Should I get to work on my mini then? Is that a thing that would be appreciated?
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My thoughts are with the friends and family of the Orlando Shooting victims and with the rest of the LGBTQA+ community.
Check out my Newborder Peasant Cube here! http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/37467
Necarg, please don't acknowledge this in any way whatsoever.
True Name Mafia (Win),Clan Contest IX Mafia (Win), Bravely Default Mafia (Loss), BOTAS (loss), BfV (Loss), Ace Attourney (loss)
Rules Advisor before they were eradicated
I highly recommend for anyone interested in mafia game design or interested in reviewing games to check out Eco's Reviewing Mafia Games article, if you haven't looked at it already. It has a lot of "checklists" that I go through when I review games, and has some basic design philosophies that I think are essential to craft good mafia games.
I'd also recommend people check out the articles list in general (once again, if you haven't read them already). Some of them are a bit old and advanced, but the information is still relevant.
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
Some things I've been ruminating about and would like the Council to respond/other users:
1. Should we move the Micro queue to a separate sign-ups queue? The reason why I would like to do this is because we have these large games that take forever to fill, and it's really annoying to see sign-ups stall because of this. For example, Mind Screw Salvation and GoldenEye both took one month for the game to fill, and I think that running some Micros on the side while we wait for the big games to fill up could help keep the players engaged, since Micros typically don't last very long. This quote encapsulates what I'm thinking perfectly:
Quote from zindabad »
So if I understand correctly, one has to wait for this game's one-month-long signups to finish before another game starts signups?
2. Could we be more relaxed in enforcing the "no quintiple posting" etc rule? This is something that annoys me because in every other mafia site I've played at, posting four/five/six times when you're trying to catch up is perfectly normal - it helps with the readability of your posts, rather than turning your post into a morass of multiquotes and line breaks. Obviously if someone flies off the handles and posts 19+ times in a row (*cough* mastin *cough*) we should infract them, but for smaller scale incidents like these I don't really see the point in carding others for spam.
I'd love the input of the community on this, I think these are two small changes that can improve the quality of the subforum.
1) The obvious flaw is that running smaller games alongside signups for larger games risks making the larger games fill even slower as Micros siphon off players. The playerbase at the moment is very small, which makes it not very surprising when large games take a while to fill, but Micros are so small and seem to be almost exclusively played by experienced players that I don't think they'd add much other than just scratching an itch. I think signups could be handled better though: Golden Eye mostly took so long to fill because two other large games (Mind Screw and Ace Attorney) were ongoing and were still heavily populated. It would have been sensible for a smaller game to post signups instead, since there's no way we could support three simultaneous large games. The other solution is for people to make smaller large games (certainly GoldenEye's 16 is a good place to start), so they take less time to fill.
That being said, I could be persuaded to allow Micros to fire more frequently, but I don't really see how it helps do anything other than let people scratch an itch while risking making Large games take even longer to fire.
2) I thought were already pretty lax on spam infractions, particularly if the consecutive posts add sufficient content. That being said, it seems excessive to me make multiple posts while catching up and I don't feel that multiple posts helps with readability. What's wrong with writing thoughts in notepad or whatever as you read and then making the catchup as one post? I don't have a problem with someone, say, putting a PBPA in a separate post to questions addressed to another player, but making 6 posts in a row with one question each or with stream of consciousness thoughts while rereading is irritating.
This is, however, a question for you moderators. I don't even know what the official forum policy on multiple consecutive posts is.
I think intent and context need taken into account when considering spam.
Games move pretty slowly on MTGS compared to pretty much every other mafia site.
It's absurd to expect someone to wait for another person to post if they have a new thought, when there can be hours between posts. If there is no one else around and posting, multiple posts happen pretty often if someone is trying to solve the game. They get new thoughts, and either want to express them, or ask someone a question about them.
If someone spams off 7 posts with only seconds of delay in between each post, that's spam.
If someone spams off a series of posts with only like, one letter in each post to make a point (Think Y. O. U. A. R. E. S. C. U. M, or something), that's obviously spam.
Someone posting game content in every post, with a few minutes between each one isn't really spam. It's just a function of a slow moving game where there are not other players around actively posting. I've been in off-site games where a game going more than 2 minutes without a new post is considered odd.
We can't let smaller game sign-ups run at the same time as larger because every time we have, they've taken players from the larger games, which stalls the queues from progressing and prevents hosts from having their fair shot at hosting. Additionally, have you seen the queue recently? We can't fire games off willy-nilly when we don't have games to fire off, to begin with.
