MTG Salvation

Probably, given the town's past history in invitationals, the town really doesn't need significant power. I know it was requested to make it not a mountainous game, but with as many invitational games as have ended with flawless town victories in the last 4-5 years, the two Masons made a bad situation pretty much impossible for the scum, I think.

Probably wouldn't have mattered in the end given the early collapse, but given the trend, the town certainly won't need that kind of help when you have townies like iso in the mix.

I don't think that our long game deadlines are a problem, but if people see fit to run some shorter deadline games, there's certainly an untapped market there for the tapping.

Quote from Annorax »

Another thought that I had was updating/adjusting some of our older material for other sites and using that to bring new players into our community by running one-off games on those other sites and letting their players experience our unique flavor of Mafia without leaving home, then leaving them with a "this was one of our greatest hits, join up on MTGS to see the current games in these series." One good example would be SomethingAwful, which has a number of former MTGS players and somehow manages to fill 24 player games in a day or two; if we can recruit some of that player base, things would get much more interesting.

I'm seriously considering doing an XL version of MU2 to bring it up to 25 or so players and running it over there after MU4 is done. Any thoughts on whether this might be a good play?

I would probably hold off on that until we get better organized, and figure out who's going to be in charge of selecting what setups should run. It's likely to be a process similar to the FTQ, most likely put to a vote by the FTQ committee amongst multiple contenders.

Ok. So we need to hammer out solutions to these issues:

1. Newb games/recruitment/player contact list
2. Appropriate mix of complex vs. core games
3. Appropriate mix of short and long deadlines
4. Encourage moderators, hosts, and the community to utilize report post features and to police overly negative play.
5. Stance Towards MU

Proposals:

1. The original incarnation of the player contact list was a terrific tool, but it took a lot of time to update.

What we might consider putting in its place is a player contact list that we just discard and refresh every three to four months. Or just use a single thread and let it get massive - whatever works.

Within it, players can sign up for basic or "core" games, which will fire upon the demand threshold being met. Players can also state if there is a particular game type they're looking for, and when signups go up, the host can contact those players, if he or she sees fit. That will also help our hosts and the council gauge what types of games the playerbase is looking to play in, in close to real time, gauge how much latent demand is out there, and provide a good spot for new players to sign up for games. We can also use it to fire games of any queue type without waiting for the previous game to end, if there is demand to support it.

To implement, we would need either one of the current or a new mafia secretary to monitor the thread and identify when sufficient support for a game type to fire may exist, and get a mod to sticky/unsticky as needed.

(How's that, Eco?)

2. Per the above, I think that method would result in a good mix of both complex games and core games. As part of the bargain, once we bring back basics, I don't think there's any reason to put complexity restrictions on normals, and those can go back to being purely size-based. (Sound good Iso?)

3. Could we institute a rule in which the playerbase in each game gets to vote on what kind of deadline they want, ranging from three days, to two weeks, to unlimited, or a sliding scale that provides additional time during the early phases of the game? Or would we rather break that down by game type, so that core games get variable deadlines and the rest stay as is?

4. If you see it, say something. Most of the active players in the forum have been following this conversation. View it as a recruiting issue.

5. I think we need to have some kind of presence or relationship with MU, because it doesn't have to be a one-way street where only one site or the other benefits. A lot of the newer players who have been making things interesting around here, are players from other sites who stumbled onto us one way or another, liked our playerbase compared to the others that are out there, and wanted to stick around. Even in our relatively pared down state, we have an awesome group of players here, which playing in the MU invitational only underscored for me. The more we mingle with other sites, the greater chance we have of drawing in those guys to play not only on their home sites, but here as well. We have a critical mass of talent here, and talent draws talent.

For that reason, I think regularly scheduled cross-town games, as Askthepizzaguy suggested, are an obvious choice to help market ourselves. Do we have any volunteers who would like to coordinate with him on organizing that?

I also think that it wouldn't be a terrible idea to run a limited amount of other games on mafia universe on a periodic basis - games that we bill as "long deadline" games, perhaps, that we open up to other MU players to try out. Again, the objective being to both expand our own playerbase, but also to help build up MU by offering a quality of game design, and a unique play experience, that few other sites can match. Perhaps we run the PCQ games over there, since those will tend to be the most distinctive and draw in more of our experienced players, and we can tailor the PCQ games in response to feedback more readily than we can tune our other queues.

