It's the Team Mafia Tea Party (Dead Thread)

[Kagami]

Hi guys.

[Kagami]

Nightless would have been won but for the mollie replace, which should be taken into account in future team mafias. If replacements/swaps are allowed, there can't be nightless games.

Lynching nacho was too valuable, sotty was toast and I was going to go down with him, so I just went the low-info route.

Nacho's list was great, but it had GI in it, who was the only other player I didn't want around.

[Kagami]

Btw, I had no issue with either my team or scumteam, I just had to say that for there to remain doubt that GI was town.

[Kagami]

Though I'm not super happy that Cabd didn't let me replace into mod error :<

[Kagami]

I don't know about the others, but it's simply beneficial to strategically replace in VN. I can't fault people for making the smart move.

[Kagami]

The strength of replacement isn't about improving the player in the slot, it's about putting a player who wouldn't join the game as a certain alignment given the game's constituency.

Imagine if playerlists were announced before alignment tokens were used. Several alignments could be deduced purely from people not wanting to be scum in a game that contains someone they are afraid of.

[Kagami]

Strength is an interesting point, since strong town players are likely to die in other games early on, allowing them to replace elsewhere, but that seems mostly alignment independent in its effect on the new game.

[Kagami]

Doesn't really bother me, since our team never had any real chance of winning given the tiebreak system, just seems like something to consider next team mafia event.

[Kagami]

(Our team basically AFKed every game except maybe aeronaut, who was lynched day 1)

[Kagami]

I'm also sad you lynched TSO, ferry. The wagons that were disbanded to kill him were good.

[Kagami]

TSO I thought was townish enough, but I'm astonished that cabd got lynched.

His claim should have made him an IC to any sensible town. Apparently people believe that magua gave scum a surprise lylo role that could even be safely used to mislynch before lylo.

[Kagami]

Doesn't matter for scum: cabd power to L-2 + cabd vote + buddy.

[Kagami]

Btw, my suspicion is that reck's team tokened scum in every game. Confirm/deny?

[Kagami]

ok, cabd was framed. Everything makes sense.

Magua, never ever put a framer in a game again, pretty please~

[Kagami]

o right. That's a significant windfall then.

[Kagami]

fwiw, I disagree strongly with the existence of a meaningless point mechanic, even if it is town controlled.

[Kagami]

It seems like there were a lot of possible cases where "player x should have been mislynched" if things hadn't gone nicely.

[Kagami]

For one, it allows scum to claim a meaningful point-mechanic based role. The only defense to such a claim is "maybe the mod made points meaningless solely to enable a scum fake-claim."

[Kagami]

Suppose a member of the scumteam looked very townish. That scum finds out that the score mechanic is in fact a red herring, placed in the game for who-knows-what reason. He claims that he can do something that is clearly town and interacts with the score, let's say "once per game, if a player has over 60 points without any other player having manipulated his score, you can have the mod publicly confirm that player's alignment if he/she is town."

But wait, it is confirmed to reck that score is meaningless. Sorry scummo, you lose.

[Kagami]

That's entirely true. My understanding is that it is related to voting patterns based on the early game when Cabd was alive, or that it was solely manipulated by reck.

[Kagami]

For one, yes, I think scum should be able to fake-claim things without being disproven by "btw, no one else interacts with the score" in a player's role PM.

Also, reck's role could easily die night 1. You'd have to continue to keep score, and it would be entirely available to scum to claim whatever they want that interacts with that score.

[Kagami]

Suggestion:

1. Tokens or whatever for picking games, no tokening for alignment.
2. Teams learn what games they're in, and captains decide who is playing what.
3. After assigning players, they learn alignments.
4. Point system determines victor. +10 points for winning a game, -3 points for swapping teammates between games, -2 points for replacing a teammate. Special penalties for things like the nacho slip (-5 points or w/e). Any tiebreaking system we apply here if town wins the normal is going to be flawed; I wouldn't mind seeing the cockettes win purely for being a solid team that didn't need replacements.

[Kagami]

the truth is that any point system that deducts any number of points whatsoever for swapping/replacing essentially makes it so that no team can ever swap/replace. If it comes down to a tiebreaker, as it is statistically fairly likely to do, it doesn't matter if you get 10 points or 100 points for a win and -9 points or -0.0001 points for replacing: it results in the team not replacing with a win.

Mission accomplished? That sounds pretty great...

In any case, specific points would matter, because swaps were being used tactically in order to win games. +7 points is a lot better than +0. No one would just let a slot fester in the hopes of not losing the 2 points, because it will cause them to lose the 10 points.

[Kagami]

But you don't know your alignment yet, like the way mafia games are supposed to be.

[Kagami]

You tokened alignment. While your team got exceedingly unlucky, it's generally the case that you'll get your tokened alignment.

[Kagami]

You tokened alignment. While your team got exceedingly unlucky, it's generally the case that you'll get your tokened alignment.

...ish?

imo the alignment tokening thing had it's pros and its cons, but I never thought it would seriously affect a specific player's alignment because of the way it was done [as, it just increased the dice's upper or lower range, basically].
...

I think you're underestimating the power of a token.

Consider a 3-10 mini game. By default, I have a 23% chance of being scum.

If I put in a single town token, I have a 11.5% chance. That's a pretty huge difference.
If I put in a single scum token, I have a 61.5% chance of being scum, which is wildly higher than town's day 1 scumlynch rates.

If I knew that someone put in a scum token, I would want that person lynched day one without question.

[Kagami]

Regardless of specifics, I think it's pretty clear that game swapping compromises the integrity of the games. Replacements do as well, although less severely.

Point deductions for doing so seem pretty reasonable to me. If teams refuse to replace flakes for fear of a penalty, so be it.

[Kagami]

I am still an advocate for restricting the number of teams participating for the sake of upholding quality.

This might be the best solution. I would also do the opposite of what was done this time around: teams that won in the past should certainly not get preference. If anything, prior winners should be part of the design/modding team.

[Kagami]

There's obviously going to be a correlation between number of town on the team and win rate when town won most of the games.

[Kagami]

Grats to Y&B, btw~