As for the spamming, I think 3 posts in a row should be the hard limit. Anything else is spam, period. If you have multiple one-line thoughts after you make a post, you should be condensing them into a single post, even if they're stream-of-consciousness. It's a courtesy to other players, because nobody wants to read half a page full of one-liners from the same player.
Organize your thoughts, take your time, and post in chunks. If you're making a catch-up post, or a big post in general, divide it into reasonably-sized paragraphs. If you're concerned about the readability of your case due to quote-striping, then you should probably condense your case, or break it into separate posts.
If the game is quiet, then the mod needs to be prodding people.
There's absolutely no reason you should ever have to post more than 3 times in a row in a Mafia game.
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 personally don't consider Micro's detrimental to my other games. I will happily join one when I am in other games because it doesn't require much time or brainpower.
I agree that context is important to multiposting. Like, I prefer multiposting on my phone because multiquotes suck and navigating them on mobile is the balls. Maybe 2 quotes per post would be sufficent, and save big big posts till you get home, but 4 or 5 posts in a row is hardly something worth getting mad at.
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.
Agreed on both counts.
I do not believe micro's take away players from bigger games and they keep giving us something to do when waiting for a big one to fill.
And I use multiposting regularly. Mostly because I'm in a different timezone than most players. I reread, post my thoughts, think some more, post some more, read again and post... Often without anyone posting inbetween because they're all asleep. And on the phone it's just waaay easier to answer quote by quote than to try to multiquote (and then lose a whole array of thoughts once in a while).
Hey question about checking post counts in a mafia game thread. Someone said we could do this but I clicked through the options and still can't find it?
1) The obvious flaw is that running smaller games alongside signups for larger games risks making the larger games fill even slower as Micros siphon off players. The playerbase at the moment is very small, which makes it not very surprising when large games take a while to fill, but Micros are so small and seem to be almost exclusively played by experienced players that I don't think they'd add much other than just scratching an itch. I think signups could be handled better though: Golden Eye mostly took so long to fill because two other large games (Mind Screw and Ace Attorney) were ongoing and were still heavily populated. It would have been sensible for a smaller game to post signups instead, since there's no way we could support three simultaneous large games. The other solution is for people to make smaller large games (certainly GoldenEye's 16 is a good place to start), so they take less time to fill.
What are your thoughts, then, on a rule that a large game can't post signups until one of the two large games ends? I don't think MTGS has the playerbase to support three simultaneous large games running at a time, and all of the signup stalls that have been happening recently have been due to a third large game posting signups when two are already running.
Quote from Ecophagy »
That being said, I could be persuaded to allow Micros to fire more frequently, but I don't really see how it helps do anything other than let people scratch an itch while risking making Large games take even longer to fire.
Larger games take nearly a month to fill up (GoldenEye and Mind Screw have, at least) and Star Trek is approaching the two week mark. I was thinking - since a Micro usually starts and ends within a week or less, it shouldn't affect large game signups, right?
Quote from Ecophagy »
This is, however, a question for you moderators. I don't even know what the official forum policy on multiple consecutive posts is.
The rules just say "don't consecutively multipost" but with mafia it's much more lax.
Quote from Iso »
We can't let smaller game sign-ups run at the same time as larger because every time we have, they've taken players from the larger games, which stalls the queues from progressing and prevents hosts from having their fair shot at hosting. Additionally, have you seen the queue recently? We can't fire games off willy-nilly when we don't have games to fire off, to begin with.
How do you propose we fix the problem of having one large game in signups for weeks at a time, then? You might not really see it as a problem, per se, but I think that it makes our community sluggish and makes smaller games bottlenecked by these larger ones.
The only way I see to reasonably fix the problem is to either restructure the queue per my recommendations last time we had this discussion, and/or to get more players to join the playerbase.
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
My intent when designing the current queue system was to have a signup for each type of game running simultaneously, and let the larger games be damned if they couldn't fill up anymore. So yeah, I'd endorse Proph's original suggestion.
Let market forces decide. Seems like there's a huge demand for the minis, and the large games are just getting in the way. Even some of the large games that have fired don't seem to have been terribly well-received by the players.
