Hey everyone. There's been intermittent discussions in the council cave regarding whether the MTGS mafia community should continue on here, or find a new home.
We have a lot of history and infrastructure here, and a lot of our older players and players from other communities know where to find us. We have our own distinct playstyle, and can organize the types of games we're interested in playing.
On the other hand, we don't have a ton of new blood coming through, now that the site has split and traffic is significantly down. Little by little, we're slowly losing numbers.
We've tossed around ideas such as joining MU or another well-established community with a healthy influx of new users. As per above, there's pluses and minuses to that. We've also discussed the idea of a specially designed inaugural game or competition. I have a setup that I've just drafted that I'd be willing to toss into the ring, with a co-mods' assistance, whichever way this debate goes.
Let me know your thoughts on options and strategies to respond to the situation. We'll leave this open for a good while.
I voted to move. We always waffle on it, might as well move forward. No matter what we'll still be the same group of people so who cares where we do it.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
MU has a subforum “partner communities” where you get your own subforum. In there we can organise our own games.
Civilisation Fanatics Centre is a good example of a community that moved there for who that works well, with an influx of new players.
They also still use their homesite for some of the games they host for raisins.
If it is decided to stick around here playing mafia for the time being, my suggestion is only having one active game at a time, maybe with a second in sign ups ready to go. My original community started out with a plethora of active ongoing games, but as activity dwindled we discovered that just one active game was enough to keep the community going strong. With a lower occurance of new games it helped hype the excitement of the each new game. Too many games with not enough users takes away from the urgency to get people in sign ups. And there is still mafia universe or other sites for those that need more than one ongoing game at a time. I personally don't enjoy mafia universe, mafiascum. "Mainstream" mafia sites. I prefer the smaller close knitted communities where you get to know the people you play with better. Bigger sites I think are more intimidating. Just thought I'd come and chime in, me a random nobody new to this community
Your chime is very welcome, mister(?) random nobody.
I also (personally) like tight-knit communities over giant Mafia factories, and as I understand it (someone correct me if I'm wrong) the plan is to remain that. We would be a small island inside a much larger archipel, with players coming and going as they please.
Our issue is not how many games we are running at once, it's the dwindling of our community. MTGS is a dead site (most members moved to "MTG Nexus"), we barely ever get truly new players (only travellers like you who come from another community), old players come and go. Other than Cantripmancer's game which is an exception, games take months to fill up.
No matter how tight-knit the community, if it can only rely on travellers to grow and on veterans staying to not dwindle, it's going to slowly die. I have seen it happen to completion elsewhere, and it is currently happening here.
So we are moving to essentially become the new blood we lack.
---
As for where, my vote goes to Mafia Collosseum over Mafia Universe since we were invited by Osie, who is very active here behind the scenes and knows our needs / preferences well.
I don't know what options we have other than these two (or going to nexus and having secret games, through PMs and user profiles :-p )
I can’t make up my mind about which is better, MC or MU.
If you ask me a different day, my answer will be different.
I am playing games both on MC and in a separate community on MU. I have the idea that MC being small actually will work against keeping our own identity because it will turn into a merge automatically. While MU is so large that being a separate entity seems to actually work. With some influx from the main site. At least that is what I see happening with CfC there.
MC in general is the nicer community though so if we do end up getting swallowed up, I prefer having that there over MU bigtime.
And it has Osie.
(Although Thingyman is yummie eye candy - almost as cute as Sloth)
So far it looks like the people want to move [eventually]. I support that decision, and think Sloth is right in that it's probably better to rip off the bandaid than go back and forth on it for months and months.
I would rather see us move to MC just because I don't really like being on MU. I don't like the feeling of "mafia factories," as someone else put it. But if that's where MTGS ends up then I will follow.
I had been firmly in camp remain here and muddle through because of the history, but running my game changed my opinion for a few reasons. One I think that more people would host if VC's are automated. Eco's vote counter is great but when you play across multiple devices (especially work computers!) it's not always usable. But second and more importantly specialties are something that most people agree are a huge part of our identity. And historically they had filled pretty quickly even if other games had sign ups lag. That was not the case for my game.
My game took a very long time to fill and only eventually filled through a massive recruiting effort by myself and Osie. And that can be exhausting for a host. As long as we could get specialties to fire I was fine with stay here and keeping our history in tact, but that's no longer that case.
To me the debate about where to go can wait till we've made a decision on yes or no because like Rhand my mind keeps changing on where is best.
