So, this setup used to be pretty different. Both Cap'n Bones and Vermillion had a 1-Shot Daykill; Bones used hers publicly, and Vermillion used his privately. Vermillion's ability got changed to the vanillizer ability; retrospectively, this should have been 2-shot, as the 3-shot was pretty much what sealed the town's fate when shadow could not Jail on the last Night. Jack's "Swab the Deck" used to affect voting, but that got changed to the reflector ability at Eco's behest. I don't remember what his other ability was before that, but the Janitor was actually Eco's suggestion, if I recall correctly, and it completely and totally drained the town's motivation. Looking back on it, I would have changed this ability to go away at the start of Day 3. Mid-way through the game, I realized how badly this was affecting the town's energy, and reached a compromise with Eco: If the game reaches a mislynch and lose/lynch or lose situation, I would announce such to the game thread. Unfortunately, I could not assess which path to victory Az would opt to take, so I was forced to announce LyoL instead of MLaL.
The biggest change, I think, was Azrael's role. Originally, I wanted Azrael to be able to win on his own when he collected the souls of all living crew members, which would end the game. However, I recognized that "suddenly, Neutral win" has been a thing a lot of people haven't enjoyed all that much in recent MTGS history, so I approached Eco with the setup and said, "Hey, there are a few things I'm not feeling too great about; what are your suggestions?" Eco suggested I turn Az's role into one that gains power as time goes on, but ultimately be a survivor variant. I didn't like that idea, as it encourages the Neutral to coast all game and then scumside at endgame. I kept in the "you win and everyone else loses" ability at 10 souls, which, while extremely infeasible to accomplish, is actually reachable if the person hammers each lynch, targets the NK every Night, and the game goes to LyoL but the town still wins, hoping it might entice the player to go for a grander victory than the easy way out.
I would argue that the town's two biggest mistakes were lynching Archmage Eternal instead of Azrael after Rodemy's census ability revealed the numbers (which worked surprisingly well with the Janitor; in any other circumstances, the correct use of that ability was on Day 1, but the Janitor's existence actually reduced the EV of that play. Amusingly, Rodemy didn't even realize he had the ability until towards the end of Day 1.), wherein they assumed they had actually lynched scum at that point, and not immediately trying to lynch vezok after he basically outed himself as scum on Day 4.
I recognize that there were a few aspects of this setup that weren't quite enjoyable, and that some of those were due to the last-minute changes that Eco and I made in an attempt to, ironically, make the setup more enjoyable for you all. I'm sorry for those of you who were disappointed, but I hope you all understand why I made the choices that I did and at least enjoyed the game to some extent.
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
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
The first part I kind of echo, I enjoy playing the game but man this one was rough.
The latter statement is 100% correct, this was not a game I would ever consider normal.
Frankly, two huge suggestions I’d make would be to have A. Advertised that this setup had a no flip mechanic, and B. Because of the no flip mechanic have some hard town investigation/reveal counter mechanisms.
This is one of the few times I would actually be strongly in favor of a real cop. I also think the janitor ability might make more sense as a shared ability. IE “as long as you are alive and not the only living member of the scum team: Flips don’t occur” or something like that.
Having so many things that could just go either way and cause huge amounts of paranoia (role cop, single shot unlynchable, jailer, etc) made this game just a bunch of dice roles.
On a more individual note, I’m really frustrated that I just got completely ignored when I was advising caution before the AE lynch and then I just couldn’t believe it when there was absolutely zero consideration coming into this final day despite it being mod confirmed that all the scum were alive. Like that was a huge drop of the ball. Yes, Az had no incentive to wait, but his constant berating town with the holier than thou mentality was grating. Yes, town got a lot of this horribly wrong, but some of that you were right along with us (Terry for example) and the people you were pushing were also town (me, Tom, etc). Vezok is right, this isn’t your win, not really.
I’m frustrated with the DV self replace, I’ll concede that it was part of why I townread him. The other part was that his role was basically the only real investigative role in a game where town should have had hard investigation.
The way my role was written vs how it behaved was clearly an oops moment, but I didn’t mind so much, it’s probably the least of the things that irritated me about this game.
All this said, Serious props to Grapefruit, he had me fooled, and really stepped up his play this game. Dude well done.
Sorry if my attitude came off as holier than thou. It was more like, "man, I'm actually really rooting for you guys, but can't actually step up and do what needs to be done myself, so all I can do is be the annoying canary in the coal mine." Much prefer to be actively scrapping and not armchairing it up, but it seemed like the town kinda lost the will to live pretty quick, here.
Looks like I misremembered - the Janitor was my suggestion, but the fact that it was on for as long as the Janitor was alive was something we failed to discuss beyond its initial suggestion.
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 would like to sincerely apologise to the players of this game. I reviewed this game at the last possible moment when Iso wanted thoughts on the Neutral, just before he sent out role PMs. I had a lot of issues with the setup, and in the process of fixing and discussing the setup with Iso (primarily to reduce the number of kills and balance to the role madness requirement), I missed/misinterpreted the full implications of the janitor and the decision to make it a permanent passive (which I would like to state for the record was not my idea). Unfortunately, this oversight on my part more or less ruined the town's chances, and with it the game.
I think this game stands a lesson in why we mandate reviews as part of the game design process: even a host with with experience can make catastrophic design mistakes and additional pairs of eyes and discussion throughout the game's development are necessary to avoid this kind of situation.
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 will re-iterate that the game had been reviewed prior to our changes; just that I didn't remember who actually reviewed it.
Well whoever it was clearly didn't do a very good job, so perhaps I should clarify that competent reviewing is a mandated part of the game creation process.
Passive janitor is a very swingy role. The game concentrated a lot of power on scum. This maybe the rolecop infinitely valuable as it worked as a cop that also gave the role of the person.
I would have come under fire as vanillaser, dv would have been strung for using the kraken and Grape would have been killed for being janitor.
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Scumming sucks even when you are a broken janitor that has a publicly provable portion of their role. I was trying so hard to stay invested in this game and I was still on the low end of end game posters. And that was with me in a position that was much more likely to be motivated than town deprived of any information.
That said this was by far the best scum game I've ever played and I'm really proud of it. I built the AE wagon pretty much single-handedly and I'd like to think my posts about Terry's motivation helped seal his fate. I was widely town read for *reasons* and that I think were entirely tom incepting the town that I was townie. I don't really remember anyone else town reading me, but tom just kept doing so and eventually everyone agreed with him. I seriously have no idea why I was town read before my claim. Which was a weird role and really only seemed to exist as a safe provable thing to claim. I theoretically could use it to ensure the NK wasn't RB'd by protecting a buddy but with a vanilla'izer on the team that felt slightly redundant. Plus Vezok was already BP so the kill protection aspect wasn't crucial either. My main plan was to use it to protect tom and keep him alive since as he quipped he was basically our MVP. Also I was 3 shots and I don't remember why I lied and said 2. *shrug* I think it might have been to justify saving a shot for the end game just in case but I don't know.
@DBS I lost my temper D1. I hope it didn't show through into the game or negatively impact your enjoyment of this one, but I was taking advantage of the fact that I was scum to push you for out of game reasons. I was still salty about Zero Escape and chose to tunnel on you because of that. Not a cool move by me. I'm sorry.
Anyway I had a really fun time this game and had a pleasure scumming it up with you guys. Thanks for all the help DV and Vezok.
