroom
Generalhankerchief is from here and is still a moderator of the subforum, and if the subforum stays active, we could add additional mods.
I am also from here and I can get bumped back up to mod status if you need me.
I hate that your home is being taken from you.
As thanks for the years you have shown me hospitality on your site, please, feel free to make a new home at my currently vacant home. All of you. The whole lot. Do things the way you've always done them. Long phases. Same setups you have always wanted.
We did manage to make a timer and someone even figured out how to make an automatic vote counter. I will have to look those up though.
The forum skin looks very nice if you log in and switch the skin to The Guild skin.
The smileys are very, very nice. I love them.
The rules of the site, the site leaders, and the site culture has always been chill. Very rarely did people get banned in the gameroom for bad behavior.
And, well... it's yours, as an option. While you could be absorbed into another community and maybe that is even a better idea, I just want to say, there is this nice, well run space that is entirely vacant. No lines, no waiting, nothing but love and good times to be had.
If the Mafia community moves to another site, please have someone let me know via Discord; it's a bloody shame that Star Trek Myriad Universes 5 won't be able to happen here, but I'd very much like to run that *somewhere*. If Mafia has no home on the successor site, I'd be open to starting something myself to support the Mafia community.
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Hey all... I'm retired, not dead. Check out what I'm doing these days (and beg me to come back if you want):
That's a very generous offer Pizza, we appreciate it.
The Mafia Universe staff have offered to help us integrate over there as well. They'd like to get the database with our old games in them to host them for us, and are willing to split their light games queue into a post limited queue and a long phase queue, over which we'll have a lot of leeway since no one really plays long phase games over there. We'd essentially be able to just put our games into the new queue and fire them from there with the bonus of being able to attract some MU players who want to try longer phase games. We've had quite a bit of player crossover with them over the last couple of years, too, for whatever that's worth, though their game design principles are probably a bit different.
I guess we're really looking for player input here, as well, what do you all think about moving to Good Gamery, or Mafia Universe, or taking up Pizza on moving to totalwar? I don't think we can swing a site of our own even if I thought it was a good idea, to be honest, and I don't really.
Personally, my big concern with Good Gamery is that even if we merge with them the overall site traffic there is pretty low, I'm not really sure how we would attract and keep new players from that platform. Same with the totalwar forum, for that matter. I think we only have around two dozen active players at the moment.
We'd lose most of our autonomy by integrating with MU, but we can keep the Discord server for organizing games and reviewers and events, potentially, and maybe attract mafia players from other parts of their site into playing our longer phase games. This is the biggest downside, of course, and eventually our flavor of game will just become part of MU and not something separate from it.
But yeah, this is a discussion the whole community needs to have, I think.
If the Mafia community moves to another site, please have someone let me know via Discord; it's a bloody shame that Star Trek Myriad Universes 5 won't be able to happen here, but I'd very much like to run that *somewhere*. If Mafia has no home on the successor site, I'd be open to starting something myself to support the Mafia community.
Is your Discord tag still Annorax#9329 ? Just to make sure we can reach you.
I will say that if you do move to TotalWar, I do not foresee your community growing (on its own). Over time it will eventually lose more people than it gains because it is not the most popular totalwar site and new games dont bring as many people in as they used to.
It does have the benefit of being a space that can be your own, ready to go, right now, fully functional, and you could have one of your own step up and be a moderator of the gameroom section I am sure, since no one else is using it. You wouldn't need to feel like guests in someone else's party. The party at the org has been over for a while now, I don't see it coming back.
The suggestion just isn't a solution that will make your community grow. Not automatically, for sure. But you can go grab some more people by going to MU, hosting and playing games there, and inviting people back home to your community and your culture. The way I have kept interest in the org since its first major bout of inactivity.
As long as you have a space you can consider yours, your culture and community can survive. The important thing is that you do have a space, as that is what you are losing. If you have that, then your culture and community can survive there and adapt and gather more people to grow it, with a little persistence and outreach on your part.
It all depends on how much you want to maintain it as its own unique thing. If you're really compatible with Good Gamery that might be a good match. If it isn't or doesn't turn out to be, you can have your last hurrahs on your own space on the org. Boards, and communities, and friendships in life, they have a way of being there for a while and then passing out of your reach. But if you feel the time is not over for your community and culture, then there is still time on the org. As a first or as a last resort, it will still be there.