If it is decided to stick around here playing mafia for the time being, my suggestion is only having one active game at a time, maybe with a second in sign ups ready to go. My original community started out with a plethora of active ongoing games, but as activity dwindled we discovered that just one active game was enough to keep the community going strong. With a lower occurance of new games it helped hype the excitement of the each new game. Too many games with not enough users takes away from the urgency to get people in sign ups. And there is still mafia universe or other sites for those that need more than one ongoing game at a time. I personally don't enjoy mafia universe, mafiascum. "Mainstream" mafia sites. I prefer the smaller close knitted communities where you get to know the people you play with better. Bigger sites I think are more intimidating. Just thought I'd come and chime in, me a random nobody new to this community
I completely understand this perspective, but I like the idea of always having a signup available so that when a player hits the forum (as either a new player or a returning veteran), there's an opportunity to participate beyond spectating the current game in progress.
I too am torn, as I want to stay here, but if moving is the only way to persist as a community, I will go wherever. Grape's point about his specialty is a good one, as well. As to where to go, Mafia Colosseum would probably be my first choice.
I can’t make up my mind about which is better, MC or MU.
If you ask me a different day, my answer will be different.
I am playing games both on MC and in a separate community on MU. I have the idea that MC being small actually will work against keeping our own identity because it will turn into a merge automatically. While MU is so large that being a separate entity seems to actually work. With some influx from the main site. At least that is what I see happening with CfC there.
MC in general is the nicer community though so if we do end up getting swallowed up, I prefer having that there over MU bigtime.
And it has Osie.
(Although Thingyman is yummie eye candy - almost as cute as Sloth)
I will follow whatever we decide.
Obviously a bit of bias but MU's partner community section has always seemed sorta... you get out what you put into it, I guess? The site itself is obviously better than any other on features, but the partner communities didn't seem to have gained much in the way of players from being mixed with MU. Maybe that's gotten better, dunno.
MC is very low activity at the moment and in that vein could end up similarly, but we can pretty much make anything happen in some form or other on the technical side of things and the bigger pressure at that point is recruitment, something which I'm not convinced is going to be a non-issue for the visitor communities. There's a little bit of a question on funding past 2022, but if there's activity there, there's definitely more ability to make that happen. The numbers aren't huge; without steady updates (which likely aren't super necessary at this point), they don't need to be higher than an average of about $150 per year, but that's big enough that it's easier to happen with more people. If we have long phase games, we may also be able to pull players from the other long phase Xenforo-based site, with which at least a couple of us are already familiar.
Thingyman and Megiddo remind me of each other in terms of how cute they are. Sloth wins any day though.
My game took a very long time to fill and only eventually filled through a massive recruiting effort by myself and Osie. And that can be exhausting for a host.
While I am open to hearing from Shadowlancer on behalf of MTGS staff and new owners, the complete silence since the site rescue isn't promising.
I posted player number updates in the original thread, but it's clear that our playerbase is dwindling. We've had a few major system shocks that have caused massive losses on top of general attrition, and have yet to see any significant recovery from any of them.
I believe our best option is to migrate. While we have history and distinct style here, I think that our playerbase (and by extension host base) is too small. Current rates are just about sustainable, but one more major event (e.g. site sale) or period of empty queues could easily be a death knell. If we stay here, it can only be done by a genunine concerted effort to improve player numbers - and to get back to even 2016 levels we'd need to nearly double where we are now. Frankly, history has shown that we as a forum have completely failed to implement any (effective) effort to rebuild the playerbase in the past.
If we do move, I think MU is the best destination. As much as I appreciate the other offers we have received, I think a merge with forum of similar size and state to us would just kick the can down the road - it won't solve anything long term. With MU, yes we would be subsumed into a greater whole and risk our identity, but if we get our own space we can mitigate that, and with enough integration we can really try to change attitudes towards slower paced/longer deadline games.
Regardless of where we go, I think we need the following to make it a success:
Active and enthuiastic Council members to coordinate the community and engage with destination site staff. Strong leadership will be required, and the council needs some refreshing.
Games ready to go in the pipeline. Some MTGS-unique Specialties would be great, but we just need a backlog of something because if we go somewhere, host one game, then spend a month trying to find another game the move will fail. Hopefully the reception to our initial offerings will encourage other hosts to finish their games.
Community buy-in. We need to move with as many people as possible (once you've played once with MU software you should be excited). But I would also like to see community integration - join the discord, play their games (especially the cross-site events). We want to not be hermits within the wider community - we want everyone to learn the joys of making one wallpost every 3 days.