GG town I actually thought you guys played pretty well considering the circumstances. Sure there wasn't a ton of rereading and true analysis happening, but with no reveals it's no an easy thing to do. I think only the AE and DotA pushes were clearly bad and the DotA one probably would have dissipated if not for the fast hammer. The AE one I really believe was just due to town apathy. I kept banging the drum and since everyone else was demoralized by lack of any information it just kind of happened despite not really making sense. Which almost 2 months into a game without flips is understandable.
@Terry I worked hard to get you mislynched and towards the end I thought you did an awesome job letting your towniness shine through. But I did believe what I was saying about your motivation. It was hard pushing that case against you because you're awesome but it definitely did appear more like you wanted to stay alive and be the hero than just push what you believed. Then again maybe it just appeared that way from my position of privileged information. Anyway scum got to scum, felt bad to be on opposite sides two times in a row after hydra'ing, let's town together again.
This was a weird game where the people I thought did a solid job appearing townie (in particular Tom, Shadow, Rodemy, and Kazin) had very off base reads and the people whose reads were closer to the mark really struggled to gain the trust of town. Well except Rhand, but he didn't have a ton of time to play in. Anyway I understand how frustrating this game must have been, but I still enjoyed hanging out with all of you. Thanks for getting through it and just being cool. This was an awesome playerbase and I'd play with all of you again in a heartbeat.
@Iso thanks for hosting! There were some very cool roles (the reactive to being targeted roles were very cool), and the flavor was on point.
@Shadow Thanks! I definitely felt like my play was better here than it had been before, and hearing it from you is nice. Though I do think I coasted a bit on D2 and early D3 (and had a stupid role and one of the more influential players hard town reading me from the jump which helped a lot).
@Azrael there was so much time spent worrying that we couldn't count on you and that vanilla'ing on D4 was a giant risk. It seemed crazy for you to make up that role, but it also was nerve wracking to trust outing one of us and going into 3v3v1 relying on you.
Unfortunately, this oversight on my part more or less ruined the town's chances, and with it the game.
I think we did a plenty good job of ruining our own chances by (collectively) getting lynched and lynching each other. Scum outplayed us.
The no flips did pretty actively keep me from rereading, since the point has always been (for me at least) to reread with info and see what changes.
Would call the setup scumsided but not horrifically so besides the no flips
The issue was that it was literally miles from a normal. Like, that's supposed to be a safe game for a new player to join, right?
This wasn't.
Just imagine being ******* kazin this game. I hope he plays again, but if this had been my first mafia experience I'd have 100% never even considered signing up for a second.
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
But it's entirely not about the individual roles (well, the janitor probably makes it not a normal all by itself but I digress) but the setup as a whole. I know you actively try to **** with your players in every game (things like both day abilities being scum, town having 4 protectives with zero extra KP which seem orchestrated to stop setupgaming) and I enjoy that. It's just not a normal and I'm frankly shocked you are even questioning that lol
Speaking from the perspective of an outside observer, Janitors feel really terrible. The lack of flips changes the game at a really basic level and I wouldn't have expected one in a normal.
That said, town didn't play very well and probably could have solved it, though I'm not sure they could have beaten scum+Azrael once Az decided to scumside. There's probably an argument that they played badly because of the janitor and a lack of flips demoralized them to the point where they didn't think they *could* win even though they definitely had a shot, at least up until they lynched Archmage, but yeah. The neutral being set up to scum side in the late game probably didn't help either... But they also had a lot of tools to keep them out of that late game situation and didn't utilize them optimally, as I recall.
Over all I think the game was probably balanced well enough, just. The janitor probably doesn't belong in a normal, at least not without some kind of warning or indication that the game contains nonstandard roles. Also I don't really like neutrals in general but that's more of a personal choice, heh.
Flavor was really excellent though, props for that!
Even think it was a cool setup, with an echo of shadows caveat that no flip setups really needs hard info roles to make it feel like you might know what's happening.
My issue is entirely with this being considered a normal. And it seems like this just went wonky but if our review process let this get through in that queue it is extremely flawed
Ohhh on the topic of limited extra KP (DBS's donate being the only possible one though with Kazin and AE it could turn into a ton of extra kills in a very convoluted specific situation) we had a ton of insurance against vigs (Vezok's BP vest and my ability) for such a limited Vig option. Huge part of why DV believed for a long time Az was a serial killer despite the lack of kills. I'd actually forgotten the Vezok was partially trueclaiming and had the vest at all. Until DV said something in the scum chat I thought it was entirely fabricated.
Is there a spec/dead thread? I'd love to read it if there is.
I don't necessarily think the roles, in themselves, were too complicated to be in a Normal. I do hear your criticisms that the Janitor was pretty bonkers, yes. Like I said, retrospectively, I'd have had the passive end at Day 3.
Of course our review system is flawed; there aren't concrete rules that decide what is and isn't okay. There are some roles that are unarguably more powerful than others; but ultimately, balance is determined by a person who has a subjective view of what is and is not fun or fair.
Also, I forgot to mention: I think at least one of the protective roles was something else before my review with Eco, and dawn's role was exactly what the Barbosa role was in Legend of Lucian.
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
Question to the void in general: can a role madness set up be a normal game? I thought this was reasonably well done in terms of nights not devolving into chaos with a pretty limited set of targeted abilties. Obviously the janitor crosses a line that is controversial (I'm anti janitor after playing a flipless + stump game for my second game and hating every second of it), but outside that I thought this was pretty tame for a 13 player role madness game.
On an unrelated not I got incredibly salty when DBS claimed her role and flavor and it matched with the previous game. I felt a mislynch slipping away from me and reacted very poorly. Especially when combined with my previously mentioned salt. Sorry again DBS. That said I do think that's probably not ideal design to have a role have the same flavor, same alignment, and very close to the same abilities as in prequel.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with putting a role madness game in the normal queue, as long as the roles and set up aren't super complex.
My issue is entirely with this being considered a normal. And it seems like this just went wonky but if our review process let this get through in that queue it is extremely flawed
I think the problem is that this game dfidn't folow the regular review process - Iso says it was reviewed back in the mists of time, but clearly not very well, and it got one pair of eyes on it just before it went live when I had very limited capacity to fix things. Standard reviewing process should be at least one reviewer working in tandem with the game host for 40% ish of the process (i.e. not all of it but a decent chunk) AND a second reviewer giving the finished game a fresh pair of eyes to make sure nothing egregious is happening. Some aspects of the game are borderline not Normal (unlynchable, the Neutral, obviously the janitor), while at least not violating any of the hard rules for being a Normal.
Question to the void in general: can a role madness set up be a normal game? I thought this was reasonably well done in terms of nights not devolving into chaos with a pretty limited set of targeted abilties. Obviously the janitor crosses a line that is controversial (I'm anti janitor after playing a flipless + stump game for my second game and hating every second of it), but outside that I thought this was pretty tame for a 13 player role madness game.
I don't think role madness is inherently not Normal, but I think making a Normal game with "everyone has a role" as a requirement leads to the game being more complex or with more weird stuff than it really needs just for the sake of having no vanillas because you force yourself to add bits the game doesn't need (and therefore risks there being non-Normal or unbalanced/unfun aspects).
I’m still salty about DV’s self-replace and feel that shouldn’t have been allowed. This game makes me feel like we should collectively think about using alts and have some rules around that.