I reached out to the council already about potential for combination with Mafia Society. We've had a lot of back-and-forth growth with MU and others already and have plans for future growth. Having a variety of phase lengths and game styles available would be a welcome benefit. And if all goes well, we should have some slick site software available. (Working on it.)
Will confirm Osie's post, the Mafia Society has also offered to host our games. We'd get a couple mod positions and possibly a subforum to ourselves, basically the same as Mafia Universe's offer. Details would have to be ironed out once we decide what to do.
There are a few familiar faces at both forums; Prophylaxis, Osie, Last Whisper, RE1031, and Togs (Atogaholic) are admins over at the Mafia Society and Bur, Scarlet Celestial, Shinichi, and Dawning Blue Sky play over at the Mafia Society. Grapefruit might as well? And DV has played a few games there I think.
At Mafia Universe we have tomsloger, Voxxicus, and Newcomb as mods with a handful of our older players having gone over there for shorter phases and better software; Gentleman Johnny, Sir Chris, etc. And of course there's no reason we couldn't call one site "home" and play some games on the other still, at least not that I know of, or like Pizza said we could move to the Org or Good Gamery and play some games at both sites to drum up interest.
It really depends on what we want to do as a community. If we want to keep our identity intact for the foreseeable future, Good Gamery and the Org are probably our best options. If we just want to keep playing our style of games and get more people into them it might be better to merge with a larger group on a dedicated Mafia site like Mafia Universe or what Mafia Society will be once their new forum is up and running.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has offered to take us in, we really do appreciate it. And also it's been an honor playing here the last three years and being your Council Member for ~6 months.
I think at some point we may want to institute a checkbox poll exploring who will be able/willing to want to relocate to each of the proposed spots, and use that to inform the decision. We want to keep as much of the band together as possible.
On MU, there are some definite benefits worth considering as far as being able to pull from their wider playerbase, and the software is pretty fantastic. I do worry about the risk that we get subsumed/diluted. When you join a large existing community like that, it does change things. Still, change can be good. Things got a little stagnant here without a lot of new users around, and that was a big part of the problem. On the other hand, fit and culture are pretty valid concerns, based on some of the interactions/frictions I've seen. Lurking and low-participation may be issues we'd have to deal with regularly.
For me, GG has that nice homey feel, and a very compatible playstyle. But will we be able to recruit lots of new players there? Not likely. For me, I think there's a level of comfort and a number of intangibles at GG that MU can't offer, such that it would be more of a home-coming than a refugee relocation. Floated the possibility over there, and it was very well-received.
I suppose it depends largely on what's most important to us as a community. Preserving the kind of community that we've built here, or launching a new adventure. We have options in that regard, and we may find that this change was a benefit to us, in the end.
@Az I think my biggest fear with relocating to GG is that a relocation is going to be hard on us regardless, and going to somewhere that will cause us to struggle to pull players had the thread of letting us die completely.
As far as a poll, I’d rather pull in everyone’s input, make a tentative call and get feedback. I don’t know if a poll can satisfy each persons perspective.
I agree that's the biggest minus at GG. I'm a little out of touch as far as what their new membership numbers are like nowadays, but that could very well be the deciding factor if it's too minimal. I can check.
Mafia universe has 262 active users online at the moment, versus 30 for GG. Our mafia sub has 30 active online users at the moment.
GG has a thousand members. MU has 4800 members, of whom 1200 are active. We have had about 188 unique players in the past three years. MTGS as a whole has 4530 active users just this moment, and 391,000 members total.
Either site is going to be a bit of an adjustment from what we're used to, I suspect. MU's raw user pipeline is much larger. GG's user pipeline is, potentially, a higher quality or a better fit on average, as they're used to playing our style.
Legitimate arguments for either option can be made.
Pretty happy with either GG or MU. I like Pizza's offer on the TotalWar thing as well as sort of a "empty space you can play games in" but I don't think we have a large enough community to justify moving there and dying a slow death with no new player retention?
GoodGamery is interesting to me because I recall they had a pretty great archival system of some sort for mafia games (deckfullofouts, which is now dead I assume?) and I also remember some pretty great games (there was one where Az GOATed hard that's escaping me). I see that they're pretty enthusiastic about having new blood and it would be fun to accommodate them.
MU is probably the most realistic best option though, b/c we can get a place setup for longer games and the forum software is fantastic, and we can draw some MU players who are pressed for time and would like to drop in for a longer game.
