Discussion Mafia Game "Discussion" Thread v.10

Lawl Po Bia · Sep 16, 2014

Re: Mafia Game "Discussion" Thread v.9 - Part 5

just perma bann KD and the problem solved

Evil3ye · Sep 16, 2014

Re: Mafia Game "Discussion" Thread v.9 - Part 5

Hardy said:
-Lovers and 3some candidate (role needs to be updated): 1st of all, if the 3some dude guesses 1 correctly he should be told which one it is (and he'll only have to find the other one), so that the role isn't impossible to play. Also, if one of the lovers die but he finds the other one before he kills himself, then he'll take the dead lover's place (is this clear? lol).

Post update suggestion in other thread, we can work it out.

Hardy said:
Boss (role needs to be updated): the PM part is just outdated nowadays, as we use piratepad that isn't needed at all... and so his only power is having the same result as a normal townie (this would fix the problem orgz had with the word ¨usually¨ lol).

Same here. Role needs update badly, post update, we review.

FrostyMouse said:
I obviously was killed before I could suicide myself, but I was thinking of perhaps a change to the Time Bomb, and perhaps a renaming.

How about this?

Time Bomb Option 1: The host decides before the game starts the night by which the Time Bomb must explode, of which the player is informed. The player can choose to explode any Night Phase, not including the first Night Phase, up to and including the Night Phase that the Time Bomb is required to explode by. The night it shall explode, it can target any other player and blow him up. If the Time Bomb is killed before the time limit is passed, it does not explode.

I was thinking that we could argue tampering or something as a reason for it to explode early, so perhaps we could do something like this

Time Bomb Option 2: The host decides before the game starts when the Time Bomb will explode, of which the player is informed. The night it shall explode, it can target any other player and blow him up. If the Time Bomb is killed before the time limit is passed it does not explode. If the Time Bomb is targeted with an investigation type ability, be it a Townie or Mafia role, the Time Bomb explodes, killing the investigating player as a result of tampering.

Sounds kinda interesting, we can give it more thoughts in the roles suggestions thread, also.

Hardy said:
Penalties: Should we use a 3 strike system like in the last game, or use a penalty as a warning and the 2nd one would be a hostkill like Nuno suggested? I think the latter should work fine.

Hardy said:
Minimum posts: they should be more, 3 posts are a joke really (unless the day phase ends earlier like niichan's case in this game). They should be something like from 5 to 10 (although 10 seems like A LOT to me).

3c said:
Penalties + Activity: 2 strike IMO. First offense: Penalty votes. Second: Host kill. I just in general really despise this low activity attitude. If you don't have time don't fucking sign up to play. It really complicates the game unnecessarily. Look at this shit, kdowns survived until Day Fucking 8 and was the mafia boss. Zero contribution. IMO 3 posts is garbage. Also a distinction SHOULD be made between CONTRIBUTIVE and NON-CONTRIBUTIVE posts. I mean if it's hard to judge then learn2mod. If you have trouble I can give you a lightning course honestly ^^ Think: "Is this post adding to the discussion?" If someone uses a post to say "just woke up" and another to post a fucking smiley they are NOT contributive and don't count. You can also add some (positive) bias here. If someone logs on and only posts two huge posts, then that could count for something and not just be "two posts". Up to the host IMO. In terms of amount of posts required, I'd say we should up it to 5. That's still a garbage number, but whatever. In huge games like this, 5 posts in one big day is a drop in the sea...

xi0 said:
A host deciding whether someone is contributing or not and hostkilling them is completely unfair. All the requirements should be is that they're posting and voting, that's it.

A host can deny people playing, ban or not. As long as it isn't an unfair reason, I don't see a problem with it. But a host going, "you know, this person isn't playing like they should"...that's way too subjective. Killing that person is basically the host playing the game for people.

xi0 said:
The problem with any sort of ruling on activity is this...

