Board 8 > If anyone was wondering about my mafia championship qualifier game

(+) Yeah! (+)

But of course people who disliked my play take every single thing I say to imply the worst even though I pretty much never am implying those sorts of things

There's an example of Silver doing this in spec chat an hour ago lol

Saraberry also did it before. Went on a whole mini-tirade in spec chat defending herself against claims that I wasn't making

I recognize these facts. I don't care to transform my online communication style to cater to everyone to get them to like me. I understand how this has an impact on my vote total.

I'm still just shooting it straight at the end of the day, and not claiming to be an all-around swell guy.

Heck I'm not even suggesting I got done wrong or anything

Like, I voted SK and Ephemera lower in g10 because I was salty about their success in game lol

I don't even deny that. It's a product of human nature

I'm sorry for shitting on you, my bitchy mood has passed and wasn't necessary

It's all good, you did get under my skin a little too. I was actually just thinking this is a spot I can be quite content to hang it up and call that a career for mafia.

And I apologize if I offended any of your friends or embarrassed you by association.

I'm glad you two made up

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I dunno, reading all this it does look like you suck to play with

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I'm literally not denying that? The first thing I said to summarize my play round 2 was I acted like a jerk.

votes supposed to be based on mafia talent not who you like, hence why I said "if everyone is being honest", but that misses the point here

Point distribution by the way

93
86
68
63
53
46
44
19
18
15
10
5
3
2

Top 5 move on, I missed by 7 points

3 wolves, 11 non-me town

11x + 3y = 46

x = my average score from town; y = my average score from mafia

It's apparent that mafia were biased against me (I'm not just being vain, anyone can go read the discord where it was openly talked about by them)

If the bias brings y down > 2.33 points from x, or if it brings y down ~2 points from x and moving me up 2 spots across the 3 wolf rankings would move the 5th place player down on a couple lists (obviously I can't know this but it's not a stretch)

Then yeah

This isn't salt from me, it's just me spelling out in crystal clear terms exactly what information I was considering when I made the statement that "/some/ wolf salt" kept me out

How about if the wolves voted you really highly since they were impressed, but the town punished you for not being a team player, so it wasn't enough to get you to top 5.

The point is it's a popularity contest either way. If the goal is to get to the finals so you can win, then the metagame needs to be played in such a way that gets you voted for the finals.

You're like the "master strategists" on survivor who get voted out before the merge and are shocked.

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turbopuns3 posted...

Back to Dragon Quest!

always a good choice

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congrats on winning the game. sorry about the lack of advancement

yeah, i as a policy try not to play social games to win- i just end up getting frustrated. this includes stuff like Diplomacy, MTG Commander, Munchkin, and wc/sc phantom mode. Being good at the game just makes you a target

i'm curious as to the story (role, length of survival, personality, etc) behind the 5 advancers. what scores did you give them?

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It's pretty hard to be to worried about advancements in these. I remember in my semi-final game most recently we just absolutely murdered the wolves and I spent half the time going 'what if?' pointlessly because the wolves were so murdered. Everyone kept spinning in circles and I was just like "well this is probably boring."

These are fun get-togethers for sure though, take them for what they are.

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turbopuns3 posted...

Like, I voted SK and Ephemera lower in g10 because I was salty about their success in game lol

i think it's fair to not rank wolves high if you felt they were easy to catch, even if the rest of the game didn't

because mafia skill level is subjective. and it doesn't exist in a vacuum. since they fooled an entire town, they were "objectively" good. but your vote can be your own subjective experience, and if every player in the town had your mindset instead of being swindled because they knew those two from past games, they may have been caught more easily, or at least wouldn't have controlled the game as much.

being well-liked matters, but that's not entirely separate from skill. mafia is a social game, and if people find you agreeable, they will be less likely to lynch you, and more likely to listen to your cases. (which are things you want as both town and scum)

i do think there is an issue with champs where people know each other from past games and it makes it less of an even player field.

this is going to happen more and more, as champs gets more well known. and old-school message boards are phasing out of popularity, mafia scenes are dying, so more and more people will go to MU as a mafia hub for games throughout the year.

foolm0r0n posted...

How about if the wolves voted you really highly since they were impressed, but the town punished you for not being a team player, so it wasn't enough to get you to top 5.

...okay but again

Public discussion

A few town expressed surprise and even "shock" that I didn't advance

More than one town went so far as to say it bothers them that I didn't advance

Meanwhile multiple scum have publicly displayed negative bias

You just have no ground to stand on here if you're informed and paying attention

banananor posted...

i'm curious as to the story (role, length of survival, personality, etc) behind the 5 advancers. what scores did you give them?