Finally a reminder: much of our community is active on discord, which I imagine will be our hub no matter where we end up.
I am all for leaving, and all for going to MU. I get history and yada yada, but the times are changing and I think having the voting tool is just such a godsend, as someone who was over there, came back here and realized how annoying it was to try and figure out votes.
I don't know for sure if they still have them, but there used to be long games (like, think a month deadline) back then that had nonMTGs players, so for those who do prefer the longer style for their games, you do have players you can pick up.
No. No popcorn. Let's stay on topic and not feed trolls.
The vast majority is voting to go, while the second highest (at almost 50% less than the first) says that it's probably time but aren't quite ready.
With 16 votes, are we waiting on a lot of players? Seems like if all the regulars we have were to show up and vote any other option but "head elsewhere", "head elsewhere" would still be in the lead by a wide margin.
Should we shift the focus of the conversation, then, to where we're going, instead of if?
Hi guys, if you have drama from somewhere else, settle it there, not here. This beef does not have a place in this thread - this thread is for the discussion of the future of the Mafia group, and thereby the forums as they stand here. Not personal vendettas.
Hi guys, if you have drama from somewhere else, settle it there, not here. This beef does not have a place in this thread - this thread is for the discussion of the future of the Mafia group, and thereby the forums as they stand here. Not personal vendettas.
The discussion we had away from the community was about the community, out of respect for the fact that apparently good faith conversations about certain subjects can't be had here. Beef doesn't really enter into it.
No. No popcorn. Let's stay on topic and not feed trolls.
The vast majority is voting to go, while the second highest (at almost 50% less than the first) says that it's probably time but aren't quite ready.
With 16 votes, are we waiting on a lot of players? Seems like if all the regulars we have were to show up and vote any other option but "head elsewhere", "head elsewhere" would still be in the lead by a wide margin.
Should we shift the focus of the conversation, then, to where we're going, instead of if?
I mean this with all due respect to those guys, but if they aren't ready now, when will they be? I don't want to wait for a mad scramble like when we thought the site was going to be gone a few years ago. We are already at the point of struggling to fill a 12 player mini, almost a week later.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
I don't get the eaten up argument, honestly. Specially if we get like a small subsection (which was my understanding?).
But I've played at MC, and loud eye-hurty themes aside, it's pretty neat.
My concern with MC (and maybe someone else can talk here) is that I worry we'll end up having this same discussion there in a few months. Aren't they having the same issues filling up games/getting people? @Osie
I don't get the eaten up argument, honestly. Specially if we get like a small subsection (which was my understanding?).
But I've played at MC, and loud eye-hurty themes aside, it's pretty neat.
My concern with MC (and maybe someone else can talk here) is that I worry we'll end up having this same discussion there in a few months. Aren't they having the same issues filling up games/getting people? @Osie
Sort-of. In a sense. It's not quite the same, and I have offers and requests for games there still quite often. We can also likely do some recruiting that was harder to do before if we have long phase games.
As I said on Discord and I'll say here. I plan to straddle the line between MU/MC. If MC grows I'll likely end up making that permanently my new home, if it dies then I'll migrate as needed. I really like the players of MC and I think some of you should check out the add ons on MC(Some of them may only be available to those that have host permissions) because the tools that MC has are pretty good.
For my opinion I prefer MC in every way other than the possible issues with players. Its a close knit community, that feels more like mafia did on MTGS here 10 years ago. MU is the big brother to everything, but with that comes the loss of as close knit of a community as what I personally am interested in. MC has advantages that MTGS doesn't have in terms of tools/use for Mafia games which I think put a large hamper on our ability to grow as a community.
How many active players does MC have, how many games running, does either MU or MC have a tools edge?
Also, it sounds like MC is gradually shrinking as well? Do they have a recruitment or growth strategy?
MU's gathering of refugees from across the internet has been a pretty successful plan, that seems like a strong bet for long term viability. I'd rather move once, not twice, as any and every move is going to result in casualties.
Alternatively, if the MC folks are declining also, would they be interested in leaving together with us, so that we can form a stronger bulwark against contrasting playstyles and meta?
Also, I think a necessary step before we leave would be to identify any and all past veterans who may drop back in, and send them all PMs so they know how to find us. That way, even if the sub is eventually closed and archived after our material is ported, we have continuity.