If someone is inactive, they have a great chance of ruining the game. Penalties don't actually do anything once the game is started. Hostkilling doesn't either, but it's kind of inevitable in many situations. The problem is nothing we have in place actually prevents the possibility of an inactive player, only bans and potential permanent bans.

So regardless of rule changes, it doesn't actually improve anything. I think it's the same deal with post requirements. Before we had none, now we have some in order to force people to post. Now we're making value judgments on what kind of posts can/should count. It's too many rules man, this game is supposed to be casual and fun. Sure, we get people who REALLY get into it and get all srs bsns about it, there's rage because of that. So just kill the person if you think they're not valuable to the game, hostkilling/penalties influences the game in a negative way just as much as inactivity, in my eyes.

-Ken- said:
How about carrying over the minimum requirement the next day if they fail to meet it. Like they'll have to make 6 posts instead of 3?

Obviously, sometimes people are busy. But having one inactive mafia getting modkill and another one just stay quiet throughout the night not saying anything is kind of annoying, tbh. But I don't think there's anything that can do done about the latter.

The contributive or not part, like mentioned later in the thread is completely unportable. Not only would that be subjective from one host to an other, it would leave players wondering, why for instance digital wasn't banned, while making only three posts and one of them being a certain smiley - not contributional at all - or was it?! And worst thing to a game in my opinion is when players making conclusions not about players in game, but the host's action (or no actions).

I do think three posts is too little of a contribution to actually call it a contribution. Especially in the beginning of the game. 10 posts on day one is reasonable. And for anyone who actually reads what others are posting and is responding, joining in the conversation, those posts are easily made. In a game of 25 players that is. Smaller games would end in smiley spam posts in my opinion, and I cannot make myself to believe anyone actually wants that.

So here's an other question, should the minimum posts be proportunately coupled to the amount of players in the game? Or would this overload big games even more, due to those exponential growth of posts per player? Does anyone wanna participate in such bigass things, and how much time would that actually require.

An other question is, do these set minimum posts have the same value in the beginning as they have at the end? I was thinking, while those 10 posts on day 1 would be a piece of cake to reach, in later phases, phase 6 or so with maybe 7-8 players left it would be a big drag. So should it be lowered then? Or maybe having the minimum post thing for like only the first 2-3 phases? I mean, there are really lot of options, which are of course all connected to so much more work for the host, but which of those do you think could actually improve the quality?

And here's why I found Ken's post very interesting. Keeping that minimum amount, and if a player is struggling to reach it, rising the bar for him, so he has to work more to stay in the game.

Maybe that coupled with a 2-strikes punishment system. Pentality vote(s), Hostkill.

Hardy said:
Locked votes: well, I had troubles with them in my game too. Imo we shouldn't use them until the day phase is extended once, and after that locked votes would count. The problem here is what happens if there's a tie again? A coin flip is unfair and killing both people might be too much.

3c said:
Locked votes: Kind of rough as a first tie-breaker, I agree. I concur it should be 1hour extension first, then locked votes can count supreme to non-locked votes.

I am pretty satisfied with that system as it is for now, and here is why.

First of all, each player knows how much time he has to make a decision (two decisions actually, first vote, second final vote). It is said at the beginning of each phase. With the exception of a mathematical majority that can be reached, in which case we agreed it is reasonable to end a phase earlier, to not unnecessarily drag out a day, when the outcome cannot be changed anymore anyway.

Second of all, I believe it in fact is fair to say, that second locked votes are worth more than the first votes, because it is a final decision a player makes. And looking at it from the other perspective, the player with more locked votes is in a worse position, as he has less players to convince to change his vote (or vice versa, the one with less votes is in a better position as he has more, thus statistically bigger chance to actually succeed in doing that).

Third, and what xi0 mentioned after his lynch, that a created ties can and is often used as a strategy and power play, but who is actually the beneficiary of such a strategy? It obviously benefits the mafia side on many more occasions than the town's. A time extention was usually used to wait until a fellow mafia member is online again to come for the rescue.

