Board 8 > A Mafia Discussion topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

Maybe we have enough activity to justify having a central topic again, maybe not, but I have stuff I wanna talk about anyway that isn't YYH end of game, so why not. Gravy's next and nobody's after that I think? Champs is over I think? Discord mafia isn't a thing I think?

The main thing *I* wanted to talk about here is the "infraction" system we tried out in YYH. It was Chris' idea a game or two back, and I liked it and talked Pez into trying it as an experiment. Basically, it's just the idea that you could give out small perks or penalties for minor rule violations that don't really deserve a modkill. We handed them out for people posting after the STOP, but it could also work for other stuff like non-malicious post editing or deletion. It didn't go super great, but I think the core idea is solid and could be done well after a couple more trial and error games learning from our mistakes. My takeaways and suggestions:

-It's probably better to give penalties to the offending player (or scumteam) rather than bonuses to their opponents. It is easier to do without giving away alignments, and probably more fair all around.
-That applies several times over if there are multiple factions in play. >_> SK Sultan kinda got screwed for a town mistake in this game. Town gravy missed the STOP, so we gave mafia a rolescan and Sultan....something, I forget what. Mafia scanned Sultan, catching him, and got him lynched the next day. Some of that was mafia's choice of target, some of that was Sultan making a slip the next day, but I think the main reason Sultan lost was a different faction's mistake, and that sucks.
-Our bonuses basically trumped every role- they'd go through protection and bussing and blocks and untargetability and everything. That might have introduced more noise than desirable. Going back to the Sultan example, he was untargetable except from kills, so getting caught by a rolescan kinda sucks even if he had "deserved" it (which, again, he didn't) and that also was a weird puzzle for town to figure out.
-I might make them detectable (coming from "Mod") by things like Watcher, too, again to reduce the confusion.
-I MIGHT even publicly announce that a punishment was given, avoiding unnecessary details as to its nature. That would also open up a few more options, like vote manipulation. For instance we could've made gravy Hated (-1 vote needed to lynch) or taken away his vote for a day.
-You gotta think hard about the context and who can benefit or suffer, and who could possibly glean info. We tried to do that but weren't perfect.
-Scum will pounce on any minor thing town does, but that's nothing new :P

I know Corrik really didn't like the idea at all but he's about the only one who weighed in and I want to hear from more folks.

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@DrPez wanted me to tag him and I also feel like @TheSultanOfSlam kinda deserves an apology

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Giving Mafia a free power up feels way more egregious than just modkillng gravy for posting 10 minutes after stop
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I think a one-shot scan is a smaller effect than a modkill even though it didn't really play out that way this time

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Lolo_Guru posted...

I'm willing to host an "actually small" (anywhere from 5 to 13 players) game if the community wants to get a feel for small games again.

I dunno what I think about the punishment system except that it was pretty rough on the third party. But yeah, the whole scum gets blank/town gets blank depending on alignment of offendee, yeah, that in scans; pretty much was meta-able from the start and as such needs retooling to say the least.
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Tom Bombadil posted...

I think a one-shot scan is a smaller effect than a modkill even though it didn't really play out that way this time

As was just clearly displayed, the problem is someone potentially getting punished for someone else's indiscretion. Shifting the balance of power in the middle of the game to me is at best problematic.
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Tom Bombadil posted...

@DrPez wanted me to tag him and I also feel like @TheSultanOfSlam kinda deserves an apology

Its okay i could have been a bit more creative and tried harder to get out of it but i got caught i probably would have got caught sooner or later

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one thing was the rules said those were *potential* things we could hand out, not the only ones. I misread that for a while myself, so that wording could probably be improved >_>

the other thing with the gravy example specifically was that wasn't that the three hour day 1? I think a lot more slack should be given when day 1 goes three hours because really guys who does that and nobody is going to expect day to already be over <_<

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Also id love to host again at some point i highly enjoied that ill put my name on the list to host a simpsons Mafia i got a pretty good idea for that one

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Meow1000 posted...

As was just clearly displayed, the problem is someone potentially getting punished for someone else's indiscretion

Yeah but I think giving penalties more than bonuses (especially in 3+ factions) would go a long way towards mitigating that

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I think we're just a bit modkill happy in general. I feel there shouldn't be modkills nor power-up candies necessary for stuff like gravy. The fact that there would have been a modkill under normal rules is a sign that we're treating a symptom with the power up and not the problem I think.

Just a single bold warning to the player for a first minor infraction and then a modkill after that would be fine. Maybe give players who have a history of being warned less slack.

Alternate non kill based enforcement like forced replace outs would be fine too.