Grape played amazingly and clearly is scum MVP. He did a few very ballsy things. I was amazed no one even blinked when he said he was going to have a look at my reads after I got nightkilled, which he never really did.
@Grape: did you write that in the hopes no one else would go and look at my reads?
Looking back, I probably should’ve kept those reads to myself at the end of that Day to avoid being NK’ed, so that I would still be around to bury Grape and Vezok, because no one listens to dead players ever
@Rhand yeah I hoped that by doing that myself I'd diffuse other people doing it. But at that stage I really thought Vezok wasn't going to last long and I was setting myself up to bus. At some point it really became clear (to me, buddies were on it from the start) how bad it was for my slot to bus and I just dropped it. Also I just didn't have a ton of time to play D2 and tried to cover for not going back by complaining about the lack of flips.
TLDR I wanted to get out in front and set the narrative of your reads. Also thanks for the kind words.
now that the game's ended, I have some things to say..
@Grapefruit & others
about you and the salt in ZE, I'm not sure what I did to warrant the hate, since you pushed all 3 town to scumread you (not just me). taking advantage of being scum is surprising to hear, and disgusting tbh.... when I'm scum, I know that I'm at the advantage, so I would play all the more considerately. I play for a challenge, not to bully someone (even as town, unsurprisingly).
anyways, I only noticed you were being obnoxious and abrasive - hence why I considered replacing out or dying. getting in contact with the host is not something I'd like to resort to.
if you look over my ISO, it's seething with rage towards the end. this says a lot about how I feel on the matter. just saying you don't care, or that someone should be ignored/offed cuz "we wouldn't understand them anyway" can be personal/frustrating if the person really is different.
I do come from a different community. I do think differently (even for my homesite). and there's many things about me that's different IRL. I even brought up the fact that I am left-handed in a similar vein. it was cutting and felt like a personal attack when almost everyone kept emphasizing my "being different/weird". imagine eyeing someone head to toe simply because they're different, and see how that feels. DO NOT EVER talk about someone from a different community, or who has differences, as if it's some bloody headline. while I understand it's just standard reaction, please be a more reputable community/player when it comes to differences - don't keep poking it (this happened in ZE as well). if you say it's part of the game, you can/should find better or more appropriate arguments to use.
as mentioned before, I respect and work around playstyles. considering factors is one thing, but it helps keep me aware of how 'different' someone is in (playstyle or other) without coming off as insulting. you never know when your "blasting out the differences" could come off as a personal attack.
anyways, I'm glad I died early before things got nasty lol. and this setup was confusing to deal with. maybe a bit glad with my lynch, since it reflected my feelings rather well .-.
~ end of useless ranting ~
------------------------------
sometimes killing off town will save town. still stand by it.
personally feel that Rodemy should've been lynched D1. it's pointless and redundant to townread/preserve someone whose reads you will/can not rely on later. it seems Rodemy is reputed as a not-so-dependable player, which is part of why nobody listened to him. there was a good chance of lynching him D1, and he did make bad posts that (now obvious) town wanted to lynch him for. leaving him alive helped scum more than not. if not, at least, town should've accepted that they chose to see him as one of their own and listened to him. talk about decisions this game.
Grapes was good, considering his scum theater with Nancy. the way things imploded there was really convincing. and he really mopped the floor haha
the DV replacement came across normally to me I guess. I'm better at reading players who are aggressive or calculated in their moves, since I'm like that too. didn't notice DV since he's more like a go-with-whatever/random player. but the way he kept defending himself against ALL arguments with the "I was trying new things" insistence looked too unnatural for me.
cool how my 2/3 reads live on. focused on Rodemy/Grapes/DV on D1, and 2 of them were scum.
as for my role, I purposely chose to keep quiet about vig since it would just lead to manipulation. would've given it to Azrael if I could, or Shadow if I didn't worry about him being a popular NK choice. while I really townread Terry, I didn't trust him to make the right decisions (and that remark of being sexist got to me lol).
having a janitor in the setup should be considered bastard imo. over in MAL, we put some general notice if anything that affects roles were in play (eg. flips or alignment changes), or just classify it as bastard. I expected this site to hate bastard setups, so the flipless was a surprise.
not sure who should be best scum here, since it's more thanks to the Grape/Nancy!DV theater that the team sailed. I probably would say DV, since his entire D1 act felt real - even reacting strongly to his scumbuddy's push. Grapes was doing fine, but I guess the personal approach gives him less points in my eyes.
On an unrelated not I got incredibly salty when DBS claimed her role and flavor and it matched with the previous game. I felt a mislynch slipping away from me and reacted very poorly. Especially when combined with my previously mentioned salt. Sorry again DBS. That said I do think that's probably not ideal design to have a role have the same flavor, same alignment, and very close to the same abilities as in prequel.
that was more of an issue for me, since it could've been seen as fake. and maybe you should remember that it isn't bad if a mislynch is slipping away from you, since the whole town is your oyster lol.
also @Terry
loved your play in this game. the way you tried to read Nancy as trying to fit in with town like I did in ZE was pretty considerate. kinda think you would be a good player for newbies to meet :3
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"I still remember the days I prayed for the things I have now.
I agree I did some things I'm not proud of. I was definitely using my push on you as a means of catharsis, but I wasn't attempting to use it to advantage in the game. If anything I thought it made me less likely to win, but I did it anyway. Just it was a petty, selfish thing.
Also Nancy was replaced by Dota. DV self replaced as Nobue. So there was still some D1 bussing but nothing like what it would have been in the other team
@grape and DV: Are you ok woth releasing the scum thread? I gave a lot of insight on the game there and I'd like for other people to read it.
I read the dead thread and have some clarifications. I would have went after Azrael as survivor as both town or scum. That is not alignment indicative of me. I would have done the exact same thing as town, because of the possibility of what happened here.
I also scum claimed in thread as the game was already over. It was part of my plan. I was gonna come and ask Az to vote Kazin or else we will kill him. Az did our job easier tho.
Please read the scum read if my partners want to release it as it explains a lot of my thought processes.
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@grape and DV: Are you ok woth releasing the scum thread? I gave a lot of insight on the game there and I'd like for other people to read it.
I read the dead thread and have some clarifications. I would have went after Azrael as survivor as both town or scum. That is not alignment indicative of me. I would have done the exact same thing as town, because of the possibility of what happened here.
I also scum claimed in thread as the game was already over. It was part of my plan. I was gonna come and ask Az to vote Kazin or else we will kill him. Az did our job easier tho.
Please read the scum read if my partners want to release it as it explains a lot of my thought processes.
its already released (link in the pm spoilers to scum)
Yeh I already read the scumchat
Took me about an hour or so.
And I’m baffled that on top of the janitor you guys got daychat. This game was scumsided like no tomorrow.
@dbs: i wish i had died early. It's not that i am not dependable, it's just i have a hard time actually focusing on what people say. I'm a little slow on the uptake, but i usually figurr out at least one scum. I just have trouble conveying why or convincing people why.
I was right about d_v for most od the game. Figured out vezok too late and had a hell of a tunnel on tom.
That being said, this game was stressful and confusing to me, but i tried. I really did.
