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On June 14 2013 07:30 drazak wrote: Yeah, that's me in those games. Games went pretty long last night because we played with more people, IRL mafia grows in length by a lot the more people you add.
Well, nothing compared to the shit fest of the first few games ever played on the forums anyway of TL.
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fuck me now that I have more time and do nothing but play modo to make money I should try forum mafia one more time.
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United States1966 Posts
man, this last game they are playing right now is hilarious. Mostly due to Tim/Shindigs :p
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Agreed this final game saved the night. What a lovely romance between Neal/Ryan.
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the batman is not just a man, he is a symbol, he cannot die
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It took 4 note cards to track that game...
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Cheers for giving me a shot in game1, it was nice to not get killed night 1 like last time I got in.
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Do any forum regs keep an eye on this, and if so could they bump this thread if one is going on? I've missed like all of them, and I'm determined to catch one of these.
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I missed it this wednesday (not sure if it was on), but generally it's every wednesday in the evening (as the OP says, times change, but just watch Koibu's stream pop up in the list on the right). If I remember I'll let you know next time I see it.
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kitaman27
United States9244 Posts
On June 29 2013 04:13 VisceraEyes wrote: Do any forum regs keep an eye on this, and if so could they bump this thread if one is going on? I've missed like all of them, and I'm determined to catch one of these.
You could always just watch the VODs I'd image.
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I could if twitch weren't down KITAMAN
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I'll try to bump the forums when we play, I fell asleep and didn't play this week.
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kitaman27
United States9244 Posts
I finally managed to tune into one of these. While it was entertaining at the beginning, from a viewer perspective the game was far too long. I suppose it comes down to whether or not you want to cater to the players or the viewers, but I honestly think it should have been half as long per round. The rounds with unlimited time were especially cringe worthy and it seemed like there were long periods of time where nothing productive was being accomplished. Obviously the more time you have as a player, the easier it is to figure things out, but I think you have to draw the line somewhere if you want to stream the games to others.
I don't think I fully understand the system that is used to trigger a vote. From my understanding, one player may decide to formal another player, who then must defend themselves. The initial player may then rescind the formal or trigger a majority vote on that one player. I must be missing something since it seems like the mafia team could always formal a town player to control who the town is voting for.
Since the setups seem to always be run as no-flip on death, they seem like they would always be reliant on the cop. I'm not sure if they are run that way for balance concerns, but I think flip games with the appropriate balance modifications would be a lot more interesting. Player analysis seems to turn into "lets consider implausible scenario X, Y and Z" because we are completely in the dark about the alignments of the last two lynches.
Something that seemed pretty backwards was how common it was for a player to be forced to explain why they are town. That leads to a lot of "I'm town because I am town", which rarely accomplishes anything. It should be up to the other players to determine whether or not you are town. Your goal should be to share reads and push town objectives, not defend yourself against a non-existent case.
From the game I watched, it seemed like there was too much analysis given towards mafia WIFOM. The plan to lynch based on a confirmed mafia player deciding not to hammer a player was a good plan. However, when Tofu decided to start rambling on about how good of a plan it was, the town started to get spooked. That's exactly what he was trying to accomplish. The fact that considered Tofu a poor lynch was puzzling considering how the only thing he was interested in was pushing a plan that would have a extremely low success rate if he were town. Town also over analyzed the mafia decision to not kill the confirmed town player. Following the plan to lynch through the Tofu non-voters would have won the game, so it is the mafia's goal to create confusion through the night kills. Coming to conclusions based on an action the mafia have control over and know will be analyzed is really dangerous. Allowing Alan to live at the end of the game was somewhat confusing considering how emotionless he was, but I'm sure it's a lot more difficult from a player perspective. I know I wouldn't be able to recall something that happened 5 minutes ago, let alone an hour and a half ago.
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Honestly I've been mostly just listening to them while I work for that reason Kita. And I'm pretty sure they don't understand the "formal" system either - most of the "formals" I've seen streamed came with no formal accusation at all. That's why you feel like nothing is getting accomplished because they seem to have a hard time verbalizing what they find suspicious, even when there's a specific reason and target.
They're also a very "meta" heavy bunch, whether they realize it or not. They try and boil down every lynch to performances in a previous game, by default. I guess that's just a tangible thing they can point to? "He acted this way last game, and he's acting differently now, so I think he's suspicious."
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That epic game two! Tim is a beast lmfao! GM meta for sure! haha Best game of the night by far. I agree that the times are little long but that's part of mafia, if it was forced into maybe 10-15 minutes it makes it hard on town because they dont really have time to talk with people goofing around aka game 3. also another reason for pro 20-30 minutes games is that with all that time you have time to question everyone since they aren't playing on SC II 's version where everything is much faster and easily remembered due to text.
Anywho I was a first time viewer and i am so coming back :D
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Hoping to shed some light here, as someone who's played a lot of forum mafia and a lot of live/streamed mafia.
On July 12 2013 01:22 kitaman27 wrote: I finally managed to tune into one of these. While it was entertaining at the beginning, from a viewer perspective the game was far too long. I suppose it comes down to whether or not you want to cater to the players or the viewers, but I honestly think it should have been half as long per round. The rounds with unlimited time were especially cringe worthy and it seemed like there were long periods of time where nothing productive was being accomplished. Obviously the more time you have as a player, the easier it is to figure things out, but I think you have to draw the line somewhere if you want to stream the games to others. The problems you've listed are well-known, but I don't think anyone has addressed the crux of the issue: the setup is designed for live, in-person play. Trying to emulate that sort of gameplay with online tools is always going to turn out lacking because players don't have the full range of in-person tools, but don't have a good range of online-tools available to them either.