My understanding of the state of a Mafia Universe integration is as follows:
They will set up a new subforum called "long phase games" where one cycle is 5/2 minimum
The queue for that subforum will be managed by one of us, and games we currently have queued will be placed into the queue in whatever order we wish and will run first
We may be permitted to place someone from the Mafia Council on the MU moderation team
The "council" as such will be dissolved/have no official power as far as that subforum is concerned; the queue manager position will be subordinate to the regular MU hierarchy just like the others are
This was almost three years ago now and I haven't spoken directly to anyone in the MU administration team about it recently though
-------------
Separately, there is a Partner Communities subforum where we can run things basically however we want and keep the council, etc. if we want to do that unrelated to the Long Phase subforum.
The big problem with that is games there aren't advertised and sign ups spread only by word of mouth, but it would also allow us to keep things basically as they are with a smaller community, etc.
As I said on Discord and I'll say here. I plan to straddle the line between MU/MC. If MC grows I'll likely end up making that permanently my new home, if it dies then I'll migrate as needed. I really like the players of MC and I think some of you should check out the add ons on MC(Some of them may only be available to those that have host permissions) because the tools that MC has are pretty good.
For my opinion I prefer MC in every way other than the possible issues with players. Its a close knit community, that feels more like mafia did on MTGS here 10 years ago. MU is the big brother to everything, but with that comes the loss of as close knit of a community as what I personally am interested in. MC has advantages that MTGS doesn't have in terms of tools/use for Mafia games which I think put a large hamper on our ability to grow as a community.
/barn most of this. The environment at MC feels more like community, while MU has always felt to me like Serious Business(tm).
However, while I might straddle communities wrt playing in games, I will likely host (primarily, probably exclusively) where we as a community "decide" to go, as this community/player base has my heart and I want to work toward its continuation as much as possible.
I completely understand the reservations about not wanting to move twice and the potential attrition. The optimist in me says that MC is established now and would grow, especially if we made it our home and worked to help it thrive. But that's the same optimist that just wants to hunker down in my familiar MTGS and hope that we magically get regular infusions of new blood.
My understanding of the state of a Mafia Universe integration is as follows:
They will set up a new subforum called "long phase games" where one cycle is 5/2 minimum
The queue for that subforum will be managed by one of us, and games we currently have queued will be placed into the queue in whatever order we wish and will run first
We may be permitted to place someone from the Mafia Council on the MU moderation team
The "council" as such will be dissolved/have no official power as far as that subforum is concerned; the queue manager position will be subordinate to the regular MU hierarchy just like the others are
This was almost three years ago now and I haven't spoken directly to anyone in the MU administration team about it recently though.
This sounds so perfect I can't believe we haven't done it already. It'll be sink or swim but if we can produce a rule set and quality games good enough to attract a fraction of MU's playerbase the payoff would be huge.
The Partnered Community thing is piquing my interest. As I understand it it's basically the same thing as a subreddit: a self-contained community with the same tools as the rest of the site.
The lack of advertisement is obviously an issue, but an unadvertised MUPC is still more likely to attract new players than an obscure subforum in a necrosing M:tG forum.
The Partnered Community thing is piquing my interest. As I understand it it's basically the same thing as a subreddit: a self-contained community with the same tools as the rest of the site.
The lack of advertisement is obviously an issue, but an unadvertised MUPC is still more likely to attract new players than an obscure subforum in a necrosing M:tG forum.
We could, as far as I know, do both; it would just be increased workload on whichever council member is also queue manager for the Long Phase subforum
Any continuation of our own separate yearly awards and such would have to be specifically for the partner community subforum, though, and any privileged council communication would have to occur on Discord or via PM since we wouldn't have a hidden subforum any more
Eta: it may also be too taxing on our game hosts to host both long phase games on the main forum and games in our partner subforum
Edit2: the queue manager position for the long phase subforum and any council position in the Salvation Mafia subforum would also likely diverge with time
How many active players does MC have, how many games running, does either MU or MC have a tools edge?
Also, it sounds like MC is gradually shrinking as well? Do they have a recruitment or growth strategy?
MU's gathering of refugees from across the internet has been a pretty successful plan, that seems like a strong bet for long term viability. I'd rather move once, not twice, as any and every move is going to result in casualties.
Alternatively, if the MC folks are declining also, would they be interested in leaving together with us, so that we can form a stronger bulwark against contrasting playstyles and meta?
MC's been pretty steady at 1-2 games going at once, with about 20 active players. But most games have a lot of outside people through direct recruitment. There was decline during the pandemic; some of the regulars were less active, but we did still manage a decent level of activity overall.
MC 2019 Stats: 92 players across 18 games. Average player played 2.7283 games. Average game size was 14 players. MtGS 2019 Stats: 49 players across 14 games. Average player played 3.1667 games. Average game size was 11 players.