93 - I ranked them 2nd. First PR to claim in response to the VT claiming PR. This player was the first after me to vote the scum who got lynched day 1, and it was for reasons of that scum reacted very poorly to my pressure. They were shot night 1.

86 - I ranked them 3rd. The other PR. Was in sync with PR #1 during day 1. Good reads. Posted a legendary meme that should single-handedly win them the whole event tbqh. Was shot night 2.

68 - I ranked them 1st. VT who is credited with being the spark of the late day 1 switch to the other scum I'd been parked on all day. Was widely cleared after the day 1 scum flip due to this. Was pretty on point but relatively low impact for the remainder of the game. Was shot the night before me despite being less confirmed.

63 - I didn't have this player in my top 7. VT who was mislynched day 4. Was 4th to join the initial scum wagon on day 1, the one we pivoted away from. Pushed hard on a VT most of day 2 then swung onto a different VT who ended up lynched in the eleventh hour. Went back to pushing the previous VT on day 3, and mislynched them. Was in essentially every town player's POE day 4, never cast a vote that day, and was absent for EOD.

53 - I ranked them 5th (nice). Replaced into the game day 2 when a VT bailed for reasons unknown. Was universally cleared by everyone after the N2 scum flip based on the way the two dead scum interacted with the slot. Asked a ton of probing questions to everyone, had the right gut on day 4 when we mislynched but caved to consensus without much of any resistance. Was pretty secure in lynching the last scum day 5.

DoomTheGyarados posted...

These are fun get-togethers for sure though, take them for what they are.

That's what I'm doing but you know me. I'm gonna be overly verbose and end up the last person talking about the game after literally every game no matter what happens.

Dels posted...

being well-liked matters, but that's not entirely separate from skill. mafia is a social game, and if people find you agreeable, they will be less likely to lynch you, and more likely to listen to your cases. (which are things you want as both town and scum)

I think a lot of people forgot I was universally cleared day 1 for reasons having nothing to do with PRs or bucket strat.

I was literally cleared for pushing on a wolf all day 1 and lynching them.

Then day 2 I squared up scum and said I'm vig and I dare you to let me shoot, and they said sure go for it hot shot, and I shot the roleblocker.

But people really didn't like it when I went "woo yeah I did great" so

It's funny to me, even if some people believe I can't find it funny and want to talk about it without feeling salty

turbopuns3 posted...

Dels posted...
being well-liked matters, but that's not entirely separate from skill. mafia is a social game, and if people find you agreeable, they will be less likely to lynch you, and more likely to listen to your cases. (which are things you want as both town and scum)

I think a lot of people forgot I was universally cleared day 1 for reasons having nothing to do with PRs or bucket strat.

I was literally cleared for pushing on a wolf all day 1 and lynching them.

Then day 2 I squared up scum and said I'm vig and I dare you to let me shoot, and they said sure go for it hot shot, and I shot the roleblocker.

Oh yeah that's not to mention the fact town was still listening to me day 4. Like, I ultimately pushed the wrong player that day, yes, but the players in the game were still respecting me and/or my reads and whatnot. So it's not as if I'd committed such heinous offenses that nobody wanted to work with me.

I said it before but I'll say it again, I went into the abrasiveness thing with eyes wide open. Not like I expected people to love me for gloating. The biggest reason I focused more on the wolf bias thing in my reaction posts was that was the part that was less accounted for by me ahead of time. It was relatively "new" info. Yes I knew Silver had blatantly denied that I had any legitimate tell on him, and yes I knew Centuries had the audacity to say he could reasonably see me as 8th best (convenient...) in the town during the phase right after I goaded him into letting me shoot him and before I'd gotten anything wrong - I knew those things, but I didn't know if the result would be affected much or not until all was said and done.

I feel like this is the part where you respond to Silver with "lmao kid. keep up the damage control" and then step away?

I mean, people expressed you should have moved on. salty scum prevented it. That's all factual it seems, so just allow that to be the narrative and move on. This guy wants to say you had no read, just say you're used to playing against better wolves so it was easy, then move on

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I mean, that's basically what I did. It's not like I've been arguing with the wolf team about it.

I'm referring to things that were said in spectator chat after the wolves died but before I died

Yes I posed a question to Centuries after I died but after his reluctance to acknowledge anything I did as good was apparent I just dropped it

And same with Silver basically

Para I have a couple questions I'd like your perspective on if you're still reading.