EDIT: Cross-referencing my comments on Annorax's proposal in the council thread:

Quote from annorax »

Kind of, but more focused on ongoing narrative. We have proven serialized games and serialized stories. We have one-off games that could be developed into serialized stories. I'm thinking of a queue that focuses on that, running alongside the FTQ. I'm thinking of a queue we can really sell to players to get them talking on other sites & bringing players in. I'm thinking of a queue that banks on what we're really good at & focuses it on growing our community.

FTQ gets the new, great ideas. This queue would build on the ones that have the popularity and design space to be built into more than one game. It'd be a queue for sequels and reboots so that they're running as often as possible and bringing players in from outside to experience what we've all experienced makes MTGS mafia unique.

I think it's an essential part of building an experience; after all, have you really experienced our flavor of Mafia if you haven't played a Star Trek: Myriad Universes game (hate tooting my own horn, but if people are still signing up for the series four games in, I have to be doing something right), Cyan's Impossible Mafia, any of Seppel's games, or any of the dozens of other games we've had that ooze innovation and creativity? Creative setups are something we're really, really good at, and that's something that I think needs to be more accessible to new players, especially experienced ones coming from other sites.

We've got a lot of creativity, we're not doing much to get the word out about it & bring players in, and I think this queue can do exactly that.

Hmm. Hold up a moment guys, I think Annorax is really onto something here.

It's not just that we're trying to start another FTQ or PCQ. He's talking about the way we market ourselves, and emphasizing our strongest designs and story-telling elements in an intentional manner. Not just for our own consumption, but for recruitment.

For instance, what if we ran a trilogy of games based on xyre's designwork? They could feature similar flavor and design, and I could imagine word-of-mouth and excitement building as the trilogy progresses. Not enough spots to sign up? Well, we've got all these other fine games available back on the mothership...

Now, let's say we got intentional about the way we offered those games, and did it on MU. Maybe in one of the cross-town games Askthepizzaguy proposed, for maximum impact Hell, I'd guess that even just as a spectator event you might have a few dozen people just observing. Think about the potential for recruiting.

I think we probably need to bring our "welcome new players" thread back down into the main section of the forum somehow too. The problem was that it was combined with our rules thread, I believe, and the Curse types wanted all the rules in an announcement at the top.

But there's really not much of a chance that new players perusing the forum are going to notice it when they scan through, looking for a thread to sign up. I'm guessing we're not getting any mentor requests or player contact list requests ever since we got switched to that system.

It also appears that we don't have any signups available at the moment? Which is another thing we have to avoid at all costs. The new player contact list was supposed to be our backup for that eventuality, so we need to either duplicate the rules thread and move it down, or just split the content. Mods?

Quote from Iso »

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, in conjunction with the Mafia Design Throwdown, we were also thinking we'd start preparing for an inter-site throwdown between MTGS players, and mafiascum players, using the League scoring system.

For venue, we were thinking we'd start off on Mafiascum, and switch back and forth a bit, depending on how many games we're set to play.

In order to organize that, we were hoping that folks who are familiar with mafiascum can point us in the right directon/act as liaisons and contact information people for us, helping us get in touch with their leadership and players who would be suited to play and to judge.

We also figured we'd use that as an opportunity to also promote the design throwdown, in case there's some folks who'd find that interesting, as well.

As yet, not sure whether this will be an elite squad vs. elite squad sort of thing, or whether we can finagle a way to make it more inclusive.

Raise your hand if you can pitch in with that, or are interested in participating.

Quote from D_V »

I am more than free to ask that this be made public.

By making a public call out you have made it in the public view. There were many ways for you to make this private if you wanted to but you choose to make this public.

DV, there is no reciprocal right for you to force anyone to make a complaint public that they wish to make in private.

Now, at the point that the council was considering taking any action involving you, we would reach out to you ourselves and ask for your input on the process prior to making any decision. That's only fair. However, we feel this is a situation that is best handled by the site's moderation, and have said as much. This would only fall under council jurisdiction if it represented a systemic or repeated issue.