MC 2020 Stats: 85 players across 24 games (7 of which made up a 20-player micro league). Average player played 2.5618 games. Average game size was 10 players (splitting up the league), or 13 players (not splitting up the league). MtGS 2020 Stats: 44 players across 10 games (2 of which were the same). Average player played 2.5682 games. Average game size was 12 (counting the duplicate game), or 11 (ignoring the duplicate game)
Over a third (19) of the MtGS 2020 players have also had some play on MC.
"19 of the MtGS 2020 players have have also had some play on MC"
Meaning we'd be bringing ~20 players year over year to the site
That isn't nothing, to be sure, just being clear lol
Also, in the interests of full disclosure, I personally prefer the MU vote counter/autohost to the MC tally counter having had a chance to use both; the tally counter isn't a deal breaker or anything, but the autohost keeps track of the full vote history and has a lot of powerful built in vote analysis tools that I either couldn't find or don't exist on MC.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
MC 2019 Stats: 92 players across 18 games. Average player played 2.7283 games. Average game size was 14 players. MtGS 2019 Stats: 49 players across 14 games. Average player played 3.1667 games. Average game size was 11 players.
MC 2020 Stats: 85 players across 24 games (7 of which made up a 20-player micro league). Average player played 2.5618 games. Average game size was 10 players (splitting up the league), or 13 players (not splitting up the league). MtGS 2020 Stats: 44 players across 10 games (2 of which were the same). Average player played 2.5682 games. Average game size was 12 (counting the duplicate game), or 11 (ignoring the duplicate game)
Over a third (19) of the MtGS 2020 players have also had some play on MC.
And I'd imagine a fair number of MC players have also played on MTGS in 2020. Probably not 19 but I'd guess at least 10 (off the top of my head: Osie, DV, Wisp, Jackrito, Shin, and Proph have been active on both sites). I'm really torn on which site to go to. I love the MU tools. And I think the vote count things would lend themselves to the way a lot of people imagine themselves playing (I know that I do much more sophisticated ISO'ing and VC analysis and in tandem there than I do here because of the ease of use) but we're really already almost a partner community with MC and the move would be much smoother as a result I think.
I think the fear with moving is we'd lose people in the transition.
We absolutely will, that's just... part of leaving a site, some people won't get the message or won't want to learn the new software or won't like the leadership at the new site or... any of a dozen other things probably
But, we're losing players by staying here, as well, whether it's new players who can't stand the software limitations we have or old players dropping out for years at a time
Also, in the interests of full disclosure, I personally prefer the MU vote counter/autohost to the MC tally counter having had a chance to use both; the tally counter isn't a deal breaker or anything, but the autohost keeps track of the full vote history and has a lot of powerful built in vote analysis tools that I either couldn't find or don't exist on MC.
For sure, though on the flip side, essentially the more featured the vote counter, the more townsided games will automatically be. I realized at some point the diminishing returns of trying for more than a versatile votecounter that can check any selection of posts.
Oh, sorry ZDS I missed the end of your first post about other places we could go
We were invited by a few other sites when it appeared the site closure was imminent, but uh. I've not made it a secret I don't really like Mafia451's software, for example. I've used too harsh words for it in the past, their site is excellent overall and the admins are friendly enough it's just not my cup of tea personally (or most of yours, I'd imagine; the site is set up more like a discord server with real time posts and branching discussion threads than a traditional forum)
We could theoretically just show up en mass to SmashBoards or MafiaScum or GiantITP "uninvited" and submit our games through their regular queues or something if we wished, I suppose
Ok, so does someone want to touch base with MU and gather some facts on how this would work, if everything's the same as from 3 years ago?
And for MC, is there any data/info we have on what their long-game survival strategy is?
Over the short-term, I love the sound of a playerbase with tons of overlap and a very similar playstyle. That's huge. But if we're just postponing a similar crisis for several more years, I'd rather rip the band-aid off now, and do the transition while we still have some strength, numbers, and good communication lines established. We'll have a stronger chance of establishing the design and playstyle identity we want now, than if we lose another 1/3 to 1/4 in a transition to MC and then try to move again later.
If MC has self-sustaining player-base growth or can come up with a solid recruitment plan to produce that, it's a different equation for me. But if they're in rough shape too, then I'd rather stay as allied communities than merge. A transition is risky enough, without having to try it twice in short order.