1) what did Gorf do well? Here's a list of things I can't give him any credit for, so I'm wondering what he possibly does get credit for:

-having any impact
-catching any wolves
-lynching any wolves
-convincing anyone of anything
-getting people to realize he's town
-using a role well
-voting / being present while he's up for lynch

2) If the game was played out the same except instead of Silver as scum, it was one of BJ/AP/Chingles/etc. - in other words if day 1 was a mislynch - does Thunal still get first place?

I'm asking these questions to better inform my perspective for a private conversation I was having with someone else in the game.

Aecioo posted...

You have brought much shame to B8

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Aecioo posted...

Aecioo posted...
You have brought much shame to B8

But I'm proud and smug and don't care what the haters think tbh

(I'm seriously baffled about Gorf > Ephemera like it's just...wut, like...wut...but yeah)

turbopuns3 posted...

You just have no ground to stand on here if you're informed and paying attention

On my point that you played the metagame poorly, of course I do

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foolm0r0n posted...

On my point that you played the metagame poorly, of course I do

nobody is disputing that - just gtfo honestly lol

you took a jab that was irrelevant, I pointed out it's irrelevant, you pivoted, I pointed out there's evidence to disprove your suggestion, you're pivoting again

why are you here

I feel like there should be a group of uninformed observers that decide who advances not the players themselves.

That just turns mafia into mafiaception in a way

But maybe that's the point

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Lopen posted...

I feel like there should be a group of uninformed observers that decide who advances not the players themselves.

well, there are. that's how turbo advanced past the qualifier stage.

but that system ends in the semifinals.

That actually seems backwards

I'd expect the players to be LESS able to remain impartial as stakes increase not more

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well, theoretically it is more about their ability to judge than about their impartiality.

it's assumed that the people who made it to semifinals will be good judges of gameplay ability, whereas those in the qualifiers can be just any random person sent by any community.

Yeah. I don't know. I feel like vetted judges who aren't involved would be best.

Surely there are some people who are respected as "good" that don't make it to the high rounds.

Like I'd rather have a good player who is not in the game judge my play than a great one who is, generally.

I'm not saying no one can be impartial, but I do think when you're in those high rounds that it's likely a minority and you're likely meta-mafiaing to win those championships.

Especially with someone like turbopuns who can be pretty obnoxious to play with at times (I mean this in the nicest way)

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the panel is made up of the previous year's finalists, so yes, they are usually pretty good.

do you mean meta-mafia as in people trying to vote strategically, i.e. give less points to the best players, so they have more of a chance to advance themselves?

generally doesn't happen. there's a lot of votes besides your own, you will make a minimum impact really.

hell, by turbo's own admission, the people that advanced are 4/5 of the players he thought deserved to. he doesn't actually disagree with the result as a whole, it seems.

well

technically

I think 3/5 of them deserved to advance

More I mean that you're trying to play in a way that seems like you'll curry the approval of the players in the game rather than the way that's actually most likely to win. Like for instance, as a super dumbed down hypothetical example that would never actually happen, if you're playing with a group of players that support mass claim on day 4 100% of the time, it would make you more likely to advance by pushing for a mass claim on day 4, even if it's dumb as hell to do so in the current game state, because you know the judges think that's smart.

But speaking in direct circumstances and not hypotheticals, I just feel like if you anger people who are playing you'll get screwed out of advancing because of salty people downvoting you more often than not, especially when it's somewhat tough to call.

With an unknown impartial judge panel I feel this is less likely to happen than it is with people who are involved in the game.

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Lopen have you read the description of my semifinal jw lol

turbopuns3 posted...

this triggered like 10 people to reply to me insisting I don't understand that the bucket strategy is optimal

Well I can't say I read everything you said thoroughly, and I can't say I read the game to understand whether a bucket strategy was or was not optimal but this did enter my head as similar to the day 4 mass claim thing I was talking about

Not sure if that's what you're getting at but yeah this is part of what sent me on this tangent in any case!

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Anyway that's basically exactly it

I knew going against the grain (especially loudly) would hurt my chances of advancing, but I wasn't about to be assed to play their way just because they think I should play their way

And that's largely because, to me, playing my game well was something I cared more about than advancement

Like if I rolled vig and then before game started they told me if you refuse bucket strat you won't advance, how do you think I'd have played it?

Exactly the same except probably slightly more obnoxious somehow

Yes, it's true (and I said it in game day 3 as para somewhat disingenuously observed) that one reason I wanted the vig shot was I knew it was a way to potentially impress/advance. But I also wanted it because it's just the coolest role and was something I wanted an opportunity to do for the hell of it. Shooting scum is fun.