I'd support both options but I also have not played here in a year, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Regardless of where we move I think the queue system needs to be massively restructured though, we don't have the numbers to sustain our current queue system (plus, the fact that I have to wait multiple years to fire a Specialty is beyond me).
We (Mafia Society) have a comparable but slightly higher number of active users to GG. And base users are comparable as well. Possibly more users familiar currently with MTGS Mafia. We're also looking for similar features in a website as to functionality for mafia games, though some of that would potentially be a longer-term project to get operational. We're looking to be up and running with some upgrades on our end just before MTGS closes down.
@Az: I took at look at GG, because you make a strong case. The mobile interface was not feasible for me, is there a way to change the view that I’m missing? No profile info, no pictures, no sigs. Also I couldn’t fit much on screen. These would be limiting factors for me personally, and likely impact other mobile users.
MU seems the most tenable and sustainable option, to me; it's larger, Mafia-dedicated playerbase with no shortage of activity. I'm sure arrangements could be made with the local staff to accommodate the integration of a community as specialized as our own.
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
@Az: I took at look at GG, because you make a strong case. The mobile interface was not feasible for me, is there a way to change the view that I’m missing? No profile info, no pictures, no sigs. Also I couldn’t fit much on screen. These would be limiting factors for me personally, and likely impact other mobile users.
Never tried it on mobile - that could definitely be a minus.
Sounds like MU is the front-runner thus far.
I suppose that means once work stops exploding, I should think up a game or two to introduce them to how we roll, over here...
Considering that I play much less games nowadays than I used to, I don't really have strong opinions one way or another. I'll probably move along wherever we go, though MU kinda appeals to me with their fine and shiny systems.
If we move to MU, did we have a way to archive our games from here somehow?
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Quote from Prophylaxis »
Also modgaming Bur setups is kind of treading down a dark path
An archive is being hastily assembled from bubblegum and broken dreams using carbon copy paper uh, worked on. We'll have a copy of the games whatever else happens but it might not be easily accessible for a while.
The current front runner in conversation currently is MU, a long phase section that would be our niche and also available to bring in other players. If you have thoughts on this, now is the time.
Well shoot, I don't check the site for three days and this happens? That's a bummer.
I played at GG and Misetings before it. Time was the mafia games were comparable, but I don't think they've had a real game there in ages. Not enough interest. I've never tried MU (I think that site might actually be blocked for me at work - or maybe it was the place they were playing the cross-site mafia games, I can't remember).
Just want some place I can keep my toe in the water.
It's sad for me. Almost 15 years. But I guess nothing last forever.
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Ambush Krotiq makes me laugh so much. I keep rereading the card and it keeps not having Flash. In what sense is this an ambush again? I just have visions of this huge Krotiq poorly concealed in some bushes, feeling slightly sad that his carefully planned ambushes never seem to work.
Well shoot, I don't check the site for three days and this happens? That's a bummer.
I played at GG and Misetings before it. Time was the mafia games were comparable, but I don't think they've had a real game there in ages. Not enough interest. I've never tried MU (I think that site might actually be blocked for me at work - or maybe it was the place they were playing the cross-site mafia games, I can't remember).
Just want some place I can keep my toe in the water.
It's sad for me. Almost 15 years. But I guess nothing last forever.
Not sure if you've used Discord before, but we've been using a Discord server as an off site community hub for a while and most of the community organizing is probably going to shunted to that once the site goes read only.
I've been trying to think of an alternative for people who don't want to mess with it like a mailing list or similar. We might be able to use a thread on Mafia Universe for some community stuff but our leadership is mostly going to be folded into theirs if we move there on a permanent basis.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
MU looks like they'd be genuinely helpful, but I'm not sure sacrificing the Council's autonomy is the right move. If I can get something going, it'd be dedicated to the Mafia community. I'd be open to putting it on a separate domain as well; it doesn't necessarily need to be on annoraxgames dot com.
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Hey all... I'm retired, not dead. Check out what I'm doing these days (and beg me to come back if you want):
I've been mulling over my opinion on this for a bit. I think that MU or possibly Mafia Society is our best bet.
I have been a progression WOW raider for many years. In that time I've been part of failing guilds, that due to membership declining or other reasons have had issues fielding the numbers required for mythic raids in the time slot they are running. In order to fix these issues, I have been part of 4 merges with other guilds in the course of my time playing. They have never worked.