On July 12 2013 01:22 kitaman27 wrote: I don't think I fully understand the system that is used to trigger a vote. From my understanding, one player may decide to formal another player, who then must defend themselves. The initial player may then rescind the formal or trigger a majority vote on that one player. I must be missing something since it seems like the mafia team could always formal a town player to control who the town is voting for. The vote system originally worked like this: a player initiates a formal (i.e. ##formal: XXXX), the accuser gives a formal argument, the accused gives a formal defense, then it goes to a vote - majority to lynch. If a majority isn't reached, the accused can't be put up for a lynch vote again that round.
At some point in time, however, the rule mutated such that you didn't need to go to a vote at all - you could rescind the vote if you felt that you had reason enough to do so. I've spoken about this to the group a few times because it essentially defeats the purpose of calling it a 'formal' accusation - it's just another way to say FOS but with unintended (potentially disastrous) consequences.
On July 12 2013 01:22 kitaman27 wrote: Since the setups seem to always be run as no-flip on death, they seem like they would always be reliant on the cop. I'm not sure if they are run that way for balance concerns, but I think flip games with the appropriate balance modifications would be a lot more interesting. Player analysis seems to turn into "lets consider implausible scenario X, Y and Z" because we are completely in the dark about the alignments of the last two lynches. This is something we should experiment with, but I don't think no-flip is being run due to balance, but more of a way to keep things interesting since it's easier to make town/mafia reads in-person than it is just based on forum posts. May have to ask flamewheel for why it's that way in the first place.
On July 12 2013 01:22 kitaman27 wrote: Something that seemed pretty backwards was how common it was for a player to be forced to explain why they are town. That leads to a lot of "I'm town because I am town", which rarely accomplishes anything. It should be up to the other players to determine whether or not you are town. Your goal should be to share reads and push town objectives, not defend yourself against a non-existent case. In live games this is actually a fairly simple and effective way to pressure for mafia. In a forum game you only really have the merits and flaws of someone's textual argument and actions (votes, night actions, etc.); in live games it's much easier to pick up on additional signals like body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, etc. The whole online-webcam setup doesn't work as well, plus the additional barriers created by computer-interaction and home-environment make it easier for these things to go unnoticed. It's just an approach that doesn't work as well online as it does in person.
Lastly there are currently some restrictions on chat ability that really don't make sense to me. The equivalent of a PM-enabled online game in a live setup (i.e., ability to have side conversations, etc.) is much more nuanced and interesting - you can actively contribute to the game on a local level and still have global impact. Again here is where the whole "are you mafia" question is much more powerful in person than online, because conversations with your immediate neighbors can help form fairly safe town trust blocs based on personal reads alone, which are incredibly important in a game without flips.
Currently, however, no PMs are allowed (unless in case of a role), because while you could have side-conversations IRL, you can't have a side-conversation with EVERYONE. The consequence is that everyone is basically forced into only addressing the entire group if they want to contribute to town - something that can be incredibly difficult to do even in live circumstances.
The other thing about PMs that I find kind of dumb right now is that mafia aren't allowed to coordinate beyond simply naming their night kills. Most of the WIFOM situations that get hashed out by the town during the day aren't important - people just need to take the worst case scenario and play accordingly, but a lot of time is wasted on the "what if" situations. Giving mafia the ability to communicate (and thus make bigger, coordinated plays) largely benefits mafia, but it also allows for way more interesting games - some of the conversation might be valid.
As for being meta-heavy - again, it's an effective IRL crutch. Online meta is kind of meaningless because it's easier to post; acting differently in person doesn't work as well.
TL;DR live format needs to adapt so it can be played more like forum mafia; otherwise games will degenerate into wastes of time because current roster of players can't play well without relying on live-tools.
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On July 12 2013 11:49 d3_crescentia wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2013 01:22 kitaman27 wrote: Since the setups seem to always be run as no-flip on death, they seem like they would always be reliant on the cop. I'm not sure if they are run that way for balance concerns, but I think flip games with the appropriate balance modifications would be a lot more interesting. Player analysis seems to turn into "lets consider implausible scenario X, Y and Z" because we are completely in the dark about the alignments of the last two lynches. This is something we should experiment with, but I don't think no-flip is being run due to balance, but more of a way to keep things interesting since it's easier to make town/mafia reads in-person than it is just based on forum posts. May have to ask flamewheel for why it's that way in the first place. You might want to think about something like delayed flips or announcing number of mafia left every 2/3 days as a compromise between the two. Whenever I've played mafia irl, one of those methods has been what we've used.
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On July 12 2013 12:28 HiroPro wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2013 11:49 d3_crescentia wrote:On July 12 2013 01:22 kitaman27 wrote: Since the setups seem to always be run as no-flip on death, they seem like they would always be reliant on the cop. I'm not sure if they are run that way for balance concerns, but I think flip games with the appropriate balance modifications would be a lot more interesting. Player analysis seems to turn into "lets consider implausible scenario X, Y and Z" because we are completely in the dark about the alignments of the last two lynches. This is something we should experiment with, but I don't think no-flip is being run due to balance, but more of a way to keep things interesting since it's easier to make town/mafia reads in-person than it is just based on forum posts. May have to ask flamewheel for why it's that way in the first place. You might want to think about something like delayed flips or announcing number of mafia left every 2/3 days as a compromise between the two. Whenever I've played mafia irl, one of those methods has been what we've used. Wow. HiroPro always pulling out the clever setup ideas
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