Now that said

Once the game was finished, I fully believe (and if the temperature in the thread/discord over there were different, you bet I'd be arguing it because I have plenty of ammo for valid arguments with specific examples) that my play qualified me over nearly everyone else in the game. That wasn't something I would think by default out of arrogance, but there wasn't a lot of impressive play to be seen out of the pool of players, imo, and when you start putting together a checklist of what all I achieved or contributed to, it's in my eyes apparent that "he was a rude meanie" had a lot to do with people's perspective of me

But to circle back, and to pre-empt foolmo's meaningless line of attack - I did that with eyes wide open

It's like when Johnny Depp first showed up for Pirates of the Caribbean and they were like "wtf is this character you're doing, be more like we wanted" and he was like "nah, this is what I've done with the character. If you don't want it, find someone else"

They decided they wanted Depp. MU decided they wanted...gorf. Good for them. On with life.

Now granted there is something to be said for "trying to play diplomatically is good" because you need to convince people to vote, so I mean, maybe trying to curry the favor of the players is good play. And maybe there is something to be said that refusing to bucket or whatever is a distraction for town. I don't know.

I just think you introduce a lot of weird factors when you have players in game vote on who did best. You're likely going to be close to the right answer but to me it feels impure. People tend to overvalue diplomacy and undervalue actually being correct on b8 at least in my experience in the postgame chats, and tend to say people who had correct reads got "lucky" more often than they probably should (unless diplomacy allows the player to AVOID the lynch, then it was all the town being bad-- and I say this as someone who imo is actually fairly good at convincing people in mafia games) and I would be surprised if that wasn't the case there.

This gets worse ESPECIALLY when people are upset about things. The people who are less directly involved in the game tend to value things more fairly on average I think.

I also think the actual stats in the game should count for something and it shouldn't be straight voting (maybe it isn't?) because while getting stuck on "a bad team" can happen on average good players will win more often than bad ones, regardless of team they're on. With enough sample size you'd be able to stabilize bad draws to the point where game results actually do indicate the strength of a player.

ANYWAY yeah just talking. On the one hand, groupthink is bad and they probably do a lot of that in any established community. On the other in the few games of yours I've watched/played in with you I would say your bigger weaknesses have been the inability to convince people of things (which in large has been driven by your gratingness at times) so it's hard to really know how much I agree you were robbed without putting in way more effort than I want to, but I tend to think you're probably right in your appraisal based on what you're saying here.

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Yeah I think that's all fair

One thing I'll say is, to the extent that playing diplomatically is good (in game), the reason it's good is because it gets people to agree with or follow you, less likely to lynch you etc.

Well that just makes diplomatic play a means to an end

If I have other means to that same end, then not playing diplomatically isn't a negative (in game)

Now for voting, obviously people don't want to vote for the town who pantsed them on page 2 or for the vig who they thought would go rogue with a shot but then put it square between their eyes or for the town who told them their strategy was dumb

More thoughts rattling around now

I don't think many people realize I wasn't really making a point to start a huge fuss over the bucket strat stuff

To illustrate what I mean

Around midday 1 someone posted "I think the 3rd PR should reveal now"

This was followed by a second player posting "I also think the 3rd PR should reveal now"

I then posted "I also think the 3rd PR should reveal now

Wait no I don't"

The intent of that post was not to start a huge debate. I was just making a snarky day 1 shitpost

But ya know several people had to put their big brain optimal strategist ideas out there in reply to me

So I acknowledge their posts and then yeah

It wasn't like I came out firing with a big anti-bucket wall post thesis or something

Right. Diplomacy is important when it influences votes on the right guy and doesn't have you making bad votes.

They're both bad outcomes, but diplomatically voting for the wrong guy is worse than voting for the right guy and convincing no one every time. Especially since you're likely to lose all that social capital you gained by being diplomatic by being wrong, and then getting lynched yourself is usually the worst outcome.

Obviously you'd like to vote for the right guy and convince everyone, but yeah, doesn't always work that way.

I guess where I'm at is I see people in game significantly more likely to be frustrated when someone is being abrasive than people outside the game, and sometimes being abrasive (within reason) is a better play than not, so yeah in those edge cases you're gonna have trouble with the judging process.

My thought would be ideally play along with bucket strategy until it comes to a conclusion you don't like (unless you think it's fundamentally a bad strategy, then you gotta pick the fight immediately otherwise you lose credibility when you do), THEN pick the fight with it. Not that I'd necessarily be able to have that restraint either-- seems like the exact kind of fight I'd pick in a mafia game <_<

But yeah it's hard to know. Anyway I was more out to discuss why I'm not sure the community has a good method for choosing which players advance than whether your play was good, which I can't really know as I didn't follow the game.

