So, take this with a grain of salt, because I'm aware that my opinions / tastes when it comes to mafia are, by the by, a few standard deviations away from the mean.
I've played a couple times here, and I'd definitely consider doing so again, but there are a couple stumbling blocks.
1. The biggest one, by far, is that there are very rarely the types of game that I'd want to play available to sign up for. This is definitely a minority opinion, but to me mafia is about the informed minority vs. the uninformed majority, and that's it. I don't like Neutrals, I don't like roles that mess with the mechanics of the game, I don't like rules that change the basic concepts of votes, phases, discussion, etc. I like the unique confluence of logic, behavioral psychology, and persuasive writing that is mafia, and I don't like anything screwing with that.
This leads to me not wanting to sign up for big games, which are inevitably complex - even SG-1, which was billed as a "Normal", had an Ascetic Absorbing SK or something like that and a town role with 2-shot Resurrection. Both of which are just, like... nope. Nope nope nope. On the other end of the spectrum are Micros, which seem to be 80-90% mechanics / theory exercises, which, again, not really my jam.
In my experience, Mafia player preferences usually group into one of roughly 4 types:
1) Very basic games with minimal mechanics/flavor. In my experience, this tends to attract two types of players - new players who are still learning the game and intimdated by the complexity of larger game types and a small but vocal brand of very experienced player who prefers to remove most of the uncertainty about the setup (via low mechanics or open setups) in order to emphasize behavior (and sometimes setupbreaking). Interestingly, this includes quite a very of the very best players I've seen (notably Yosarian2 and petroleumjelly on 'Scum and Caphriel/Sotek/Acionyx on FantasyStrike).
2) High-power, moderate complexity games with a (often strong) flavor component but few/no special mechanics. Think Apocalypse, or The Hobbit, or Animal Mafia; Cyberpunk is on the extreme end of complexity for this type. I tend to like this type personally, and two of my favorite games of all time (OGML's Medieval Mafia and channeldelibird's Stargate SG-1 Mafia, both on MafiaScum) were this type.
3) Specialties, i.e, games with a strong central mechanic or mechanics with varying levels of complexity layered on top. Generally benefits from having at least some flavor/complexity on top, though I've seen a few games that focused narrowly on the central mechanic and were able to appeal to players who like simple games. MTGS does these right, IMO; MafiaScum traditionally throws these together with group 2 games in the Theme queues, which drains playerbase away from Normals.
4) Bastard games (Cult/Jester games go here, even without other bastard mod elements). This group overlaps with groups 2 and 3, but not group 1, since bastard mod elements are usually anathema to players who want to minimize setup uncertainty. I can personally attest that there's an audience here, since I built a modding career on MafiaScum by a game series with bastard elements.
Specifically the bolded part. I cut my teeth playing with those guys on FantasyStrike, and that style of heavy analytical play is the perspective I'm coming from. I don't have a tenth of their experience, but when I think about the kind of mafia player I'd like to be in a couple years, I'm 100% holding up a guy like Acionyx as my ideal.
So, all that being said, I'm looking at the last, say, 6 months of signups, and I'm seeing... basically Off the Grid, and that's it, as games that I'd be enthusiastic about playing.
Is Problem. At least for me.
2. The interface. Having recently finished up Game 7 of the Champs series over at Mafia Universe, the difference is just... stark. Curse sucks, etc, I won't go into that as it's been adequately covered, except to confirm that, yes, I'm a player and the interface here actively makes games less fun.
It might sound drastic, but you would guys consider just... running all your games over at MU? Like - keep everything here, discussion / signups, all that, but when the game fires, just send a link to the game thread at MU with the role PM. Boom. Problem solved.
Or maybe that's hopelessly naive, I have no idea.
I just know that playing with the tools they've got at MU versus playing here is quite emphatically night and day. And Curse isn't just bad, it's actively bad, as in, the site interface seems to actively fight playing mafia, rather than just being like, say, vBulletin, which is just "sure, fine, whatever".
3. Phase lengths. SG-1's Day One lasted literally months. There were extenuating circumstances, and I do like the idea of longer phases in general, and I'm even one of those guys with a job that demands no-phone/computer for a lot of my work hours, so yeah, in theory, long phases are great. But there's definitely this self-correcting feedback loop where the indeterminate, multi-week Days kind of lead to stagnation. No sense of pressure / everyone plays at their own pace, but it's a vicious cycle, where lulls in the game are kind of contagious. Shorter (but not short) phases give players a sense of purpose, and focus. My ideal phase lengths are 5/2 - a week to get through a Day/Night cycle. I've played shorter, and longer, and of course MTGS shouldn't just abandon its signature thing, but if you want to attract a larger crowd, maybe having every single game have the expectation of multi-week Days isn't a great thing, if only for sheer lack of variety.