And lastly, I find time extentions very tiring, when you know when the phase is supposed to end and you have a result, but then it isn't, and you wait and wait, and keep checking and checking, wait for people whose votes actually still count (unlocked votes), etc. And especially as host, as it requires constant presence, it basically screws up all your plans for the next like what one-two hours (if you're lucky), and for what exactly, some stupid power play of mafia, who is doomed to lose anyway (like common, if you happen to be suspicious enough to get tied with a townie, there's probably some really awful play behind that).

And I constantly keep repeating how dreadful I find a decision with a coin toss, but if the majority feel like it's the ultimate solution, I will swallow my despite and execute it. Rather than the extentions, as a host that is.

Hardy said:
Toxic bomb: Ken had this idea. Imagine that, in the day gnut got lynched, he decided to suicide and kill himself with nuno using his ability just minutes before the day phase ends. What happens then? The votes get reset and... the 2nd most voted person dies or there's a time extension? It's such a toxic move that I really have no idea what happens there.

Ken PMd me yesterday about it as well, and I gave it a little thought, but like not really yet, as I lacked time. According to our rules that we have now, the next person in line would have been lynched. In past games also each player that voted for the daykilled player could change his vote one more time, and I'm not sure if it was coupled with a day extention, probably not, as we never had it happening in the last minutes. Depending on how many votes were on the daykilled person, a time extention would be appropriate (like if he was the one with the leading votes).

Farfalla said:
We have another issue to discuss: permabans! \o/ kuh kuh kuh

Farfalla said:
Well that's why I asked the penalties to be discussed again. Sometimes we can't know if the person will go thru something and become inactive, but that has to be an exception, imo. What bothers me is that we kinda know some people that are troublesome and rules nowadays don't keep a good record so we can refrain those people from taking part. And I'm sorry if I'm saying that some people shouldn't play, but when they often ruin a game by getting hostkilled or showing little activity, I don't see the point in having them... We just had two mafia that showed very little activity, and I can imagine the frustration of the rest of their teams, it ruins the strategic part not to be able to use their roles, plus what that does to the odds... Gladly they were from different teams xD Anyway, not saying a hostkilled person should be banned forever, but we do have "toxic" players, and I know we're free to chose not to play with them, but I kinda wish that wasn't the only option. So I think that 2 or 3 penalties in a game should lead to a hostkill, and that a person that get a certain amount of hostkills should be taken away from the game. Maybe, later, the host can review this "permaban", considering different cases, but still...

I don't know what's there to discuss. Maybe a permaban can be lifted after, I don't know, say ten games? Other than that, I find the installed system so far quite satisfying.

Josef K. said:
Inactivity was a big issue with this game, kdowns barely made it at times, and his night presence was nonexistent, sure it brings no help to his mafia buddies, but it was an annoying wait, also we waited for thorn quite a lot of days.

Days and night get shorter as less and less players are in the game, the thrill is bigger and people are more anxious, it's getting to the wire, 16 hour day and 8 hour night is still "fair" considering some people can't even make the 24/12 hour set up. >_>

Well, believe it or not, but kdowns did make a complain about the shorter day and night phases, as it appeared sometimes they fell when he was actually asleeping (which is completely understandable, in a rhythm of 16/8, that at some point you just do to bed and miss 7-9 hrs). Time zones and personal day schedules make it often not possible to contribute in those shortend time phases. He does have a point. So some people have to just swallow their annoyance over relatively longer phases in the end game, because of the fact that we are a global community.

xi0 · Sep 16, 2014

Re: Mafia Game "Discussion" Thread v.9 - Part 5

I'd say, that if the majority feel that the locked votes solution is best, then at least a single extension of an hour is a decent enough compromise (or more, depending on circumstances and host's discretion). After all, people can already force the end of a day phase buy locking their votes anyways.