Also As putting Cantrip at top town tier feels weird.
I've felt good about Cantrip's posts, but his constant disappearing and lack of presence don't make him my top tier town read.
He's the friendliest of the lurkers. You could kind of sub-categorize this a bit given lurking quotients, but I'd be more willing to bank on Cantrip's occasionally showing up to make positive town posts once in a blue moon, over some others'.
But given how little pressure is being put on the lurkers, or on anyone really, the town is lacking information on a whole variety of fronts. There really haven't been very many major wagons at all. Nobody placing votes, nobody moving things.
Without that information generation, the town's information pool is severely under-developed. Most towns I'm used to would have 3x or 4x as many wagons to analyze at this point of the game.
To elaborate. If Boom is scum, he's done an absolutely fantastic job. I can't clear him, but he's not the most likely deep wolf, at all.
Bessie? Not so much. Totally vanished today at EOD, complete non-factor for the town. Not sure why she wasn't prodded. Pretty good starting spot for you, if you want to hunt deep wolves.
Vaimes is here mainly due to anti-town effect. He's just not doing good things for the town. I can't pin anything on him tell-wise, but I've never been able to previously, either.
Tubba is just a generic lurker, in my book. They're not all of them scum. Hasn't given me much either way.
Bur and Cuth seem more like the pernicious types, for reasons previously stated. My ISOs will have those preserved for you.
None of the others on my POE are viable until someone makes a persuasive case. That hasn't happened, and I didn't have time. Lynches are non-viable until goes to the effort of making them viable.
If someone does, you got a shot. Take a look, do some analysis, it's still a winnable position.
I don't think my analysis is fully complete, but it's a good starting point. With relatively little content and responses going on, that makes it hard to pin down deep wolves. But the low-hanging fruit are much easier to start with. And the town's never going to win, if those lurkers don't get replaced or killed.
You're already losing, and I'm out of my misery, no longer tasked with doing endless work for a town who doesn't care. At this point, I put in my best effort, my work is finished, it's just a relief.
The trajectory is correctible mathematically, the POE issues don't seem impossible, but there's no willpower to take any of the necessary steps to find scum and direct votes into the correct POE.
You've still got a fair number of people who can be town-read. That's helpful. But starting to place votes early, doing actual analysis. Kinda hard to win without that stuff.
We have you, me, Tubba, and Wisp. Not counting Tammy even if she's here.
You already said you're sticking around though. So there's no use in you placing your vote on me early.
In fact, if anything, that makes it more difficult for you to hit 8 votes on me if someone who doesn't want to be the one to end early goes away. The 7th spot should go to that person, if anyone, but I doubt there's going to be any problem getting me to 8. Hell, I'll probably pile on myself to help you avoid another no lynch. This town is clearly stuck in sequential mode and isn't going to be able to hunt multiple scum reads/comprehensive teams all at once, so that's the lesser evil given the personnel we have.
But given how far beyond you're going to be, you need that extra lynch today. Don't play fast and casual and give up that advantage.
Looks like no one is going to be compiling that "willing to lynch list", so the best available proxy for that is placing votes on the leaders who aren't yet near the lynch threshold who qualify. Cuth and LW are the two closest on my "willing to lynch" list.
This style of play means that I have an obligation, to you, as town, to provide a valid explanation for why I'm doing whatever the hell it is that I'm doing.
If I can't provide that town explanation for my behavior, then I've failed you and I've failed the rest of the town by failing to make myself clear. If I don't give you necessary information that you need to read me, I'm hurting the town.
That's all I've been trying to do here. You stated that you felt my dismissing your cases was a tell. That means it's now my burden of proof to respond and explain. Not bludgeoning - giving you a necessary tool.
If it's useless to you, because this isn't a thing that you do, I'm sorry. But that's the pattern of how I respond to every case that someone makes against me, by making sure that they have the info they need to reach correct conclusions. Under this system, that's what I'm supposed to do.
For anyone who actually is interested in tracking what the hell I'm talking about:
Quote from Az Article »
How do we get better at playing mafia? At the end of the day, it all boils down to one thing: honing our behavioral edge. Role analysis and design speculation only get us so far, especially when the moderator designs his game well. Of course, behavioral analysis can be very difficult. Not only do you have to directly compete against another human being who is trying very hard not be discovered, but we also have to be able sift through the false leads created by our own teammates. We have to be able to distinguish between good evidence, and red herrings.
The Scum Tell Method: Actus Reus
But there is a common tendency among players not to approach the problem this way. Most players track of a list of behaviors that people generally say are mafia tells. Evasion, appeals to emotion, defending scum, snacking on babies, and so on. Most players refer to these activities as scum tells. The more scum tells a person has, the higher they are on your scum scale, and the higher the chance that they’re scum. If a player has a higher level of scum tells than you would expect them to have as a townie, they’re put on the short list for your vote. If they max out their scale high enough, the town eliminates them.
In criminal law terminology, they concentrate on the "actus reus". The actions of their fellow players, and whether those actions help or hurt the town, and whether those actions look like one of the traditional mafia tells. The mens rea element (mental state) is deemphasized.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the scum tell method. It does a fair job of catching inexperienced players who haven’t learned that they need to avoid traditional scum tells at all costs, and can sometimes nab experienced players who slip up and commit one in a moment of weakness. It’s also a good introductory method for newer players, because it teaches beginners to what to look for, and it is very, very simple. You read through the thread, identify behaviors that might be scummy, and cast your vote accordingly. 1,2, 3.