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Thank you for choosing
Rodemy Pizza
It’s not the best choice, but it’s a choice nonetheless
1. Janitor was very frustrating, I think if any one were to want to run a janitor in the future, it would need to be one-shot. With the Kraken, we couldn't even be sure that Rhand was an intended kill target. On top of that, town has very little opportunity to change the Tide (pun intended) after mislynches. If any of the dead players were revealed as town, I think town could go back and trust some of the reads and lines of evidence we left. Continue to number 2.
2. The momentum on my Lynch was clear, I knew I was getting the noose, I was frustrated, especially with DV (see number 3), I really put a ton of work into trying to leave a legacy, but no one ever trusted it after I got lynched (see number 1). I had DV nailed, and Grape and Vezo, both as feasible suspects with role POE and thought I raised some pretty solids points during twilight.
3. DV's self replace should have not happened, I don't really blame ISO for not modkilling him. I blame DV for lack of discipline. I think playing as alts should be carefully monitored. I was onto Nobue and when DV replaced himself and said that it was a gimmick he was playing I fully let up until I looked carefully at his posts while I was on Death Row. It bought him a second life in my eyes. Also @DV, please try to avoid defusing people's arguments by implying they are idiots.
4. Grape played well, I would have never caught him on behavior alone, the only lead I had on him was the Role POE I did. Nice work grape.
5. Az's role had one unfortunate side effect that maybe suckered me more than most, the hammer incentive. I fully blame my mishammer of AE on that. I kind of respect the way Az played that role. I think it was classy.
6. ISO's flavor was excellent. I enjoyed that aspect of this game. The balancing was a bit rough.
@dbs: i wish i had died early. It's not that i am not dependable, it's just i have a hard time actually focusing on what people say. I'm a little slow on the uptake, but i usually figurr out at least one scum. I just have trouble conveying why or convincing people why.
I was right about d_v for most od the game. Figured out vezok too late and had a hell of a tunnel on tom.
That being said, this game was stressful and confusing to me, but i tried. I really did.
I actually really appreciated all the effort you put into figuring this out. That was really evident, and in a group full of people who were ready to give up, you were right in there, fighting it out. That was awesome.
So don't pay any attention to DBS' bit about you needing to be lynched because people wouldn't listen to you. I violently disagree with that both in practice and in theory.
That said, DBS had some really good points about what happened to her, here. THere was a point in time for both Iso and I, a while ago, where we would put pressure on people for the sake of seeing how they'd respond to it, on an emotional level. And in the goodness of time, we each reached a point in our development as players where we agreed that trying to stress people out crossed a line, and shouldn't be done going forward.
I really want us to be welcoming community and a good place for people to come and make a mafia home. And if DBS is feeling that that's not what happened in this game, if we were actually making a big issue out of her being from somewhere else instead of welcoming, that's something we've really got to keep an eye on going forward. We've always been a community that welcomed people from all over the place to come here, and play, and make a home here. Being good to one another > being a good mafia player. Let's keep true to our roots on that.
I mostly agree with you Az, but I think pressuring players is a good way to determine alignment. The problem stems from the fact that people don't know how to respond to that and get the incorrect read on players.
Antagonizing people is also a good strategy for scum. Frustrated people react irrationally and that helps scum.
I think there's a fine line between both of these and day 1 of this game crossed it a fair bit.
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Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy. Check out the Shop Thread
I don't know if the town played insanely well, or if the game was just that town sided. You all are going to give me weird looks for that statement, but hear me out. We got the town to miss lynch three days back to back. And I still felt going into day four was a crap shoot. I wasn't sure if we were going to lose the game at that point. Then day five felt better, but depended on Azreal.
That's with a permanent janitor. That's with a multishot day vanilizer. That's with me getting a mass claim through and people town reading me for it. And I was still pretty iffy if we were going to win. So much so that when Vez jumped the gun and declared victory I was like hold your horses we don't know what is going on.
I've got some opinions on scum day chat, I'll hold off till my own game finishes to talk about that. Someone should remind me at the end of the game though.
Other thoughts.
I think I fundamentally disagree with Azreal on the idea that pushing people is bad. I'm going to use an example.
I was playing a game with Osie off site recently. In that game Osie had like 90+ posts and a player that hadn't been active yet. Quoted on post by Osie and accused Osie of making "Fluff posts" to make it to end game. I counter pressured the player, because I saw it as a ludicrous attack and viewed it as a scum post. This player made many attacks including arguing that I was trying to "Win the argument", while doing so they also lied about statements I made and later when I called them out on that apologized to me and said they did so "Because they were angry".
Why am I sharing this story. This player made these attacks and couldn't really back up what they are saying. We can't let people just say words and then go "Ok everyone gets a cookie now thanks for your contribution". This is a game of facts. And at the end of the day facts are either true or not true.
Which leads me to my larger point. I think the larger problem on MTGS is that we allow to many dumb things to be said.
In this game, my alt was attacked for "Lurking" when I was gone for a few days IRL. I personally don't think that player "Activity" should ever be used in a game as an attack. I think player "Contribution" should. But, on top of that you all just sat by and watched. As shadow put it "I didn't like the player that much so I just let it happen".
Azreal you want to talk about a friendly environment. How about not sitting on the sideline watching a player get attacked for things such as that. And instead coming in and going "Hey don't make that argument."
I'm going to use a much older example as well.
In Mindscrew IMAB(Who from this experience I think is worse than TS ever was) made the statement that I was changing my avatar when I made posts. Which I knew was a lie and many others did too. It upset me quite a bit. I actually would say this is the most personally attacked I've ever felt on this site. And people watched from the sidelines and let that happen.
You don't think that doesn't make a player feel welcome. You don't think that maybe that makes a player more toxic. Maybe if we on MTGS tried to stop things like this, we wouldn't see people go off the rails as much. If I was Osie in that above example do you know how frustrated I would have been had that been me and nobody else spoke up to say "He's right".
I'll talk about my self replacement now.
This game got a lot better for me after I self replaced and I'm talking mentally not anything else. I literally had a player that has and had less posts than the ******* mod tell me that I was lurking. I really struggled with replacing myself for "Game integrity". I actually did it by accident and it was because I was half sick and pissed off at the same time. Other people clearly were not enjoying the game, because I wasn't enjoying the game.
And specifically at Shadow and Rhand.
BOTH of you voted Nobue because you thought they were toxic, not because of any reasons about scum. Neither of you two get to be salty about me self replacing. You didn't catch me; you were just angry and I find it offensive that you are trying to paint the picture as anything other than that.
I think this game was one of the least fun games I've been in the last few years. And even though the game got better, it never really loss that day one taint for me. If it wasn't for that MAL game firing at the same time I might have just replaced out, because I was thinking I just hated mafia. But overall I had a blast over there.
Props to Terry for figuring out the team, I was really worried he wasn't going to get lynched and lead the town to victory.
Some other thoughts about the game setup.
I don't think Janitor is a bastard role, but the way it was setup in this game was pretty close. I'm not fan of having roles counter roles, but maybe if Rodemy wasn't just a one shot it would have been better.
**** neutral survivors.
And specifically at Shadow and Rhand.
BOTH of you voted Nobue because you thought they were toxic, not because of any reasons about scum. Neither of you two get to be salty about me self replacing. You didn't catch me; you were just angry and I find it offensive that you are trying to paint the picture as anything other than that.
I respect you as a player, and I understand why you self replaced, and I understand that I hadn’t “caught you” because I certainly hadn’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that you were intentionally playing caustically under the Nobue persona, and you would have been lynched if you’d stayed the course. I’m not going to tell you that you absolutely should have, but I do have every right to be frustrated that things went the way they did, and you do not get to take that from me.