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Lopen posted...

I also think the actual stats in the game should count for something and it shouldn't be straight voting (maybe it isn't?) because while getting stuck on "a bad team" can happen on average good players will win more often than bad ones, regardless of team they're on. With enough sample size you'd be able to stabilize bad draws to the point where game results actually do indicate the strength of a player.

well, a game takes weeks to play, with 48 hour days. so you don't really have time to get any proper sample size for the players, unfortunately. that's why that sort of system isn't a possibility.

Dels posted...

so you don't really have time to get any proper sample size for the players, unfortunately

Not enough of one where game results can be the sole determining factor, no.

Enough of one where you can weigh them in somehow? Absolutely.

No idea on where you place the weights exactly but like someone winning being worth +1 advancement vote in the judge panel probably wouldn't skew results a ton.

Mostly a judge panel, as large of one as you can make + some weighing of results + a random selection of players in game to flesh out the numbers a little (strong majority should still be panel) seems best to me. Definitely entirely going off in game player votes seems like a bad idea.

I'd be curious to see what the win percentage and average survival duration of previous winners has been though. Maybe stats don't matter as much as I think they do.

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Lopen posted...

My thought would be ideally play along with bucket strategy until it comes to a conclusion you don't like (unless you think it's fundamentally a bad strategy, then you gotta pick the fight immediately otherwise you lose credibility when you do), THEN pick the fight with it. Not that I'd necessarily be able to have that restraint either-- seems like the exact kind of fight I'd pick in a mafia game <_<

It comes to a conclusion I don't like pretty quickly when my chances of firing plummet by claiming day 1 (I'm being a little facetious)

Thing is - I don't think it's a bad strategy

It is an optimal strategy

But what bugs me is the reasons it's optimal

When you start drilling down

What makes bucket strategy good? It confirms a few town early.

How does it confirm town early? Because scum are pretty much outing themselves one way or another if they counter. If this wasn't true, faking PR would be a viable counter to the strategy. But everyone agrees it's not a viable counter.

So now we're at, it's good in part because it disallows scum from being able to fake being PR (oh yeah - flips were alignment only in this setup. So VT getting cute faking PR then dying without rescinding can be problematic, PR dying without having claimed can be problematic, etc.)

Okay. So why is it good to disallow scum from faking PR? Because faking PR makes it less likely for that scum to get lynched.

And now we've finally reached the bottom which is - bucket strategy is good because it stops town from having to read a player's alignment based on their role claim.

And fundamentally, I just wanna be like "man up, fuck claims, read their play and go based on that"

I know this is watering it down to a certain extent. But day 1 when people were like "if the 3rd PR doesn't claim, then what if we're about to lynch a scum and they claim PR at the last minute!!!"

Like, headdesk so hard at that notion. Oh fucking no. They claimed PR we can't lynch them now.

If PRs were that important that lynching one is detrimental, then why are we suggesting all PRs reveal themselves day 1 in the first place? Obviously losing their advantages isn't a big deal. Yet the reason the strategy is good kinda stands on the idea that we need to not risk mislynching PRs.

It just feels like we're really splitting hairs to avoid maybe possibly making a mistake in a game where those mistakes are inevitable anyway.

Actually just having all the players vote, but making their consensus amount to a couple of judge votes rather than being weighted the same, would be better than a random player selection. But eh what can you do. Working out the kinks of the judging system itself is probably a game of mafia on its own.

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Seems like a strategy that gets progressively worse as the caliber of player increases. Good players won't believe power role fake claims as easily. Good players will be harder to identify as scum without power role help. Good players won't gain as much by narrowing the pool of wrong choices as they're going to be more likely to find reasons to vote that are on average better than random chance

I'd probably have argued with it too

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Yeah I veered a little off target in my last post, but basically I don't think the amount it increases EV is worth the trade-off in the level of fun

Agreed.

And town that isn't having fun is on average more likely to burn out and choke endgame

Honestly I think there's a lot of nuance to the merit or lack thereof of the strategy and it's probably a lot more subjective than the community would have you believe

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turbopuns3 posted...

you pivoted

I made my 1 comment multiple times since you seemed to miss it, but now I see you're still playing mafia so I get it. Only reason I'm still here is pride but that runs out so fast nowadays.

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foolm0r0n posted...

I made my 1 comment multiple times since you seemed to miss it,

Seems like I'm not the one missing anything here