Mergers typically have not worked due to the guilds merging both having systemic problems that need them to merge. IE both of them had hard time fielding the numbers needed. In my mind these merges did not work, because both guilds were already bleeding players, and the merge while providing an injection never solved the issue of stabilization.
In taking these experiences and others in to account I can say that mergers with smaller websites as mentioned would in my mind continue the slow death it feels that we are having. We need to face facts here we have had plenty of other players come to our site from other sites and almost none(If not all this last year) have not stayed. Part of this in my mind is due to specialty games which I would say is our specialty did not fire for a long time this year. (As a side not we should probably require that FTQ or anything we run in future on any website be mostly if not totally finished when submitted for consideration).
I also think that going off on our own would be the worst decision we could make if we are looking to attract new players. We've failed to attract many new players on a site that was bringing in many new users a month. And we've failed to recruit out of existing mafia player bases.
With that being said that leaves two options in my mind. MU or MS. MU seems exciting for the tech, the large player base, and the option of at least some freedom. MU doesn't seem like a bad option to me, but I do see us as a whole sort of fading away into their structure. However, for our game types I don't see that as a death sentence and I can see our games possibly doing quite well there.
MS is more of an unknown to me. The new website is attractive in my mind over MAL so that's a huge bonus right there. We've been offered I believe(And correct me if I'm wrong) much more freedom on MS than we have been offered on MU in both mod slots and in the community as a whole. My only hesitation is that MS is an unknown. While the possibility exists that it will grow and prosper, the same possibility exists that it won't. I also will say that I really hope they will succeed, and I have to wonder if we went with MS if that would help them succeed.
So, to me that's the difference. MU should work, but it has its downsides. MS might work, but has in my mind the potential to be a much better merger than MU. Personally, I'd choose MS over MU. But I understand the MU choice as well.
Hey guys, I will join Annorax and ask to be contacted if/when you have decided where to migrate (I'm ZDS#8009 on Discord). I've been considering maybe doing a quick comeback every once in a while.
Please pick a website that's not going to stagnate and wither away, or that risks disappearing somehow (*cough*leaking money*cough*). These are the most important considerations IMO — see DV's post.
Wherever we do go, I think the key thing is to hit the ground really running - if we just rock up with Hill House mostly filled and fire it relatively quicky, and then just kind of do nothing else, there's a strong chance of us all just fizzling out. I think some focus needs to be made towards:
Pre-integrating with the selected community. Join their discords, play some games, learn their metas. It will make it more likely for natives to join our games if they recognise names they enjoy playing with
By the same token, do the same for other sites. We've had lots of generous offers, which shows that our community is valued as being skillful and worthy opponents. Even if we settle on one place as a home, some more digital exploration would help bring in newer players while also exposing us to new ideas to improve our own games.
Have some solid games in the pipeline. MTGS-level Specialties would be the best showcase of our uniqueness (and we should have something from the FTQs that could be ready to run soon), even if they might be a bit wacky to drop on an unsuspecting forum. But even our other game types showcase our own approach to things (and will be easier for others to understand and play in). The key thing is to make sure we have games of any kind to run to ensure we have momentum upon moving to stop current active players floating away.
It's a bit hyptocritical of me to make these claims because I'm not really active enough to really help with them, but I really do think a transition with a run up and proper momentum is really important to keep the community together during a transition like this.
Yep yep. Pretty sure Az is working on something new (!!!) and DV and I are talking about an MTGS tribute specialty with roles and mechanics from previous specialties mixed together. We do have a few specialties in the queue already though. We mostly need MTGS style normals and minis since Cantrip is holding up the entire non-specialty queue by the sheer force of his creative genius at the moment (besides a normal Shadow has in there).
I... may have a normal I can add to the queue but we also don't really have a way to add stuff to the queue. I may just create a hosting channel where people can @mention bur to add stuff to the queue that has the current queues pinned at the top of the channel?
I'd also mention that Ever Changing Seasons mafia that is in the que is ready to go from me. Subject to my reviewers telling me its ready to go. I think its ready to go though, so that gives a good idea of how close it is.
I'd consider it a specialty game but nothing THAT crazy.
Edit: Its complexity level is something akin to ZeroEscape.