I think after you replaced you did a fine job. And for game health reasons I’m glad Nobue was a false character.
I think the feeling of this game being townsided is something that you’re probably going to have to come to terms with just not being true. Town never had a shot at this game, both because of bad play and because of the setup. No scum players died, none of you were ever even in serious danger, and the paranoia factor was 100% in your favor.
I am sorry for not defending against the lurking argument, because yeah, it was stupid. I usually try to call out bad arguments, and I didn’t because you’re right, I didn’t care if Nobue was lynched.
I agree that new players should feel welcome and we should strive to keep them around, but I also believe there is a line, and if a new player acts like you did as Nobue and it’s a serious indication of their personality and how they play, I do not want them in our community. I won’t go out of my way to force them away, but I won’t feel bad if they leave. Not everyone is worth having.
D_V, to clarify, I don't think Az was saying "don't push players" so much as he was saying "don't push players in a way that makes the game unable to be enjoyed by them". The last time I did this was in XKCD Mafia, where I pushed Tom (not tomsloger, but Tom) pretty doggedly, and he raged SO hard. I towncleared him for the way he went about it, but he was convinced I was scum for the rest of the game because of it and did not enjoy the game as a result of my push on him, neither of which were conducive to our eventual victory.
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
@DV, I think it's ok to vote players for being toxic. Lynching them for being toxic, is a different story, but sometimes a "Vote" for being toxic can reduce toxicity, especially if they get a couple votes from it. In this game's case, it actually caused you to self-replace and did in fact reduce toxicity.
@Terry I worked hard to get you mislynched and towards the end I thought you did an awesome job letting your towniness shine through. But I did believe what I was saying about your motivation. It was hard pushing that case against you because you're awesome but it definitely did appear more like you wanted to stay alive and be the hero than just push what you believed. Then again maybe it just appeared that way from my position of privileged information. Anyway scum got to scum, felt bad to be on opposite sides two times in a row after hydra'ing, let's town together again.
Yeah, I saw your push on me was half hearted and didn't differentiate between guilty scum and unsure town. I think your push opened the hammer up to shadow, who may have held off if you hadn't pushed it. My motivation was weak at the beginning of this game because I was tired from scumming hard in a hopeless situation, but when I was about to get lynched my desperation was in fact, to stay alive because I hate being mislynched. As much as I talk that I like to meta-shift, my self meta analysis this game really was spot on. As town, I'm much more careless and apt to hammer. I can't wait till we can not try to murder each other. Thanks!
also @Terry
loved your play in this game. the way you tried to read Nancy as trying to fit in with town like I did in ZE was pretty considerate. kinda think you would be a good player for newbies to meet :3
Thanks DBS. I guess I'm going to have to try harder to be abrasive, I'm getting soft.
hopefully I haven't antagonized anyone with what I said, at least not too much. I'm admittedly short-tempered, and take things too seriously at times, besides being unforgiving...I'm trying to work on those. I'm part to blame for poorly handling myself. while I think differences matter, I also think someone should owe up to giving a bad impression.
I agree I did some things I'm not proud of. I was definitely using my push on you as a means of catharsis, but I wasn't attempting to use it to advantage in the game. If anything I thought it made me less likely to win, but I did it anyway. Just it was a petty, selfish thing.
I remember insulting someone by accident before, in my 2nd mafia game I think, and since then I was more mindful about the approach towards differences. at least we all learn. I've had my fair share of holding grudges, so I can't blame you for here.
Also Nancy was replaced by Dota. DV self replaced as Nobue. So there was still some D1 bussing but nothing like what it would have been in the other team
oh yeah, mixed the names up. but got the persons right. you were pushing Nobue and defended Nancy.
@dbs: i wish i had died early. It's not that i am not dependable, it's just i have a hard time actually focusing on what people say. I'm a little slow on the uptake, but i usually figurr out at least one scum. I just have trouble conveying why or convincing people why.
I was right about d_v for most od the game. Figured out vezok too late and had a hell of a tunnel on tom.
That being said, this game was stressful and confusing to me, but i tried. I really did.
yeah, I'll commend you for dealing with things so far. but I meant that town chose their fate leaving you alive, yet they ignored your reads - it was redundant leaving you alive if you were meant to be a stump.
I think this game was one of the least fun games I've been in the last few years. And even though the game got better, it never really loss that day one taint for me. If it wasn't for that MAL game firing at the same time I might have just replaced out, because I was thinking I just hated mafia. But overall I had a blast over there.
nice to know you enjoyed the MAL game~
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"I still remember the days I prayed for the things I have now.
@DV: I was convinced you were scum. The toxicity I experienced (and it was largely directed at me, you were trying to use it to get me off your back) just made me not want to vote anyone else anymore and that’s pretty much what I said. I was never voting a townread there.
I do think the self-replace was a pretty dirty move to make. It made me reconsider my read on you, and it pretty much invalidated everything you said before as you were playing a persona. It saved you from the lynch and that isn’t fair to town. Or at least that’s how I feel.
I too let that bad argument about you being gone slide. But that’s because I thought you were scum. Why would I help counter bad arguments when they’re aimed at someone I want to see lynched? If they help build the wagon, then they’re useful.
Also why did shadow stop all abilities when his role said that he stopped only kills?
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The biggest change, I think, was Azrael's role. Originally, I wanted Azrael to be able to win on his own when he collected the souls of all living crew members, which would end the game. However, I recognized that "suddenly, Neutral win" has been a thing a lot of people haven't enjoyed all that much in recent MTGS history, so I approached Eco with the setup and said, "Hey, there are a few things I'm not feeling too great about; what are your suggestions?" Eco suggested I turn Az's role into one that gains power as time goes on, but ultimately be a survivor variant. I didn't like that idea, as it encourages the Neutral to coast all game and then scumside at endgame. I kept in the "you win and everyone else loses" ability at 10 souls, which, while extremely infeasible to accomplish, is actually reachable if the person hammers each lynch, targets the NK every Night, and the game goes to LyoL but the town still wins, hoping it might entice the player to go for a grander victory than the easy way out.
I would argue that the town's two biggest mistakes were lynching Archmage Eternal instead of Azrael after Rodemy's census ability revealed the numbers (which worked surprisingly well with the Janitor; in any other circumstances, the correct use of that ability was on Day 1, but the Janitor's existence actually reduced the EV of that play. Amusingly, Rodemy didn't even realize he had the ability until towards the end of Day 1.), wherein they assumed they had actually lynched scum at that point, and not immediately trying to lynch vezok after he basically outed himself as scum on Day 4.
I recognize that there were a few aspects of this setup that weren't quite enjoyable, and that some of those were due to the last-minute changes that Eco and I made in an attempt to, ironically, make the setup more enjoyable for you all. I'm sorry for those of you who were disappointed, but I hope you all understand why I made the choices that I did and at least enjoyed the game to some extent.
{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
That was actually an error in the role PM, which I corrected privately to shadow afterwards.
{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
That was NOT a ******* normal
The latter statement is 100% correct, this was not a game I would ever consider normal.
Frankly, two huge suggestions I’d make would be to have A. Advertised that this setup had a no flip mechanic, and B. Because of the no flip mechanic have some hard town investigation/reveal counter mechanisms.
