I agree with Az that Xyre's case on WoD is forced especially after considering the fact that Xyre called at least one of WoD's posts scummy then when much earlier he had read that exact same post as town citing it as a WoD like thing to do. And then he ended his cases saying that WoD was acting unWoD-like. I have some more to say but enough time. I'll try to post later.
In case you're asking why I'm voting and unvoting back to back, it's because I'm wavering on the validity of our wagons. OK.
When I'm interested in reading a player, I do tend to wait for reactions.
When I have a strong town read on a player, as I mentioned I had with Skander, I'll tend to weigh in against a dubious attack against them whether they've responded personally or not. A read that strong that early in the game? I find that hard to believe. I don't think you've explained where your read of Skander came from so early on so could you explain now?
Yes, abandoning my read is precisely the correct connotation. I no longer trusted it because it was a tenative read, and by that time was outweighed by more substantive actions. And your read on Skander wasn't? Other than that lingering question this defense makes sense.
I mention sarcasm because it can be one of the components of a scum-like response; especially one in which they're attempting to belittle the attacks against them. Yes, but you didn't explain how sarcasm made the belittling any scummier. You kind of just stuck it in there and didn't explain how it made the actions any scummier.
Strong language is standard operating procedure for me when I'm launching an initial pressure vote. If a player doesn't take the pressure seriously, their reactions are less likely to be useful. Ok this makes sense.
I can see where Azrael was coming from when he attacked Kraj and how he constructed the attack, but his explanations made his defense of Skander much more suspicious.
Quote from toast »
A vote is not always a symbol of willingness to lynch. And purely on meta? It does strike me that you're trying to get away from something with this vote, it's weak.
In the post, he said he was cool with lynching WoD. With a suspicion like that why didn't you follow up with any sort of vote?
Quote from Kpaca »
Skander, the keyword is "active". I feel more as if you give an opinion on an argument made by someone else, mostly either in support or opposition to it, all the while never doing your own attacks.
I don't think that this is entirely fair. While Skander has not pursued his own attacks, he has questioned other players and added unique points to other's cases. However, I can agree that I'm also getting a hollow feeling from Skander's posts. I think he could be putting out a lot more of his own thoughts and reads.
And I don't like his response.
Quote from Skander »
kpaca: This is the second time you've mentioned that you feel that I'm scum without providing reasons. Although this time you did try and put something on me as opposed to last time where you admitted it was pure gut. But seriously? I haven't been scumhunting? I've been commenting on everything that's been going on here...
The emotion in his response doesn't seem genuine; to me, he's not indignant about Kpaca's opinion. He's just dismissing the point with questions that don't even accurately address Kpaca's read and bringing up Kpaca's gut read as if it has anything to do with the concrete argument brought against him.
A) That's exactly what I did. I had a "point" to add and added it.
B) Yes the point just ocurred to me. Only, that it isn't really a point. See above.
C) You are making this up. You are basing all your points on the assumption that you are always right and I don't think(and I know it isn't) that's the case.
"Thoughts on Kraj": Where exactly do you see the changing thoughts in his post?
A and B are mutually exclusive: you can't have originally thought of the point and had forgotten to post it, and also have just had the same point occur to you. However, I can see how what I meant by point A could be easily misinterpreted. I'm going to take "the point just occurred to me" as your answer since you explicitly stated it. And I've already explained why I find this scummy:
B) The point just occurred to him now. This I think is scummy because it indicates that the original attack wasn't very well thought out and he's just adding in details as he goes along.
Feeling good about Azrael right now. Rather than support or shoot down my wagon, he sat back and watched reactions. I ought to have some comments on said reactions tomorrow.
I think this brings an interesting point to the table. Azrael, as I've read in other games as well, has a tendency to wait and evaluate players based on reactions. But he didn't do so when Xyre attacked Skander. He responded to the attack before Skander had anything to say for himself (and later Skander seemed to be hiding behind that defense). By doing this, he implicitly assumes Skander's towniness and is not actually interested in reading him as it seems he wants us to think. But then this brings into question why he waited for reactions in the Kraj incident (if I may call it that). My answer is exactly what he was accusing Kraj of doing: "he was already planning on using it to launch counter-strikes; regardless of the style in which people attacked him." in that Azrael was going to use the results of Kraj's "gambit" to stage an attack. What helped me reach this conclusion was his seemingly forced attack on Kraj:
His first-post joke-vote against WoD struck me as a form of townie humor, rather than mafia.
But as of his last two posts, I'm abandoning that read, and joining the wagon.
I'll start here. "abandoning your read, and joining the wagon" seems off to me. Abandoning has the connotation that you're merely leaving it behind and forgetting about it as opposed to actually have read into something that convinced you otherwise. Joining the wagon I think helps clarify that an opposing read isn't what's important here.