Ultimately the question you need to ask is whether a modkill disrupts the game more or allowing it to ride disrupts the game more. The modkill is almost always more disruptive so should generally be avoided. The weird powers you gave out were almost modkill tier though because like we had Sbell's slot as confirmed town for nothing other than the SK getting a cop scan for no reason.
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Tom Bombadil posted...

the other thing with the gravy example specifically was that wasn't that the three hour day 1? I think a lot more slack should be given when day 1 goes three hours because really guys who does that and nobody is going to expect day to already be over <_<

Twilight solves all these problems. ;)
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I'm not a fan of the idea, it's just too swingy and introduces too much weird meta when the set up suddenly has the potential to feature all kinds of stuff it wasn't balanced around. Honestly people like gravy and Chris should have just been modkilled. If an alternative is really desired, I'd say bring back the "twilight" thing Chris did in a game last year where you get 15 minutes after end of day where everyone can talk freely, although that has its issues as well (notably: that rule and mayor/lawyer should never co-exist unless it's explicit that the lynched person cannot talk, which wasn't the case in that game). If you can't manage to notice 15 minutes have passed since the day ended that's definitely on you.

I think using this game as a launching point for discussion on that matter is pretty sketchy though since it was obviously a lot easier to post after hammer when the hammers were coming at wacky times. Some of the posts were obviously against the rules (gravy was super late, Chris directly reacted to being hammered), but quite a few more were late enough to be in a grey area because no one really expected day to end at that time. Hopefully these random hammers at dear god o'clock aren't a new trend in b8 mafia <_<
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I think that the system is ultimately workable, especially with the stated goal of not having to resort to the rather extreme punishment of modkilling for non-egregious things.

YYH exposed some flaws in it, which I think Tom mostly covered. The game being so early hammer happy led to multiple people not paying attention and posting significantly late. I think in a conventional game, gravy is excused on day 1 with a warning, then modkills start flying on day 2, which probably impacts the game more than the bonus scans scum got (Sultan aside). Agreed that working out some sort of system to penalize the specific player instead of giving bonuses on a faction basis is going to be necessary for anybody wanting to reuse this kind of system. If your penalty can be fairly and equally applied regardless of alignment, that removes all issues with announcing it publicly too.

Also quoting this here so it gets seen, even if not related to the things Tom brought up:
Reg posted...

Make the maximum game size 13 for a while. If you get more signups than your game is sized for, cut people instead of expanding it. Don't hesitate to cut people who have repeatedly shown a propensity towards idling out and not giving a fuck.

I think recent games have shown that 17 is more than this community can truly support tbqh.

Tom Bombadil posted...

I think a one-shot scan is a smaller effect than a modkill even though it didn't really play out that way this time

I believe this is true as well.

With so little to go from such a short day 1 on it was effectively RNG that we got such a lucky role scan.

You can judge a system on a single sampling. And the fact that it has the potential to be influential should serve as a deterrent to violations.

I think it's better for the hosts to be able to say "something will happen that has a varying range of potential effects" versus a modkill which has very concrete consequences. And then you don't have to split hairs as far as what is mk-worthy. 5 minutes? 3 minutes? 1 minute?
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Lopen posted...

I think we're just a bit modkill happy in general. I feel there shouldn't be modkills nor power-up candies necessary for stuff like gravy. The fact that there would have been a modkill under normal rules is a sign that we're treating a symptom with the power up and not the problem I think.

Just a single bold warning to the player for a first minor infraction and then a modkill after that would be fine. Maybe give players who have a history of being warned less slack.

Alternate non kill based enforcement like forced replace outs would be fine too.

Ultimately the question you need to ask is whether a modkill disrupts the game more or allowing it to ride disrupts the game more. The modkill is almost always more disruptive so should generally be avoided. The weird powers you gave out were almost modkill tier though because like we had Sbell's slot as confirmed town for nothing other than the SK getting a cop scan for no reason.

As much as I dislike MU, one thing they do right is have topics that autolock the moment the day ends.

Problem is we don't have the capability for that here

But really, you're responsible for checking in before you post is all it's about.
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Reg posted...

Agreed that working out some sort of system to penalize the specific player instead of giving bonuses on a faction basis

I could see this.

"If the player is town, scum is given their flavor and role". Would be a good way to penalize specifically that player.
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Reg posted...

I think that the system is ultimately workable, especially with the stated goal of not having to resort to the rather extreme punishment of modkilling for non-egregious things.

YYH exposed some flaws in it, which I think Tom mostly covered. The game being so early hammer happy led to multiple people not paying attention and posting significantly late. I think in a conventional game, gravy is excused on day 1 with a warning, then modkills start flying on day 2, which probably impacts the game more than the bonus scans scum got (Sultan aside). Agreed that working out some sort of system to penalize the specific player instead of giving bonuses on a faction basis is going to be necessary for anybody wanting to reuse this kind of system. If your penalty can be fairly and equally applied regardless of alignment, that removes all issues with announcing it publicly too.