I'd recommend that all concerned take some deep breaths and consider whether or not they're handling this situation well.

I feel like the ignore list tends to perpetuate rather than alleviate flaming problems in-game, so I don't oppose ridding ourselves of that particular option.

Half the time, it seems like it's used more as an obnoxious insult to the player being ignored than as a legitimate attempt to reduce conflict.

Quote from Iso »

Hi, guys! I have an announcement to make.

As my participation in Tare's active game comes to a closing, I wanted to advise you all that I am stepping down as an MTGS Moderator.

I love this community and I love helping you guys in every way I can, but I need a major break from Mafia; I've been burnt out since before the game over on 2+2 and I've barely been chugging along since. Most of the games I've joined have been to help them fill, but there's a lot that I'd like to be dedicating my extra time to. I want to start work on my YouTube channel, I want to start making music again, I want to grow hot peppers on my windowsill, and I want to spend more time on Magic.

I'm still going to host and review games, and I'm definitely staying on as a Council member. But I might not be checking MTGS every day like I used to, and I'm trying to avoid signing up for any games for a while. In the meantime, Cythare and Proph will take good care of you guys.

It's been a pleasure.

I'm calling a special meeting of the council to veto Iso's life choices.

A warm welcome to our newest Mafia Moderator: The Most Curious Thing!

I'm surprised so many non-Void people in the spec chat I had a scum read on my early in the game.

Ultimately, there were two problems with/for me (personally) this game:

-) Majora's Mask has crippled my mafia confidence, as I noted at one point ITT. Like, I know the only way I can improve is by playing more, but it's really rough when a game where you thought you were playing well ends up going THAT badly. As a result of the aftermath of MM, I've basically just drowned myself in setup design, and this game for me suffered for that, through no real fault of its own.

-) I felt kind of awkwardly...not really betrayed, per se, but I guess given false hope...by my role. It was like, hey here's this potential where you can do something awesome maybe possibly down the road.....but good luck with that. Like, all hope of me ever getting the signet was gone probably before the game even started, especially since the whole "Inside Information" aspect of my role was actually just completely useless. Inside Info is automatically assumed scum (informed minority, as described in spec chat), and when at least 4 other people in the game ALSO had Signet info, it just throws out all usefulness of that passive (ER, D_V, and the scum). My Inside Info wasn't very Inside, so I didn't really have a choice of what to do with it, which I think otherwise could have formed an interesting decision tree.

Also, side note -- this might just be me, personally, but I find that my activity suffers a bit when I'm vanilla. When I have a role that has an ability to use, I keep closer tabs on the game because I want to get my night result. When I'm vanilla and have nothing to either send in or receive, it doesn't help things because I'm not checking as often, which means that the game frequently begins Days without me actually paying attention, which keeps me in a permanent stage of behindness. Again, that might just be me personally, but...there it is.

I think that there's been more than enough said about Asenion and Seppel's faction in the spec chat, so I'll restrain from comments on that.

Overall, though, I applaud TMCT for the game -- while it did have some problems, I liked that he was willing to take chances with it and push design in various areas, rather than succumbing to the same-old-same-old. I'd definitely be interested in future TMCT games....although, hopefully after my mafia-playing mental state has had a chance to repair itself. I'm vastly too competitive to be content being this bad at the game.

Quote from Tanarin

Have a quick question:

What would I need permission wise in order to run another bastard mod game? From what I can tell it has been 3 years since the last one, and I am kinda feeling the urge to design one.

Those kinds of urges can be controlled with medication.

About a month ago, Curse was starting to look at making to the full move to the Beta. As part of their final check, they had the admins do a comprehensive feature and bug audit. We gave them a pretty massive list, so they ended up deferring to go back and address things that had been previously tabled, new things that had arisen since then, and just all around go through it with a finetooth comb.