If we can't run many large games anymore, but we have 5 or 6 or 7 minis running at a time, that's a perfectly fine direction for us to evolve in. I think we might just be surprised by how many more players would like to play, if only we let them sign up for the minis that they wanted in the first place. Don't those things fill up literally 30x faster than the large games do these days? A single day?
If people get a large game itch they want to scratch now and again, we've always got the PCQ or FTQ to step in and fill that gap from time to time.
That's pretty extreme Az. The market clearly supports larger games as evidenced by the fact that we have two large games running right now. What we clearly can't support is three large games at once, and I'm pretty sure we worked that out like 6 months ago when we did our last round of queue restructuring. I am completely on board with the idea of running 1 Specialty and 1 Normal at a time, and X Minis and X Micros. It does seem very silly to try and fill a third large game (while one of the existing games is still on Day 1 no less) rather than let a Mini slide in first. The problem is clearly just in managing the queue and signups rather than in a total absence of player demand.
I think what we're currently doing is trying to clear out the Specialty queue so that we can strictly run Normals and PCQs as large games, which is why we're a little backed up at the moment.
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
am completely on board with the idea of running 1 Specialty and 1 Normal at a time, and X Minis and X Micros.
I support this. With how long Mind Screw and GoldenEye took to fill, I don't think the playerbase can handle a third large game ongoing, while Minis and Micros seem to be firing pretty regularly (Off the Grid filled up in a Day, Twinborn in a week-ish).
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
So do we think it would be a good idea for Star Trek to close signups until Mind Screw finishes and open up signups for a Mini instead, with apologies to Annorax.
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
So do we think it would be a good idea for Star Trek to close signups until Mind Screw finishes and open up signups for a Mini instead, with apologies to Annorax.
If we do this, I'd be more inclined to run a Micro instead, since we already have a Mini running.
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
We're trying to let the Specialty queue play out, not prevent it from ever finishing.
If the playerbase is interested in different game-types isn't that more important than letting the game host run his game on the queue it was initially designed for?
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
So you're suggesting we should punish the hosts who took the time to create a balanced setup for the enjoyment of the players, get it reviewed (and getting reviewers these days is no small feat), and waited patiently on the list for months to be able to share their game with the players, just because we can't support three large games at a time?
If we have to, why not just run 2 of (PCQ, Normal, Specialty) at a time until the Specialty list clears up? And don't necessarily restrict the ability for large games to have sign-ups open - when enough players die in either, we'll see people start to fill the empty slots.
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 thing is, I want to fix the problem where we have sign ups open for weeks/months at a time. I think that it seriously impedes the playerbase when this happens and makes less games run overall, when the opposite should be happening.
On another note: Can we please make not reading your role PM a blacklistable offiense (or formally state it out)? I think it pretty clearly goes against the spirit of the game.
The thing is, I want to fix the problem where we have sign ups open for weeks/months at a time. I think that it seriously impedes the playerbase when this happens and makes less games run overall, when the opposite should be happening.
On another note: Can we please make not reading your role PM a blacklistable offiense (or formally state it out)? I think it pretty clearly goes against the spirit of the game.
@Proph-The person you are referring to might not have known. I also didn't know about that rule. If it is such an important offense why is it never in a single rules list when we have things like "Don't thank posts" or other such minutia as rules.
Totally agree that not reading your role PM should not be allowed. I'm surprised such a rule doesn't exist, but I guess that's because it's supposed to be assumed that doing it on purpose is incredibly underhanded, especially since games require confirmation of role PM receipt (which implies read).
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
So you're suggesting we should punish the hosts who took the time to create a balanced setup for the enjoyment of the players, get it reviewed (and getting reviewers these days is no small feat), and waited patiently on the list for months to be able to share their game with the players, just because we can't support three large games at a time?
If we have to, why not just run 2 of (PCQ, Normal, Specialty) at a time until the Specialty list clears up? And don't necessarily restrict the ability for large games to have sign-ups open - when enough players die in either, we'll see people start to fill the empty slots.
Punish? No. But if it's negatively impacting the health of the subforum, that takes priority. Otherwise, *none* of the game hosts will be running games.
Presumably, our hosts are designing their games for the benefit of the community, because they'd like to contribute to it. If we get in a situation where we're weirdly prioritizing the interests of game hosts in running games over the 16-30 people who may or may not want to play in said game, then we're killing ourselves.