FTR. I will definitely be willing to step aside in the hosting queue to let either Az or DV go sooner, as while I'm excited for Snipe Hunt (and I think it'll be a lot of fun), it can't compare in sheer craziness to Ever Changing Seasons, and pretty much nothing compares to an Az game. So if we're looking to establish our design creds wherever we end up, either of those are welcome to fire first, as the community/council deems fit.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
Apparently a buyer for MTGS has emerged, but there still seems to be a schism brewing, with considerable impact on the mafia forum, for good or ill, still possible. Discussion ongoing.
I think we probably continue contingency plans
the survival of MTGS is up in the air, just as mtgnews was seriously damaged as a result of the last schism
We can stick around long enough to see how things start panning out
But I think we probably needed a change for the betterment of the community anyways
Still, I like the idea of keeping all our infrastructure and old games just as they were
We probably need to reverse some of the queues changes we made, I think
I feel like the signup system we have now is an absolute disaster.
The entire system is held hostage to games that aren't filling
And our specialties and FTQs have no pressure or impetus to fire
And the entire sub just looks stale and deserted now
I think we've had the players all along
But we've lacked games that they want to sign up for - the more experienced players in particular who have played in a ton of standard complexity normals and are burnt out on those game types
I agree that we absolutely need to reinstate the specialty queue
I think if we have game hosts who are interested in putting out interesting new games, they'll fill in a heartbeat, and people will come out of the woodwork for them
I know in my case, my entire MO for the last year has been to check on the site every 1-2 months, looking for any games that catch my eye as unique or creative or interesting, and there's just nothing moving through the pipes that called to me
there's absolutely games IN the pipes like that
but they're not being pushed to completion
And I'm sure I'm not the only old vet who's doing that exact thing
Yeah, the whole "people are looking for interesting setups" was the reason I pushed so hard to get the Specialty Queue reinstated. The FTQ just wasn't producing setups fast enough to meet the demand for specialty level set ups on its own. Of course now we have a problem in that there are a bunch of specialty set ups in the queue and around half of them are unfinished, but one thing at a time.
I do agree we need to at least keep the escape pods ready in case things go south, but if we want to try to ride out the ownership change I'd be willing to do what I can to make it work.
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The council will begin working on some solutions to keep us as a community together and whole, but we very much ask for your input and suggestions as we prepare for the future. Thank you.
The article for reference:
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/articles/49777-the-end-of-an-era
If you would like to keep in touch, I am Iso#5336 on Discord. I will be leaving the MTGS Mafia Discord once the site is shut down.
With regards to maintaining the community, I believe migration to a different Mafia site altogether is the most tenable option. I may pop in here and there to make a cameo in the rare, occasional game when I catch the itch, but aside from that, I'm putting Mafia behind me. I hope you all find what you're looking for.
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Silver lining: doesn't much matter if we double-post outside of game threads now. Care to comment on why admin didn't care to continue the mafia sub? Where are all their best moderators going to come from, now, anyways?
So, I guess we need a new home, maybe. MU is certainly one option, although we'd be a pretty small subset of the whole. Likely to get swallowed up, and hard to maintain ourselves as distinct.
Here's one other option that may not be on the radar as much, but might let us keep the community as a whole together and distinct, preserve our autonomy and structure. Good Gamery (goodgamery.com). We've had plenty of mixers with them over the years, and out of any of the communities we've played with, they are, by far, the most similar to us. Not by accident, either. The tie-ins between our userbases go all the way back to 2005, and you could make a strong argument that MTGS's style of play originated with those guys. When I was first learning how to play and design games back in 2003, when the same crew was on Misetings.com, that's who I first learned to play with. A lot of the creative stuff they put together was one of my major influences. Then I came over here when mafia first started on MTGS, with just a dozen or so of us initially, and that same style was the germ of MTGS's playstyle and design DNA. Out of anywhere else that I'd continue to be inclined to play, that would allow us the most continuity.
We also already share a fair number of members who have played on both sites. Similar culture, both being magic sites. It's owned by an active participant in the forum, who's not likely to be running off anytime soon. I'd say that's as close to home as we're going to get. It'll also help both sites to consolidate forces. They have have suffered from attrition same as a lot of other mafia subs, but still have quite a few old-hands who also enjoy the multi-day playstyle, thorough analysis, PBPA work and creative specialty designs that are our signature playstyle. Some of the best players I know, anywhere, still frequent that site. Smart, and easy-going.
That'd be my suggestion.
EDIT: Also, I'm told Grakthis is no longer there. Which for me is a minus, but a huge plus for everyone else.