4. Community standards. This one is a little nebulous, and I've never personally had a bad experience with a player on this site, but I've read or at least skimmed just about every game over the last 6 months or so, and there have been multiple times in most of them where I thought to myself, "why isn't the moderator telling people to chill out?" Obviously, "what is acceptable behavior in a mafia game" is waaaaaay beyond the scope of this post, but on a very basic, very holistic level, I don't think you could argue that MTGS has seen some fairly toxic spikes on the ol' data set over the last stretch of time. I'm not sure if it has to do with site culture, or what, but very rarely do I see moderators acting as, well, moderators. Absolutely mafia is a game where things are going to get heated, people should feel free to play their own style, etc, but like. There are lines. I'm sure somewhere on this site you even have them written down, as rules. I'm not out to make MTGS a hugbox or North Korea or anything, but it's at least worth mentioning that when I've considered signing up for games, it's turned me off a bit thinking about some of the fights / behavior / angles that were allowed to escalate and escalate and escalate without a moderator stepping in and going, "hey, you guys are being douchenozzles, stop it."
Anyway, when I think about signing up for a game here, those are the four things that make me pause. They're in order - the main thing is game type. I really, really favor behavioral analysis and hate anything that gets in the way of that, and have a strong preference for games that are stripped down to just... mafia. The interface / phase lengths are not great, but tolerable. The community health stuff is whatever, and certainly not a unique MTGS problem, but seemed worth at least pointing out from a somewhat outsider's perspective. Really, it's not that games are super toxic at all times, it's just a puzzling lack of front-loaded expectations, or community enforcement where the majority of the playerbase is like "this is not okay", or the moderators are quick to step in and do their thing... it's just a bit eyebrow-raising, since it seems kind of like a no-brainer for community health.
36 hour phases are going to be brutal for me. Work + sleep means I'll miss at least half of every Day during the week. So it goes!
It was cool seeing the MTGS QT; it's awesome that so many people are following along.
Az, I voted you #1 to advance in our game. Regardless of read accuracy in that particular game, I thought you were in a class by yourself when it came to the "who would you want on your team in a hypothetical game" metric. 10/10, would love to roll village with again.
Thankfully this game is an open setup so I won't have the option of claiming Town Delayed Watcher Loud Bulletproof as mafia. Should be a real boon to my game.
@Azrael I'm excited to roll into a game with you! I read the Invitational and came away pretty impressed with your play.
I expect a fair bit of salt over the setup, but as someone who followed the game and thought it looked pretty fun for the most part, I just want to say:
It was kind of a perfect storm of bad stuff this game, so I didn't enjoy it much at all, but I don't think that's really anyone's fault. D1 just lasted waaaaaay too long, IMO, and was a struggle to stay engaged with. D2 started with the triple whammy of Chris dying, TS getting revived, and tom imploding and getting turbo-lynched, and once a little more information about the setup came out, it just didn't feel like Nacho and I ever actually had a chance, which is a pretty tough sell when I'm trying to stay motivated. I don't pretend to understand setup balance, but it certainly felt super, super unbalanced, even trying to separate my bias where I'm a huge pillar of salt because I was on the wrong side of it and channeling, basically, this emotion for like 1.5 IRL months playing out the string.
Wow...I would be out of my mind with rage right now if I had been assigned a mafia role in this game. I honestly don't know how they were ever going to win.
Between that and being on the winning side of the always NK enabled, double voting werewolves in Vanillaville 2, I think I'm going to stick to open setups from now on
Is NotVoxx even one to like, be resigned to his death? I don't think I've been in a game where he's ever been lynched? So his reaction to it here is a first for me.
But I think I'd expect like, a legacy post from him. For him to be more adamant about whom we kill in the world where he flips town. The initial Plowshares case is meh, considering what (Rhand? Cyan?) said about Plowshares being reeeally close to becoming confirmed town/scum. There is almost nothing Plowshares can do to weasel out of that, and we can afford to wait for that to resolve, with probably half of the scumteam dead.
Apparently so? I dunno, I might have made more noise if I were more invested in the game, but at this point, it is what it is. My legacy is my VCA post + response to Citric, with a general "listen to Citric tomorrow if he's alive"-type thing.
I was indeed town this game, so you'll have to sort though it yourselves tomorrow. Go ahead and hammer me whenever, Von. You've got what you're going to get out of me.
You Can Never Banish Your Own Shadow
VAIMES VAIMES VAIMES VAIMES
I've played a couple times here, and I'd definitely consider doing so again, but there are a couple stumbling blocks.
1. The biggest one, by far, is that there are very rarely the types of game that I'd want to play available to sign up for. This is definitely a minority opinion, but to me mafia is about the informed minority vs. the uninformed majority, and that's it. I don't like Neutrals, I don't like roles that mess with the mechanics of the game, I don't like rules that change the basic concepts of votes, phases, discussion, etc. I like the unique confluence of logic, behavioral psychology, and persuasive writing that is mafia, and I don't like anything screwing with that.
This leads to me not wanting to sign up for big games, which are inevitably complex - even SG-1, which was billed as a "Normal", had an Ascetic Absorbing SK or something like that and a town role with 2-shot Resurrection. Both of which are just, like... nope. Nope nope nope. On the other end of the spectrum are Micros, which seem to be 80-90% mechanics / theory exercises, which, again, not really my jam.