But as times goes on, the weaknesses of this approach have become obvious. For one, may of the activities that were labelled as tells early in the game’s history may not actually be tells at all, or at minimum may be not be anywhere near as strong as we used to believe. Two, this approach is extremely predictable. It gives scum a clear and simple instruction manual of what behaviors to avoid if they don’t want to be lynched. It allows them to hide a guilty mind behind innocent-seeming actions.
But the greatest downside to the scum tell method is that if you choose not to evaluate whether your evidence is reliable, if often won't be. Town players can easily max out a scum scale with activities that have completely innocent and reasonable townie explanations. When that happens, innocent townies become collateral damage, and the scum reap the benefits of pointless and preventable mistakes.
Causation Analysis
The scum tell scale method may be a good technique for beginners, but other methods of analyzing behavior exist. As players become more experienced, they often begin to realize that the game of mafia is more complex than crime and punishment. There is a component of empathy.
Huh? Empathy? What do you mean by that? Are we supposed to feel sorry for the scum?
What I mean by empathy is that we have to be able to step inside the heads of our fellow players. What a player does in public is only one half of the picture. The other half, the more revealing half, is their motive for doing it. We want to figure out the cause of their actions, and their emotions.
He's the friendliest of the lurkers. You could kind of sub-categorize this a bit given lurking quotients, but I'd be more willing to bank on Cantrip's occasionally showing up to make positive town posts once in a blue moon, over some others'.
But given how little pressure is being put on the lurkers, or on anyone really, the town is lacking information on a whole variety of fronts. There really haven't been very many major wagons at all. Nobody placing votes, nobody moving things.
Without that information generation, the town's information pool is severely under-developed. Most towns I'm used to would have 3x or 4x as many wagons to analyze at this point of the game.
I look forward to your demise, scum. It's a travesty the town's love of shiny objects and lurking has allowed you to survive this long.
Bessie? Not so much. Totally vanished today at EOD, complete non-factor for the town. Not sure why she wasn't prodded. Pretty good starting spot for you, if you want to hunt deep wolves.
Vaimes is here mainly due to anti-town effect. He's just not doing good things for the town. I can't pin anything on him tell-wise, but I've never been able to previously, either.
Tubba is just a generic lurker, in my book. They're not all of them scum. Hasn't given me much either way.
Bur and Cuth seem more like the pernicious types, for reasons previously stated. My ISOs will have those preserved for you.
Again:
Tier 1 Town (5)
Sloth
Anak
Tammy
KJ
Cantrip
Angry Elf (town unless faking anger) (1)
HR
Tier 2 Trees (4)
Boom
Vaimes
Bessie
Tubba
Scum/Neutrals (3)
LW
Bur
Cuthalion
No hard feelings at all. Rooting for you. Hope the Cuth shot helps us both.
None of the others on my POE are viable until someone makes a persuasive case. That hasn't happened, and I didn't have time. Lynches are non-viable until goes to the effort of making them viable.
If someone does, you got a shot. Take a look, do some analysis, it's still a winnable position.
I don't think my analysis is fully complete, but it's a good starting point. With relatively little content and responses going on, that makes it hard to pin down deep wolves. But the low-hanging fruit are much easier to start with. And the town's never going to win, if those lurkers don't get replaced or killed.
The trajectory is correctible mathematically, the POE issues don't seem impossible, but there's no willpower to take any of the necessary steps to find scum and direct votes into the correct POE.
You've still got a fair number of people who can be town-read. That's helpful. But starting to place votes early, doing actual analysis. Kinda hard to win without that stuff.
And skipping the extra lynch? That's just...lol.
You already said you're sticking around though. So there's no use in you placing your vote on me early.
In fact, if anything, that makes it more difficult for you to hit 8 votes on me if someone who doesn't want to be the one to end early goes away. The 7th spot should go to that person, if anyone, but I doubt there's going to be any problem getting me to 8. Hell, I'll probably pile on myself to help you avoid another no lynch. This town is clearly stuck in sequential mode and isn't going to be able to hunt multiple scum reads/comprehensive teams all at once, so that's the lesser evil given the personnel we have.
But given how far beyond you're going to be, you need that extra lynch today. Don't play fast and casual and give up that advantage.
Tier 1 Town (5)
Sloth
Anak
Tammy
KJ
Cantrip
Angry Elf (town unless faking anger) (1)
HR
Tier 2 Trees (4)
Boom
Vaimes
Bessie
Tubba
Scum/Neutrals (3)
LW
Bur
Cuthalion
Hey, Vaimes, you -1'd us. If you unvote for a bit, we can see if we can get someone else ramped up to lynch range instead of giving away a free lynch.
vote: Cuthalion, vote: Last Whisper.
Looks like no one is going to be compiling that "willing to lynch list", so the best available proxy for that is placing votes on the leaders who aren't yet near the lynch threshold who qualify. Cuth and LW are the two closest on my "willing to lynch" list.
Not what I'm going for. *sigh*
This style of play means that I have an obligation, to you, as town, to provide a valid explanation for why I'm doing whatever the hell it is that I'm doing.
If I can't provide that town explanation for my behavior, then I've failed you and I've failed the rest of the town by failing to make myself clear. If I don't give you necessary information that you need to read me, I'm hurting the town.
That's all I've been trying to do here. You stated that you felt my dismissing your cases was a tell. That means it's now my burden of proof to respond and explain. Not bludgeoning - giving you a necessary tool.
If it's useless to you, because this isn't a thing that you do, I'm sorry. But that's the pattern of how I respond to every case that someone makes against me, by making sure that they have the info they need to reach correct conclusions. Under this system, that's what I'm supposed to do.