The lifeblood of this forum is providing games that people WANT to play in. If you don't have that, you don't have a sub. And for every day that goes by without the ability to sign up for a game that people want to play in, we're turning people away and getting them out of the habit of checking on us and signing up for games. We can't continue that policy. It's been in effect too long already, with catastrophic results. Where are all our older players? Where are the new players coming in? We need to end this, not six to nine months from now, but immediately.
Should we simply make a move towards making this listed as a game rule more commonly?
I don't think it's really a probation/blacklist offense unless it intentional and/or repeated. There are plenty of ways to cheat that haven't been added to our rules as an exhaustive list of things you shouldn't do.
One option would be to put the people on the Specialties list into the PCQ, but give them a handicap, like two free votes. That way, they still have to prove the game is worthwhile, but are advantaged over someone starting from square one.
Of course, if the experience of Mind Screw should teach us anything, it's that a game could be voted up in the PCQ with much enthusiasm and still take an eternity to fill up and be coming to its end slowly and painfully. (With no disrespect to Tar, whose game is really cool; I think the age of Mind Screw/super-high complexity games on this site may be coming to its end.)
Another thing I though is that we could try running both micro and non-micro sign-ups both and see if it works.
Yes Iso, I know you said that they will prevent the bigger games from ever filling, but has it actually ever happened? I thought of giving it a try if it works and if it doesn't, go back to the old one.
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Quote from Prophylaxis »
Also modgaming Bur setups is kind of treading down a dark path
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
To be absolutely honest, how exactly do we know what games the playerbase wants? The only metric we're working on right now is the speed at which sign ups go, but those are heavily affected by the reduced size of the playerbase. The specific case of the slowness Star Trek currently in signups (and GoldenEye before it) can easily be explained by the playerbase being unable to support three large games at once. We already knew this when we decided to convert the Specialty queue into a PCQ-run thing, but somehow we've ended up trying to run three large games at once anyway. This is a bottle neck that *should* clear up once Mind Screw finishes and we're not running a third, PCQ game any more.
If we're serious about working out what the player base wants (which we should be), we have to do it properly. This would probably involve sending a survey to every active member asking them what they want to see. Beyond that though, if we're looking towards growth in general, I think it goes way beyond people not wanting to play the game currently in signups and those signups taking a long time.
Also, I would really prefer if you guys came up with unanimous rules/guidelines for the running the games (as in, in which order to launch set-ups and such). It would make my job easier.
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Quote from Prophylaxis »
Also modgaming Bur setups is kind of treading down a dark path
I always assumed that it should be stacking order of what type of setup finished last, with the limits of however many of each type of game we're running in consideration.
Since I'm next on the PCQ slot, I will be happy to hold my game off until the Specialty queue clears out once Mind Screw is over.
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
Also, I would really prefer if you guys came up with unanimous rules/guidelines for the running the games (as in, in which order to launch set-ups and such). It would make my job easier.
Agree the survey would be a nice idea - probably a poll would work best.
Xyre's idea of a PCQ-bonus to hosts who got bumped is a good compromise, I think.
The most important guideline for firing signups, IMO, is that the mini queue and micro queues should fire continually. At least one of those should be open at all times. We need a source of games that is always open, upon demand, and that has the capability of filling quickly. Not over the course of weeks or months.
Gosh, if only we had a type of game that we could have rolling signups for that was small and relatively uncomplex so that new players could join in too. We could call them "simples" or "easys".
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
Sure, have at it - then if the trend continues from before, where larger games are still unable to fill at a reasonable pace, can we go back to the previous method, or change the queue to size-based games?
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
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Please bump me to the bottom of the queue. Not sure I won't host again at some point but the time isn't now.
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Non-Staff Quasi-ModCheck out my Newborder Peasant Cube here! http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/37467
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Curse PremiumI'd also recommend people check out the articles list in general (once again, if you haven't read them already). Some of them are a bit old and advanced, but the information is still relevant.
Azrael changed his avatar?
kinda.
I totally mentioned it in the Championship 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
Oh. That the heck. Kinda.
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Curse Premium1. Should we move the Micro queue to a separate sign-ups queue? The reason why I would like to do this is because we have these large games that take forever to fill, and it's really annoying to see sign-ups stall because of this. For example, Mind Screw Salvation and GoldenEye both took one month for the game to fill, and I think that running some Micros on the side while we wait for the big games to fill up could help keep the players engaged, since Micros typically don't last very long. This quote encapsulates what I'm thinking perfectly:
2. Could we be more relaxed in enforcing the "no quintiple posting" etc rule? This is something that annoys me because in every other mafia site I've played at, posting four/five/six times when you're trying to catch up is perfectly normal - it helps with the readability of your posts, rather than turning your post into a morass of multiquotes and line breaks. Obviously if someone flies off the handles and posts 19+ times in a row (*cough* mastin *cough*) we should infract them, but for smaller scale incidents like these I don't really see the point in carding others for spam.