Also quoting this here so it gets seen, even if not related to the things Tom brought up:
Reg posted...

Make the maximum game size 13 for a while. If you get more signups than your game is sized for, cut people instead of expanding it. Don't hesitate to cut people who have repeatedly shown a propensity towards idling out and not giving a fuck.

I think recent games have shown that 17 is more than this community can truly support tbqh.

This community has unfortunately never been good at culling out people who sign up and go inactive by day 2.

But yeah, it's pretty much accurate.
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Forceful_Dragon posted...

Reg posted...

Agreed that working out some sort of system to penalize the specific player instead of giving bonuses on a faction basis

I could see this.

"If the player is town, scum is given their flavor and role". Would be a good way to penalize specifically that player.

That to me is acceptable as a compromise. Just suddenly giving scum a brand new power isn't.
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Forceful_Dragon posted...

Reg posted...

Agreed that working out some sort of system to penalize the specific player instead of giving bonuses on a faction basis

I could see this.

"If the player is town, scum is given their flavor and role". Would be a good way to penalize specifically that player.

if that player is scum, they just get modkilled, because scum is like, never modkilled ever.
oh wait, you can't do that because then all the other town offenses are "guaranteed" town then.
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Lolo_Guru posted...

Twilight solves all these problems. ;)

Twilight devalues hammer and rewards town mistakes. It creates its own set of balance problems as well. Not to mention people still will post after it when you have things like super early hammers.
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red13n posted...

Lolo_Guru posted...

Twilight solves all these problems. ;)

Twilight devalues hammer and rewards town mistakes. It creates its own set of balance problems as well. Not to mention people still will post after it when you have things like super early hammers.

is it really such a bad thing to devalue the hammer
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Other communities are just worse then

I'm just thinking in terms of what disrupts the game and modkill has to be higher than most things

Like short of someone posting a dissertation on who they think is scum 30 minutes after night phase I'm struggling to think of what is going to mess with the game worse than someone being killed for no (game mechanic based) reason
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Lolo_Guru posted...

Twilight solves all these problems. ;)

Hadn't seen that before, but seems interesting if that's what Panth's talking about!

Lopen posted...

I think we're just a bit modkill happy in general.

Possible! ...the main goal of this system would be to reduce modkills but I get where you're going.

Panthera posted...

quite a few more were late enough to be in a grey area because no one really expected day to end at that time.

yeah I think Chris and gravy were the only ones we actually punished. There was a day when like three people posted within a couple minutes of a weird early hammer but one was scum so we kinda just let that cancel out.

Panthera posted...

Hopefully these random hammers at dear god o'clock aren't a new trend in b8 mafia <_<

I'd like to think we'll learn from that as well >_>

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Lopen posted...

I think we're just a bit modkill happy in general.

False. This community has the opposite problem.

Also historically speaking Ulti is accurate
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Forceful_Dragon posted...

Reg posted...

Agreed that working out some sort of system to penalize the specific player instead of giving bonuses on a faction basis

I could see this.

"If the player is town, scum is given their flavor and role". Would be a good way to penalize specifically that player.

I would try to err on the side of penalties that can be publicly announced without hinting/confirming a player's alignment if possible. Tom's ideas of the player needing one less vote to lynch or rescinding the player's vote for a day honestly seem good in that regard except for the fact that they break the game if applied at endgame.

Might be hard to do though.

Lolo_Guru posted...

is it really such a bad thing to devalue the hammer

Being able to talk after being dead is a huge balance swing. Its completely unfun to have dead town swinging at you when you are scum.
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Meow1000 posted...

Forceful_Dragon posted...

Reg posted...

Agreed that working out some sort of system to penalize the specific player instead of giving bonuses on a faction basis

I could see this.

"If the player is town, scum is given their flavor and role". Would be a good way to penalize specifically that player.

That to me is acceptable as a compromise. Just suddenly giving scum a brand new power isn't.

Keep in mind this game was literally a first run PoC for the idea. It was never going to be perfect, but we can improve it.

Lopen posted...

Other communities are just worse then

I'm just thinking in terms of what disrupts the game and modkill has to be higher than most things

Like short of someone posting a dissertation on who they think is scum 30 minutes after night phase I'm struggling to think of what is going to mess with the game worse than someone being killed for no (game mechanic based) reason

Certain actions are in modkill territory, like placing real life bets and bounties in the game in order to make your argument stronger. Han was once modkilled as Jack with a scum scan on me for excessively violating this. Maybe 7 years ago.
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Meow1000 posted...