While MafiaUniverse has quite a lot of forum software and a modbot and all that, I would like to formally invite you all to come play as much as you like at my still operational but more or less inactive home site for mafia.
Forums.totalwar.org / Gameroom
Generalhankerchief is from here and is still a moderator of the subforum, and if the subforum stays active, we could add additional mods.
I am also from here and I can get bumped back up to mod status if you need me.
I hate that your home is being taken from you.
As thanks for the years you have shown me hospitality on your site, please, feel free to make a new home at my currently vacant home. All of you. The whole lot. Do things the way you've always done them. Long phases. Same setups you have always wanted.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php/156-Gameroom
We did manage to make a timer and someone even figured out how to make an automatic vote counter. I will have to look those up though.
The forum skin looks very nice if you log in and switch the skin to The Guild skin.
The smileys are very, very nice. I love them.
The rules of the site, the site leaders, and the site culture has always been chill. Very rarely did people get banned in the gameroom for bad behavior.
And, well... it's yours, as an option. While you could be absorbed into another community and maybe that is even a better idea, I just want to say, there is this nice, well run space that is entirely vacant. No lines, no waiting, nothing but love and good times to be had.
I salute you, MTGS community.
https://twitch.tv/annorax10 (classic retro speedruns & occasional MTGO/MTGA screwaround streams)
https://twitch.tv/SwiftorCasino (yes, my team and I run live dealer games for the baldman using his channel points as chips)
The Mafia Universe staff have offered to help us integrate over there as well. They'd like to get the database with our old games in them to host them for us, and are willing to split their light games queue into a post limited queue and a long phase queue, over which we'll have a lot of leeway since no one really plays long phase games over there. We'd essentially be able to just put our games into the new queue and fire them from there with the bonus of being able to attract some MU players who want to try longer phase games. We've had quite a bit of player crossover with them over the last couple of years, too, for whatever that's worth, though their game design principles are probably a bit different.
I guess we're really looking for player input here, as well, what do you all think about moving to Good Gamery, or Mafia Universe, or taking up Pizza on moving to totalwar? I don't think we can swing a site of our own even if I thought it was a good idea, to be honest, and I don't really.
Personally, my big concern with Good Gamery is that even if we merge with them the overall site traffic there is pretty low, I'm not really sure how we would attract and keep new players from that platform. Same with the totalwar forum, for that matter. I think we only have around two dozen active players at the moment.
We'd lose most of our autonomy by integrating with MU, but we can keep the Discord server for organizing games and reviewers and events, potentially, and maybe attract mafia players from other parts of their site into playing our longer phase games. This is the biggest downside, of course, and eventually our flavor of game will just become part of MU and not something separate from it.
But yeah, this is a discussion the whole community needs to have, I think.
Also, /in for whenever that fires, heh.
It does have the benefit of being a space that can be your own, ready to go, right now, fully functional, and you could have one of your own step up and be a moderator of the gameroom section I am sure, since no one else is using it. You wouldn't need to feel like guests in someone else's party. The party at the org has been over for a while now, I don't see it coming back.
The suggestion just isn't a solution that will make your community grow. Not automatically, for sure. But you can go grab some more people by going to MU, hosting and playing games there, and inviting people back home to your community and your culture. The way I have kept interest in the org since its first major bout of inactivity.
As long as you have a space you can consider yours, your culture and community can survive. The important thing is that you do have a space, as that is what you are losing. If you have that, then your culture and community can survive there and adapt and gather more people to grow it, with a little persistence and outreach on your part.
It all depends on how much you want to maintain it as its own unique thing. If you're really compatible with Good Gamery that might be a good match. If it isn't or doesn't turn out to be, you can have your last hurrahs on your own space on the org. Boards, and communities, and friendships in life, they have a way of being there for a while and then passing out of your reach. But if you feel the time is not over for your community and culture, then there is still time on the org. As a first or as a last resort, it will still be there.
There are a few familiar faces at both forums; Prophylaxis, Osie, Last Whisper, RE1031, and Togs (Atogaholic) are admins over at the Mafia Society and Bur, Scarlet Celestial, Shinichi, and Dawning Blue Sky play over at the Mafia Society. Grapefruit might as well? And DV has played a few games there I think.
At Mafia Universe we have tomsloger, Voxxicus, and Newcomb as mods with a handful of our older players having gone over there for shorter phases and better software; Gentleman Johnny, Sir Chris, etc. And of course there's no reason we couldn't call one site "home" and play some games on the other still, at least not that I know of, or like Pizza said we could move to the Org or Good Gamery and play some games at both sites to drum up interest.