Here's a summary of what the outcome of their first pass over our audit was:

• Animated avatar will be supported.
• Avatars will be square instead of rounded
• Post formatting will match across sites. (If you spent a bunch of time getting your primer or game OP to look just right, it's going to look the same over there)
• Custom Titles will be supported, but they're not going to make it in by launch. It's been added to their update plan for ALL their sites, so it's coming.* Stacking titles and formatted titles should be added at the same time.
• The thanks button is slated to be added at launch.
• Forum skins will be supported. So far, all I know of is a Dark alternate skin, but we'll see what they do.
• Dice tags are slated for post-launch, but some of the techs have been working on them already
• New version of the Spy
• The top dropdown bars will be click-to-open instead of hover-to-open
• Public profile fields (join date, location, etc) will be displayed under avvies again.
• Staff bold usernames will be back
• Quoting system fixed and improved
• Option to hide user avvies and sigs
• Trophy data will be saved, but won't be displayed until they get the system in place for them (post-launch)
• Bunch of mod stuff (easier thread management, improved report system, etc)
• Thread and post icons will be coming post-launch
• Mana symbol spacing will be fixed
• A new "Advanced Editor" feature
• Posts per Page and Threads per page both will go increased to 50.
• "Mark all read" will be fixed
• Spoilers clipping the sig will be fixed
• Forum tree ends at the main forum index instead of the home page.
• Deck list tag updates
• An issue with quotes was fixed
• Space between sig and text was fixed
• "Name on the door" for local mods set to be visible by default
• Some set spoiler issues were fixed.
• Ability to sort by view count, post count, OP, etc. will make it in before launch.
• Bunch of CSS and checkbox fixes.

That's the starting list, and I took off the mod-only crap and there was also more techy stuff. If there's problems that weren't covered in the above, I strongly recommend you post to CI or the beta. The techs peek in on the CI thread from time to time but they very actively follow the beta. I can answer what questions I can here, but if there's things that we're missing, it's important you let the techs know.


*I should note: one of the things they've stressed is that our feature updates and fixes are going to the whole Curse network, and vice versa, so when we go live, development isn't going to stop there because everything they develop for us represents a network-wide improvement.


EDIT: I should note that a LOT of that list is still in development or not yet pushed to the public iteration. If it's on that list but not visible on the public beta, give it time, it's coming.

Comment Hidden

I think I'm the host that's most prepared at this point in time, and we're going to start setting things in motion Wednesday night. I'm expecting a lag as we get our MS guests migrated over for the festivities, but we will have a player list, rule set, and opening flavor.

Quote from Azrael

Quote from Iso

Would you happen to mean "Last Gasp", Proph?

Also, who's been using MafiaScribe in the polls?

No idea. Mafiascribe isn't authorized to vote, obviously, so the vote will be disregarded.

If you guys want, I can change the numbers to reflect as if it hasn't voted.

Comment Hidden

Quote from Azrael

This is because 2-3 years ago when I created that thread I did a sloppy job rerouting links from the old thread. Since the thread is closed, it'll need a mod tweak, now.

Quote from ZeDorkSlipeur

The article you guys are talking about does not exist (anymore).

Quote from Azrael

Quote from ZeDorkSlipeur

The article you guys are talking about does not exist (anymore).

Did someone move the old thread to the Forbidden Zone?

Doh!

Ok, I found the problem. The old thread was deleted four years ago (not inherently obvious btw when you just get plopped into it. :sweat:)

I've gone ahead and undeleted it for the time being.

Hi, everyone. I'm heading up at least the initial stages of this cooperative endeavor from the Mafiascum side. I'm in charge of Large Theme games there, and have run a number of not-too-dissimilar events over there. Anyway, I'm excited to see what comes from this. We've gotten a number of requests like this in the past, but this is the first time we've really taken it up, mostly because you all play in a style that we think complements our own.

Anyway, I'm putting together a team of 2 or 3 more people to help me out, but I'll be periodically checking in here. I'm in Italy on my honeymoon for a couple of weeks starting Tuesday, but I'll leave you in some capable hands.

I encourage anyone who is helping to organize this from your side to give me a PM so that we can set up some chat contact (AIM, Gchat, Skype, whatever) as I think that'll be the quickest way to get some back and forth.

Anyway, thanks for the invitation, and I hope this turns out to be fruitful for both sides!