The lightning-fast day/bandwagoning point against bunk is bunk. Don't take his surface motive at face value. Part of what Kraj was doing was setting up a trap, eliciting reactions. He says as much in his last two posts, and he's the calibre of player who won't accidentally put on a sandwich board with big, bold red letters screaming "VOTE FOR ME!", unless he means to.
Don't consider that evidence against him.
As for the things that do disturb me in his last two posts under substantial pressure, stay tuned below.
Having set his trap and sprung it, we have an across-the-board, mildly sarcastic assault directed at the folks putting pressure on him.
Sarcasm isn't much of a tell on his own, but he's not even really engaging with the arguments against him here. On the argument that his vote-switch to Toastboy was bizarre (it was, although on purpose), he plays it off as though his behavior was perfectly normal and his attackers are overreacting.
It may be a bad point, but he takes a cheap stab instead of admitting the stunt was odd.
Pointing out sarcasm seems to be not an actual part of the argument but rather an attempt to make it appear better. Really your point is that he's playing off the attacks and pretending like the attacker's are overreacting. The fact that he's using sarcasm has nothing to do with whether your points are valid or not.
Then there's his comment about people seeing his bandwagon on Toasty was scummy, even though we don't know Toasty's alignment. Completely overlooks that the style of a post is a much better indicator of alignment than its actual effect.
Come on. We can't accuse anyone of being scummy before we know if the person they're attacking is scum? Please.
As a possible town explanation, maybe that comment is being generated out of Kraj hoping to gain reactions on two levels: reactions to himself, and information about Toastboy's alignment (who he does appear to suspect). Still, it's incredibly off-base.
Up till now, we've just had some weird logic errors. But when we get to this point, we start getting some dodgy mindset tells.
This basically tells me that Az wasn't ever reading to much into the above points anyway.
This reaction looks canned. And by canned, I mean I think he was planning on making this post as soon as he voted for Toastboy. Going into the gambit, he was already planning on using it to launch counter-strikes; regardless of the style in which people attacked him.
I haven't seen any scum tells generated in the course of the attack on Kraj. Some useful town reactions perhaps, but no scum indicators. Nevertheless Kraj has already started auto-firing at everyone who took a piece out of him. There's no thinking-through who's been scummy here: he's just mindlessly retaliating against everyone who attacked him.
That's a scum-like defense against pressure, not a pro-town thinking process.
I think this is where Az overlooks some important parts of Kraj's analysis: he's taking everyone who posted in some responsive way to his "gambit" post into account. And, Az overexaggerates (perhaps intentionally to make the point seem better) in saying that Kraj is auto-firing because Kraj's responses at a lot of points were defenses rather than counter attacks.
Whew. Look at that counter-attack. The language is so super-charged, it almost palpably sizzles. Rhetoric that strong doesn't indicate an analytical mindset, it indicates a fighting mentality.
Maybe a townie Kraj falls into a fighting mentality in this situation, but I'm inclined to read this as mafia pulling a gambit, and catching a little bit more heat from it than he expected. Instead of coolly presenting his explanation, with confidence in his ability to survive, he's seriously concerned by this pressure. I don't think a townie would be as seriously concerned, if he had a valid defense already prepared, and at least one analyst in-thread (me) who had already signalled that he recognized the gambit.
Consider my vote on Kraj.
Requesting vote-count.
Overall, I feel that Az's attack on Kraj was quite forced. The opening line I think betrayed Az's intentions and I feel like add had to add unnecessary things to make the case seem better. Unvote, Vote Azrael.
I find the following players suspicious:
Charm_Master3125- He hasn't been saying much and seems to be circumventing major discussion topics: specifically with his vote on Skander and then Kraj where he votes them for the mere speed of the wagon and neglects to comment on the validity of the wagon itself.
ChrisXIV- I think I've already made myself clear here.
Azrael- Look above.
I'll put together my thoughts on all of the players later; I'm quite hungry right now.
Well, I was hoping that Phantom would answer my question and Chris would respond again before I left but oh well. I think I have enough to analyze from Chris.
Kraj votes for kpaca because he thinks that one of kpaca's posts warranted the vote. Kraj later confirms that he is happy with his vote - on kpaca. And then he proceeds to vote Toastboy, who is unable to defend himself in the same post.
Most of his answer was repetition which is what I expected. However, he felt the need to add a previously unmentioned point (black writing). I think he did this because of
A) He originally meant this as a point but never expressed it in thread. I find this unlikely because when players generally have points to add they add them.
B) The point just occurred to him now. This I think is scummy because it indicates that the original attack wasn't very well thought out and he's just adding in details as he goes along.
C) By my asking him to explain why exactly he thought it was scummy, he felt that the attack was weak and made something new up to support it. This I also think is scummy.
Now for Xyre's answer to my question:
Whoops. That could be. I haven't read any games of WoD as scum, whereas I've seen (and run) many games with WoD as town when he played like this.
This seemed townie to me. He didn't try making stuff up to justify his position and he didn't overexaggerate on the potential mistake with smilies and an overkill promise to read all of WoD's games to fix it.