Are there any other sizable mafia communities with a similar playstyle we should be considering? I'm not familiar with two of those you mentioned, Silver, and I haven't played on MS in ages.
We have a lot of history and infrastructure here, and a lot of our older players and players from other communities know where to find us. We have our own distinct playstyle, and can organize the types of games we're interested in playing.
On the other hand, we don't have a ton of new blood coming through, now that the site has split and traffic is significantly down. Little by little, we're slowly losing numbers.
We've tossed around ideas such as joining MU or another well-established community with a healthy influx of new users. As per above, there's pluses and minuses to that. We've also discussed the idea of a specially designed inaugural game or competition. I have a setup that I've just drafted that I'd be willing to toss into the ring, with a co-mods' assistance, whichever way this debate goes.
Let me know your thoughts on options and strategies to respond to the situation. We'll leave this open for a good while.
Civilisation Fanatics Centre is a good example of a community that moved there for who that works well, with an influx of new players.
They also still use their homesite for some of the games they host for raisins.
MC can offer us something similar.
I also (personally) like tight-knit communities over giant Mafia factories, and as I understand it (someone correct me if I'm wrong) the plan is to remain that. We would be a small island inside a much larger archipel, with players coming and going as they please.
Our issue is not how many games we are running at once, it's the dwindling of our community. MTGS is a dead site (most members moved to "MTG Nexus"), we barely ever get truly new players (only travellers like you who come from another community), old players come and go. Other than Cantripmancer's game which is an exception, games take months to fill up.
No matter how tight-knit the community, if it can only rely on travellers to grow and on veterans staying to not dwindle, it's going to slowly die. I have seen it happen to completion elsewhere, and it is currently happening here.
So we are moving to essentially become the new blood we lack.
---
As for where, my vote goes to Mafia Collosseum over Mafia Universe since we were invited by Osie, who is very active here behind the scenes and knows our needs / preferences well.
I don't know what options we have other than these two (or going to nexus and having secret games, through PMs and user profiles :-p )
If you ask me a different day, my answer will be different.
I am playing games both on MC and in a separate community on MU. I have the idea that MC being small actually will work against keeping our own identity because it will turn into a merge automatically. While MU is so large that being a separate entity seems to actually work. With some influx from the main site. At least that is what I see happening with CfC there.
MC in general is the nicer community though so if we do end up getting swallowed up, I prefer having that there over MU bigtime.
And it has Osie.
I will follow whatever we decide.
Are you really?
I would rather see us move to MC just because I don't really like being on MU. I don't like the feeling of "mafia factories," as someone else put it. But if that's where MTGS ends up then I will follow.
My game took a very long time to fill and only eventually filled through a massive recruiting effort by myself and Osie. And that can be exhausting for a host. As long as we could get specialties to fire I was fine with stay here and keeping our history in tact, but that's no longer that case.
To me the debate about where to go can wait till we've made a decision on yes or no because like Rhand my mind keeps changing on where is best.
I too am torn, as I want to stay here, but if moving is the only way to persist as a community, I will go wherever. Grape's point about his specialty is a good one, as well. As to where to go, Mafia Colosseum would probably be my first choice.
Obviously a bit of bias but MU's partner community section has always seemed sorta... you get out what you put into it, I guess? The site itself is obviously better than any other on features, but the partner communities didn't seem to have gained much in the way of players from being mixed with MU. Maybe that's gotten better, dunno.
MC is very low activity at the moment and in that vein could end up similarly, but we can pretty much make anything happen in some form or other on the technical side of things and the bigger pressure at that point is recruitment, something which I'm not convinced is going to be a non-issue for the visitor communities. There's a little bit of a question on funding past 2022, but if there's activity there, there's definitely more ability to make that happen. The numbers aren't huge; without steady updates (which likely aren't super necessary at this point), they don't need to be higher than an average of about $150 per year, but that's big enough that it's easier to happen with more people. If we have long phase games, we may also be able to pull players from the other long phase Xenforo-based site, with which at least a couple of us are already familiar.
To say the least.
I posted player number updates in the original thread, but it's clear that our playerbase is dwindling. We've had a few major system shocks that have caused massive losses on top of general attrition, and have yet to see any significant recovery from any of them.
I believe our best option is to migrate. While we have history and distinct style here, I think that our playerbase (and by extension host base) is too small. Current rates are just about sustainable, but one more major event (e.g. site sale) or period of empty queues could easily be a death knell. If we stay here, it can only be done by a genunine concerted effort to improve player numbers - and to get back to even 2016 levels we'd need to nearly double where we are now. Frankly, history has shown that we as a forum have completely failed to implement any (effective) effort to rebuild the playerbase in the past.