I'd love the input of the community on this, I think these are two small changes that can improve the quality of the subforum.
That being said, I could be persuaded to allow Micros to fire more frequently, but I don't really see how it helps do anything other than let people scratch an itch while risking making Large games take even longer to fire.
2) I thought were already pretty lax on spam infractions, particularly if the consecutive posts add sufficient content. That being said, it seems excessive to me make multiple posts while catching up and I don't feel that multiple posts helps with readability. What's wrong with writing thoughts in notepad or whatever as you read and then making the catchup as one post? I don't have a problem with someone, say, putting a PBPA in a separate post to questions addressed to another player, but making 6 posts in a row with one question each or with stream of consciousness thoughts while rereading is irritating.
This is, however, a question for you moderators. I don't even know what the official forum policy on multiple consecutive posts is.
Games move pretty slowly on MTGS compared to pretty much every other mafia site.
It's absurd to expect someone to wait for another person to post if they have a new thought, when there can be hours between posts. If there is no one else around and posting, multiple posts happen pretty often if someone is trying to solve the game. They get new thoughts, and either want to express them, or ask someone a question about them.
If someone spams off 7 posts with only seconds of delay in between each post, that's spam.
If someone spams off a series of posts with only like, one letter in each post to make a point (Think Y. O. U. A. R. E. S. C. U. M, or something), that's obviously spam.
Someone posting game content in every post, with a few minutes between each one isn't really spam. It's just a function of a slow moving game where there are not other players around actively posting. I've been in off-site games where a game going more than 2 minutes without a new post is considered odd.
As for the spamming, I think 3 posts in a row should be the hard limit. Anything else is spam, period. If you have multiple one-line thoughts after you make a post, you should be condensing them into a single post, even if they're stream-of-consciousness. It's a courtesy to other players, because nobody wants to read half a page full of one-liners from the same player.
Organize your thoughts, take your time, and post in chunks. If you're making a catch-up post, or a big post in general, divide it into reasonably-sized paragraphs. If you're concerned about the readability of your case due to quote-striping, then you should probably condense your case, or break it into separate posts.
If the game is quiet, then the mod needs to be prodding people.
There's absolutely no reason you should ever have to post more than 3 times in a row in a Mafia game.
{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 agree that context is important to multiposting. Like, I prefer multiposting on my phone because multiquotes suck and navigating them on mobile is the balls. Maybe 2 quotes per post would be sufficent, and save big big posts till you get home, but 4 or 5 posts in a row is hardly something worth getting mad at.
I do not believe micro's take away players from bigger games and they keep giving us something to do when waiting for a big one to fill.
And I use multiposting regularly. Mostly because I'm in a different timezone than most players. I reread, post my thoughts, think some more, post some more, read again and post... Often without anyone posting inbetween because they're all asleep. And on the phone it's just waaay easier to answer quote by quote than to try to multiquote (and then lose a whole array of thoughts once in a while).
How exactly do you query this stat?
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Curse PremiumWhat are your thoughts, then, on a rule that a large game can't post signups until one of the two large games ends? I don't think MTGS has the playerbase to support three simultaneous large games running at a time, and all of the signup stalls that have been happening recently have been due to a third large game posting signups when two are already running.
Larger games take nearly a month to fill up (GoldenEye and Mind Screw have, at least) and Star Trek is approaching the two week mark. I was thinking - since a Micro usually starts and ends within a week or less, it shouldn't affect large game signups, right?
The rules just say "don't consecutively multipost" but with mafia it's much more lax.
How do you propose we fix the problem of having one large game in signups for weeks at a time, then? You might not really see it as a problem, per se, but I think that it makes our community sluggish and makes smaller games bottlenecked by these larger ones.
My opinion on these have not changed in years.
{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
Let market forces decide. Seems like there's a huge demand for the minis, and the large games are just getting in the way. Even some of the large games that have fired don't seem to have been terribly well-received by the players.