Now for my thoughts on Kraj switching his vote which he was happy about from Kpaca to Toast. It seemed townie to me. His switch was the mark of changing thoughts and opinions as he wrote the post. This to me indicates that his post was a genuine expression of his thoughts as they developed.
why do you think WoD doing a WoD-type thing (I interpreted this as the word "playstyle") is a town tell? Aren't actions indicative of playstyle more null tells than anything else?
Xyre could you answer these questions? You didn't address it in your last post.
Kraj votes for kpaca because he thinks that one of kpaca's posts warranted the vote. Kraj later confirms that he is happy with his vote - on kpaca. And then he proceeds to vote Toastboy, who is unable to defend himself in the same post.
Why is it scummy for him vote for some one who is currently to defend themselves for a couple of days? Toastboy can just answer the accusations once he comes back.
Why is the fact that Kraj switched his vote from some one he was happy it was on to some one else in the same postscummy? It means the opposite for me.
Also, masons should stop name claiming unless they can provide a valid reason to do so. We don't know if it will help or hurt us.
I can see where Azrael was coming from when he attacked Kraj and how he constructed the attack, but his explanations made his defense of Skander much more suspicious.
In the post, he said he was cool with lynching WoD. With a suspicion like that why didn't you follow up with any sort of vote?
I don't think that this is entirely fair. While Skander has not pursued his own attacks, he has questioned other players and added unique points to other's cases. However, I can agree that I'm also getting a hollow feeling from Skander's posts. I think he could be putting out a lot more of his own thoughts and reads.
And I don't like his response.
The emotion in his response doesn't seem genuine; to me, he's not indignant about Kpaca's opinion. He's just dismissing the point with questions that don't even accurately address Kpaca's read and bringing up Kpaca's gut read as if it has anything to do with the concrete argument brought against him.
A and B are mutually exclusive: you can't have originally thought of the point and had forgotten to post it, and also have just had the same point occur to you. However, I can see how what I meant by point A could be easily misinterpreted. I'm going to take "the point just occurred to me" as your answer since you explicitly stated it. And I've already explained why I find this scummy:
What is the point of voting like this?
I think this brings an interesting point to the table. Azrael, as I've read in other games as well, has a tendency to wait and evaluate players based on reactions. But he didn't do so when Xyre attacked Skander. He responded to the attack before Skander had anything to say for himself (and later Skander seemed to be hiding behind that defense). By doing this, he implicitly assumes Skander's towniness and is not actually interested in reading him as it seems he wants us to think. But then this brings into question why he waited for reactions in the Kraj incident (if I may call it that). My answer is exactly what he was accusing Kraj of doing: "he was already planning on using it to launch counter-strikes; regardless of the style in which people attacked him." in that Azrael was going to use the results of Kraj's "gambit" to stage an attack. What helped me reach this conclusion was his seemingly forced attack on Kraj:
Overall, I feel that Az's attack on Kraj was quite forced. The opening line I think betrayed Az's intentions and I feel like add had to add unnecessary things to make the case seem better.
Unvote, Vote Azrael.
I find the following players suspicious:
Charm_Master3125- He hasn't been saying much and seems to be circumventing major discussion topics: specifically with his vote on Skander and then Kraj where he votes them for the mere speed of the wagon and neglects to comment on the validity of the wagon itself.
ChrisXIV- I think I've already made myself clear here.
Azrael- Look above.
I'll put together my thoughts on all of the players later; I'm quite hungry right now.
Most of his answer was repetition which is what I expected. However, he felt the need to add a previously unmentioned point (black writing). I think he did this because of
A) He originally meant this as a point but never expressed it in thread. I find this unlikely because when players generally have points to add they add them.
B) The point just occurred to him now. This I think is scummy because it indicates that the original attack wasn't very well thought out and he's just adding in details as he goes along.
C) By my asking him to explain why exactly he thought it was scummy, he felt that the attack was weak and made something new up to support it. This I also think is scummy.
Now for Xyre's answer to my question:
This seemed townie to me. He didn't try making stuff up to justify his position and he didn't overexaggerate on the potential mistake with smilies and an overkill promise to read all of WoD's games to fix it.
Now for my thoughts on Kraj switching his vote which he was happy about from Kpaca to Toast. It seemed townie to me. His switch was the mark of changing thoughts and opinions as he wrote the post. This to me indicates that his post was a genuine expression of his thoughts as they developed.
Xyre could you answer these questions? You didn't address it in your last post.
I don't think its fair to give anyone credit for the town win- just SK's ability.
Why is it scummy for him to vote for someone who is currently unable...
Why is it scummy for him vote for some one who is currently to defend themselves for a couple of days? Toastboy can just answer the accusations once he comes back.
Why is the fact that Kraj switched his vote from some one he was happy it was on to some one else in the same postscummy? It means the opposite for me.
oh wait... I don't think I'll have time.
/replace