It really depends on what we want to do as a community. If we want to keep our identity intact for the foreseeable future, Good Gamery and the Org are probably our best options. If we just want to keep playing our style of games and get more people into them it might be better to merge with a larger group on a dedicated Mafia site like Mafia Universe or what Mafia Society will be once their new forum is up and running.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has offered to take us in, we really do appreciate it. And also it's been an honor playing here the last three years and being your Council Member for ~6 months.
edit: corrected Mafia Society admin list, heh
On MU, there are some definite benefits worth considering as far as being able to pull from their wider playerbase, and the software is pretty fantastic. I do worry about the risk that we get subsumed/diluted. When you join a large existing community like that, it does change things. Still, change can be good. Things got a little stagnant here without a lot of new users around, and that was a big part of the problem. On the other hand, fit and culture are pretty valid concerns, based on some of the interactions/frictions I've seen. Lurking and low-participation may be issues we'd have to deal with regularly.
For me, GG has that nice homey feel, and a very compatible playstyle. But will we be able to recruit lots of new players there? Not likely. For me, I think there's a level of comfort and a number of intangibles at GG that MU can't offer, such that it would be more of a home-coming than a refugee relocation. Floated the possibility over there, and it was very well-received.
I suppose it depends largely on what's most important to us as a community. Preserving the kind of community that we've built here, or launching a new adventure. We have options in that regard, and we may find that this change was a benefit to us, in the end.
Mafia universe has 262 active users online at the moment, versus 30 for GG. Our mafia sub has 30 active online users at the moment.
GG has a thousand members. MU has 4800 members, of whom 1200 are active. We have had about 188 unique players in the past three years. MTGS as a whole has 4530 active users just this moment, and 391,000 members total.
Either site is going to be a bit of an adjustment from what we're used to, I suspect. MU's raw user pipeline is much larger. GG's user pipeline is, potentially, a higher quality or a better fit on average, as they're used to playing our style.
Legitimate arguments for either option can be made.
GoodGamery is interesting to me because I recall they had a pretty great archival system of some sort for mafia games (deckfullofouts, which is now dead I assume?) and I also remember some pretty great games (there was one where Az GOATed hard that's escaping me). I see that they're pretty enthusiastic about having new blood and it would be fun to accommodate them.
MU is probably the most realistic best option though, b/c we can get a place setup for longer games and the forum software is fantastic, and we can draw some MU players who are pressed for time and would like to drop in for a longer game.
I'd support both options but I also have not played here in a year, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Regardless of where we move I think the queue system needs to be massively restructured though, we don't have the numbers to sustain our current queue system (plus, the fact that I have to wait multiple years to fire a Specialty is beyond me).
No longer my decision to make, but my $0.02.
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Never tried it on mobile - that could definitely be a minus.
Sounds like MU is the front-runner thus far.
I suppose that means once work stops exploding, I should think up a game or two to introduce them to how we roll, over here...
If we move to MU, did we have a way to archive our games from here somehow?
hastily assembled from bubblegum and broken dreams using carbon copy paperuh, worked on. We'll have a copy of the games whatever else happens but it might not be easily accessible for a while.I played at GG and Misetings before it. Time was the mafia games were comparable, but I don't think they've had a real game there in ages. Not enough interest. I've never tried MU (I think that site might actually be blocked for me at work - or maybe it was the place they were playing the cross-site mafia games, I can't remember).
Just want some place I can keep my toe in the water.
It's sad for me. Almost 15 years. But I guess nothing last forever.
I've been trying to think of an alternative for people who don't want to mess with it like a mailing list or similar. We might be able to use a thread on Mafia Universe for some community stuff but our leadership is mostly going to be folded into theirs if we move there on a permanent basis.
Particularly if the site will be archived, we want that discord link to be easy to find going forward, before the site goes dead and can't be altered.
MU looks like they'd be genuinely helpful, but I'm not sure sacrificing the Council's autonomy is the right move. If I can get something going, it'd be dedicated to the Mafia community. I'd be open to putting it on a separate domain as well; it doesn't necessarily need to be on annoraxgames dot com.
https://twitch.tv/annorax10 (classic retro speedruns & occasional MTGO/MTGA screwaround streams)
https://twitch.tv/SwiftorCasino (yes, my team and I run live dealer games for the baldman using his channel points as chips)
I have been a progression WOW raider for many years. In that time I've been part of failing guilds, that due to membership declining or other reasons have had issues fielding the numbers required for mythic raids in the time slot they are running. In order to fix these issues, I have been part of 4 merges with other guilds in the course of my time playing. They have never worked.