If we do move, I think MU is the best destination. As much as I appreciate the other offers we have received, I think a merge with forum of similar size and state to us would just kick the can down the road - it won't solve anything long term. With MU, yes we would be subsumed into a greater whole and risk our identity, but if we get our own space we can mitigate that, and with enough integration we can really try to change attitudes towards slower paced/longer deadline games.
Regardless of where we go, I think we need the following to make it a success:
Finally a reminder: much of our community is active on discord, which I imagine will be our hub no matter where we end up.
I don't know for sure if they still have them, but there used to be long games (like, think a month deadline) back then that had nonMTGs players, so for those who do prefer the longer style for their games, you do have players you can pick up.
The GJ way path to no lynching:
---
#BLM
#DefundThePolice
I am sorry that you feel that way.
The GJ way path to no lynching:
You personally cussed me out and threatened me on Osie's discord server. Did you expect me to somehow feel differently?
---
#BLM
#DefundThePolice
And even if I did, I know you are lying. I have never threatened anyone.
The GJ way path to no lynching:
I'm sure Osie can clear things up for you.
---
#BLM
#DefundThePolice
The vast majority is voting to go, while the second highest (at almost 50% less than the first) says that it's probably time but aren't quite ready.
With 16 votes, are we waiting on a lot of players? Seems like if all the regulars we have were to show up and vote any other option but "head elsewhere", "head elsewhere" would still be in the lead by a wide margin.
Should we shift the focus of the conversation, then, to where we're going, instead of if?
---
#BLM
#DefundThePolice
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
The discussion we had away from the community was about the community, out of respect for the fact that apparently good faith conversations about certain subjects can't be had here. Beef doesn't really enter into it.
---
#BLM
#DefundThePolice
I mean this with all due respect to those guys, but if they aren't ready now, when will they be? I don't want to wait for a mad scramble like when we thought the site was going to be gone a few years ago. We are already at the point of struggling to fill a 12 player mini, almost a week later.
The GJ way path to no lynching:
It's why I'm advocating to move the conversation past the "if" stage and officially to "where".
MC seems very similar to us, but Mafia focused. I would love those bot tools though.
But I've played at MC, and loud eye-hurty themes aside, it's pretty neat.
My concern with MC (and maybe someone else can talk here) is that I worry we'll end up having this same discussion there in a few months. Aren't they having the same issues filling up games/getting people?
@Osie
Sort-of. In a sense. It's not quite the same, and I have offers and requests for games there still quite often. We can also likely do some recruiting that was harder to do before if we have long phase games.
For my opinion I prefer MC in every way other than the possible issues with players. Its a close knit community, that feels more like mafia did on MTGS here 10 years ago. MU is the big brother to everything, but with that comes the loss of as close knit of a community as what I personally am interested in. MC has advantages that MTGS doesn't have in terms of tools/use for Mafia games which I think put a large hamper on our ability to grow as a community.
Also, it sounds like MC is gradually shrinking as well? Do they have a recruitment or growth strategy?
MU's gathering of refugees from across the internet has been a pretty successful plan, that seems like a strong bet for long term viability. I'd rather move once, not twice, as any and every move is going to result in casualties.
Alternatively, if the MC folks are declining also, would they be interested in leaving together with us, so that we can form a stronger bulwark against contrasting playstyles and meta?
They will set up a new subforum called "long phase games" where one cycle is 5/2 minimum
The queue for that subforum will be managed by one of us, and games we currently have queued will be placed into the queue in whatever order we wish and will run first
We may be permitted to place someone from the Mafia Council on the MU moderation team
The "council" as such will be dissolved/have no official power as far as that subforum is concerned; the queue manager position will be subordinate to the regular MU hierarchy just like the others are
This was almost three years ago now and I haven't spoken directly to anyone in the MU administration team about it recently though
-------------
Separately, there is a Partner Communities subforum where we can run things basically however we want and keep the council, etc. if we want to do that unrelated to the Long Phase subforum.
The big problem with that is games there aren't advertised and sign ups spread only by word of mouth, but it would also allow us to keep things basically as they are with a smaller community, etc.
However, while I might straddle communities wrt playing in games, I will likely host (primarily, probably exclusively) where we as a community "decide" to go, as this community/player base has my heart and I want to work toward its continuation as much as possible.