This is one of the few times I would actually be strongly in favor of a real cop. I also think the janitor ability might make more sense as a shared ability. IE “as long as you are alive and not the only living member of the scum team: Flips don’t occur” or something like that.
Having so many things that could just go either way and cause huge amounts of paranoia (role cop, single shot unlynchable, jailer, etc) made this game just a bunch of dice roles.
On a more individual note, I’m really frustrated that I just got completely ignored when I was advising caution before the AE lynch and then I just couldn’t believe it when there was absolutely zero consideration coming into this final day despite it being mod confirmed that all the scum were alive. Like that was a huge drop of the ball. Yes, Az had no incentive to wait, but his constant berating town with the holier than thou mentality was grating. Yes, town got a lot of this horribly wrong, but some of that you were right along with us (Terry for example) and the people you were pushing were also town (me, Tom, etc). Vezok is right, this isn’t your win, not really.
I’m frustrated with the DV self replace, I’ll concede that it was part of why I townread him. The other part was that his role was basically the only real investigative role in a game where town should have had hard investigation.
The way my role was written vs how it behaved was clearly an oops moment, but I didn’t mind so much, it’s probably the least of the things that irritated me about this game.
All this said, Serious props to Grapefruit, he had me fooled, and really stepped up his play this game. Dude well done.
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy.
Check out the Shop Thread
{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
I think this game stands a lesson in why we mandate reviews as part of the game design process: even a host with with experience can make catastrophic design mistakes and additional pairs of eyes and discussion throughout the game's development are necessary to avoid this kind of situation.
Sorry guys.
{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
Well whoever it was clearly didn't do a very good job, so perhaps I should clarify that competent reviewing is a mandated part of the game creation process.
I would have come under fire as vanillaser, dv would have been strung for using the kraken and Grape would have been killed for being janitor.
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy.
Check out the Shop Thread
That said this was by far the best scum game I've ever played and I'm really proud of it. I built the AE wagon pretty much single-handedly and I'd like to think my posts about Terry's motivation helped seal his fate. I was widely town read for *reasons* and that I think were entirely tom incepting the town that I was townie. I don't really remember anyone else town reading me, but tom just kept doing so and eventually everyone agreed with him. I seriously have no idea why I was town read before my claim. Which was a weird role and really only seemed to exist as a safe provable thing to claim. I theoretically could use it to ensure the NK wasn't RB'd by protecting a buddy but with a vanilla'izer on the team that felt slightly redundant. Plus Vezok was already BP so the kill protection aspect wasn't crucial either. My main plan was to use it to protect tom and keep him alive since as he quipped he was basically our MVP. Also I was 3 shots and I don't remember why I lied and said 2. *shrug* I think it might have been to justify saving a shot for the end game just in case but I don't know.
@DBS I lost my temper D1. I hope it didn't show through into the game or negatively impact your enjoyment of this one, but I was taking advantage of the fact that I was scum to push you for out of game reasons. I was still salty about Zero Escape and chose to tunnel on you because of that. Not a cool move by me. I'm sorry.
Anyway I had a really fun time this game and had a pleasure scumming it up with you guys. Thanks for all the help DV and Vezok.
GG town I actually thought you guys played pretty well considering the circumstances. Sure there wasn't a ton of rereading and true analysis happening, but with no reveals it's no an easy thing to do. I think only the AE and DotA pushes were clearly bad and the DotA one probably would have dissipated if not for the fast hammer. The AE one I really believe was just due to town apathy. I kept banging the drum and since everyone else was demoralized by lack of any information it just kind of happened despite not really making sense. Which almost 2 months into a game without flips is understandable.
@Terry I worked hard to get you mislynched and towards the end I thought you did an awesome job letting your towniness shine through. But I did believe what I was saying about your motivation. It was hard pushing that case against you because you're awesome but it definitely did appear more like you wanted to stay alive and be the hero than just push what you believed. Then again maybe it just appeared that way from my position of privileged information. Anyway scum got to scum, felt bad to be on opposite sides two times in a row after hydra'ing, let's town together again.
This was a weird game where the people I thought did a solid job appearing townie (in particular Tom, Shadow, Rodemy, and Kazin) had very off base reads and the people whose reads were closer to the mark really struggled to gain the trust of town. Well except Rhand, but he didn't have a ton of time to play in. Anyway I understand how frustrating this game must have been, but I still enjoyed hanging out with all of you. Thanks for getting through it and just being cool. This was an awesome playerbase and I'd play with all of you again in a heartbeat.
@Iso thanks for hosting! There were some very cool roles (the reactive to being targeted roles were very cool), and the flavor was on point.
@Azrael there was so much time spent worrying that we couldn't count on you and that vanilla'ing on D4 was a giant risk. It seemed crazy for you to make up that role, but it also was nerve wracking to trust outing one of us and going into 3v3v1 relying on you.
I think we did a plenty good job of ruining our own chances by (collectively) getting lynched and lynching each other. Scum outplayed us.
The no flips did pretty actively keep me from rereading, since the point has always been (for me at least) to reread with info and see what changes.
Would call the setup scumsided but not horrifically so besides the no flips
The issue was that it was literally miles from a normal. Like, that's supposed to be a safe game for a new player to join, right?
This wasn't.
Just imagine being ******* kazin this game. I hope he plays again, but if this had been my first mafia experience I'd have 100% never even considered signing up for a second.
{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
Grape/kazin/archmage. Possibly rhand/vezok. Maybe AZ.
But it's entirely not about the individual roles (well, the janitor probably makes it not a normal all by itself but I digress) but the setup as a whole. I know you actively try to **** with your players in every game (things like both day abilities being scum, town having 4 protectives with zero extra KP which seem orchestrated to stop setupgaming) and I enjoy that. It's just not a normal and I'm frankly shocked you are even questioning that lol
That said, town didn't play very well and probably could have solved it, though I'm not sure they could have beaten scum+Azrael once Az decided to scumside. There's probably an argument that they played badly because of the janitor and a lack of flips demoralized them to the point where they didn't think they *could* win even though they definitely had a shot, at least up until they lynched Archmage, but yeah. The neutral being set up to scum side in the late game probably didn't help either... But they also had a lot of tools to keep them out of that late game situation and didn't utilize them optimally, as I recall.
Over all I think the game was probably balanced well enough, just. The janitor probably doesn't belong in a normal, at least not without some kind of warning or indication that the game contains nonstandard roles. Also I don't really like neutrals in general but that's more of a personal choice, heh.
Flavor was really excellent though, props for that!
Even think it was a cool setup, with an echo of shadows caveat that no flip setups really needs hard info roles to make it feel like you might know what's happening.
My issue is entirely with this being considered a normal. And it seems like this just went wonky but if our review process let this get through in that queue it is extremely flawed
Is there a spec/dead thread? I'd love to read it if there is.
I don't necessarily think the roles, in themselves, were too complicated to be in a Normal. I do hear your criticisms that the Janitor was pretty bonkers, yes. Like I said, retrospectively, I'd have had the passive end at Day 3.
Of course our review system is flawed; there aren't concrete rules that decide what is and isn't okay. There are some roles that are unarguably more powerful than others; but ultimately, balance is determined by a person who has a subjective view of what is and is not fun or fair.
Also, I forgot to mention: I think at least one of the protective roles was something else before my review with Eco, and dawn's role was exactly what the Barbosa role was in Legend of Lucian.