Mergers typically have not worked due to the guilds merging both having systemic problems that need them to merge. IE both of them had hard time fielding the numbers needed. In my mind these merges did not work, because both guilds were already bleeding players, and the merge while providing an injection never solved the issue of stabilization.
In taking these experiences and others in to account I can say that mergers with smaller websites as mentioned would in my mind continue the slow death it feels that we are having. We need to face facts here we have had plenty of other players come to our site from other sites and almost none(If not all this last year) have not stayed. Part of this in my mind is due to specialty games which I would say is our specialty did not fire for a long time this year. (As a side not we should probably require that FTQ or anything we run in future on any website be mostly if not totally finished when submitted for consideration).
I also think that going off on our own would be the worst decision we could make if we are looking to attract new players. We've failed to attract many new players on a site that was bringing in many new users a month. And we've failed to recruit out of existing mafia player bases.
With that being said that leaves two options in my mind. MU or MS. MU seems exciting for the tech, the large player base, and the option of at least some freedom. MU doesn't seem like a bad option to me, but I do see us as a whole sort of fading away into their structure. However, for our game types I don't see that as a death sentence and I can see our games possibly doing quite well there.
MS is more of an unknown to me. The new website is attractive in my mind over MAL so that's a huge bonus right there. We've been offered I believe(And correct me if I'm wrong) much more freedom on MS than we have been offered on MU in both mod slots and in the community as a whole. My only hesitation is that MS is an unknown. While the possibility exists that it will grow and prosper, the same possibility exists that it won't. I also will say that I really hope they will succeed, and I have to wonder if we went with MS if that would help them succeed.
So, to me that's the difference. MU should work, but it has its downsides. MS might work, but has in my mind the potential to be a much better merger than MU. Personally, I'd choose MS over MU. But I understand the MU choice as well.
Please pick a website that's not going to stagnate and wither away, or that risks disappearing somehow (*cough*leaking money*cough*). These are the most important considerations IMO — see DV's post.
It's a bit hyptocritical of me to make these claims because I'm not really active enough to really help with them, but I really do think a transition with a run up and proper momentum is really important to keep the community together during a transition like this.
I... may have a normal I can add to the queue but we also don't really have a way to add stuff to the queue. I may just create a hosting channel where people can @mention bur to add stuff to the queue that has the current queues pinned at the top of the channel?
I'd consider it a specialty game but nothing THAT crazy.
Edit: Its complexity level is something akin to ZeroEscape.
EDIT: Scratch that. Rough draft of setup complete.
Short answer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yam5uK6e-bQ
(Or is it Dreams Mafia? :P)
Whichever way: HYPE!
Might take you up on that - can't be eliminating Shadow from the player pool.
Yeah, otherwise who would be copped Night 1?
I think we probably continue contingency plans
the survival of MTGS is up in the air, just as mtgnews was seriously damaged as a result of the last schism
We can stick around long enough to see how things start panning out
But I think we probably needed a change for the betterment of the community anyways
Still, I like the idea of keeping all our infrastructure and old games just as they were
We probably need to reverse some of the queues changes we made, I think
I feel like the signup system we have now is an absolute disaster.
The entire system is held hostage to games that aren't filling
And our specialties and FTQs have no pressure or impetus to fire
And the entire sub just looks stale and deserted now
I think we've had the players all along
But we've lacked games that they want to sign up for - the more experienced players in particular who have played in a ton of standard complexity normals and are burnt out on those game types
I agree that we absolutely need to reinstate the specialty queue
I think if we have game hosts who are interested in putting out interesting new games, they'll fill in a heartbeat, and people will come out of the woodwork for them
I know in my case, my entire MO for the last year has been to check on the site every 1-2 months, looking for any games that catch my eye as unique or creative or interesting, and there's just nothing moving through the pipes that called to me
there's absolutely games IN the pipes like that
but they're not being pushed to completion
And I'm sure I'm not the only old vet who's doing that exact thing
I do agree we need to at least keep the escape pods ready in case things go south, but if we want to try to ride out the ownership change I'd be willing to do what I can to make it work.