If we can't run many large games anymore, but we have 5 or 6 or 7 minis running at a time, that's a perfectly fine direction for us to evolve in. I think we might just be surprised by how many more players would like to play, if only we let them sign up for the minis that they wanted in the first place. Don't those things fill up literally 30x faster than the large games do these days? A single day?
If people get a large game itch they want to scratch now and again, we've always got the PCQ or FTQ to step in and fill that gap from time to time.
{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
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Curse PremiumThere are two more Specialties in the queue, and then we're officially killing the Specialty Queue off in favor of the PCQ.
This was all decided upon a while ago.
{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
{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
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Curse Premium{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
{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
If the playerbase is interested in different game-types isn't that more important than letting the game host run his game on the queue it was initially designed for?
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
If we have to, why not just run 2 of (PCQ, Normal, Specialty) at a time until the Specialty list clears up? And don't necessarily restrict the ability for large games to have sign-ups open - when enough players die in either, we'll see people start to fill the empty slots.
{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
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Curse PremiumOn another note: Can we please make not reading your role PM a blacklistable offiense (or formally state it out)? I think it pretty clearly goes against the spirit of the game.
@Proph-The person you are referring to might not have known. I also didn't know about that rule. If it is such an important offense why is it never in a single rules list when we have things like "Don't thank posts" or other such minutia as rules.
{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
{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
Punish? No. But if it's negatively impacting the health of the subforum, that takes priority. Otherwise, *none* of the game hosts will be running games.
Presumably, our hosts are designing their games for the benefit of the community, because they'd like to contribute to it. If we get in a situation where we're weirdly prioritizing the interests of game hosts in running games over the 16-30 people who may or may not want to play in said game, then we're killing ourselves.
The lifeblood of this forum is providing games that people WANT to play in. If you don't have that, you don't have a sub. And for every day that goes by without the ability to sign up for a game that people want to play in, we're turning people away and getting them out of the habit of checking on us and signing up for games. We can't continue that policy. It's been in effect too long already, with catastrophic results. Where are all our older players? Where are the new players coming in? We need to end this, not six to nine months from now, but immediately.
Should we simply make a move towards making this listed as a game rule more commonly?
I don't think it's really a probation/blacklist offense unless it intentional and/or repeated. There are plenty of ways to cheat that haven't been added to our rules as an exhaustive list of things you shouldn't do.
Of course, if the experience of Mind Screw should teach us anything, it's that a game could be voted up in the PCQ with much enthusiasm and still take an eternity to fill up and be coming to its end slowly and painfully. (With no disrespect to Tar, whose game is really cool; I think the age of Mind Screw/super-high complexity games on this site may be coming to its end.)
Experiments Series: #5 (Courtly Intrigue Mafia) | #4 (Drunken Tracker) | #3 (Big Red Button) - coming soon | #2 (Pope Mafia) | #1 (Iso's Inflammable Mafia)
Mini Games: MTGS Mafia Redux II (Invitational, Evil Mirror Universe) | Unreal City
Old Games (bad): The Greenwood Affair | Blood Moon Mafia
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Non-Staff Quasi-ModYes Iso, I know you said that they will prevent the bigger games from ever filling, but has it actually ever happened? I thought of giving it a try if it works and if it doesn't, go back to the old one.
{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
If we're serious about working out what the player base wants (which we should be), we have to do it properly. This would probably involve sending a survey to every active member asking them what they want to see. Beyond that though, if we're looking towards growth in general, I think it goes way beyond people not wanting to play the game currently in signups and those signups taking a long time.
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Non-Staff Quasi-ModAlso, I would really prefer if you guys came up with unanimous rules/guidelines for the running the games (as in, in which order to launch set-ups and such). It would make my job easier.
Since I'm next on the PCQ slot, I will be happy to hold my game off until the Specialty queue clears out once Mind Screw is over.
{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
Agree the survey would be a nice idea - probably a poll would work best.
Xyre's idea of a PCQ-bonus to hosts who got bumped is a good compromise, I think.
The most important guideline for firing signups, IMO, is that the mini queue and micro queues should fire continually. At least one of those should be open at all times. We need a source of games that is always open, upon demand, and that has the capability of filling quickly. Not over the course of weeks or months.
{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 suspect we may have people begin to volunteer to address the problem, if we come to that point, however.
Sure, have at it - then if the trend continues from before, where larger games are still unable to fill at a reasonable pace, can we go back to the previous method, or change the queue to size-based games?
{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