{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
On an unrelated not I got incredibly salty when DBS claimed her role and flavor and it matched with the previous game. I felt a mislynch slipping away from me and reacted very poorly. Especially when combined with my previously mentioned salt. Sorry again DBS. That said I do think that's probably not ideal design to have a role have the same flavor, same alignment, and very close to the same abilities as in prequel.
Sorry Iso, much of the game setup was great, but the Janitor role completely altered the game to the point that I regretted signing up for it.
I think the problem is that this game dfidn't folow the regular review process - Iso says it was reviewed back in the mists of time, but clearly not very well, and it got one pair of eyes on it just before it went live when I had very limited capacity to fix things. Standard reviewing process should be at least one reviewer working in tandem with the game host for 40% ish of the process (i.e. not all of it but a decent chunk) AND a second reviewer giving the finished game a fresh pair of eyes to make sure nothing egregious is happening. Some aspects of the game are borderline not Normal (unlynchable, the Neutral, obviously the janitor), while at least not violating any of the hard rules for being a Normal.
I don't think role madness is inherently not Normal, but I think making a Normal game with "everyone has a role" as a requirement leads to the game being more complex or with more weird stuff than it really needs just for the sake of having no vanillas because you force yourself to add bits the game doesn't need (and therefore risks there being non-Normal or unbalanced/unfun aspects).
Grape played amazingly and clearly is scum MVP. He did a few very ballsy things. I was amazed no one even blinked when he said he was going to have a look at my reads after I got nightkilled, which he never really did.
@Grape: did you write that in the hopes no one else would go and look at my reads?
Looking back, I probably should’ve kept those reads to myself at the end of that Day to avoid being NK’ed, so that I would still be around to bury Grape and Vezok, because no one listens to dead players ever
TLDR I wanted to get out in front and set the narrative of your reads. Also thanks for the kind words.
@Grapefruit & others
about you and the salt in ZE, I'm not sure what I did to warrant the hate, since you pushed all 3 town to scumread you (not just me). taking advantage of being scum is surprising to hear, and disgusting tbh.... when I'm scum, I know that I'm at the advantage, so I would play all the more considerately. I play for a challenge, not to bully someone (even as town, unsurprisingly).
anyways, I only noticed you were being obnoxious and abrasive - hence why I considered replacing out or dying. getting in contact with the host is not something I'd like to resort to.
if you look over my ISO, it's seething with rage towards the end. this says a lot about how I feel on the matter. just saying you don't care, or that someone should be ignored/offed cuz "we wouldn't understand them anyway" can be personal/frustrating if the person really is different.
I do come from a different community. I do think differently (even for my homesite). and there's many things about me that's different IRL. I even brought up the fact that I am left-handed in a similar vein. it was cutting and felt like a personal attack when almost everyone kept emphasizing my "being different/weird". imagine eyeing someone head to toe simply because they're different, and see how that feels. DO NOT EVER talk about someone from a different community, or who has differences, as if it's some bloody headline. while I understand it's just standard reaction, please be a more reputable community/player when it comes to differences - don't keep poking it (this happened in ZE as well). if you say it's part of the game, you can/should find better or more appropriate arguments to use.
as mentioned before, I respect and work around playstyles. considering factors is one thing, but it helps keep me aware of how 'different' someone is in (playstyle or other) without coming off as insulting. you never know when your "blasting out the differences" could come off as a personal attack.
anyways, I'm glad I died early before things got nasty lol. and this setup was confusing to deal with. maybe a bit glad with my lynch, since it reflected my feelings rather well .-.
~ end of useless ranting ~
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sometimes killing off town will save town. still stand by it.
personally feel that Rodemy should've been lynched D1. it's pointless and redundant to townread/preserve someone whose reads you will/can not rely on later. it seems Rodemy is reputed as a not-so-dependable player, which is part of why nobody listened to him. there was a good chance of lynching him D1, and he did make bad posts that (now obvious) town wanted to lynch him for. leaving him alive helped scum more than not. if not, at least, town should've accepted that they chose to see him as one of their own and listened to him. talk about decisions this game.
Grapes was good, considering his scum theater with Nancy. the way things imploded there was really convincing. and he really mopped the floor haha
the DV replacement came across normally to me I guess. I'm better at reading players who are aggressive or calculated in their moves, since I'm like that too. didn't notice DV since he's more like a go-with-whatever/random player. but the way he kept defending himself against ALL arguments with the "I was trying new things" insistence looked too unnatural for me.
cool how my 2/3 reads live on. focused on Rodemy/Grapes/DV on D1, and 2 of them were scum.
as for my role, I purposely chose to keep quiet about vig since it would just lead to manipulation. would've given it to Azrael if I could, or Shadow if I didn't worry about him being a popular NK choice. while I really townread Terry, I didn't trust him to make the right decisions (and that remark of being sexist got to me lol).
having a janitor in the setup should be considered bastard imo. over in MAL, we put some general notice if anything that affects roles were in play (eg. flips or alignment changes), or just classify it as bastard. I expected this site to hate bastard setups, so the flipless was a surprise.
not sure who should be best scum here, since it's more thanks to the Grape/Nancy!DV theater that the team sailed. I probably would say DV, since his entire D1 act felt real - even reacting strongly to his scumbuddy's push. Grapes was doing fine, but I guess the personal approach gives him less points in my eyes.
that was more of an issue for me, since it could've been seen as fake. and maybe you should remember that it isn't bad if a mislynch is slipping away from you, since the whole town is your oyster lol.
also @Terry
loved your play in this game. the way you tried to read Nancy as trying to fit in with town like I did in ZE was pretty considerate. kinda think you would be a good player for newbies to meet :3
Be grateful, always."
I read the dead thread and have some clarifications. I would have went after Azrael as survivor as both town or scum. That is not alignment indicative of me. I would have done the exact same thing as town, because of the possibility of what happened here.
I also scum claimed in thread as the game was already over. It was part of my plan. I was gonna come and ask Az to vote Kazin or else we will kill him. Az did our job easier tho.
Please read the scum read if my partners want to release it as it explains a lot of my thought processes.
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Took me about an hour or so.
And I’m baffled that on top of the janitor you guys got daychat. This game was scumsided like no tomorrow.
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy.
Check out the Shop Thread
I was right about d_v for most od the game. Figured out vezok too late and had a hell of a tunnel on tom.
That being said, this game was stressful and confusing to me, but i tried. I really did.
1. Janitor was very frustrating, I think if any one were to want to run a janitor in the future, it would need to be one-shot. With the Kraken, we couldn't even be sure that Rhand was an intended kill target. On top of that, town has very little opportunity to change the Tide (pun intended) after mislynches. If any of the dead players were revealed as town, I think town could go back and trust some of the reads and lines of evidence we left. Continue to number 2.
2. The momentum on my Lynch was clear, I knew I was getting the noose, I was frustrated, especially with DV (see number 3), I really put a ton of work into trying to leave a legacy, but no one ever trusted it after I got lynched (see number 1). I had DV nailed, and Grape and Vezo, both as feasible suspects with role POE and thought I raised some pretty solids points during twilight.
3. DV's self replace should have not happened, I don't really blame ISO for not modkilling him. I blame DV for lack of discipline. I think playing as alts should be carefully monitored. I was onto Nobue and when DV replaced himself and said that it was a gimmick he was playing I fully let up until I looked carefully at his posts while I was on Death Row. It bought him a second life in my eyes. Also @DV, please try to avoid defusing people's arguments by implying they are idiots.