I completely understand the reservations about not wanting to move twice and the potential attrition. The optimist in me says that MC is established now and would grow, especially if we made it our home and worked to help it thrive. But that's the same optimist that just wants to hunker down in my familiar MTGS and hope that we magically get regular infusions of new blood.
This sounds so perfect I can't believe we haven't done it already. It'll be sink or swim but if we can produce a rule set and quality games good enough to attract a fraction of MU's playerbase the payoff would be huge.
The lack of advertisement is obviously an issue, but an unadvertised MUPC is still more likely to attract new players than an obscure subforum in a necrosing M:tG forum.
Any continuation of our own separate yearly awards and such would have to be specifically for the partner community subforum, though, and any privileged council communication would have to occur on Discord or via PM since we wouldn't have a hidden subforum any more
Eta: it may also be too taxing on our game hosts to host both long phase games on the main forum and games in our partner subforum
Edit2: the queue manager position for the long phase subforum and any council position in the Salvation Mafia subforum would also likely diverge with time
MC's been pretty steady at 1-2 games going at once, with about 20 active players. But most games have a lot of outside people through direct recruitment. There was decline during the pandemic; some of the regulars were less active, but we did still manage a decent level of activity overall.
MC 2019 Stats: 92 players across 18 games. Average player played 2.7283 games. Average game size was 14 players.
MtGS 2019 Stats: 49 players across 14 games. Average player played 3.1667 games. Average game size was 11 players.
MC 2020 Stats: 85 players across 24 games (7 of which made up a 20-player micro league). Average player played 2.5618 games. Average game size was 10 players (splitting up the league), or 13 players (not splitting up the league).
MtGS 2020 Stats: 44 players across 10 games (2 of which were the same). Average player played 2.5682 games. Average game size was 12 (counting the duplicate game), or 11 (ignoring the duplicate game)
Over a third (19) of the MtGS 2020 players have also had some play on MC.
Meaning we'd be bringing ~20 players year over year to the site
That isn't nothing, to be sure, just being clear lol
Also, in the interests of full disclosure, I personally prefer the MU vote counter/autohost to the MC tally counter having had a chance to use both; the tally counter isn't a deal breaker or anything, but the autohost keeps track of the full vote history and has a lot of powerful built in vote analysis tools that I either couldn't find or don't exist on MC.
And I'd imagine a fair number of MC players have also played on MTGS in 2020. Probably not 19 but I'd guess at least 10 (off the top of my head: Osie, DV, Wisp, Jackrito, Shin, and Proph have been active on both sites). I'm really torn on which site to go to. I love the MU tools. And I think the vote count things would lend themselves to the way a lot of people imagine themselves playing (I know that I do much more sophisticated ISO'ing and VC analysis and in tandem there than I do here because of the ease of use) but we're really already almost a partner community with MC and the move would be much smoother as a result I think.
But, we're losing players by staying here, as well, whether it's new players who can't stand the software limitations we have or old players dropping out for years at a time
For sure, though on the flip side, essentially the more featured the vote counter, the more townsided games will automatically be. I realized at some point the diminishing returns of trying for more than a versatile votecounter that can check any selection of posts.
Well, the crossover would be 1 for 1; I literally just counted people from the MtGS stats who had played a game on MC since the start of 2020.
We were invited by a few other sites when it appeared the site closure was imminent, but uh. I've not made it a secret I don't really like Mafia451's software, for example. I've used too harsh words for it in the past, their site is excellent overall and the admins are friendly enough it's just not my cup of tea personally (or most of yours, I'd imagine; the site is set up more like a discord server with real time posts and branching discussion threads than a traditional forum)
We could theoretically just show up en mass to SmashBoards or MafiaScum or GiantITP "uninvited" and submit our games through their regular queues or something if we wished, I suppose
And for MC, is there any data/info we have on what their long-game survival strategy is?
Over the short-term, I love the sound of a playerbase with tons of overlap and a very similar playstyle. That's huge. But if we're just postponing a similar crisis for several more years, I'd rather rip the band-aid off now, and do the transition while we still have some strength, numbers, and good communication lines established. We'll have a stronger chance of establishing the design and playstyle identity we want now, than if we lose another 1/3 to 1/4 in a transition to MC and then try to move again later.
If MC has self-sustaining player-base growth or can come up with a solid recruitment plan to produce that, it's a different equation for me. But if they're in rough shape too, then I'd rather stay as allied communities than merge. A transition is risky enough, without having to try it twice in short order.
Are there any other sizable mafia communities with a similar playstyle we should be considering? I'm not familiar with two of those you mentioned, Silver, and I haven't played on MS in ages.