That to me is acceptable as a compromise. Just suddenly giving scum a brand new power isn't.

There are lots of other options too. RB. Vote stuff like I mentioned. Silencing. Force replaces. Role nerfing. Publicizing or hiding info. It was an interesting exercise coming up with different options and then we picked like the worst ones <_<

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red13n posted...

Lolo_Guru posted...

is it really such a bad thing to devalue the hammer

Being able to talk after being dead is a huge balance swing. Its completely unfun to have dead town swinging at you when you are scum.

Could always have the rules prevent the one on the chopping block from speaking during twilight, just let everyone else.
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Btw Twilight is an awful idea that's horribly unfair to scum we're not doing Twilight.
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red13n posted...

Being able to talk after being dead is a huge balance swing.

What about if only living players could talk, so it's less a chance to give a dying message and more a grace period?

(I assume you don't flip the role until afterwards)

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I really dislike the concept of force replace btw, just because of the severity of the punishment.

Like, if it's bad enough to warrant that, it probably falls outside of the scope of the system we're discussing and modkill has to be on the table too

It has its niche

I force replaced Pez once because my then-girlfriend accidentally let info slip to him :P

was also on the table last time I main-hosted: a town member got an anonymous PM telling him who the scum team was. But there we just ended game because it probably would've kept happening even if we replaced him. I still wanna know who that jerk was.

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Tom Bombadil posted...

What about if only living players could talk, so it's less a chance to give a dying message and more a grace period?

(I assume you don't flip the role until afterwards)

You are still letting dead players talk. What if say, I just hammered the hell out of FD and want to shoot Chris before he can say "hey red knows not to hammer FD hes scum". Now he gets to say it and I cant shoot him first.
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Tom Bombadil posted...

red13n posted...

Being able to talk after being dead is a huge balance swing.

What about if only living players could talk, so it's less a chance to give a dying message and more a grace period?

(I assume you don't flip the role until afterwards)

Much better but there's still a distinct problem: You're letting town openly discuss a lynch right after it happens. Town is not supposed to be able to discuss the lynch until the next day. It's inherently unfair to scum that they get to do this instead of having to wait for 24 hours. It also can greatly affect how town power acts that night, which is also an inherently unfair byproduct.
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Tom Bombadil posted...

It has its niche

I force replaced Pez once because my then-girlfriend accidentally let info slip to him :P

Right. It does, but anything that warrants that seems outside the scope of this system.

red13n posted...

Tom Bombadil posted...

What about if only living players could talk, so it's less a chance to give a dying message and more a grace period?

(I assume you don't flip the role until afterwards)

You are still letting dead players talk. What if say, I just hammered the hell out of FD and want to shoot Chris before he can say "hey red knows not to hammer FD hes scum". Now he gets to say it and I cant shoot him first.

Yep.
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I'm not getting why Chris couldn't have just said "if red hammers he's scum" beforehand anyway though?

then again I'm not actually sure what kinda posts you could make during twilight that you couldn't have made during the day, except reacting to hammer, which has limited effect if the role hasn't flipped

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Tom Bombadil posted...

I'm not getting why Chris couldn't have just said "if red hammers he's scum" beforehand anyway though?

maybe he thought for sure I was town. And then I just say "fuck it i want FD dead its tied".
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Tom Bombadil posted...

I'm not getting why Chris couldn't have just said "if red hammers he's scum" beforehand anyway though?

then again I'm not actually sure what kinda posts you could make during twilight that you couldn't have made during the day, except reacting to hammer

Except in this scenario he didn't.

What's universally worse is if he didn't specifically because he knew he'd have twilight to say it in.
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What I'd prefer if we're doing mechanic things, are things that don't immediately provide new intel to the game but still are a detriment to the team.

1. If scum does it, a random town player gets a one use bulletproof that never goes away until shot. Scum will be told if they hit the penalty bulletproof with their night kill.
2. If town does it, a random scum player gets a one use roleblock shield against scans/night kills or something like that.

I actually really like the scum modkill thing, but with town I'm struggling to think of something that both hinders town and doesn't provide immediate intel. I think the core of the power up problem is that it can influence the game too easily. Something that is a penalty but has more mystery to it in terms of gained information is ideal.
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Dead town chats are about as much a waste of time as flavor texts to open days/nights imo.
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Meow1000 posted...

Dead town chats are about as much a waste of time as flavor texts to open days/nights imo.

within 3 hours of being in dead town chat i got to talk more about the game than i got to in game.
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red13n posted...

Meow1000 posted...

Dead town chats are about as much a waste of time as flavor texts to open days/nights imo.

within 3 hours of being in dead town chat i got to talk more about the game than i got to in game.

Why does it matter at that point if you're dead
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some people value social interaction