4. Grape played well, I would have never caught him on behavior alone, the only lead I had on him was the Role POE I did. Nice work grape.
5. Az's role had one unfortunate side effect that maybe suckered me more than most, the hammer incentive. I fully blame my mishammer of AE on that. I kind of respect the way Az played that role. I think it was classy.
6. ISO's flavor was excellent. I enjoyed that aspect of this game. The balancing was a bit rough.
I actually really appreciated all the effort you put into figuring this out. That was really evident, and in a group full of people who were ready to give up, you were right in there, fighting it out. That was awesome.
So don't pay any attention to DBS' bit about you needing to be lynched because people wouldn't listen to you. I violently disagree with that both in practice and in theory.
That said, DBS had some really good points about what happened to her, here. THere was a point in time for both Iso and I, a while ago, where we would put pressure on people for the sake of seeing how they'd respond to it, on an emotional level. And in the goodness of time, we each reached a point in our development as players where we agreed that trying to stress people out crossed a line, and shouldn't be done going forward.
I really want us to be welcoming community and a good place for people to come and make a mafia home. And if DBS is feeling that that's not what happened in this game, if we were actually making a big issue out of her being from somewhere else instead of welcoming, that's something we've really got to keep an eye on going forward. We've always been a community that welcomed people from all over the place to come here, and play, and make a home here. Being good to one another > being a good mafia player. Let's keep true to our roots on that.
Antagonizing people is also a good strategy for scum. Frustrated people react irrationally and that helps scum.
I think there's a fine line between both of these and day 1 of this game crossed it a fair bit.
Thanks to DNC at Heroes of the plane studios for this awesome sig and SGT_Chubbz for the awesome avy.
Check out the Shop Thread
I don't know if the town played insanely well, or if the game was just that town sided. You all are going to give me weird looks for that statement, but hear me out. We got the town to miss lynch three days back to back. And I still felt going into day four was a crap shoot. I wasn't sure if we were going to lose the game at that point. Then day five felt better, but depended on Azreal.
That's with a permanent janitor. That's with a multishot day vanilizer. That's with me getting a mass claim through and people town reading me for it. And I was still pretty iffy if we were going to win. So much so that when Vez jumped the gun and declared victory I was like hold your horses we don't know what is going on.
I've got some opinions on scum day chat, I'll hold off till my own game finishes to talk about that. Someone should remind me at the end of the game though.
Other thoughts.
I think I fundamentally disagree with Azreal on the idea that pushing people is bad. I'm going to use an example.
I was playing a game with Osie off site recently. In that game Osie had like 90+ posts and a player that hadn't been active yet. Quoted on post by Osie and accused Osie of making "Fluff posts" to make it to end game. I counter pressured the player, because I saw it as a ludicrous attack and viewed it as a scum post. This player made many attacks including arguing that I was trying to "Win the argument", while doing so they also lied about statements I made and later when I called them out on that apologized to me and said they did so "Because they were angry".
Why am I sharing this story. This player made these attacks and couldn't really back up what they are saying. We can't let people just say words and then go "Ok everyone gets a cookie now thanks for your contribution". This is a game of facts. And at the end of the day facts are either true or not true.
Which leads me to my larger point. I think the larger problem on MTGS is that we allow to many dumb things to be said.
In this game, my alt was attacked for "Lurking" when I was gone for a few days IRL. I personally don't think that player "Activity" should ever be used in a game as an attack. I think player "Contribution" should. But, on top of that you all just sat by and watched. As shadow put it "I didn't like the player that much so I just let it happen".
Azreal you want to talk about a friendly environment. How about not sitting on the sideline watching a player get attacked for things such as that. And instead coming in and going "Hey don't make that argument."
I'm going to use a much older example as well.
In Mindscrew IMAB(Who from this experience I think is worse than TS ever was) made the statement that I was changing my avatar when I made posts. Which I knew was a lie and many others did too. It upset me quite a bit. I actually would say this is the most personally attacked I've ever felt on this site. And people watched from the sidelines and let that happen.
You don't think that doesn't make a player feel welcome. You don't think that maybe that makes a player more toxic. Maybe if we on MTGS tried to stop things like this, we wouldn't see people go off the rails as much. If I was Osie in that above example do you know how frustrated I would have been had that been me and nobody else spoke up to say "He's right".
I'll talk about my self replacement now.
This game got a lot better for me after I self replaced and I'm talking mentally not anything else. I literally had a player that has and had less posts than the ******* mod tell me that I was lurking. I really struggled with replacing myself for "Game integrity". I actually did it by accident and it was because I was half sick and pissed off at the same time. Other people clearly were not enjoying the game, because I wasn't enjoying the game.
And specifically at Shadow and Rhand.
BOTH of you voted Nobue because you thought they were toxic, not because of any reasons about scum. Neither of you two get to be salty about me self replacing. You didn't catch me; you were just angry and I find it offensive that you are trying to paint the picture as anything other than that.
I think this game was one of the least fun games I've been in the last few years. And even though the game got better, it never really loss that day one taint for me. If it wasn't for that MAL game firing at the same time I might have just replaced out, because I was thinking I just hated mafia. But overall I had a blast over there.
Props to Terry for figuring out the team, I was really worried he wasn't going to get lynched and lead the town to victory.
Some other thoughts about the game setup.
I don't think Janitor is a bastard role, but the way it was setup in this game was pretty close. I'm not fan of having roles counter roles, but maybe if Rodemy wasn't just a one shot it would have been better.
**** neutral survivors.
I think after you replaced you did a fine job. And for game health reasons I’m glad Nobue was a false character.
I think the feeling of this game being townsided is something that you’re probably going to have to come to terms with just not being true. Town never had a shot at this game, both because of bad play and because of the setup. No scum players died, none of you were ever even in serious danger, and the paranoia factor was 100% in your favor.
I am sorry for not defending against the lurking argument, because yeah, it was stupid. I usually try to call out bad arguments, and I didn’t because you’re right, I didn’t care if Nobue was lynched.
I agree that new players should feel welcome and we should strive to keep them around, but I also believe there is a line, and if a new player acts like you did as Nobue and it’s a serious indication of their personality and how they play, I do not want them in our community. I won’t go out of my way to force them away, but I won’t feel bad if they leave. Not everyone is worth having.
{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
I remember insulting someone by accident before, in my 2nd mafia game I think, and since then I was more mindful about the approach towards differences. at least we all learn. I've had my fair share of holding grudges, so I can't blame you for here.
oh yeah, mixed the names up. but got the persons right. you were pushing Nobue and defended Nancy.
yeah, I'll commend you for dealing with things so far. but I meant that town chose their fate leaving you alive, yet they ignored your reads - it was redundant leaving you alive if you were meant to be a stump.
nice to know you enjoyed the MAL game~
Be grateful, always."
I do think the self-replace was a pretty dirty move to make. It made me reconsider my read on you, and it pretty much invalidated everything you said before as you were playing a persona. It saved you from the lynch and that isn’t fair to town. Or at least that’s how I feel.
I too let that bad argument about you being gone slide. But that’s because I thought you were scum. Why would I help counter bad arguments when they’re aimed at someone I want to see lynched? If they help build the wagon, then they’re useful.