Basically, what Taredas was talking about here:
Specifically the bolded part. I cut my teeth playing with those guys on FantasyStrike, and that style of heavy analytical play is the perspective I'm coming from. I don't have a tenth of their experience, but when I think about the kind of mafia player I'd like to be in a couple years, I'm 100% holding up a guy like Acionyx as my ideal.
So, all that being said, I'm looking at the last, say, 6 months of signups, and I'm seeing... basically Off the Grid, and that's it, as games that I'd be enthusiastic about playing.
Is Problem. At least for me.
2. The interface. Having recently finished up Game 7 of the Champs series over at Mafia Universe, the difference is just... stark. Curse sucks, etc, I won't go into that as it's been adequately covered, except to confirm that, yes, I'm a player and the interface here actively makes games less fun.
It might sound drastic, but you would guys consider just... running all your games over at MU? Like - keep everything here, discussion / signups, all that, but when the game fires, just send a link to the game thread at MU with the role PM. Boom. Problem solved.
Or maybe that's hopelessly naive, I have no idea.
I just know that playing with the tools they've got at MU versus playing here is quite emphatically night and day. And Curse isn't just bad, it's actively bad, as in, the site interface seems to actively fight playing mafia, rather than just being like, say, vBulletin, which is just "sure, fine, whatever".
3. Phase lengths. SG-1's Day One lasted literally months. There were extenuating circumstances, and I do like the idea of longer phases in general, and I'm even one of those guys with a job that demands no-phone/computer for a lot of my work hours, so yeah, in theory, long phases are great. But there's definitely this self-correcting feedback loop where the indeterminate, multi-week Days kind of lead to stagnation. No sense of pressure / everyone plays at their own pace, but it's a vicious cycle, where lulls in the game are kind of contagious. Shorter (but not short) phases give players a sense of purpose, and focus. My ideal phase lengths are 5/2 - a week to get through a Day/Night cycle. I've played shorter, and longer, and of course MTGS shouldn't just abandon its signature thing, but if you want to attract a larger crowd, maybe having every single game have the expectation of multi-week Days isn't a great thing, if only for sheer lack of variety.
4. Community standards. This one is a little nebulous, and I've never personally had a bad experience with a player on this site, but I've read or at least skimmed just about every game over the last 6 months or so, and there have been multiple times in most of them where I thought to myself, "why isn't the moderator telling people to chill out?" Obviously, "what is acceptable behavior in a mafia game" is waaaaaay beyond the scope of this post, but on a very basic, very holistic level, I don't think you could argue that MTGS has seen some fairly toxic spikes on the ol' data set over the last stretch of time. I'm not sure if it has to do with site culture, or what, but very rarely do I see moderators acting as, well, moderators. Absolutely mafia is a game where things are going to get heated, people should feel free to play their own style, etc, but like. There are lines. I'm sure somewhere on this site you even have them written down, as rules. I'm not out to make MTGS a hugbox or North Korea or anything, but it's at least worth mentioning that when I've considered signing up for games, it's turned me off a bit thinking about some of the fights / behavior / angles that were allowed to escalate and escalate and escalate without a moderator stepping in and going, "hey, you guys are being douchenozzles, stop it."
Anyway, when I think about signing up for a game here, those are the four things that make me pause. They're in order - the main thing is game type. I really, really favor behavioral analysis and hate anything that gets in the way of that, and have a strong preference for games that are stripped down to just... mafia. The interface / phase lengths are not great, but tolerable. The community health stuff is whatever, and certainly not a unique MTGS problem, but seemed worth at least pointing out from a somewhat outsider's perspective. Really, it's not that games are super toxic at all times, it's just a puzzling lack of front-loaded expectations, or community enforcement where the majority of the playerbase is like "this is not okay", or the moderators are quick to step in and do their thing... it's just a bit eyebrow-raising, since it seems kind of like a no-brainer for community health.
Hope that semi-helped.
It was cool seeing the MTGS QT; it's awesome that so many people are following along.
Az, I voted you #1 to advance in our game. Regardless of read accuracy in that particular game, I thought you were in a class by yourself when it came to the "who would you want on your team in a hypothetical game" metric. 10/10, would love to roll village with again.
@Azrael I'm excited to roll into a game with you! I read the Invitational and came away pretty impressed with your play.
OMG WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GO VAIMES
I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT
http://i.imgur.com/N6u0o2U.gifv
So what was your ultra secret town tell that I would have had to basically luck into (twice) as mafia? Just for posterity's sake.
Between that and being on the winning side of the always NK enabled, double voting werewolves in Vanillaville 2, I think I'm going to stick to open setups from now on
Thanks for hosting, Taredas.
Apparently so? I dunno, I might have made more noise if I were more invested in the game, but at this point, it is what it is. My legacy is my VCA post + response to Citric, with a general "listen to Citric tomorrow if he's alive"-type thing.
I was indeed town this game, so you'll have to sort though it yourselves tomorrow. Go ahead and hammer me whenever, Von. You've got what you're going to get out of me.